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It's planning season again. The most agonizing process for GTM teams needing to plan their targets.
We discuss how b2b SaaS teams should go about it.
We discuss how b2b SaaS teams should go about it.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:34) - The Annual Plan: A Recipe for Disaster
- (02:37) - The CFO owns it
- (07:43) - The most important plan
- (12:43) - Multi year planning
- (18:30) - Resource Allocation: Balancing Headcount and Budget
- (20:04) - Commercial & financial planning in parallel
- (22:01) - Navigating Initiatives
- (25:04) - Short-Term vs Long-Term
- (28:52) - Get some friends in FP&A
***
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Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
[00:00:00] Toni: Hey everyone, this is Toni Hohlbein from Growblocks.
[00:00:02] You are listening to the Revenue Formula with Mikkel and Toni. In today's episode, we discuss the plan that kills most teams. It's the annual plan. We share the problems, when to start, and a bunch more. Enjoy
[00:00:17] times.
[00:00:19] Mikkel: times.
[00:00:20] Toni: Have you thought about the intro?
[00:00:23] Mikkel: So, I almost died the other day
[00:00:27] from the man flu, from the man flu.
[00:00:31] So it was one of those where, you know, you're just knocked out. You're just not mentally present and just, you know, lying flat on the couch out.
[00:00:39] Toni: Really? Was
[00:00:40] Mikkel: it that bad? Yeah, Wednesday was that bad. And then my wife basically comes home and all the three kids, As well, I wake up from my youngest daughter basically I think maybe climbed on top of the couch and just jumped down on my belly and you just wake up in agony and a complete shock.
[00:01:01] But she just found it hilarious that I
[00:01:02] Toni: was Yeah, of course.
[00:01:03] Sleeping. That
[00:01:04] Mikkel: apparently. Yeah, that was fun. So I almost died. Fact. That's a fact. Almost died from the man flu. And I actually just got life insurance. So it could, you know, I wonder if they would have made a lawsuit out of it. It's like, ah, you knew it was going to happen, didn't you?
[00:01:16] Toni: if your wife is poisoning you.
[00:01:18] Mikkel: Yeah. Well, I don't know if the bounty is, is that high, but you know, it's, it's a, it's a
[00:01:25] Toni: It's a profit loss
[00:01:26] Mikkel: thing. Yeah.
[00:01:26] Toni: Mikkel. If the bounty isn't that high, it could still be that the loss is like, you know
[00:01:32] Mikkel: That's true. That's true.
[00:01:34] But, so, that's actually the segue because we're gonna talk a bit about the plan that kills most teams out there.
[00:01:41] And what plan is that? Actually, Toni.
[00:01:44] Toni: I don't know, you tell me about it.
[00:01:45] Mikkel: It's the annual
[00:01:47] Toni: wow. It's
[00:01:47] Mikkel: the annual plan because it's so much torture to work for like two months on a terrible plan. You basically get a number handed to you and you figure out that there's no way you're gonna make that number and people just go tough.
[00:02:00] Toni: Yeah, and I think for like, for clarification, right, when we're saying the annual plan, we're kind of meaning a mix of two plans, really.
[00:02:07] Mikkel: Yep.
[00:02:08] Toni: The one is the financial plan. And the other one is the, you know, you could say the commercial plan or the revenue plan or something like this. Right. We could go deeper.
[00:02:16] It's like, well, a hiring plan, well, it's kind of part of both of these things, but it's ultimately those two items, right? If you look at your profit and loss statement, the first line, which is revenue and then the cost line, those of those two things need to be kind of figured out that's what we're talking about today, isn't it?
[00:02:31] Mikkel: it?
[00:02:31] Exactly. So there are a couple of problems we want to get to into first with planning as it is today.
[00:02:37] And I think one of the things you and I, I guess we're laughing a bit about back and forth on Slack was a LinkedIn post, which went something like, Hey, I kind of don't get it. The CFO creates a plan and there's no way that plan is going to come to fruition, meaning we can't hit the numbers.
