Hey All,

My new top dash (first thing I check in the mornings) per the discussion on the sales call and Stevie’s slides in the town hall. No doubt this will evolve but version one probably falls under the crude but effective tag.

The gist, as discussed on the sales call:  we can create a huge impact if we all work as a team and get involved. 

Lets say there are 50-70 people with a solid (or solid potential) client or partner facing component to our roles..

• if each of us ups the tempo slightly to do an extra 3 quality interactions a week (F2F or video) we end up with 50*3 or 150 more per week;
• if we stick at it between now and the end of March that 150*12 or 1,800 new quality interactions; 
• if 1% of these adds to a quality lead that’s 18 additional leads in the quarter; 
• our average deal size in 2020 was $130k, so 18*130 = an extra $2.3m of business for Q2; 
• the net uptick in opportunities has been much higher than 1% when we’ve done these in the past. 

As we mentioned over the years these sorts of programs have been exceptionally effective in generating new business.. so much so that we’ve only ever tended to do them for 3-4 months before being swamped with new deliveries.. hopefully the case this time. 

The reality is that most firms in our sector (and most sectors) are very prone to navel gazing so you can stand out from the crowd by have a structured approach to ensuring strong client and market engagement. 

A few elaborations: 

• first, the implied target here is that everyone (yes even me and certainly you) squeeze out at least 3 quality external meetings a week; 
• generally the folks who nail this have some sort of program or pattern.. for example;
  • the CSO (& other new folks in security) could work with TAMs to ensure we do a monthly security review with the top 30-40 clients; 
  • support management could work w/TAMs to organise a base of monthly or quarterly account reviews; 
  • marketing can loop through and have a check in what every publication and partner marketing team once a quarter;
  • TAMs can do weekly check ins over video; 
  • or start scheduling an informal 15 minute end of week check in with the primary contact in each account; 
  • etc, get my drift.. 
• doing 20 quality meetings a week with one person or customer is not the same as doing one quality meeting a week with 20 firms; 
  • the latter being way more effective in the long term; 
• we probably shouldn’t count the call if more than four people from our side are on it.. something we’ll look at; 
  • for quality engagement 1s & 2s tend to be way more effective than large group calls;
  • net calls is probably a better measure,.. in the past we’ve had a “no delegations” policy to this end; 
• more fine tuning for down the line, prospecting, and discussion new projects, etc, tends to be more effective; 
• especially fun stuff, new cutting edge technology POCs and the like; 
• building rapport with key ecosystem partners can be very powerful (key,.. as in any of their customers is a potential customer for us); 
• same for key influencers, etc.. 

Finally, as managers, it is worth remembering that your role here is to make sure the folks in your team are on board and banging out the meetings. 

Managerial leverage is very powerful with larger teams, i.e. getting 10 people doing 5x meetings a week gets 50, way more than the manager could do themselves and still keep on top of the day job. If you run large teams the optimal strategy to create overall impact is often to do just enough yourself to demonstrate that you’re onboard, then focus on getting the rest of the team humming along. 

Understanding that managerial leverage exists, the impact of leadership (what you do as observed by the team), etc, is the key to being a high impact leader. Something key they don’t teach folks in business school. 

Hope this helps. 

Cheers,

Danny

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