Topher Grant

“Our budget was slashed again,” exclaimed a frustrated CMO from a $75mil SaaS company. “The remaining staff is depressed, and those who can are jumping ship--anyone have any ideas for me?” the CMO asked. And so began another CMO Huddle in the “hidden recession” of 2024. Before breaking down the potential solutions to this common challenge for many B2B CMOs, let’s reflect on the economic realities our recent research revealed: ⚡ 69% of B2B marketing leaders believe their industry is in a recession ⚡ 50% noted their company experienced layoffs ⚡ 69% were asked to do more with less budget ⚡ 76% are experiencing more pressure to deliver pipeline results [Note: The complete report will be released on 6/18/24. Ping me for a copy.] Now let’s tackle this CMO’s leadership challenge after layoffs and budget cuts. Most of the time, layoffs do not end up with the optimal mix of talent based on the reduced budget. Sure, you eliminated some weak performers. That’s always helpful. But the critical question is, given your new budget, do you have the right mix of talent? If you had started from scratch, is this the team you would have put in place? Rather than fretting about staffers jumping ship, think of that as an opportunity to right-size and rebuild with a team unburdened by what happened before. Look for “utility players” eager to tackle multiple roles and “Impact Players” as outlined in Liz Wiseman’s great book. These more flexible individuals will be invaluable as you look to stretch every penny. Now, on to allocating your smaller budget. The biggest mistake you can make is to cut each area equally. Instead, take a step back. Restart your strategic process. The budget will follow. A smaller budget requires more focus. First, your smaller staff won’t be able to cover the same ground they did before. Second, your overall reach is likely to drop or your dollars will be spread too thin to make an impact. But again, you need to tackle your go-to-market strategy before deciding on budget allocation. Here are some questions to help drive a more focused strategy: 🐧 Can you eliminate one or more products/services in your portfolio?   🐧 Can you drop a vertical market or two or refine your ICP? 🐧 Can you fixate on one vulnerable competitor and win more of those deals? 🐧 Can you reposition your product/service to make it more appealing to a specific target? 🐧 Can we adopt a more distinctive personality to help us cut through?  This exercise is about differentiation. Narrowing the target and finding your unique position, your most compelling point of difference. Once you have this, allocating your reduced marketing budget will almost be fun. Ultimately, a budget cut is a leadership opportunity for CMOs. Force the big-picture discussion. Remind your leadership team, “We can’t keep doing what we did before with fewer resources and expect better results.”  You can also promise them that a tighter strategy is the fastest path to innovation. 

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Here are 3 two BIGGEST traits we look for in a team member when hiring for Chewonthis DTC and GaaS For SaaS And why you should be looking for the same.

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This tool saved me thousands of dollars. Me and my team were brainstorming ad angles for an e-commerce client in a very specific niche. And at one point we were stuck... Because we didn't really know what their target audience was up to at that specific moment. ➝ Their current pain points... ➝ Trending topics... ➝ Objections... And we didn't want to guess. That typically leads to wasting time and money. Even though we had data from post-purchase surveys and testimonials... We needed something else. That's when we started looking for info online. And came across this amazing tool... 🤩 The best part: it's free! Want to know which tool I'm talking about? Comment "tool" and I'll send you a DM. PS: I'm not affiliated with this tool, I just find it very helpful.

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Good agencies and great agencies are separated by one thing. People. I used to think it was process too. But, I think most agencies have virtually the same process. The difference in good process v bad process are the people executing that process and the quality at which they do it and how much they care. The name of an agency matters virtually zero. The people within the agency matter, a lot. The size of the agency, most of the time, doesn't matter a TON. The quality of the TEAM at that agency, that you are working with, matters. 3 A players will accomplish more (and a higher quality output) than a bigger group of B + C players. All this to say, if you are looking to build a great agency, you must find A players who care about the success of the agency and the clients you serve, almost as much as you do. When you find them -- pay them extremely well. Invest in their success, their happiness, their future. Most of the 'bad' agencies I chat with, don't charge their clients enough, or have a good enough margin, to support a team of A players, and it shows. They have high employee churn. In turn, high client churn. And worse, overall morale is low. Great agencies are made up of A players. Play like a champion, today :)