[00:02:55] And then when the VP sales, misses target, who gets fired.
[00:03:00] Toni: Of course,
[00:03:01] because she should.
[00:03:03] Mikkel: She didn't make the, hit the numbers I wrote in the sheet.
[00:03:07] yeah,
[00:03:08] Toni: is apparently, or he, apparently just incapable, you
[00:03:12] Mikkel: yeah.
[00:03:13] Toni: And I think this is I think I don't think there's a problem
[00:03:16] Mikkel: here.
[00:03:24] I just find it funny that So, the CFO should be responsible for driving the plan. Let's get that out of the way, right? But I just find it funny that someone creates a plan that, technically speaking, someone else is responsible for bringing to life, effectively, right? And then If there is that back and forth of someone saying, Hey, we can't hit that plan.
[00:03:42] Why not listen? And I also get it because there's a bit of moral hazard involved when there's commissions and so on tied to it. But still that, that to me seems a bit odd because it's not just the VP sales, by the way.
[00:03:52] Toni: by the way.
[00:03:53] No, excellent. In many cases And let's just be in the real world the VP of sales will need to, or the CRO, whoever's going to be, needs to accept that plan.
[00:04:03] And they usually kind of don't, there's usually haggling involved, and they're kind of pushing back, and saying, well, this can't work, because all of those really good reasons.
[00:04:10] And then it's like, well, too bad It's already approved by the board, can't take it back.
[00:04:14] Mikkel: yeah, yeah.
[00:04:17] Toni: and if, if then the COO doesn't, doesn't execute the plan, it's like clearly he or she is just incompetent. I mean, that's an execution fault. And if we if he or she can't do it, maybe we need to get someone else,
[00:04:31] Mikkel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the class. And you know what? The funny thing I'm just reflecting over as well is probably the, the person this is most important to pay attention to is actually the person in sales leading the sales team, because the marketing person can just go, well, to hit that number, we just need to double the number of MQLs.
[00:04:47] It's easy. I'll just get a lot of leads in India or China or wherever. Yeah. Boost up them curl numbers so we at least hit don't care what happens to sales here.
[00:04:56] Toni: I got to say both of these roles, CMO, CRO, both of them, like, you know, very low tenures these days.
[00:05:01] Mikkel: Yeah. . I wonder why,
[00:05:03] Toni: I think, you know, when I was talking to Jaco, I think he was like, I think it's down to 12 months.
[00:05:07] Mikkel: Yeah. At some point it's gonna be three.
[00:05:09] Toni: You basically come out of ramp up, you know, which is, let's just say still 90 days for you just to kind of learn the ins and outs of like a decent sized organizations.
[00:05:18] And then you have nine months and then you're out again. It's like.
[00:05:22] I
[00:05:22] don't have a good comparison for this, but it just sounds nuts, But yeah that's how it is. And it's not the CFO's fault. Let's just be very clear. Not the CFO's fault. What, what, what other problems do we have?
[00:05:33] Mikkel: Well, I think there's definitely one on the investment choices you make, because when you look at a 12 month window, That's how you're going to prioritize.
[00:05:40] If we look at just a quarter and are going to make decisions on how can we salvage this quarter, we're going to look at what are the plays we know can have an impact this quarter. It's the same when you pull it up to 12 months. And you and I both know there are certain things that takes longer to build out.
[00:05:55] Whether it's establishing a new motion or something else, it will take you time. Very practically, there's just hiring. Yeah.
[00:06:03] Toni: Yeah. So
[00:06:04] on this one, I have like a funny story. So we were acquired really big conglomerate very financially driven conglomerate. And it took them a while for us to explain to them kind of this whole funnel thing, right?
[00:06:14] You kind of create something here, it converts, it takes some time and then it's money.
