The Inbound Newsletter #3
Today we are featuring content about Enterprise communication, Marketing, Pricing, a real-case scenario to $1M in MRR and more.
🙏 Thanks to Jonathan Becher, Eugene Wei, Leo Piccioli for the long term thing, Edwin Rager (locosombrero) and a few more.
Blogs / Articles - The Inbound Newsletter (TIN)
⚙️ Speed vs velocity in business - An oldie that Jonathan Becher (Khoros, Trintech, and San Jose Sharks) reminds us.
Speed is moving fast. Velocity is moving fast with the right direction. We want the latter one.
Key Takeaways:
The concept by itself. We want more of that.
The Silicon Valley mantra of “fail fast, fail often” is very good, but not the best. You are going to move fast, but a few times you’ll have the right direction. That is why pivoting is a great resource. Great teams are good at failing fast and often, great leaders are good at pivoting trying to find the right path.
Focusing on velocity helps you think more about UX (aka. in the long term).
Not only a concept here. KPIs should change because of this. In SaaS and subscription based businesses, Time To Value (TTV) is a good velocity metric.
Measuring KPIs of activities and outputs tends to be speed-focused. Measuring KPIs of results and outcomes tends to be velocity-focused.
-
⚙️ Compress to impress or Did Civil War Generals use megaphones? - Eugene Wei ( ex-Amazon, Hulu, Flipboard, Oculus and filmmaker ) taught us about communication at large companies like Amazon. Concepts like amplification and distortion are key here.
Key Takeaways:
You know telephone (American children’s game) or Chinese Whispers (the same but in China)? Ok, the same but 1000x larger is what happens in companies.
As a Manager or executive-level professional, you need to compress your ideas. In fact, everyone should always do this. The more clear, compressed ideas, the less noise you’ll have.
Jeff Bezos does it well. Short messages. Huge amplification (eg. he does it in Amazon All-hands meetings).
Think of the idea. Think of the wording. Be memorable. Does “Make America Great Again“ or “We Need You 👉” ring the bell?
Exercise: Bear this in mind. Try and communicate in a compressed way. Write your message. Edit it before sending. Make it 2x shorter. 3x ideally.
-
⚙️ Stop using the Cost-Plus Pricing, unless you sell Floppy Disks - It’s very popular in the services industry (“Don't base your pricing on your costs; charge based on the value you add.”). Now apply it in everything.
Key Takeaways:
Easy to apply in services. Do it if you are not doing it, yet.
In Retail, it helps you develop higher quality products. You’ll really think of your user needs. Don’t think of that niche that needs cheap products, otherwise you’ll always have to fight a Price War.
Coca Cola (NYSE: KO) isn’t charging based in their costs 😊.
Customers Don't Care About Your Costs. Period.
-
Social - The Inbound Newsletter (TIN)
💻 The strategy is not to be on the Forbes cover - Thanks to LocoSombrero for showing us what Nokia, Sam Bankman-Fried, WeWork, The Silicon Valley Bank and a few others have in common.
No key takeaways here 😂
-
Now, let’s get serious again…
💻 A REAL path to $1M in MRR - I said A real path, not THE real path. Thanks to Suhail (Twitter) for showing us everything in detail.
Key Takeaways:
It’s not linear. It never is.
The next milestone is always much easier. In his case, moving from $1M to $2M in MRR took him less than a year, instead of four.
You may face a “Grew too fast, couldn't scale“ scenario, which is not what some people call “the good problems”. If you can’t pivot or adjust fast, you’ll sink.
-
💻 Be assertive while communicating - It is Wes Kao ( Maven, altMBA, Gap Inc. ) who reminds us this. Be precise. Be assertive.
Key Takeaways:
Be precise. Explain what you want. Mention a value and a deadline for that.
Communicate your thoughts. Don't leave it up to assumption.
Here you have a few extra examples of assertive communication. I know you got it, but it’s helpful.
-
Visual - The Inbound Newsletter (TIN)
Progress
-
So that would be all for today. See you soon and thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a quick NPS poll. Because what is not measured, cannot be improved.