Buying sales&marketing tools is like buying sports gear.
Here’s what I mean: you know the rich kid with brand new sports gear, but zero skills?
The one who shows up with poor stamina and no experience… but tries to counter it with shiny new gear worth 3x everyone else’s?
Whatever your hobby, you’ll find that class of beginners who
– have little clue about things and
– start with purchasing expensive stuff with
– little clue about what they’re doing and
– end up with the wrong gear for their skill level and goals.
Guess what?
It’s the same story with companies jumping on any sales or marketing tool that an
– analyst recommends or
– a competitor has or
– the marketing leader’s ex-boyfriend uses.
Then, armed with 17 (or 37?) pieces of software, they realize they need a strategy.
(Let’s let that sit for a moment.)
So they tell their teams or consultants: hey, we’re on a retainer with X, Y, Z tools, so show me a strategy that helps us make the most of our investment. (And integrate them all, too!)
If you sense something is wrong with this picture, you’re right.
There is an ancient, 3000 year-old Chinese saying for this: “start with strategy, then build out a minimum viable software-stack and resources”. (This might not actually be an old Chinese proverb.)
Now, this is good business for companies like mine – Klear B2B, who can help piece tools and data together in martech, WHILE creating a go-to market strategy – sort of like assembling the plane mid-air, while flying.
Of course, it’s much better when things go in their proper order, meaning you:
– start with strategy
– test things out “manually”
– put tech behind your operations once you have proof of concept
– optimize
– scale the living scheisse out of the system
