No one starts a business to focus on a tech branding strategy. Leaders begin their entrepreneurial journey by: • seeking out problems • conceiving innovative solutions • envisioning a better world • feeding the spark of curiosity All are elements of a solid startup story resulting in your product or service. But, it turns out you’ll be telling your story a lot: at conferences, meetings, elevator pitches, coffee shop brainstorming, or even the neighborhood barbeque. And remember, each conversation is about the person in front of you, distinguishing your solution & brand, and improving ..read more

Your simplest path to success could be prioritizing execution. That reflection and this quote from Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan,  set the tone for our recent thoughts: “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t executed well. Things that are supposed to happen don’t happen.” In our experience, a great strategy that struggles with execution is still a failure. Leadership has to set direction and the expectations to get this right. That’s a lesson many startups overlook because strategy is glamorous and exciting; execution feels ..read more

“Humans gravitate to the known, the safe, and the trusted.”  – Douglas Van Praet, Unconscious Branding So true in branding, business, and life! Today, we are seeing a greater measure of this truth in ‘life’. The spillover to business and branding is very real. “Business as usual” has changed; paradigms and business processes have been disrupted. This covers everything from how you manage your product delivery, to advertising campaigns and public statements, to the benefits you give employees and what you do to help your business partners. At GrowthShift, we wanted to provide some earne ..read more

We labeled this blog with a moderately provocative title because we’re passionate that business strategy equals marketing strategy and vice versa. We’re committed to shifting conventional thinking around marketing. Business strategy is not tactical; nor is marketing tactical, when properly defined.  Peter Drucker felt the same when he stated: “The purpose of business is to create a customer… and the enterprise has two basic functions; marketing and innovation.” With that introduction, let’s jump in. We’ve discussed some baseline stuff for business and marketing in our posts on branding ..read more

Your brand’s product/market fit should be the primary objective for early-stage tech startup. It comes down to this question: Can you solve a known problem for enough customers to build a business? The obstacle standing in the way is always sales. How can you improve your sales process? Start by answering these critical questions: Do customers confuse you for another brand (not a direct competitor)? Is your sales process complicated by RFPs, demos, trials, and pilots? Do you hear from management — or colleagues — that you have a messaging problem? If you answered yes to any of the above q ..read more

How many emails did you get today? How much time did you waste sifting through irrelevant ones vs. answering the important ones? According to Adobe, Americans spend five hours per day checking their email (26% of those surveyed said they expect this to increase in 2020 and 2021). So if your brand uses email as their primary means of marketing communication (MarCom), you'd better be remarkable or you're going into the trash folder. What do I mean by MarCom? Communication relating to your positioning, differentiation, unique proposition, unique story and why it is important to your customers a ..read more

Your tech startup's brand equals your market position and value proposition. It’s your entire strategy in a single package that is as important to your customers as it is to your success. Read on for a practical perspective on branding for early-stage technology. When a company, no matter its size, makes branding a second thought, it is giving itself an unnecessary handicap. Unfortunately, this is common in tech startups who need a brand for growth, unlike the behemoths that already have decades of run time. In my experience, a lot of start-up founders, CEOs, operations and finance executi ..read more

Of all the marketing lessons we give tech startups and entrepreneurs, there’s one setting the stage perfectly for market positioning. Before anything else, own your pond. It presumes you defined your pond – positioning yourself uniquely in a marketplace. It’s easy to find a single customer and sprint toward that first sale. Rebounding from that early success, if you jump directly into scaling operations before you’ve built your foundation, you risk instability, or worse. What if this customer isn’t the right target for your business? They may have specific needs that the rest of the industr ..read more

“If I can help a company shift how they think, I can shift how they grow.”  One of the oldest tropes in hiring (whether it’s an employee or a consultant) is to describe yourself in three words.For GrowthShift, our three words are: Make a difference. Making a difference empowers our clients — B2B tech companies — to understand their unique market position, and the opportunity it provides to connect with their customers. Every step of the GrowthShift journey has been defined by relying on change to deliver an impact. Change is who we are and how we make a difference every day. Get You ..read more

Who cares about your sales quota? That’s a question from a recent discussion on passion that sparked our thoughts about the way we (and you) create enduring value for our customers. Sales quotas are an important tool in guiding sales teams and building a business. However, they are only internal and typically short-term. There’s nothing in a quota that compels a company to provide the customer service necessary to inspire loyalty and generate recurring business. And customer service is not only the domain of your client service team. It is a corporate culture discussion. Passion starts at ..read more