Growth Insights for CEOs

Outsider Insights | You Built Something Different. Your Messaging Made It Sound the Same.
Executive Takeaways
- Real differentiation often goes unsaid because messaging leads with inputs, not the outcome buyers pay for.
- When the story changes by segment, buyers have no throughline and compare you on price.
- Buyers won’t work out your advantage on their own, so the message has to state it.
- Quick test: remove your logo and see whether a buyer could still tell it’s you.
Outsider Insights
Across Chief Outsiders, we talk to hundreds of CEOs every month. In this series, we explore the trends and challenges we’re hearing from these discussions – and what you can do if you’re facing the same issues in your business.
Recent Posts

The Top 12 Internet Trends Executives Should Know About in 2018
Wed, Jun 6, 2018 — For business executives, staying relevant in this time of innovation and rapid technological advancement can be challenging. Thankfully, we can leverage consumer and marketplace data to help our companies optimize products and services. One of the premier analytical reports on emerging business-related trends, Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends 2018, was just released. While the more than 290 slides in the full report come packed with useful information for driving your company forward, here are 12 important and actionable insights for business executives.

Seven Considerations in Evaluating your Marketing and Sales Process
Sun, Jun 23, 2013 — I just finished reading several books that come at the changes in the marketing and sales process from different perspectives. Launch by Michael Stelzner, discusses how to use social media to grow your brand and your business. It includes some very pragmatic tools and examples for the marketing crowd. I highly recommend it as a primer for anyone interested in how to optimize their social media efforts. Sales Shift by Frank Belzer presents how the buying process has changed and how it will continue to evolve. Of particular interest is Belzer’s discussion of why sales skills that have worked in the past will no longer be effective going forward. When considering the combination of these two perspectives, the transformation of the commercialization process is significant.

The Four Basic Pillars of Digital Economics
Sat, Feb 16, 2013 — For many companies in both the B2C and B2B markets, selling online is a must. Whether selling digital goods like downloadable software, SaaS-model subscription offerings or actual physical goods, in my experience there are a few straight forward and basic economic pillars of selling online that are often overlooked. While your products, pricing and promotions are important, I’ve seen that a renewed focus on the intersection of these four pillars delivers significant increases in sales. These pillars are: • Traffic • Close rate • Average order value (AOV) • Retention