Yo yo, welcome back to Sour and Sass. Uh, fourth episode here. I’m Isaiah,
0:11
student video marketing manager at Directive. And this is one of those fun
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podcasts. It’s not one of these boring podcasts where everybody’s over Zoom.
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And you know, we’re in a nice studio here in Austin, Texas. And I have the
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great honor and pleasure of bringing somebody who’s been very special in my
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career and in my life. uh has been a mentor and a friend for like the past
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three years. And this is actually our first time getting to meet in person.
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But before I tell you who it is, um something that we’re going to talk about
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today is an issue that many of you marketers are experiencing right now,
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which is annual planning. Getting ready for 2026, trying to put budgets
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together, trying to put strategies together that’ll get approved by senior
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leadership that you feel will be will confidently help you hit your pipeline
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targets. But I think this guy right here has some special insights. He’s done it
0:58
before. He’s an operator who’s in your seat. And so, ladies and gentlemen,
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welcome to Sour Sass. Sam Keellay. I appreciate it, man. No, no pressure or
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anything with that tea up right there. Jesus. I hope I live up to this one.
1:11
So, Sam, uh, I hyped you up. Yeah.
1:14
A little bit. I left a lot of stuff out, but I left that for you. So, tell people
1:19
a little bit about who you are and, uh, how you got here.
1:21
I am how I got here. How I got here literally today. flew in for annual
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planning. So, it’s it’s top of mind right now. I can tell you that. Uh,
1:28
yeah. How I got here though, in-house big big enterprise did that for eight
1:34
years software company and then we were talking about this right before agency
1:38
life. It sweeps us in. We learned so spent a couple years at Refined Labs.
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just learned the the flip side of big corporate red tape to fastoving startups
1:47
and like how do you go from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 25, what that all looks like
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and I was like I love startups and everything just the speed. So yeah, did
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that for two and a half years. We my wife and I wanted to start a family. I
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was like I can’t do agency forever. I want to slow down. No, you’re never
2:02
going to slow down. But I was like all right, let’s just focus on one place
2:05
versus having a client in I had someone in Australia, someone in Europe, someone
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in California. like I can’t be stretched like 18 hours a day. So yeah, came back
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in house. Been here for three years at LockXO.
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It’s a blast, man. It’s a blast. It’s a lot of fun. And especially after going
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from agency where you work with your clients, you’re like, I really really
2:22
strongly recommend that you do this and then you watch them not do it and you’re
2:26
just like, you just watch them scrape their knees over and over. You’re just
2:28
like, let me do this for you. To finally being like, all right, cool.
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I get to make the shots. I get to call what we’re doing with marketing. And
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then it’s like, hey, you either you sink or swim. So,
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it’s fun to just to finally be like, “All right, here’s what we’re going to
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do, and here’s how we’re going to see if it plays out or not.” So, yeah, that’s
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kind of the the full loop that that’s brought us
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here. All right. Well, one thing about Sam,
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he’s he’s a health freak. So, I feel I don’t know about freak.
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No, conscious. Health conscious. Okay. Okay. We’ll call him health conscious,
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but we got some candy for you that might throw you off your health conscious
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journey a little bit. You’re just going to see me pucker up a
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little bit, but I’m dragging your ass to the gym tomorrow morning, so I’m not
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worried about it. Yeah, you’ll hear about it on LinkedIn at some point. I’m
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going to be sore tomorrow. Um, but yes, Sam, you’re on Sour and Sass,
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so we going to rip this bad boy open and we going to give you your first
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question. This time we got sour mangoes instead of
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sour grapes. I heard these are worse than the grapes. So, um, I
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mean, you can’t beat the was it the old blue Warheads?
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Don’t worry, we’re bringing the Warheads back. We’re going to bring the Warheads.
3:27
All right. Yeah. Before you pick before you do it,
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let me ask the first question you got to answer while you’re going through it. Uh
3:32
so question number one so let’s start with the big topic. So you wrote a piece
3:36
about how you approach annual planning. Um and one line that stuck with me was
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more isn’t infinite. Um so most marketers are treating
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planning like an additive exercises like we did X this year so we need to do 20%
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more of X next year. Um you’re kind of saying that’s broken. So walk me through
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why that mindset fails and like what you should do instead.
