So, you’re missing plan and revenue growth is down.  Well, welcome to the club.  You’re certainly not alone in these times.  In this post, I’ll discuss what you can do about it – specifically, how you can apply some of the ideas I’ve discussed in Kellblog to troubleshoot go-to-market (GTM) performance.  I’ll focus on troubleshooting new business (“newbiz”) ARR plan attainment, the area where most companies seem to be having the most trouble [1]. Don’t Knee-Jerk Blame Plan The immediate temptation when missing plan is to blame the plan.  “It’s not realistic.”  “It ..read more

All strategy is a function of situation.  Situation varies not only as a function of the individual company, but also of time.  Remember that classic Silicon Valley strategy books were written in a different time and had some implicit assumptions built into them.  For example, That you’re in a new category. That it’s a huge greenfield market, ripe for the taking. That once you took it, switching costs were high so you could keep it. That if you didn’t take it, somebody else would. Be the gorilla of the space.  Just ship in the tornado.  Design the category to become ..read more

For no apparent underlying reason, a lot of the companies I have worked at over the years have been quite successful in Japan.  Thus, while I don’t write about it much, I have a fair bit of experience working with Japanese subsidiaries and/or distributors in the enterprise software market.  On a recent trip to Tokyo, I met with an old friend who’s lived in Japan for well over a decade and who is now the GM of Japan at a large enterprise software company.  Over a beer, she validated two of my basic beliefs about how enterprise software companies should approach business in Japan ..read more

“When you read their profiles and interview them, you think one thing:  these people are gods.”  — European founder on early US hiring. Despite numerous warnings, I continue to see many European founders fall into the same trap when it comes to hiring in the first years of their US expansion.  Sadly, it feels like one of those lessons you can only learn from experience.  That’s painful because failing on your first US hires comes at a high cost in both dollars and, more importantly, time.  So, I thought I’d take one more run at solving this problem, based on a chat I h ..read more

I’m always looking for better ways to distill strategy. My favorite strategy author is Richard Rumelt, who wrote Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and the more recent but less acclaimed follow-on, The Crux. I love Rumelt’s work for two reasons: He takes a wrecking ball to the garbage that is often passed off as strategy. Aspirations are not strategy. Goals and OKRs are not strategy. Financial projections and forecasts are not strategy. SWOT analyses and five forces analyses are not strategy. Driving results is not strategy. Deciding to be a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker is not strategy. You ..read more

“If a bird walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” — James Whitcomb Riley Many marketers are in such a hurry to sound cool and talk about topical issues that they forget the duck test: if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then most people will conclude it’s a duck. In logic, they teach that such abductive reasoning can lead to incorrect conclusions — and it can. But here in marketing, we draw a different conclusion from the duck test. It’s how most peoples’ minds work so we shouldn’t fight against it. There are two ..read more

Last week I hosted an event at the Balderton Capital London headquarters discussing the impact of AI on go-to-market (GTM) functions. The event was inspired by two things: My aborted attempt to write an AI GTM guide, after I realized just how huge the space was and how fast it was changing. I quickly understood it’d take too long to write and it would be out of date the second it was published. But the exercise nevertheless got me started researching AI and GTM. The following slide from Battery Ventures that I discussed in my 2024 predictions post. This slide argues that, thanks to AI-driven ..read more

Just a quick post to share the slides of a presentation I recently gave on six principles that can help you optimize both your results and your career. The material, which should be familar to long-time Kellblog readers, is largely based on posts that I’ve written over the years and the last slide of the deck has links to specific posts. The six principles are: Answer the effing question (ATFQ). Not answering questions wastes time, frustrates coworkers and executives, and can stall your career. Know your in-memory analytics. Know what numbers you should know in your sleep, why, and then know ..read more

I’ve realized that one of things I do for (or should I say, to) early-stage startups is detect whether they have a real or a faux focus (pronounced fo-focus) — the latter being a focus that appears to be real at first, but is in fact fake. Focus is like baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Needed. Timeless. And everyone’s in favor. But, alas, when you drill in, the conversation often goes something like this: DK: So what are you focused on? CEO: Mid-market (MM). DK: Do you sell anywhere else? CEO: Yes, for sure. A lot of today’s SMB companies will be mid-market tomorrow, so we want t ..read more

Just a quick follow-up post to share the video from the recent Balderton event I did on opening new markets as the key to durable, efficient growth. I previously shared the slides here. Now, thanks to Balderton, I’ve got video, embedded below. Thansk to Balderton for hosting and to everyone who attended this event. The post Video of Balderton Webinar on Efficient Growth via Entering New Markets appeared first on Kellblog ..read more