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Healthy profitability isn’t what makes a DTC brand valuable. Healthy positive cash flow is... Just because your brand is profitable doesn’t mean it’s creating positive cash flow. Unless you know how to manage your balance sheet efficiently, your profitable DTC brand’s cash flow may be locked up - 1. On warehouse shelves (inefficient inventory management) 2. Your customers’ bank accounts (inefficient receivables management) 3. Your vendors bank accounts’ (inefficient payables management) Need help managing your balance sheet so you can improve cash flow and increase your brand’s valuation on the open market? Shoot me a DM. My team of Ecommerce CFOs can help. — If you found this post helpful, consider resharing and follow me Jon Blair for more content like this.

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Jon Martin had an interesting post about SAAS integrations that got me going. I'm jumping into the party. (Thanks for the inspo!) Having been down this rodeo with many tools, systems, businesses and priorities, here are the top things I see missed by companies and vendors set them up: 🌳 They fail to pass original source data in, handicapping marketing in understanding what's driving business and where to allocate budget. 💹 They underestimate tool complexities. Just because there is an integration doesn't mean you can move what you want from one place to another. If one tool doesn't accept the field type the data is stored in, it can create a lot of challenges to move data. Some are surmountable, some are not. We prefer to sign an NDA to investigate and put a real proposal together so we know what limitations are up front. 🔛 They don't properly merge data between systems for integration. If you have pre-existing data in each tool, how will you make them talk to each other so they work together? Workflows, updating data on one side... many ways to solve for, but they HAVE to be solved for. 💧 They don't do data cleansing first (often tied with above). Leaving it for after creates way more headaches. Whenever possible (there are times you can't, I get it), take the extra time up front to cleanse your data so you aren't passing faulty data and creating extra duplicates, conflicting source data or more. 🔩 They don't think about long-term maintenance. Is this built in a way it can be managed long-term with the resources available? Are you getting stuck in long-term contracts with a vendor or software service (that might be okay, but you need to walk in knowingly)? Can you easily make updates and tweaks based on new company strategy, teams, data changes? #softwareintegrations #vendormanagement

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Hiring an agency is a crapshoot, 100% of the time. It doesn't matter how many times ad age has written about them... ...or how many times they've won best places to work, or how many positive reviews they have. It could go great -- it could go ok, it could go terribly. I remind people of that all the time and they seem surprised. The best agencies in the world are not successful 100% of the time. So many factors go into an agency being successful. Some in their control. Many outside of their control. Hiring an agency could end up being the worst professional decision of your life, but I do know one thing. You should be over the moon excited on the front end and feel supremely confident. If you do NOT, you should do 1 of 2 things, or both. 1) Talk to more agencies, 2) Ask more questions of the one's you are talking to. All the social proof, past results, and testimonials STILL do not guarantee success. And, if you hire an agency, and results don't come, that doesn't mean that agency is bad, or not smart, or had bad intentions. The biggest (unintentional) mistake I think brands make when hiring agencies, is they don't talk to enough of the RIGHT agencies. Finding an agency is easy. Finding the right agency is hard. I feel so passionately about that statement I've considered getting it as a thigh tattoo. There are a BAJILLION (a real #) agencies out there. New one's enter the market ever 12 seconds. Brands don't need to speak to 10 different agencies. They need to speak to 3-4 of the RIGHT agencies.

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Not so great agencies blame the client when they get fired. Great agencies understand that almost 100% of the time, they are at fault too. Everyone loses clients for one reason or another. Yes, even great agencies. Great agencies seek to learn, to understand, to see how they can avoid whatever it was, in the future. Bad agencies point fingers, blame everyone but themselves, and can't find fault within. They make off boarding a pain in the ass. Losing clients sucks, but it's part of the game. You just hope it doesn't happen often. You should lose and off board clients as gracefully as you win and onboard them. As we know, the day you start working with a client, is the day you start losing them.

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