Flip the script on time
Bill Gates once famously said: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
In business, and marketing in particular, this flawed thinking shows up everywhere. Leaders want quick wins. Marketing teams chase short-term spikes (with no solid foundation). Sales teams push for immediate pipeline (without doing the hard work of education and engagement).
But growth doesn’t work that way.
The short term is noisy and hard to ignore
People are naturally worried about this quarter’s performance, the upcoming board meeting, next month’s sales targets and the list goes on. Activity is frantically conceived and executed with these short-term goals in mind, month after month and quarter after quarter.
But short-term thinking and frenetic activity creates only chaos. Random acts of marketing are the norm, with new campaigns launching quickly and disappearing just as fast. Strategies (or more correctly a grab bag of tactics) change every quarter. Messaging constantly shifts. Nothing is surfaced long enough to have any impact.
Activity increases. But momentum doesn’t.
The quiet power of compounding
We talk a lot about compounding. It’s the key to long-term business growth. It’s also quieter and less hurried. It’s consistent.
Consistent content publishing. Consistent nurture emails. Consistent engagement. Week after week. Month after month. Quarter after quarter.
Over time, the impact of all that effort that has built and built upon itself becomes obvious, and the effects of compounding are impossible to ignore.
Best of all, when you stick to one comprehensive and effective plan, and relentlessly execute it, things are less hurried, less frantic and far less stressful.
Ironically, the quiet power of compounding has the effect of making your message resonate loudly with your target audience.
Demand generation rewards patience
When the times comes for your sales team to reach out to a promising prospect, they will enjoy a much warmer and productive conversation if they’ve consistently seen well executed marketing and communications activity leading up to the call.
When you show up regularly, stay visible and build trust and authority over time, you remain top of mind with prospects. They know who you are, what you stand for and, most importantly, what you can do for them.
Even better, if your marketing efforts have been consistent, engaging and relevant, prospects will start reaching out to you. It’s much easier to close someone who already thinks you can solve their particular problem.
Don’t reset the clock, use it to your advantage
Every time you abandon a strategy or messaging platform for the sake of short termism, you reset the compounding clock.
It’s like if you have a long-term savings goal (say for a holiday next year) and you put a few dollars away every week. If you then go and withdraw the balance every few months for some random impulse purchase, guess what? No holiday for you!
Be it saving money or building your business, there is real advantage in staying the course. And when you eventually look back in a few years’ time, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come.
Your secret strategy to stay the course
If quiet compounding is a marketing and communications plan you’d love to try but lack the focus, resources or capability to implement, we’d like to hear from you.
One of the key benefits of our outsourced demand gen program is it helps deliver both consistency AND results – allowing you to deal with the short-term requests and firefighting without compromising your long-term vision for success.