3:55
All right. You know I’m gonna try this one here. I
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like These are cold. Yeah,
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these are good. He’s not making a face. This is crazy.
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I grew up on Warheads. Really bright colors. You can’t Sour Patch Kids, dude.
4:09
This is straight candy. I love this. You pop five of these at once.
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This is great. He’s a G. All right. Um
4:16
Yeah, you can’t scale more forever. Like, you can’t just do more more more.
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So, our company that I’m at right now, I
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came marketing engine was there wasn’t much. So, it was just like we sell to
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recruiters. Recruiters love LinkedIn. I’m like, “Cool, let’s go run ads on
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LinkedIn because we know they’re there.” So, for the first couple years, it was
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just like, “Hey, the engine’s there. Let’s just throw some more gas in it.”
4:35
And it was scaling well. Fast forward, we’re I’m here three years now, and I’m
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just like, “All right, our growth targets continue to just go, go, go, go
4:45
startup life.” And so I look at the goals that we’ve set for next year and
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I’m just like I could throw more money into this but diminishing returns start
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to come into play or like the it’s not linear growth and everything else. So I
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look at that I’m just like if I keep following this track in two years I’m
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going to have no growth levers left and that’s not where I want to be. Like I
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still want to be able to say you know in case of emergency throw X dollars into
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LinkedIn ads. I don’t want to be redlining that already and being like I
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have no levers left to pull. So that’s why I look at it. I’m just like, okay,
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you can’t just scale more forever. So that’s where you really have to start
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getting to a point of where are we at that’s that that drives
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good, predictable, comfortable growth, but then you look at your other levers
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outside of just spend, but is it leveraging the channel like LinkedIn
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with other mediums? Is it going to what we’re doing, which is like more owned
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and earned type stuff? And so that’s an area I’m just like that scares the crap
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out of me because we haven’t done too much of it and people are going to
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laugh. It’s like emails, webinars, just like basic stuff, but
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it’s like hey, we have to we have to build up from scratch. We haven’t done
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it yet. So it’s the it’s the first principal side of all right, let’s
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figure it out and we’ll see if it works. But yeah, it’s
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the I think it’s just it’s it’s knowing that
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I will hit the ceiling if I keep pressing that and that will be a worse
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look than trying new stuff and having that layer on top of it and those be
6:04
like the ecosystem concept force multipliers make the ads even more
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effective later on. Well, you said something interesting and
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you taught me this a few years ago about the growth levers.
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So for somebody who might not know what these growth levers are, you mind like
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breaking down a few of them as you grow. Another one.
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Another one. Another one. Another one. Yeah. I just need one take of him like
6:24
it being sour to you. But we make a fake face.
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Maybe the grapes will hurt worse. Let me try this for the next the next uh
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question. This one was a little bit more sour.
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Okay, we’re getting somewhere. We’re making progress.
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Let’s go for mainline them one. All right. Growth levers. So you have at
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the high level you have like paid channels, own channels, earn channels,
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and then say we were to focus in on paid. So you have your acquisition
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channels. You can go paid social, paid search, partner, referral. Those um the
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levers that I like to play with more though are looking at like from the
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funnel perspective of if you oversimplify it. So start from the
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bottom up. How many closed deals do you need? How many opportunities do you
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need? How many demo requests or um if your PLG signups do you need? And then
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in between those you have your conversion rates, you have your cost
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pers and that’s where you can usually find a lot of the direction and what you
7:21
need to start doing and figuring out what you need to do. So for example,
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usually the win rate depending on how close you are with your VP of sales or
7:28
someone else or how strong your product market fit is, you can find some stuff
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in there. Um, usually what we do is this is a page from their fine labs playbook.
