In this short episode of Spark, Dan talks about demand generation being misrepresented by marketers at the executive level. The C-Level usually have different concepts, different frames of thinking in their minds and getting buy in is not just a matter of using the right words and to help them intellectually understand.
Dan brings an analogy from investing: GTM should be diversified, just like a portfolio. A company is better using lead generation, outbound and cold outbound, to reach short and long term goals.
Buy and Hold
GTM should be diversified, just like a portfolio. If a company’s GTM is over reliant on lead generation, or outbound or cold outbound, then they’re placing their eggs, their investments into short term strategies.
Capturing demand is similar to day trading, where you buy a stock in the morning and sell it by lunch. Day trading is a pretty important component of many successful investment strategies, but over indexing on day trading or any short term tactic in any environment is risky.
You need long term components in your portfolio. You need assets that will pay exponential and compounding dividends in the long run. You keep on investing according to your strategy, regardless of the current weather. That’s the principle of consistency.
Why do you need to stay consistent?
The company is on a good path to building brand and creating demand. And then the market goes crap. They suddenly need money, the pipeline goes down and they start frantically generating leads and abandoning all of their long term plays in favour of short term ones.
In general, you really should be making adjustments to your investment portfolio and your GTM tactics on an ongoing basis.
But one thing that you never want to do is you’d never want to stop depositing into long term funds when the markets are down or when their prices drop. Consistency is the enabler of compounding returns and time will reward the consistent investor.