[00:06:19] Mikkel: They're like, is it like accruals
[00:06:21] Toni: so, yeah, exactly. So I'd eventually that got it. And then, I mean, those are smart people, you know, I'm not saying that they're smart people and then it just. You know, kicked us in the nuts the other way around.
[00:06:31] They were then suddenly saying for the second half of the year, it's like, why are we hiring anyone? It's like, well, you know, because, you know, we need to hire them. So we hit our targets and so forth. But, but if I understand this correctly, all the hires in the second half of the year, they actually won't have any revenue impact.
[00:06:47] Is that right? It's like, yeah. Huh. So this is actually really bad for our EBITDA
[00:06:51] Mikkel: Oh, no.
[00:06:55] Toni: So what they did, what they did basically try to scale down every single hire in the second half of the year, only hiring in the first half of the year. And then you enter the next year and it's like, Why is our growth expectations so low?
[00:07:07] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:07:08] Toni: And it's like, I mean, you can go in all kinds of different directions with this stuff, right? But when you really think about it from a CFO's perspective, it's like, no, every every hire on the second half year is basically useless for this year. And he's, or she's right about that. But, you know, there's this other year coming.
[00:07:24] But then also, especially when you're like a CFO and, you know, you're building towards like an exit and they were basically kind of getting purchased, basically handed from one PE to another PE, how it kind of works there. There's like, well, next year is not my problem,
[00:07:36] Mikkel: yeah. No, no,
[00:07:38] Toni: know, and to a degree they're doing the right thing, but it's, it's pretty messed up.
[00:07:42] Mikkel: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:43] So, I think the reason we're talking about this again is the season is slowly coming up on us and I at least think this plan is more important than it ever has been. Money is not as easy to acquire as a startup anymore and you actually being able to nail the plan, pretty important also for the ability to raise or just continue operations.
[00:08:05] Toni: think the, the way to think about this is how can you set yourself up to succeed from day one of next year? That's how you need to actually think about this. And obviously, you know, if you still do the planning in Q1 next year, you, well, you've clearly missed that boat, right? And I don't think we need to talk about it.
[00:08:22] I think it's pretty clear for everyone's like, ah, you know, probably we weren't set up correctly on January one in order to execute as much as we can. Totally get that. But then the next thing is, well, when should you actually start the planning process? And I think this is not a super straightforward question to answer.
[00:08:41] Because I think what we usually have seen, the way people think about this, it's about the maturity of the finance team. You know, if you have a super immature or just immature company, you know, Right. It doesn't need to be the financing that's immature. But you can get away with planning in November, December.
[00:08:59] I kind of, you've run the spreadsheet, kind of works out, CEO looks over it. You present it to a board in December. Yes, approved, done. I kind of, this process can be super short actually. And then you look at bigger organizations. And there suddenly it's not that simple anymore, right? You have like all kinds of different parts of the organization that, you know, need to kind of roll all these things up.
[00:09:20] You know, you at least need six months, six months to kind of, you know, from kicking off this thing to getting it approved, to having it in the systems and six months, right? And you know, and, and previously people were thinking like, well, it's, you know, we, we need to do the planning reverse engineering from how long the process is to get the board approval.
[00:09:39] If you really simmer it down, that's how people kind of think about this. This is how I think about this right now, right? Kind of, I need this budget thing for the board to give the stamp, and then I'm done with this thing, right? But here comes the kicker. This is a finance problem and a finance way of looking at the world.
[00:09:55] It has nothing to do with the commercial way of looking at the world. Like, zero. And here's why if you
[00:10:03] Have
[00:10:03] a one day sales cycle, oh yeah, one month, let's keep it like that, a one month sales cycle really your ability to get started next year and influence next year, it basically extends until the end of November.
[00:10:20] From the start of December and arguing, you know, the, the sales cycle before the cycle, the marketing cycle, if you will and then the project cycle to even kind of set this up, you know, even further, but, you know, basically from the 1st of December, you're creating only revenue for the next year. That's kind of how you think about this.