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Find where you win consistently, whatever stage that is at 25%. and then
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work backwards from that to say, okay, if we’re starting to taper off and that
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what used to be 25% is 20%. It’s like why? Go dig into your loss reasons. Loss
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due to functionality, loss due to competitor, loss due to price. Some of
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those you can control competitor price. Okay, one’s an offer, one’s like, hey,
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we need to we need to show up our marketing against this competitor or
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figure out why they’re beating us. If it’s functionality, you have to work
8:02
with your product team. So that’s one. But usually when you go up from the
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opportunity creation or qual SQO to the demo, that’s
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where you have a lot more flexibility as a marketer to figure out, okay, is it
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why are we not converting? Is it people are dropping off? They’re not qualified.
8:18
They’re not getting in touch. So go back what, three years to the whole uh I
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submitted a dumb request, you’ll hear back from someone in 72 hours. That’s
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the easiest problem to fix. Now, I mean, Chili Piper exists for a reason and you
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can find any tools to do that now. So, that’s one of the biggest ones, but um
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there’s a lot of levers you can play with just and that’s where you have to
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get tactical like you and I you and I always talk about just like get your
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hands wet, figure out where can we improve these different numbers,
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conversion rates, but that’s where a lot of the levers sit for you as a marketer
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is is in that, not just like, hey, let’s just go put more ad dollars in and hope
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this leaky bucket fixes itself. 100%. Well, one of the things you were
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talking about with like expanding something that you’re doing now, which
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is earned and owned media for you, what does that look like in practice? Because
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we hear it a lot like paid media, earned media, own media. Yeah.
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And there these big marketing terms that people use, but
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nobody ever breaks it down. What does this look like in practice? And even
9:13
when they try to break it down, like saying doing a webinar, doing email,
9:17
they use these very fluffy terms. They never get into the weeds. So, you’re
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building from kind of from from zero. So, what what has it been like for you
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doing earned and owned and how has that played into like the bigger planning for
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you for next year? Earned is going to be an interesting
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one. Uh I came up in the era of like PR doesn’t do much. So, and I know people
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are like oh like don’t say that like hey everything comes back and forth.
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Everything comes in seasons. It’s coming back. LLMs have kind of forced that
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because of how they go and find out like okay who are you credible not just based
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on how much you want to pat yourself on the back but are other people talking
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about you? More specifically credible sources. So if you’re getting the big um
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you know publications uh the big industry insight places even like if you
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get CNN to reference you or anything else that’s where you can get some
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earned stuff. So scraping the surface there to be honest I don’t know that’s
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going to be one of our just full on first principles. Let’s figure this out
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and see see what works. The owned one is we were spoiled in the co era. people
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just came to us like we’re just like yeah just hey brand you know just make
10:19
like do funny stuff get people interested create some education around
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yourself they’ll they’ll come to you your website mattered but the whole like
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should we make our our CTA red or blue like that level of conversion
10:31
optimization that doesn’t really matter unless you’re
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talking millions of visitors per month which people listening to this probably
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don’t have that problem and if they do I wish I was you um so on the owned side.
10:45
Yeah, it’s like you have your website, you have email, you have if you have
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like podcast distribution and what that looks like and then you have just your
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your expertise. So the blogs or um people are pushing into like Substack,
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Beehive, those different places where where you you own some of that. So
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that’s a one where we haven’t done much email. We haven’t needed to. We have
11:06
BDRs and AES who do it like very targeted cadence stuff, but if we’re
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talking like the one to many type outreach, our
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audience universe is huge. So, we sell to recruiters, we sell globally, we sell
11:20
to small and large, we sell to in-house recruiters, we sell to agency
11:23
recruiters. So, you can you can get the scope of like, hey, let’s go email all
11:26
these people. You’re talking millions of people and
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that’s just to hit them once a month. Well, we know what email domains and
11:32
Google is doing to people like that. Even if we just send one a month,
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we’re going to burn our domain so fast if we just try to send two million,
11:38
three million emails a month, even if they’re so valuable because that
11:41
threshold of what is it’s like if seven out of a thousand people report you as
11:46
spam or it’s some it’s a really small number, then all of a sudden your domain
11:50
takes a hit. You just catch someone on the wrong day, you’re going to get
11:52
reported as spam, even if it’s the best email ever to them. So that’s the part
11:56
where I’m just like, well, we have to do email. Recruiters live in their inboxes.
