What do you do when you have a revenue problem? We see this all the time with our clients. It happens!
For the early-stage companies, it’s getting traction and getting that flywheel going. That’s just tough. But sometimes you become a five-year-old company, a ten-year-old company, even a 50 or 40-year-old company — and you start to see revenue plateau.
What You Shouldn’t Do . . .
Well, I can tell you the most important thing that I have learned about revenue problems from doing this for a long time: you can’t cost cut your way out of it. This is important because it’s the number one thing that I see executives do when they have a revenue problem, and the number one thing that they cost cut is brand and marketing.
. . . And Why You Shouldn’t Do It.
The challenge with this is that the way that you generate new revenue is by aggressively being in the market with your message, with your brand, with your campaigns, with your content, and with all of the things that create relevancy and connection to the customer. If you don’t have marketing to do that for you, and you don’t have the support of marketing for sales, there is no way that you can generate new revenue.
Your salespeople can certainly try and make a valiant effort, but they’re not going to have the air cover of your brand and your go-to-market programs, which they 100% need in order to be efficient. And efficiency is the Holy Grail — when you have your brand working for you, you have your go-to-market strategy working for you, and you have a well-oiled marketing machine that is able to really make all that happen in the market, that’s when generating new revenue can really take off.
The Bottom Line
Think differently the next time you look at your revenue problem. Make sure that you’re not setting yourself and your brand up for failure — instead, make sure that you’re thinking about how you’re creating the tailwinds for success.
Giddy up!