[00:10:36] So latest then I would argue, you need to have your your shit in order. To make sure that, okay, those are the things we need to do. This is what happens. This is the hiring plan and so forth. You basically have time until the end of November to make most of those decisions. It would still be better if it was a little bit earlier, don't get me wrong, but that's kind of the timeline.
[00:10:55] Now, if your company is super mature and you have a six month cycle with finance to figure this stuff out, great. Absolutely great. You know, in this case, the finance planning cycle starts before the commercial planning cycle. Yeah. Now what happens in most organizations though, is that it's not that way.
[00:11:17] You know, you don't accidentally have those two things falling into the same timeframe. Let's just say you have a six month sales cycle and you have a mid market organization that needs two months to plan.
[00:11:30] So when you then finalize the, you know, the, the budget in December and you started planning in November everything you do now impacts maybe your q2, You know,
[00:11:42] think about it like this. It's like everything kind of, because of the sales cycle and the time delay, everything you do then in November, December, based on the new plan, based on all the things you need to achieve. Zero impact first quarter, zero, you know, very little impact second quarter and only from there onwards.
[00:11:57] So in those scenarios, you as an organization actually need to think about, wait a minute, I need to think about starting my commercial planning, you know, minimum one sales cycle before 1st of January. That's how we kind of advise people to think about this. And in all honesty, you probably want to kind of one, want to do one sales cycle plus your, your, your planning that you need to do like a month or something like this.
[00:12:20] Right. That's how you should be thinking about this. And not based on when finance needs to create this fricking budget. There's nothing to do with you. The, the commercial planning, the revenue planning needs to kind of happen at a different time.
[00:12:31] Mikkel: time. Yeah You
[00:12:34] I, I almost wonder if we can just directly jump into then the time horizon of the plan, because it's so closely tied together when you think about it, right?
[00:12:43] And one of the things I've picked up on from our good friend Dave Kellogg at some point in time was when he ran the planning process, he would do multi year.
[00:12:51] He would look three years out because they were actively pursuing, you know, Changing some of the processing metrics, like whether it's ACVs or win rates, and he just acknowledged that you don't move those around in a quarter or two. That takes a long term effort and focus. So how do you view this planning a bit further out than just one year?
[00:13:12] Toni: So I think realistically speaking and You know how people kind of feel about it? If you're a mid market company, like up to 250 people maybe even 500 people, doing serious two year planning is, is weird.
[00:13:29] Sounds a bit like a joke.
[00:13:30] Mikkel: It's
[00:13:31] Toni: It's like, I don't even know what's going to happen in Q2. Realistically, I'm acting like I do. I'm acting like I do. And now you're asking me about Q2 next year, kind of the following, come on, you know, at what point is someone going to crack up around the table and be like, you know what, actually, we're not, we are just shitting each other here.
[00:13:47] Right. But, but, and this is, I think actually, you know, my conundrum or my solution to the conundrum previously, because the problem is going to be the following, let's just say you have a six month sales cycle, let's just see you as a very grown up, mature commercial organization. You realize shit. We actually need to kind of start this planning thing in May.
[00:14:07] Kind of, we have to do the planning in May. There's no world, no way. that you're going to walk over to finance and be like, guys we actually need to start planning in May. Can we start planning now, please? And they go, Oh yeah, you know what, actually, you know, I don't need to do this for another six months, but because you asked, let's, let's jump on this.
[00:14:25] Mikkel: And
[00:14:25] Toni: to happen. It's not going to happen. And it's not because FP& A is, you know, busy. It's, well, it requires the input of the CEO, it requires the input of the board. It requires, you know, all kinds of thinking. There's like lots of things that goes into it with you know, your go to, you know, your, your, your funding market fit, basically where you need to position strategy, there's lots of stuff that needs to be figured out.