11:59
is I mean they’re they’re emailing people all the time, but how do we how
12:02
do we build this out and use this as a growth channel? How do we provide value
12:05
while not being spammy but still being frequent enough to be relevant? Because
12:10
if you just pop in once and it’s not really following a consistent theme,
12:13
like that’s why I love Substack and certain newsletters, you know, certain
12:16
days of the week I’m always going to get something like Kyle Pyer is always going
12:19
to drop a killer report on a certain day or Kaylee Edmonson every week she’s
12:23
dropping a great newsletter. So I know what to expect, but when you do extend
12:27
that out to like monthly or kind of off, then it’s a little bit more jarring for
12:31
people. So trying to find that balance there, that’s another another fun one
12:34
that we’re going to figure out this year.
12:37
Exciting things for for Lock then. Hopefully hopefully exciting things. So
12:41
then since we’re talking about 2026, um if you wouldn’t mind walking us
12:46
through the process of annual planning for you, not the not the pretty final
12:51
deck that you show to leadership, but what’s the what’s the messy first step?
12:55
What are the questions you’re asking yourself right now going into 2026?
12:59
What’s the messy first step? Am I cut out to do this? I mean, that’s
13:05
the I used to joke cuz in Refined Labs, people would always be like, I have
13:09
imposttor syndrome. And at first, people were like, “Oh, I
13:12
don’t want if I tell them that, like, they’re not going to trust me with that
13:15
account or they’re not going to hire me or this or that.” But we started to
13:18
realize the people who had the most imposter syndrome were the people
13:21
driving the best results for our clients. And we’re just like, oh, they
13:25
feel imposter syndrome because they feel like there’s always something more to be
13:28
learned, something to be gained, something to be improved upon. That’s
13:30
just performance mindset. So when you look at it from that angle,
13:34
that’s a one side of me that it’s a it’s a thin edge to walk, but I like being
13:41
scared by certain things sometimes. And like I look at the growth goals that we
13:44
have set for this year and the stage that we want to be at in the next two,
13:46
three years, and I’m just like, I’ve never done this before. So that’s your
13:49
imposttor syndrome. Then you have the growth side. It’s like, but I’m going to
13:51
figure it out. And you’re going to bet your ass I’m going to figure out like
13:54
whatever I have to do to to get to that result. And that’s why it’s funny, our
13:58
our company, we found with a lot of our best performing people here, and then
14:03
I’ve looked back at previous hires we’ve made, former athletes, people with
14:08
military background, um, people that have been part of competitive team
14:13
environments. I mean, that could even be like Quizbull. Um, doesn’t matter what
14:16
it is, but they have that drive where it’s it’s the team first mentality of
14:22
I’m going to learn. I’m going to put it all out there. I’m going to help us
14:24
achieve this result. not look at how high I can blow my quote out of the
14:28
water and not help this other AE who’s struggling. But we have this whole
14:31
concerted effort. So that’s a part that I love because I’m just like we’re going
14:34
to figure it out as a team one way or another to to get to it. But back my
14:38
mind there always is that like can I though? Is there someone else
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better suited to this? Probably. But that’s the fun part.
14:45
Okay. Uh I’ll let you get two questions without eating the
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I need to try one of the sour ones. King’s over here waiting for me to try
14:53
this one. Dude, let’s see if the green grape
14:56
green grapes actually gets you. I hope it does.
14:58
All right, so the green one. Melissa, she has been all over the cotton candy
15:03
grapes. Have you guys had those? Those are so good. Oh my goodness.
