Dave Schneider

WHY DO MOST STRATEGY PLANS END UP AS JUST THAT – PLANS THAT ARE NEVER IMPLEMENTED? This week illustrator/communicator Marianne Pihl Larsen and I discussed why companies often hire consultants to help with business and/or marketing strategies. The larger the company, the pricier the consultants – which often, in Marianne's words, results in "lots of fancy buzzwords and 150 Powerpoint slides with models and numbers." And then the process stops. The consultants get paid – and the slides remain in the C-suite "RAM" for a couple of weeks, and then nothing. The new strategy isn't communicated effectively and therefore not implemented. The odds of success increase drastically, if the client retains one of more of the consultants to work with an internal team to implement the new strategy. But even then, success requires a huge buy-in from the C-suite. The more complex the strategy and its 150 PP slides, the more outside help is needed. The alternative is to reconsider the 150 slides and go with just a few words – words that describe your brand, both externally and internally. Words that everyone can remember – even if you wake them up in the middle of the night. Back in the day at Navision Software A/S (acquired by Microsoft), my co-worker Jan Sillemann came up with 4 words that positioned Navision Financials (now MS #Dynamics365BusinessCentral) vs. the competiton: "Complex Challenges. Simple Solutions." Now, it took a great deal of product and market knowledge for Jan to come up with that, but everyone around the globe could communicate it and implement it in the product and customer-facing processes. #positioning #branding #strategy #productmarketing #revenueacceleration Graphics by Marianne Pihl Larsen, words by me :-)

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How do you align marketing, sales, and customer success in practice? I think this is an underestimated question in B2B SaaS. We can all talk about the factory aspect - the Bowtie - which is great. And we can all talk about how leadership should set KPIs - incentivization is crucial. But fundamental to all of these is a mutual understanding of what eachother’s job is like. One of the hardest aspects of true alignment of an entire revenue department, is appreciating how fundamentally different the jobs to be done within these roles are. Marketing is a scale business, even in ABM, where it’s much more about claiming space in someone’s mind and eventually convincing them your company is worth having a chat with. It’s about content, clicks, conversions, website, … And in general, it’s really inorganic. It risks becoming detached. It’s ever-changing. The pirate funnel of 5 years ago is already being challenged, today you need handraisers. What’ll it be in 5 more years? Sales then is super organic. To the point where it’s hard to scale. You need rules, process, playbooks, … Because it’s a people-driven business, not tech-, content-, automation-, or just skill-driven. It’s about building rapport, about instinct, about raw talent, about persistence amid rejection. It evolves generally at a slower pace and key principles never change at all. Humans will always want to do business with humans. But in the end, you need to close. You need to deliver. Else, you’re out. Marketers are not under the same stress. This makes sales more prone to trench-thinking, tunnel vision. They’re actually in the trenches, generating revenue for the company. Customer success is even more human, but without the focus on closing, ideally. It’s at once more organic (understanding customer’s questions and challenges, activating them effectively, being empathetic, going the extra mile), and less - because on the whole it can operate on a bit more of a helicopter view than sales does. CS doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of accounts and deals as much - ideally. Reducing the complexities every single one of these seemingly straightforward departments, into a tight-knit system, is where world-class companies are made. Combine this with a top-notch product, and hypergrowth is actually achievable. And it all starts, in my opinion, with true understanding of each other. Every marketer should make a qualification call, sit in on a proposal call. Every CS agent should too. Every sales rep should attend a testimonial shoot or contribute to a case study. BDRs could implement basic LinkedIn campaigns. CROs / Heads of Growth should have done every single part of the journey several times. Every single person should man the support chat for at least a day! Improve understanding, and the alignment will follow.

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👉 Are you B2B SaaS interested in other SaaS in Sweden or Denmark? 🇸🇪 🇩🇰 Then Vainu is for you 👇 When Robert Bråkenhielm and I were doing ABM research in Vainu, we found their 'Vainu custom industries property'. It can be quite hard to find B2B SaaS right from the bat with, for instance, LinkedIn Sales Nav. The data quality in Vainu is outstanding 👌 Especially now that they can also source contacts. And you can export your target account list straight into HubSpot 💡 Great for ABM strategies. How do you find target account data in the Nordics? And get it over to HubSpot effectively? Educate us in the comments! #ABM #Vainu #HubSpot