[00:14:46] You're not going to dictate when that timeline is going to happen. Forget about this. Right. So. But how do you want to start planning for next year when there's no, you know, any, any kind of frame around this? It's also silly. You feel like, yeah, you know, we're kind of drawing up some plans, but we all know finance is going to come.
[00:15:02] It's like, no, all of this is wrong. Right. So what are you going to do? So I think my solution to this actually, where the commercial planning horizon is much longer than the financial one, then I think you should have a very serious conversation, honestly, with a CFO. And say, Hey, since that's the case, let's do two year long planning every time we do a plan.
[00:15:27] Because then yes, and everyone recognizes that the second year is going to be less sharp, less clear, less clean. But at least there's a bit of a baseline. That you can use in order to kick off your commercial planning for the following year without needing to involve finance. Right. And that plan can still, you know, include some updated thinking, some updated knowledge, but it doesn't need to be at the level of like, Hey, that's kind of baked into the board.
[00:15:52] That's what we're going to do. But at least then you have some frame, some frame to operate within. So that's actually how I would kind of probably be doing it.
[00:16:00] Mikkel: So do you want to have it in place in order to, let's say you're sitting Q4 and you know, Q1 is around the corner, but we need to start hiring.
[00:16:07] Is that kind of the approach or is it more to actually drive the conversation just to kind of.
[00:16:12] Toni: So maybe you kind of didn't explain this really well, but you're planning, let's just say happens in Q4 with finance. And they're planning for next year only, but you as a commercial organization, you already know, first of all, you're too late for next year. So you want to be, you know, ahead. And next year you want to start actually planning in May.
[00:16:29] Because you have six months sales cycles, right? Kind of, that's what you need to do. There's no way that finance is going to start doing a new planning kickoff, like in May already what you want to do in the original, you know, Q4 that we're talking about. You want to finance plan out for two
[00:16:43] Mikkel: right?
[00:16:44] Toni: right? So that then gives you, well, not enough time for next year, but it actually sets you up then for the following year, just to kind of, you know, do the planning super early within a frame that kind of works with finance and then kind of, you know, go through
[00:16:58] Mikkel: Got it. Got it. Okay. So once you enter the, let's say the planning cycle, what are some of the things to consider as a go to market leader, as a, you know, commercial team?
[00:17:10] Toni: So, There are some, you know, there's some theories around this, and then there's some practicalities around this. I think in theory, what you as a CRO,
[00:17:21] you should be involved in the strategic conversations that are happening around the table of where you want to grow. The business, right. And, and this is something simply because you're part of that team, you, you, you will have an impact on this stuff. Right. And so you're kind of part of shaping some of the overall pieces downstream from that, what I think the, the most sophisticated and theoretically correct way of doing it would simply be to say, Dear CFO uh, CRO.
[00:17:49] We want to grow in the U S more. We all think maybe outbound could be better than inbound because of CAC Payback and what have you. And we need to get to that growth stage over there. Here's, here's all the money we have for that. Please piece it together in the best way possible so we can hit, you know, some or all of those goals, right?
[00:18:11] That would be the best way for this to be achieved. And this should be a full funnel of thinking across marketing, sales, CS et cetera, right? Okay, this is how much we need for headcount, this is how much we need for kind of marketing budget and so forth. I think a lot of revenue organizations are, would be overwhelmed by that level of, you know, let's start from scratch, right?
[00:18:30] So what people kind of default back to is they give you number of headcounts you can distribute. Which basically kind of, you know, works, I think makes it a lot easier. And you have, you know, on the one hand side, you have your resources, which is headcount plus some ad spend, basically. And on the other side, you will have an understanding of, well, we want to get to that overall growth target.
[00:18:53] Let's reverse engineer and try and figure out what that actually means for you know, all of our funnels, how do they need to look like, right. And then trying to figure out, well, with all the things we're doing, Do we, will we actually be able to meet those funnel goals in order to meet those financial goals?