15:05
She put those in the freezer. Yes, those are dangerous,
15:08
bro. While you’re chewing on that, uh, how do
15:13
you balance killing your darlings with doubling down on what’s working? Where
15:16
do you kind of draw the line? Because a lot of people
15:18
One more time. So, how do you balance killing your
15:20
darlings? Cuz some people have ego put into their strategy for next year and
15:24
they’ll go the entire year on something that’s not working and they won’t kill
15:27
it. So, how do you balance killing that thing where it’s like, man, that’s my
15:30
love child. I I know that’s going to work next year and then it doesn’t. And
15:32
then you have to double down on what sounds boring.
15:35
Yeah. Is that any more sour by the way?
15:39
I’ll try another one in a minute. I mean, I’m going to do two at the same
15:42
time. Next one. Um, it’s part of it’s just it’s Yeah, it’s
15:49
ego. It’s that. So, you can have the just get away from yourself for a
15:53
second. Set that aside. If this was someone on your team running it and you
15:56
looked in on them, what advice would you tell them? Should I keep pushing this?
16:00
Hey, let’s revisit, see what’s going on or like you need to stop. You’ve you’ve
16:04
seen how this plays out already. So, that’s one way you can do it. You can
16:07
just kind of like take a step back, third person view it. Another one is one
16:12
that we Chris Walker kind of pioneered this with the whole um framework that we
16:17
came out with, but set guard rails for what does success look like to get to
16:22
the next stage or what’s the cut off point where it’s just like hey if I’m
16:27
not seeing X result in Y days we need to either pivot and figure out like we we
16:33
have to tweak something else to make this work or we have to pump it because
16:35
it’s not going to work. So that’s a second part of it is usually we just go
16:40
into this like hey I know Google ads are going to work. We just put money into
16:43
it. Oh it’s going to come next quarter. It’s going to come next quarter. But you
16:46
never really put like well what what does success look like? What’s the
16:48
definition of that? Because without that then it’s kind of like yeah I think it’s
16:52
working you know versus something something real. So there’s that and then
16:58
there’s just the honest conversation with yourself. So even us with LinkedIn
17:01
ads I look at this stuff and I’m just like we kill LinkedIn ads. But half of
17:06
the playbook that we’re running is what has been working for the past 5 years.
17:09
And so I also know like that doesn’t have a forever shelf life
17:14
on it. So as it’s still working, figuring out what are the experiments,
17:19
what can we start playing with so we know like, oh, if we get ahead of this
17:22
trend, what does this look like? So a bad example is like the personalization
17:25
tokens that just came out on LinkedIn ads. Like you know how you can say like,
17:27
hey Isaiah, like do you want to improve your marketing results? Like that’s
17:31
going to have a really short shelf life because everyone’s going to adopt it
17:33
before long. But if you jump on that trend early, you’re going to get the
17:35
disproportionate lift from that. So if you do that though, are you pulling
17:40
money away from what’s not working? Pulling money away from maybe something
17:43
that has a little bit of lower diminishing return. So that’s the whole
17:46
the whole give and take of it that I think we have to figure out. But it just
17:50
starts with just scrap your ego. And honestly, one thing I will say, if you
17:54
go into I’ve learned this just from watching other leaders on our team and
17:59
different board meetings is the more you go into meetings with leadership with
18:02
board members honest and just own, hey, we’re not doing well with this. The more
18:06
they’re actually going to respect you than if you’re just like, “Oh, this has
18:08
worked forever. I promise it’s going to work.” Like they they see excuses. They
18:11
read all that. But if you’re just like, “Hey, we missed. Here’s what we’re doing
18:15
about it.” That’s the part they care about right there. And that’s what they
18:17
want to hear that you’re acting on. Because if you’re just like, “Hey, we
18:19
missed.” That’s still and so what like that’s what they want to hear is like oh
18:24
this person they know what they’re doing they’re in a position where they can
18:27
figure out like okay we know what’s going on we know the problem and here
18:30
are the different paths that we can take to rectify or change course if needed.
18:35
Okay we’re going to stay on that topic of ego for a second as you eat two of
18:38
these now matter of fact you hold the bag at that point just down it.