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Imagine if your marketing campaigns clicked perfectly with your audience, generating genuine connections and engagement. That's the power of targeting real, living customers instead of fictional Frankensteins. This is a topic we are massively passionate about. Because we see the opposite of this limiting so many businesses. Frankensteins are fictional, perfect characters created from wishes, assumptions, and data points. None of which represent a real person. 💥 They lead to campaigns aimed at phantom audiences. 💥 They fail to generate genuine connections and engagement. By identifying and understanding real customers—learning what excites them, what concerns them, and how they behave—you can create marketing strategies that truly resonate and achieve results. This deep understanding transforms a casual interest into lasting relationships, turning your audience into raving fans for your brand. Think about your favourite brand—how do they make you feel understood and valued? And what if you could replicate this kind of feeling for your own business? If you’re ready to move beyond marketing to mythical creatures and start connecting with real people, let’s dive in together. We are here to help you kill those Frankensteins and build genuine connections with your true audience. Get in touch today. Follow along for more marketing insights and tips! 🚀 #Marketing #AudienceEngagement #EffortlessMarketing

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Hi Johan Salo! You’re a Service Design and CX consultant at Ambition in Malmö. You’ve been using machine learning and AI in your work since 2019. Most of us didn’t discover AI as a research and design tool until recently. What were you doing back then, and how has your work changed over the years? – Well, I started out by exploring GPT-2 and how it could be used in research. Back then the technology wasn’t quite there, but you could certainly get a sense of where we were going. It was obvious that this technology would affect not just research, but all kinds of work. ... Read the full interview with Johan at: https://lnkd.in/dEqBjE_4 #ux #cx #ai

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🍯 WHY JOHNNY SAYS I SHOULD BE IN THE JAM JAR 🍯 Last week at SaaSiest in Malmö, I shared insights on ✨Sparketing✨and our philosophy of collaboration across departments Mentimeter, or as we call it, "the importance of being in each other's Jam Jars" or "Syltburksdoktrinen." Now, what do we mean by that? It means that we expect each other to challenge, support, and collaborate deeply across departments. For example, I can expect Anna Gullstrand, our Chief People and Culture Officer, to come with input, questions, and suggestions on my marketing plans and content tactics, and I, as a CMO, should embrace that perspective. That means no prestige, no defensiveness, but true collaboration and trust that people have the greater good in mind. Here are my Top Tips for management teams who want to be in each other's jam jars: 🍓 First, and most importantly, make it explicit and clarify that being in each other's jam jars is expected. 🍓 Take collective responsibility for the big picture, regardless of what team you belong to. 🍓 Encourage constructive challenges, and leave "the ego" outside of the room. 🍓 Keep your focus on your shared goals and the bigger picture for the company. You're in this together! 🍓 Make sure to focus on building psychological safety in your team; people need to feel safe to start sharing and embracing opinions about themselves, their teams and crafts. And yes, here’s a photo of Johnny Warström and a jam jar. Because I just had to. 😄

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Almost half of Partnership Teams generate 25% or more of their company's total revenue - but most of them have less than 5 people on their team! This is an insane fact. On April 30th I am launching the State of Partnership Leaders together with Kelly Stratman of EY and Jack Grey of Boston Consulting Group (BCG). We have collected a robust set of benchmarks and data to give Partnership Leaders the insights they need to have leadership conversations internally and build a winning strategy. We have limited spots available for the launch event, which will include the Executive Summary of the report, strategic guidance on how to leverage the insights, and a Q&A with Kelly, Jack and I. Comment here and I'll send you the link to sign up or check in the comments to grab a spot while they last! #partnerships #gotomarket #insights

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Tomorrow: Master the content chaos!💡 Join the upcoming webinar and learn from Product Marketing Manager Amalie Røtnes Widerberg and Business Development Manager Øystein Syversen how to stay in control of thousands of files. Content chaos, duplicates, and brand inconsistencies are past history now. Keep your media files organized and enable sophisticated workflows to boost your team's efficiency. Date: Friday, 7 June Time: 10:00 - 10:30 CEST Sign up 🔗 https://hubs.ly/Q02zNFTr0 Find out how to: ✨ Establish a single source of truth across your whole tech stack 🤖 Use AI to improve your content workflows 📷 Manage photos in compliance with GDPR We are looking forward to seeing you there! #Webinar #ContentManagement #GDPR