[00:19:08] Right. And I think this should be a good back and forth, you know, in the commercial team to figure out how can we do this the best way. This should include considerations of where do we get the most revenue for the least amount of costs? So CAC Payback, ROI, all of that stuff should be in here. It should include CMOs thinking about where are my.
[00:19:26] Volume metrics going to flatten out. We talked about this not so long ago. Where do I need to create new S curves? Where, where, you know, if, if it's not more volume, more input, where, where do we see it across the bowtie? What can we tweak? How can we get there? What would be good initiatives to drive in order to kind of achieve Really from a, you know, people to deployed, where on which projects approach, right? That should be. You know, the, the way I think theoretically and, you know, approaching practicality levels here, this is best. And then, because finance will have done their own plan at the same time. And we know this because we talk to folks like Gong, like Pleo and so forth.
[00:20:03] They're doing it actually in this way.
[00:20:04] And I think it's a good way where you basically then have a commercial plan that runs in parallel with a financial, you know, team that kind of builds some of these things a little bit further out after they're given the overall frame, and then they come to the table and compare notes. Because you know, the, the reason why those organizations are doing it is because those two different teams with a different expertise, they're looking at the same problem through different lenses. And they might come to really good ideas because of that, that, you know, the other team didn't have, and then they can compare notes and try and, you know, pick and choose the, the, the winners of this.
[00:20:36] I think that's the very benevolent way of looking at this. I think in reality it's like, well, you know, finance said this and, you know, And now I just need to agree, There's finance will always be on the, on the stronger, longer lever to kind of versus, versus the commercial teams. For, you know, that's a different episode for various reasons.
[00:20:56] But at least at this point you can have like a very good conversation of you know, what the initiatives both teams agree should be driven and then how they are resourced. And if the answer to how they're resourced is nothing, then you Then that's a really good way for you as a CEO to basically push back on that and say like, Hey, you know what we want to train those AEs, but there's no budget for anything like this.
[00:21:17] It's basically our managers need to come up with this while they're doing the daytime job. That's not going to work out. Right. And then we can't, we can't book the. The conversion rate improvement in, we can't bank on that. We've still be working on this, but we can't bank on that improvement. Right. And I think this is, this is how the two teams then come closer together.
[00:21:37] And then as we heard from, from some of those folks, it's like at the end of the day, there will still be a gap
[00:21:41] Mikkel: Yeah
[00:21:42] Toni: where they know it's kind of, it was disagree and commit where basically like, yep, we agree. There's a gap. We don't actually know how to fill this right now. We don't have resources to fill it.
[00:21:52] We is agreeing that we are kind of still tracking against that. And then hopefully over time we'll figure this out.
[00:22:00] Mikkel: so one thing
[00:22:00] I do wonder though is with With initiatives, how do you navigate that best? Because anyone is going to be able to cook up on the commercial side. Hey, here's the plans, here's the ideas. How do you best structure that side? Also because sales, marketing, CS, they're kind of different.
[00:22:15] How, how they influence your ability to grow?
[00:22:18] Toni: so I think this is where this whole methodology of the bow tie actually comes in extremely handy. And
[00:22:27] the,
[00:22:27] the reason is that as we have also discussed previously on the show there, there's a, there's a compounding effect.
[00:22:35] That takes place when you're thinking about this way, right? And, and what this means is if you isolate your marketing planning from your sales planning, for example, and on the sales and the marketing side, you expect more MQLs for whatever reason, better quality, whatever reason but you don't necessarily take this into, you know, into account, or you kind of don't know that the sales side is increasing their win rates, for example.
[00:22:58] Both of these initiatives in an isolated way. Have an impact, drive an impact, but both of them together actually have a compound impact as well, right? Now that you convert better that's great to get 10 more deals. But if you overall have a thousand more MQLs, then that conversion rate increase of 10 more deals suddenly will yield you 15 more deals, right?