18:42
Yeah just down the bag. I need I need a I need a face for the for the content
18:46
bro. You’re making this look too easy. Sour Patch Kid.
18:49
It looks like it’s just sour sweet now. These are straight sugar bombs.
18:53
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to hit the gym tomorrow. We’re going to make up
18:55
for it. There you go. There’s your picture.
18:59
I have no shame. I hung upside down last week for Clay.
19:02
You for sure did, which is crazy. I I’m getting used to the the playful side cuz
19:07
you’re you’re being on video now. Although I still get talking talking
19:10
about Clay like I think I should get a world record for the first person to get
19:13
Sam Keellay on 4K. I feel like I deserve an award for that.
19:16
Clay table real quick. Submit it. Oh, this is true. You might want to pull
19:19
that up. We might actually do it. Bring the screen over.
19:25
So, when it comes to ego, because now you’re in house, um, how do you navigate
19:29
annual planning with the sales team and not have it turn into like the old
19:34
school team turf war, sales versus marketing? It’s like how how are you
19:37
planning with the sales team and navigating through that?
19:40
Yeah, I’m you know, talk about southern
19:44
phrases. I’m blessed. Um, we were talking about that right before this.
19:48
No, but all all jokes aside, so that was one of the big things I looked at when I
19:51
came to lock. So, after working at Refined Labs, I saw startups with old
19:55
school mentality, lead genen, lead genen, lead genen. I saw startups with
19:58
sales is the darling, everyone else just bow down to sales. And then I saw
20:02
organizations that like they worked really well like CEO, CMO, CFO, VP of
20:07
sales, CR, whoever. They were all on the same page working together. So, I was
20:10
like, okay, that’s the bar for when I go in house. that’s going to be the
20:14
environment that I need to be at. So, reason I preface that is our VP of sales
20:19
and I we’re we get along great. Um
20:25
we over the last two weeks have been talking about how do we want to approach
20:29
it because the way that we look at it is so there’s different ways that we can
20:32
figure out like annual planning and ultimately the question that we are
20:35
trying to answer is how do we resource ourselves appropriately to hit our goals
20:39
this growth target and that’s what led to like is it more or is it something
20:43
else and so that is then the thread that gets pulled to be like okay well what’s
20:48
working and the whole attribution mirage whatever you want to call that starts to
20:52
come into play. We have a couple different ways that we
20:57
measure that. So there’s the the last touch lead source. Do they come in from
21:00
a demo request? Did they come in from a BDR call? Did they come in from an
21:03
event? Whatever else. So we track that. And then we also look at what was the
21:09
the department that brought them in. Was it marketing? Was it BDR? Was it AE?
21:13
Because what happens is we’re dual motion. And so what we usually see is
21:17
we’ll have people come in through our PLG side. they they start for free but
21:21
then BDRs nurture them and they get them to take a call with sales. So there’s
21:26
one question I always like to ask and that’s like who gets credit for that?
21:28
It’s marketing, is it sales? Is it BDR? Like it’s all of them. You have you none
21:32
of them are successful if one of them doesn’t work.
