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I have seen a lot of entrepreneurial scorecards, and one thing is consistently missing...  the client’s perspective.  Some businesses track NPS which asks customers/clients how likely they are to recommend the product or service to their friends or colleagues, but...

The process of developing the right scorecard for your business can be frustrating and is a journey. Does any of this sound familiar to you?: Am I tracking the right metrics to support my business? I have hopeless, long streaks of red for certain metrics on my...

Developing a tight, mature scorecard is a journey worth taking if you want to take your business to the next level.  Introducing a scorecard into your business can be frustrating and make you wonder: Am I tracking the right metrics to support my business goals? Do I...

“What are we going to do to hit our 3-year goal?” Leadership teams regularly ask this question in quarterly planning meetings. The way this question gets answered determines whether the company will hit the goal or whether they’ll arrive at a future quarterly saying,...

Most companies want to do playbooks last, preferring to try to get quick wins with a sales activity blitz, a marketing campaign, or some shiny technology. While this may generate a short term blip in the results, these things rarely create ongoing revenue growth....

When it comes to content most sales and marketing teams spend time asking the question, “What content should we present?” They should also be considering this: “When during the sales cycle should we present specific content?” Today’s buyers are overwhelmed with...

Bill Poole was a guest on The COO Show where he chatted with host Bill Reed about why there may be silos in your organization and how to integrate your teams to drive revenue growth. They also talked about how important change management is for creating lasting change...

What if the way we think about Buyer’s Journey is upside down? Smart marketing and sales teams collaborate to map out the buyer’s journey, thinking about how they can provide the right information to buyers at the right time during their decision making process. While...

The past two years have been incredibly challenging. Hats off to all of the teams that have pivoted, re-pivoted, and adapted to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. To say it has been incredibly challenging is an understatement. As we emerge from the pandemic, we find...

Series: How To Make Revenue Growth Predictable In Uncertain Times Part 1 Part 2 (this article) Part 3 Over the past few years business leaders have become familiar with uncertainty. In the midst of pandemic pivots, supply-chain shifts, and hiring hassles, one thing...

Increasing costs require many businesses to raise prices. Rather than just raise prices, what if you could take a strategic approach to cost increases? Following are ideas to get you thinking creatively about how you could handle this challenging situation. First,...

You might be wondering when it’s the right time to expand your marketing team. With a refined sales and marketing process, it can be pretty transparent on what you should be hiring for. Being particular about which role to fulfill isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Taking...

Every business shares similar struggles: there aren’t enough hours in the day, a limited marketing budget, maybe only a few sales team members. It’s important to filter through clients and projects to ensure that goals are being met as efficiently as possible....

To get from Canada to the United States in eastern Ontario, you need to cross the St. Lawrence River. When you cross the Thousand Islands Bridge, it’s like you are crossing two bridges. In between each bridge is an island. If you only cross one bridge, you get stuck...

When we sit down with our prospects for a first initial meeting, we often discover that they don’t have a defined sales process or experience that they are guiding prospects and clients through. This can be challenging for a couple reasons: It’s difficult for managers...

To hit your goals you need competitive advantage. How can you create strategic advantage in your competitive marketplace where imitating competitors seem to frustrate your efforts to differentiate? The answer for strategic advantage comes through customer experience....

I look forward to visits to the Apple Store. As a fan of the brand and a tech nerd, visiting any Apple facility is a joy to me. (I even went out of my way to see the visitor center at Apple’s corporate headquarters last time I was in Silicon Valley.) So, last week...

If you look around any successful entrepreneurial business, one thing you will consistently find are processes. Well-defined and documented processes for operations, administration and finance are paramount to driving growth. That said, if we look to sales and...

There's a delicate balance between setting aggressive revenue goals and achievable revenue goals. Of course you want to grow your business, but it is helpful to have some reasoning behind raising the bar to accelerate year over year revenue growth. The same concept...