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A friend asked me; "Who is your ideal customer....?"   And it is pretty simply   My ideal customers are...   Corporate commercial partners of LinkedIn Spend >250.000 DKK on LinkedIn yearly   They have a growth, not fixed, mindset Believe that there is always something that can be improved   Are leaders Lead a team or department Not afraid of trying and testing new ideas in project sprints It is not that there is less to optimize for smaller commercial partners of LinkedIn, the dollar value impact is just less.   A % direct cost saving and a % improvement in the use of the software tools simply has a bigger and wider impact.   Departments I mainly speak with:   CHRO, CFO, Culture and People Leaders, TA, HR, TM Leaders, Procurement. If this is you, you are my kinda person, and I can likely help you   ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ If this post inspired you, make sure to like, comment, and share 🙏 Hit the 🔔 to get notified when I share thoughts and tips for a better partnership with LinkedIn. Stay epic, Simon M. Scavenius

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I needed to pick Anders Eiler's brain 🧠 Anders is a friend and former colleague of me. He's working on his new startup Herodesk.io (a customer service platform). I needed to talk to someone with a lot of SaaS experience about something as fun as CHURN. At Plecto we constantly want to be better. To create a better product, help our customers when they need it and have our prices match the value provided to the customers. Anders and I had a talk about this: - What is a good churn rate for a SaaS company? - How important is the product vs. CSM-team? - How is the pricing and packaging structure - including a tiering model? - How do you increase the CLTV by automation CHURN predictions? I will get back with a blog post about these questions at a later point. But for now please comment if you have input to the questions above. #saas #churn

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Marketing overload, more time to chill or increased polarisation? What will be the effects of AI on marketing and consumer communication? Join me in this panel discussion next week - I'm very curious to hear where the conversation takes us!

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Got a killer idea or early case within digital health or energy? Read on to see if you are a match and get in touch ⚡️ At KRING, we have two tracks for investments; we invest in our developed ventures in our #venturestudio, BUT we also invest in early-stage external cases, when there is a match 🎯 First of all, there needs to be a match between you as co-founder(s) and KRING's values. Naturally, we have some key criteria for our external investment strategy. We could be a good match if your startup is: 1) 🧬 Within digital health, focused on early diagnostics and early intervention, chronic disease prevention, management and reversal, functional medicine, or behavioural-based health interventions. 2) 🌏 Within energy, focused on energy renovation, optimization, grid flexibility, EV infrastructure or the built environment. 3) 👶🏽 Early in the journey with ongoing development needed for product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, team capabilities or other strategic work. 4) 💻 Has a digital business model that is asset-light with low fixed costs and high scalability. 5) 💸 With early focus on profitability - we build ‘Zebras’ rather than ‘Unicorns’ and aim to make our companies sustainable with early profitability. Classic “VC journeys” are the exception. 6) 🤓 Has a B2B2C or B2C focus. We focus on solving real end-user problems with a demonstrated high level of value-add and consumer demand, either directly or via corporate partnerships. In the case your startup does not fall within each category above, there may still be a relevant match between your case and KRING. If you are interested in learning more, please get in touch with me or fill out the assessment on our website: https://lnkd.in/dvNGP_iW 📩 Don’t hesitate to get in touch - we would love to hear from you! 🤘 #venturestudio #startupstudio #impactstartups

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One of the big topics in B2B marketing right now is how to bring signals into play in modern B2B GTM. Especially how to measure them and determine how good they are at driving real business outcomes. We measure the impact of a signal as how often the signal happens and then later that same company sales pipeline. We measure this relative to how often the signal happens. Some signals are obvious: demo requests that is one of the strongest signals. But signing up for our free product is also powerful (demo requests are twice as strong). Interacting with our onboarding wizard in the free trial is also a strong signal. Some signals are things we had overlooked: interacting with our security portal (from SafeBase) is a super strong signal. Then we can turn to weaker signals like seeing our pricing page (not in the image). It's a good signal (for instance it's three times better than reading a blog post). But looking at our customer list on the website is more than twice as good. Do you have plays set up to react to signals other than the obvious ones?

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How do you create a positive commercial team culture? ⭐ Johan Jarskog, CEO at Next One Technology, joined Josef in B2B SaaS CEOs a few months ago 🎙️ 🚀 They talked about: - Creating a positive commercial team culture - Why 50% inbound and 50% outbound is a great mix - What's the most important things in a great sales process - And much more...💡 Listen to the interview by searching for" B2B SaaS CEOs" where you listen to podcasts 🎧 #ERPsystem #SaaS #B2BSaaSCEOs