21:36
So the reason I say that is when we look at revenue charts, if you look at by
21:41
lead source, that tells you one makeup of what drove what revenue, what
21:44
percentage of the total total AR this year. If you look at by department, that
21:49
tells a different story of how much is BDR carrying versus marketing. And so we
21:53
look at it from two lenses. One is the lead source. So marketing when you
21:57
account for the PLG that gets nurtured by BDRs. I’m like, well, I have to keep
21:59
pumping in at the top for BDRs to act off of. So from a resourcing
22:03
perspective, I need to be hitting whatever that percent is to to get us to
22:07
growth, but I know that I’ll lose some of that percentage because we have to
22:11
pay BDR commissions, which if the BDRs weren’t there to nurture those, then
22:14
those wouldn’t be closing. So I’m fine. We’ll do that all day long. So, needless
22:19
to say, that was the hardest discussion our VP of sales and I had was just like,
22:22
what are those numbers? Like, how do we want to present this to the leadership
22:25
team at the offsite to our board so that they understand this is how we’re making
22:28
our decision. It’s not about who gets credit for it because at the
22:33
end of the day, it’s just like we’re we’ve got we’ve got a huge growth
22:36
target. We know that if we don’t work, we’re not going to hit it. So, both of
22:39
us will be out of there if we don’t do this well. So, as I say, I’m
22:44
1% of people listening to this probably have that luxury of being like, “Oh,
22:49
that would be nice, Sam. That’d be great.” Like, but for those growing in
22:54
your career or if you’re thinking about career move, that’s something I would
22:56
say like go look for. And when you’re interviewing, like it’s not just a
22:59
one-way street. Interview them back. Say, “I want to talk to the head of
23:01
sales. I want to talk to BDR manager and understand what’s the dynamic.” And get
23:06
get what that actually looks like because that will tell you quickly if
23:08
you’re going to be walking into a what a lot of people experience today or
23:12
if it’s like, oh, like we can actually accomplish some really cool [ __ ]
23:15
together. Okay. Well, it seems like these are not
23:19
phasing you at all. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m just
23:24
I think you need to start taking some. You know what? I think I will.
23:28
There we go. How are you approaching annual planning?
23:31
What are you doing with some of your clients?
23:33
Eat one. You don’t get to just one way this. You got to eat one while you
23:36
answer it. I don’t got the tolerance. Oh.
23:47
Oh my god. I’m going try to answer so quick.
23:51
That’s worth it right there. Oh,
23:54
and ah that wasn’t even the green one. Um I mean cuz it’s similar to yours.
24:01
It’s like work from the target backwards. It’s something you even
24:03
taught me like three years ago like work start at the bottom of the funnel.
24:06
Yep. Everybody starts at top of the funnel.
24:08
We need more leads. More leads. No, no. How many opportunities do we need at the
24:11
current win rate in order to hit X AR? It goes back to the growth levers.
24:16
Once we’re able to figure out what those growth levers are, we can start playing
24:18
with them. And the thing is, it only takes one to two small percentage points
24:22
per like lever to make a very big difference.
24:25
Oh yeah. You go from talking to sales and them
24:27
having an 18% win rate to 20% and then you’re increasing demo opportunity rate
24:31
by a few basis points as well. And now you’re seeing so much more AR come
24:35
through the pipeline. And so we’re always starting there when it comes to
24:39
uh annual planning, but then also trying to figure out what channels like trying
24:43
to it’s like what you said the diminishing returns. Everybody thinks
24:45
it’s always do more channels. And that’s something that I am not a fan of. Like
24:50
just because your uh CEO read some article about yo go do Tik Tok for B2B
24:55
does not mean it was it’s going to work well for you. And so you’re putting
24:58
$100,000 worth of resources and budget into a channel that’s not going to work
25:02
for you right now instead of doubling down on what’s actually working. So,
25:05
it’s a part of knowing the northstar metric. Like, we have to aim at
25:09
something. If we don’t know what we’re aiming at, then we’ll never be able to
25:13
to fully focus on that. And then secondly,
25:16
can we channel our focus? Like actually channel our focus and not spread
25:20
ourselves then across five different channels trying to context switch
25:23
between them all. Can you get one to two that works for you? Go to market motion
25:26
and then just run the play. Like you don’t need to over complicate annual
25:29
planning. Like get the goal, get the motions in place, run the play, and just
25:33
know how to measure. Attribution is probably the last aspect of it. It’s
25:36
like you know what you’re doing, you know what channels you’re on, but you
25:38
have to be able to measure and defend it against senior leadership. And so once
25:42
you get those three things in in order, I think annual planning becomes a bit of
25:45
a piece of a cake other than having to put together a 100page pretty deck for
25:49
next year. Yeah.
25:51
Yeah. On the flight over I was just like I don’t even want to put this into a
25:53
deck. I don’t blame you.
25:54
The week I was like honestly we just we just discuss. So I’m like I’m not even
25:57
going to present this cuz so much of this is going to be changed the next 3
26:00
weeks after this. I’m like why am I spending up time designing this? This is
26:03
true. It’s like what’s actually going to work.
