Quick Question: Our plan isn’t working. What do we do now?

29 Apr

Seeing poor response to your sales and marketing motion - You’ve set expectations. And probably thresholds or tolerances, too. The results just aren’t what they need to be. It’s time to stop, evaluate and iterate.
Losing key people - You thought you’d created a culture to retain your best people, but for some reason, they keep leaving. You won't know why unless you ask. (HOT TIP: If your answer is money, ask again!) And you won’t change things if you don’t change.
Hearing NO (or nothing) from potential investors - Something about your pitch isn’t resonating. Getting feedback on why is often tough - but it’s always worth asking. Or at least look inwards to consider what could be going wrong and build a list of possible new approaches to experiment with.

Try to listen for:

New voices - If you ask the same people for input, you’ll get the same ideas. Try introducing diverse voices when you ask the question.
New ideas - It can be easy to gloss over new ideas or count them out, assuming that they won’t work. Try to leave the frustration of the current situation behind and stay open to new possibilities.
Pain Points - Explicit statements about unmet needs or problems that remain unsolved.

Follow up with...

Sometimes, the greatest value comes from the one extra question you take the time to ask.

In this situation, you could try…

What have we seen from other industries or companies that we could try?
When was the last time we felt like things were really humming?
What questions have we been asked that might give us a clue about where to start?

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Melissa Rosenthal

Quick Question: What does good look like?