Introduction

After working in the trenches within startups like CenterBeam, mid-market companies like Accelio, and large organizations like Xerox Canada, I turned my attention to working directly with mid-market CEOs. I have since had the privilege to speak to over five hundred CEOs—via Vistage talks, at the COO Alliance, and during one-on-one consultations. When I meet with small groups of CEOs, I begin each talk by listing out what I have found to be the top-ten growth challenges. They watch as I write the first few:

• Stuck at a revenue number
• Not sure where to start
• Current customers are stalled
• Constrained by sales

After I write each item, I turn to see the CEOs shaking their heads in recognition. I know they are well acquainted with these challenges.

As I continue, I ask everyone to weigh in. “Each CEO present can vote on five challenges that are most relevant to you,” I begin, “but you should wait until I write out all ten.” I already know they will all use one of their votes for the last item: random acts of marketing.

Invariably, that final item gets the most votes and, by far, the most laughs. When they see the statement, it resonates with them immediately, clearing the tension in the room. They see I understand. Now we can have a conversation about what is happening.

They know they cannot keep trying to pursue growth in a random way. Anything random is:

1. Made, done, happening, or chosen without method or conscious decision.
2. Lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern.
3. Without definite aim, direction, rule, or method.

To move ahead with clarity, they must first return to strategy.

Start with Strategy

If you want to get somewhere, you don’t get in your car and drive without a plan. The road could lead you anywhere. First, you have to establish where you want to go. Then you can execute on that plan. For that reason, we must start with strategy.

Many mid-market CEOs started their companies prior to the digital age. Others started within the past twenty years, during this age. No matter the case, they run fantastic companies today but often struggle to grow with the economy. Their companies are structured to deliver operational excellence, but they lack real growth strategies to accelerate revenue. They keep moving, trying to find the answer, but they often feel lost.

Over the last five years while working as a CMO-for-hire at Chief Outsiders, I have consulted with hundreds of CEOs and have seen firsthand that growing a company and running a company require different perspectives. Running a company is optimizing inside the four walls of the organization, driving efficiencies; growing a company is aligning to the forces outside the company—such as competitors, economic trends, technology evolution, and consumer expectations.

When I meet with CEOs one-on-one, they often share with me that they tried to hire a marketing agency, often for an exorbitant rate—hoping the agency would fix their problems. The challenge is that agencies are excellent partners to execute a well-thought-out plan and might even complement a growth strategy with a strong communications strategy, but they won’t build growth strategies for the business.

What every CEO needs first is a systematic roadmap to grow their business. They need a clear plan for sustainable growth based on data and market insight.

This plan should then lead to execution. Now you have to actually get in the car and drive to get somewhere. In those same rooms filled with CEOs, I often ask, “How many of you have done a SWOT analysis—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?” Everyone in the room will put up their hand. Then I’ll say, “Now, how many of you have activated against it?” Maybe one person keeps their hand raised, if any.

What’s going on here? They’ve checked off the box for SWOT. They’ve done what they were “supposed to do.” However, they have not activated against the opportunities identified in the SWOT strategy in a meaningful way that gets them more business. In a dash for results, they have triggered activities and have bypassed the insights gathering and strategy steps.

Before you send out messages in advertising, at tradeshows, or in sales presentations, it is important that you know those messages will resonate with your target audience. The insights should inform strategy, and your strategy should deliver compelling results.

The systematic plan, or roadmap, I will encourage you to develop in this book is based on market insight and the voice of the customer. We’ll look at best practices in both marketing and sales from Fortune 1,000 companies, which you can directly apply to your business. In the end, you’ll be equipped to truly accelerate the growth of your company.

Marketing and Sales

Marketing and sales are both essential business drivers and should be built out of a clear strategy. I will argue that sales is the execution of a marketing strategy and hence a subset of marketing.

Here, it can be helpful to envision a fulcrum, with marketing on one side and sales on the other. In today’s mid-market business-to-business (B2B) world, the end of the teeter-totter with sales is way up in the air. Where does that leave marketing? In the best-case scenarios, it is given some thought but is still not positioned optimally within the business. Mid-market CEOs have an immediate opportunity to bring this picture into balance.

From an investment perspective, most mid-market companies focus on sales as their main revenue lever. Naturally, they emphasize the importance of the sales cycle, which is a series of sales steps used to win business. However, if they want to win in a market where the power has shifted to the buyer, their focus needs to be on the “buyer’s cycle” versus the “sales cycle.”

Furthermore, because CEOs are so focused on operations, they can rely too much on sales to scale their businesses and often struggle to see the full picture. They need to look outside the window and understand the customer’s point of view, market trends, and the competitive landscape. By knowing how the customer perceives their products or services and their competitors, and by understanding the buyer’s options and how they actually go through the buying process, the mid-market CEO will realize the criticality of needing to first optimize marketing. Only then can they make their sales initiatives scale more effectively.

Recently, I was called in to help a $14 million environmental services firm that had been highly successful with past initiatives. They had recently launched an incredible new service, and they couldn’t understand why they could secure only one customer. Even with a superstar sales leader and a highly talented sales organization, they were stuck. No matter how great they were or how many calls they made, the numbers wouldn’t budge.

We did a deep dive and looked into the way the sales team was talking about this new service. The team walked me through the compelling features and benefits they would discuss with prospects. Soon, I saw what they were missing—something many mid-market companies surprisingly pass over—the voice of the customer.

They had not asked critical questions. What were customers concerned about? What were they looking for? How were they evaluating the service versus other options? How did they make their ultimate buying decision? Who were the stakeholders in the buying process, and what were they each concerned with?

As soon as we began the conversation with prospects who had chosen not to buy, we discovered that the sales team’s messaging was confusing to them. Prospects couldn’t gain a full picture of the service. They would say things like, “It doesn’t do emergency response, so we couldn’t consider it.” Since the service offerings did include emergency response, we knew something was wrong. We needed to change the story being told and put what mattered most to customers front and center.

Within weeks of changing the messaging about the service, the sales force began to gain traction with their prospects. They went from telling a story that didn’t resonate with potential customers to speaking on their level. The story being told was from the vendor’s point of view—in terms they thought were compelling. They had too quickly skipped over the marketing side of their business; they had not taken the time to establish the right story and truly understand their competitive advantage. Once they did, everything else fell in line.

So why do most...