Take a moment to answer this question: How does your organization generate revenue?

(This isn’t a rhetorical exercise. Pause for a moment and actually do it!)

Once you have your answer, look at it and try to discern whether the answer you gave was related to methods you use to generate revenue (the how) or the strategic principles behind them (the why).

As a fractional CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) I frequently talk to business leaders who will discuss the ways that they generate revenue with statements like, “We sell through numerous channels to reach a wide market” or “We use reliable manufacturers to source all of our parts so we can get new products to market quickly” or “We provide extensive customization options so our customers can get exactly what they need.” And while these statements may be true, they miss the point of how their organizations are actually generating revenue. These are things that companies do – approaches they take, practices they use, or competitive advantages they rely on. However, they aren’t the true ways that those companies generate revenue …or at least they shouldn’t be!

Your revenue strategy should be more than just a collection of methods – it should be a set of principles.

In times of planning, we ask questions like, “How do we continue this momentum?” and “How can we improve results?” We want to understand the keys to success – the path we should follow to get where we want to go. And yet, we sometimes forget that the path to success is simply moving forward.

Letting go of the old is a precursor to ushering in growth.

There are many times personally and professionally when you will need to let things go and move on to grow. How do we stop doing what we’ve always done and start doing something new?

Turmoil and uncertainty aren’t going away anytime soon. So, as business leaders, we are left with two choices – bemoan this fact or do something about it!

Complaining about reduced budgets, labor constraints, accelerated timeframes on go-to-market strategies, added competition, increased channel options, and the like are futile efforts. There will always be challenges, but there are also tools, processes, and people that can help you overcome these challenges!

Winning companies understand this fact. Their success is built on the ability to analyze where they are today and use that knowledge to find the resources that are going to get them where they want to go tomorrow.

How exactly do they do that?

Some sales teams have it. And some don’t. What makes some B2B sales teams great? In working with B2B sales teams for 25 years, I have discovered that there are three key qualities that set high-performing sales teams apart – the right goals structure, authentic camaraderie, and a foundation of trust.

Whether your sales team is consistently exceeding expectations, plateauing at meeting but not exceeding goals, or underperforming relative to their targets, there is always room for improvement. Of course, like anything else in business, increasing B2B sales performance requires both managerial support and individual initiative. Let’s talk about how sales managers can get more out of their team and retain their best salespeople as well as how B2B salespeople can sell better.

With all the buzz right now around integrating AI and automation solutions into organizational strategy, it is worth taking the time to understand what kind of benefits marketing automation can offer and how to best utilize it to drive organizational success.

Let’s look at which kinds of activities are included in marketing automation, where it is best utilized to drive value, what its limitations are, the ethical considerations to keep in mind along the way, and what is coming next.

For the last 15 years I have worked as a content creator and copywriter, first for (what was then) the world’s leading ecommerce software provider and later for myself as a business owner. And today, I considered walking away from that to work for minimum wage at McDonald’s. Let me explain what happened...

Business alignment is everyone rowing in the same direction at the same time to get where they want to go together. When departments and divisions across the whole company are aligned around a singular objective, they will accomplish what they set out to do. Therefore, alignment is how businesses achieve their goals.

However, alignment is far more elusive than many business leaders realize. A Harvard Business Review analysis of strategic alignment made the following discovery:

“We asked more than 500 frontline employees, middle managers, and senior executives across 12 different organizations to indicate how aligned they thought their companies were with respect to corporate strategy. And we found that the participants were largely optimistic, on average reporting that they felt strategic agreement within their companies was 82%. But when we analyzed detailed written explanations from those same employees around what their company’s strategies were, we found that actual alignment (as measured by the linguistic overlap in the concepts and words they listed) was, on average, just 23% — two to three times lower than perceived alignment.”

Of course, that begs the question, would you even know if your organization was misaligned?

An article in the March-April 2023 edition of the Harvard Business Review titled Beware a Culture of Busyness had a very strong message to share with readers: “Organizations must stop conflating activity with achievement.” It explains why busyness has become so valued in organizations these days as well as the significant damage that results from prioritizing and rewarding busyness. If you get a chance to read/listen to the article and want to share your thoughts with us, feel free to do so.

We would like to add our own thoughts based on what we have seen from helping B2B companies achieve strategic revenue growth for almost two decades. In our efforts to help move organizations away from a busyness culture we’re discussing the dangers of being busy, who is to blame for today’s busyness culture, and how to evolve to increase profitable revenue.