ICYMI: A recap of Q1 at The Revenue Architect

Highlights and top posts

This year has got off to a cracking start! Here’s what’s been going on:

• My substack continues to grow. I’ve now published over 140 issues packed with practical GTM advice and have over 3,200 subscribers. A huge THANK YOU to all my readers, especially to everyone who upgraded to a paid subscription, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet for private Q&A. Your support is a huge motivation for me!

• My teaching continues to grow. I’m now teaching two live courses to early-stage founders and GTM leaders; the first course covers generating more leads through warm outreach, the second course covers converting more leads to paying customers. If you’re interested in either course please get in touch or join the course waitlists on Maven to get notified about the next cohort.

• My coaching continues to grow. I’m now coaching startup leaders around the world on early-stage GTM as a fractional CRO, with clients in California, Texas, NY, UK, Germany and India. If you’re interested in GTM coaching, please get in touch at arnie@therevenuearchitect.com.

Thanks again for all your support! If you’ve been finding my newsletter useful, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work, access the full archive of issues and access to private Q&A with me.

Q1 posts on early-stage selling skills

• How to use a sales framework to troubleshoot your deals

  • Many early-stage sales teams struggle with low win rates, grinding away to book meetings only to see the momentum fizzle out after the initial call. Implementing a sales framework is the first step to solving this because it helps you figure out what is preventing your deal from closing.

  • This issue provides an overview of the SPICED sales framework, how to use it to summarize and troubleshoot a deal and how to use it in your pipeline meeting.

• How to prepare for and run a discovery call

  • In today’s crowded market you only get one chance to make a good impression on your buyer; during your initial discovery call. The key to a successful discovery call is making it mutually beneficial for both buyer and seller. Doing this well requires preparation and practice.

  • This issue covers how to prepare for a discovery call, how run it, how to follow up afterwards to keep the momentum going and common mistakes to avoid.

• How to handle an unresponsive buyer

  • You’ve had an initial discovery call that you thought went well but now it’s been a week or two and you haven’t heard anything. What do you do? This scenario happens all the time in sales and spoiler alert, the answer isn’t to send a sequence of “just following up again” emails.

  • This issue covers how to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding, how to choose the right approach to re-engage them and how to prevent your next buyer from ghosting you.

Q1 posts on 2024 GTM market trends

• 2024 SaaS will be less about Software, more about Service

  • With the intense competition in every niche, software is fast becoming a commodity. This has serious implications for startups who have built their GTM around software features as its fast becoming essential to differentiate on service, a skill that doesn’t come naturally to the tech industry.

  • This issue provides seven tangible ways to quickly build trust and credibility with prospects and customers and in doing deliver great service through your GTM.

• Is ZoomInfo finished?

  • Talking of service, ZoomInfo is a company whose customer service is so horrendous that it warrants writing an entire post about it. While most SaaS companies have a customer success team, they have a customer threats team that responds to cancelation requests with legal notices.

  • This issue was sparked by a very animated public discussion on LinkedIn and details the sorry state of ZoomInfo’s current business practices and how they reveal a company that has stopped innovating and is on the edge of crisis.

• Reddit Ads onboarding tear down

  • I’ve previously written about how today’s PLG software products look a lot like long established self-serve ads products and how having a singular focus on getting users to first impact as quickly as possible is the key to conversion and long term retention. But many startups mess this up by overloading the user with information and upselling prematurely.

  • Reddit Ads is a seven-year-old self-serve ads product that’s still finding its feet. This issuebreaks down the sequence of emails you get from Reddit Ads after you sign up but don’t convert, highlighting where they are going wrong.

Q1 posts on early-stage GTM strategy

• How to maximize the bottom of your marketing funnel

  • The rollout of Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE) has already started reducing organic traffic from the high volume informational searches that B2B marketers have long chased. The only way to make up the shortfall is to focus less on traffic volume and more on website conversion.

  • This issue details 7 simple tactics to improve B2B website conversion, including good and subpar examples of each tactic. You can probably implement most of these in one to two sprints.

• How to avoid the horizontal platform trap

  • Early-stage startup founders often believe their technology to have a broad appeal for a range of companies, functions and use cases. This is called the horizontal platform trap. Its the kiss of death for revenue growth because turns your messaging into a jungle of jargon and hyperbole that either confuses your buyers or bores them to death.

  • This issue covers how to understand your buyer’s existing workflow, how to get super-specific about how you fit into to it, 3 exercises to make your messaging super-specific and examples to get you started.

• What to measure in an early-stage GTM

  • In early-stage sales management you have a sales process that generates a low volume of data with high volatility. Its vital to separate the signal from the noise and avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions.

  • This issue lays out the types of data to collect and what to measure in each of the lead generation, outreach and closing stages of your customer journey.

Thanks again for all your support! If you’ve been finding my newsletter useful, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work and access the full archive of issues.