The end (of Q1) is nigh. Get ready to purge 🤡
Only a handful of SaaS marketing leaders I spoke to in Q1 expected that they'd even be close to their pipeline goalsAnd almost certainly, CMOs, VPs, Directors, Heads of, will be asked by the higher-ups what happened
The answers will be simple:
Whether it's the relentless cutting of teams and budgets, deals taking longer to move through pipeline or a decrease in demand across the marketIt has been... unpleasant
've been reflecting on my own performance this quarter and I'm OK with admitting I'm behind what I'd normally expect in Q1
But I'm also not beating myself up and here's why:
1. The client-product fit is extremely strong
We've been talking about how bad this period will be since Q2 last year! So as a team, we decided to focus on revisiting the quality of our pipeline
By refining our targeting and our messaging, we were able to attract more perfect-fit prospects than ever before
And because the messaging was pain point focused messaging for right now, those prospects are converting into customers at an extremely satisfying rate
2. The infrastructure we built in Q1 is future-focused
It's likely going to be a bad Q2 compared to historical performance too. Maybe even worse than we expected because of aftershocks from the emerging banking crisis
That said, we fully expected it to be uncomfortable in Q2 too and made the choice to focus on building out foundations for new channels that would pay dividends in Q3 and Q4 when everything (we hope) picks up againWhat does that look like?
– Building a total addressable market audience – I personally reviewed thousands of companies for fit
– Built systems for getting in front of those companies today
– Built systems internally for managing the different kinds of companies who we are already seeing fill our pipeline (it's a trickle, but it's an early sign)
3. We got problem focused and scrappy again
We've been in years of plenty and that breeds an attitude of entitlement: "we do x and we get y"
But the past 90-120 days have been all about trimming the fat in what we do
We removed heaps of stuff that wasn't serving us in reaching our best customers, redistributed investment to channels that we're building, tried stuff that made everyone feel uncomfortable (see basically any post I've done since Jan 1 on LinkedIn 😂)
It's been great to approach a bad year with positivity and proactivity
Let's do it!