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Yo. It’s rare for me to push a specific initiative from one of my customers. But this is different. Almost 2 years ago, Peter Fechter, Johanna Dungl and I started a podcast for MARMIND. The aim was to get interesting marketers to talk about interesting marketing problems. We’re almost 50 episodes in, and I LOVE it. A few things we've learned: 1. Consistency of frequency. Keep em rolling. Don't stop. 2. You don't need a high budget to provide value. My set up cost less than 100EUR. 3. Informal trumps every time. 4. Don't over prep. A script DESTROYS it. 5. Women bring in more listens than men 👏 6. Bring on interesting guests that have a story to tell. 7. Mention all of your guests in a LinkedIn post thanking them for their time 😏 So with that, thank you: Scott Brinker from HubSpot Declan Mulkeen 🎯🎯🎯 from strategicabm | Account-based Marketing Agency Herbert H. from Raiffeisen Bank International AG Ralf Strauss from MarketingTechLab David Rowland from Protex AI Jordan Cohen from The Fox Hill Group Patrick Ward from Rootstrap Tal Valler from Zoovu Martin Cox MBA Kathleen Booth from Pavilion Dan Dillon Tyler Lessard 🎯 from Vidyard Markus Widmer Lutz Klaus Lindsay Tjepkema John K. Brady from poptop.shop Alex Olley from Reachdesk Ohad Hecht from (then) Prodport and now Emplifi Alexander Low Uwe Römgens David Raab from the CDP Institute (list to continue in the comments!) Have a listen (link in comments). Let me know your thoughts. Aaaand.... Go get em. Ps. I should really hire a designer. My design skills on that pic are questionable.... #podcast

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"We have to focus more on the best talent in sales." I couldn't agree more with Mathias Döpfner. Recently, there has been a lot of hype around technology breakthroughs, rapid productization, and a wave of new features. This is all great, but without monetization through outstanding sales performance, the technology will remain an investment without dividends. For marketers, this means seeking an even closer relationship with sales to better understand what can move the needle when it comes to pipeline generation and closing. I am excited about this new era of teaming up to crack the sales code together! #SalesMarketing #Oneteam #SalesCode

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You know how in business we talk about that lofty and almost mythical concept known as second order revenue? It's almost mythical because it's the kind of revenue a company can accrue from existing customers through a well-built and well-executed combination of #customersuccess, #marketing, #product, and #sales. Right? You know what I mean. You know what's even more mythical? Executives believing they can blow up their post-sales organizations and still have a functioning company, with engaged employees, satisfied and successful customers, and improved margins and profitability over time. Check out my article linked to in the post below.

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SMARKETING: The Ewing Edition... Let me take you back to one of the biggest US TV shows in the Nordics back in the 80s and tell you a short story why "sales" and "marketing" merged as "Smarketing". So, while it's an old kind of buzzword, its underlying principles are grounded in practical strategies for improving organisational performance.  🎭 "Back in the 80s, in the heart of Texas where oil flows like water, lies the kingdom of Ewing Oil Enterprises - a realm ruled by the legendary Ewing family, known for their larger-than-life personalities and cutthroat business tactics. At the helm of Ewing Enterprises are the iconic brothers, “J.R.” and Bobby Ewing, whose sibling rivalry is the stuff of legends. J.R., the slick and scheming salesman, always has a trick up his sleeve, while Bobby, the earnest and honest marketer, believes in playing fair and square. But lurking in the shadows is their perennial nemesis, Cliff Barnes, the thorn in the Ewing's side. With Barnes Oil Corporation nipping at their heels and profits plummeting, the Ewing brothers must band together to save their family empire from ruin. Summoned to the sprawling Southfork Ranch by their wise father, “Jock” Ewing, J.R. and Bobby are presented with a proposition that sounds like something out of a Wild West tale; an alliance between Sales and Marketing 😎 Reluctantly, the brothers agree to set aside their differences and join forces against as they wage their war against Cliff Barnes. With the addition of their ambitious sons, John Ross III and Christopher, the stage is set for a showdown of epic proportions. As they hatch their plan, old rivalries resurface, and tempers flare. But with the fate of Ewing Oil hanging in the balance, J.R. and Bobby know they must put aside their differences and work together if they’re to have any hope of victory. With J.R.'s silver tongue and Bobby’s creative flair, Sales and Marketing become a dynamic duo, cooking up schemes and strategies that would make even the most seasoned oil baron blush" In the end, the fate rests on the delicate balance between working smart, collaborate and trusting bonds." 🤝💼🌟 Are you still working in sales and marketing silos? Reconsider, or the Ewing's might be around your competitive corner 👿 😃 #SMarketing #leadership #salesandmarketing

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