[00:23:22] And so these, these things need to be considered together. I think this is number one. And I think that number two is. What many people struggle with is how big is this initiative? Like, how much will this actually help me? Right. So, I mean, we, we had these conversations a lot when we were thinking about you know, going down market into like a PLG motion for one of the business that you and I worked at.
[00:23:46] How much money is that actually going to be?
[00:23:47] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Toni: Right. And first year, second year. And, and, and this was kind of usually the reason why we killed it. It was like, well, you know, it's kind of half a million, maybe if, if, if at all, maybe and that in comparison to all the other things that we could deploy our resources to was always super small.
[00:24:05] Right. And I think this is,
[00:24:10] Some people have like a gut feel for this because they've been in the industry. They kind of look at this like, ah, you know, but I think having a way to estimate the impact of these
[00:24:20] Mikkel: is
[00:24:20] Toni: is extremely important to have like any intelligent conversation about this,
[00:24:24] Mikkel: I think that's always been insanely difficult, like, as human beings, if there's one thing we suck at, it's estimating time. My, like, my dad would always go fast and, like, wait in the car, I'll be right back. It's like, well, how long are you going to be? Two minutes? It's like 20 minutes later, he's back, right?
[00:24:39] It's the same with work. You kind of have, well, how much time are you going to need to then ship this project? Can we launch it in May? Well, sure, yes, I think so. But then you have all these other initiatives running as well. And then the last part of it is the, well, how much impact is going to be? It is really difficult unless it's something you've done consistently before.
[00:24:59] Where you have the track record and history. How, how do you deal with that side?
[00:25:04] Toni: So the very few organizations get into this level of basically doing project management planning at the start of the year. I think it's really difficult. And I think for really good reasons. It's not that people aren't sophisticated or something like this. It's simply that they just don't, don't know.
[00:25:21] They simply do not know and it's, it's silly to talk about that stuff. Right? So what many people see is the next three to six months. That's what many people are seeing. Right? And I think for that, you can have a serious conversation about. You know, what is it you want to build next? It's very, very much like you build product, honestly.
[00:25:38] You know, I think people that have a year long roadmap of product, I think they're silly. I don't think they're doing the right thing. You know, the, the knowledge that you have about the market and the product and the users in December will have progressed by June. Why should you keep yourself to the dumber version of yourself from six months
[00:25:57] Mikkel: Yeah, yeah,
[00:25:58] Toni: to make those prioritizations, right?
[00:26:00] And yes, there are some effects here. I get that kind of.
[00:26:03] but,
[00:26:04] still, right. And I think the same applies for go to market organizations. There should be, you know, a more, you know, a bit more clarity around what is around the corner, what are we focusing on and a little bit less clarity on what happens afterwards.
[00:26:19] Right. For the stuff that's super clear. Yeah. I think you can have a little bit of like a project plan with like, you know, who takes what as a oof. That seems like a lot of RevOps
[00:26:29] Mikkel: You know,
[00:26:30] Toni: And I don't, I don't think we will get this done or we need to hire, but that hire starts, blah, blah, blah. I think that there's a, should be that conversation.
[00:26:36] There also should be a conversation on, Hey, the VP of sales, maybe we don't give him or her any project, right? Maybe we don't do that
[00:26:45] Because,
[00:26:46] you know. They usually tend to not happen anyway. And and, and, you know, similarly, so for Q2, I think you can, you can see like three to five to six months out roughly, right.
[00:26:56] But then the second half of the year, you don't. And this is, I think, where a massive problem happens for organizations is where they go like, but I still, you know, take the example of a CMO. I still need to commit to a massive MQL increase in the second half of the year. I have to commit to that, but I don't know how this is going to happen
[00:27:15] Mikkel: to happen.
[00:27:16] And
[00:27:16] Toni: And I think that's okay. I think, I think that's fine. I think this is how we just need to deal with this thing. Right. Actually kind of the way we've we've, you know, you know, try to square that circle here in in Growblocks is to work with assumptions that are more finance driven, right? That, that the CMO can say like, yes.
[00:27:35] Let's say, you know, let's assume that we'll get, you know, per month, 5 percent YMQLs or whatever. Right. And I don't know how this is going to happen, but let's assume that's going to happen. And then on the initiative side, kind of, this is more of an ongoing thing. Like, okay, this is actually how we're going to do this now.
[00:27:51] Doesn't mean we know second half of the year already, but for this, we kind of know,
[00:27:55] right?
[00:27:55] Mikkel: like dealing with the snowball effect almost, like it's gaining more and more momentum.
[00:27:59] We don't know how much, which kind of, which kind of makes sense. And I think also the the other reflection it gives me is almost like, When you see a lot of these plans, you don't see the nitty gritty plans like the, Hey, we are also going to launch this campaign or do that spiff or whatever it does.
[00:28:14] That does not make sense at all to do because the company will have certain strategic initiatives. And those are going to be default execute. You need to nail those, period. Nothing else can get in the way. And then there's going to be capacity to, you know, obviously day to day stuff, but also to additional projects where the individual leaders have some level of control and influence to define,
[00:28:36] right?
[00:28:37] Toni: to And I gotta say right, my last piece of advise here is, if you're RevOps really make sure FP&A is a good friend of yours, Like, honestly, like build that connection, have those meetings, explain your thinking, hear their thinking.
[00:28:52] If you're the CRO, make sure the CFO is a good friend of yours as well. You really want to create a scenario where both of you are like understanding enough of the other side to have, you know, have a really strong working relationship and and then build this in the right direction. Where it's toxic is where.
[00:29:11] You know, either side isn't interested. And from my perspective, it's always the CFO that's not interested, obviously. That then just kind of says like, no, it needs to be done like this. Bye. I kind of, I think this is, this is where we kind of started this episode with the CFO, just, you know, force feeding, whatever.
[00:29:26] I think that's, that's, that's a massive problem, but you, It's not only the CFO that force feeds these things. It's just because he or she is in charge of the plan. Right. So you really want to create that, you know, combined thing and, and tenure prolonging tip as you co build this with a CFO, he is also more on the hook for this
[00:29:46] whole
[00:29:46] Mikkel: this whole thing.
[00:29:47] Yeah,
[00:29:47] Toni: Right. It's like, you know, because he then, or she can't just, you know, take themselves out of this anymore and be like, well, you know, this is, you know, this is what we need to achieve. And he just couldn't execute. In this case, you know, he or she knows a little bit more of what was actually kind of the problem, what's going on and you as a CEO can kind of point back and say like, but Bob, they're always Bob, Bob, we discussed these things, you know, this, you know, I hit all the baseline numbers that I said I can hit, we had those crazy projects on top out of them, I only hit one, not, not all of them.
[00:30:20] And that's why we were 20 percent missed. But we said like, Hey, that's the error margin. I'm sorry. And, and having those kinds of conversations that can, you know that can help you have a better career prolonging experience.
[00:30:33] Mikkel: So what you're really saying is, get this stuff in writing or record it on gong? Yeah, that's really what you're saying.
[00:30:38] Toni: I say. Yeah,
[00:30:39] Mikkel: here's, let me play a snippet for you.
[00:30:40] Toni: Or just, or just another table record with your phone.
[00:30:43] Mikkel: No, that's true. Speaking of snippets, I mean, we've done a lot of episodes on planning previously to this. Go back and check them out.
[00:30:50] There's one called the plan no one makes. It's not a New subject to us. We will probably get into this again considering it's happening now. So if there's anything where you're like, ah, wish we had covered, you had covered this part send us an email at podcast at growblocks. com and it might make the show.
[00:31:08] Otherwise, thanks so much for listening. And thank you, Toni.
[00:31:12] Toni: Thanks everyone for listening, thanks for hitting like, follow, support, whatever.
[00:31:16] And thanks for helping the movement. Have a good one. Bye bye.
[00:31:18] Mikkel: Bye.