26:05
So, two things I want to follow on from what
26:07
you said there. Remind me because I’m notorious for only remembering one
26:10
thing. Dang. You might have to remind me.
26:12
Say 6Q. 6Q.
26:14
6Q. You got to remind 6Q. I don’t know.
26:16
Yeah. All right. So, what you’re talking about
26:19
with the CEO, they send you over Slack like, “Hey, we should do YouTube.”
26:24
That’s dangerous because what often happens is you go and start the channel,
26:28
you do minimum, not minimum effort, we start dumping videos in there. CEO
26:34
follows up with you a month later. How we doing? We got 75 views. That’s not
26:38
working. Turn it off. You literally just use it as like a video repository. You
26:41
didn’t do thumbnails. You didn’t write it the the titles. Well, you didn’t
26:44
figure out everything else. like this is a channel we’re going deep on for next
26:47
year because we’ve been doing YouTube in the sense that like we’ve been putting
26:51
stuff there but no real effort behind like actually growing it as a channel.
26:56
And so that’s one that I see a lot of people get in is just like well if
26:59
you’re going to do a channel like you need to go deep on it before you can
27:03
rule it out versus if you just do that shallow level work saying it’s a success
27:07
or a failure that’s not even a real result because you didn’t do the work to
27:10
figure out like is it act is it the channel or is it the playbook that you
27:13
used and usually it’s the latter in that sense. Um six Q I remembered it. Um so
27:19
annual planning. Look at you.
27:20
I know I’m just on it. Sugar’s got me wired man. Uh,
27:23
please, please. I hope this one works. All right. So,
27:28
should I try a purple one? Is that Yeah, try a purple one.
27:31
Yeah. Try one, green, one, purple at the same time. There it is. There’s stuff. I
27:34
think this one’s going to be the one. That’s awesome.
27:42
I feel like he’s faking it. I feel like you’re faking that that reaction.
27:46
I had some at first. Okay.
27:47
I grew up on Sugar, man. I did, too. But I still get shocked by
27:51
this. Sorry. 6Q before I forget.
27:55
Those are good. You can have the bag after we’re done.
28:00
Uh, 6Q. Yes. One of my mentors, Chris Dailyaly, told me about this when we
28:06
were when I was talking about all the annual planning lately, and he runs I
28:10
forget where he said he learned it. It might have been like Bane or Mackenzie,
28:13
one of those he picked it up from, but it’s a six key methodology where it’s
28:16
just like what are we doing for the next six quarters? Because he’s like annual
28:18
planning, you do all this work. And I’m totally going to butcher what he told
28:22
me. Go, he either posted about it or I’m going
28:26
to get him to post about it because he shared this with me and it’s so
28:28
valuable. Um, basically like you put all this work into annual planning, most of
28:32
it changes or I mean look at marketing and everything that comes about like in
28:35
a quarter the whole market’s shifted, dynamics have shifted, new channels
28:38
enter the equation. Yep.
28:40
So half your playbook, half your plan is needs to be altered. And so what he does
28:45
is he has a six quarter plan where it’s just like okay what do we need to do in
28:48
this next quarter to be successful to hit our targets what’s on our two
28:52
quarters out what’s on our six quarters out and then he’s just like every
28:54
quarter then you have your overarching vision okay maybe let’s move this thing
28:58
up that’s five quarters out to two quarters out because of this new dynamic
29:00
that’s coming into play or you know I wanted to go into video but I haven’t
29:04
made that higher let’s push that out a quarter so it’s much more fluid and it
29:08
takes a lot of the weight off so I haven’t done it I want to do it he told
29:13
me I was already in the thick of this one. So, that might be one next year.
29:16
But, I’ll um I’ll definitely get him to share his thoughts cuz he I mean, he’s
29:19
been running this model for for years now.
29:21
Yeah, Chris is genius. I read his com. I’m like, “Bro, this guy’s
29:23
he’s way too smart for good.” He really is.
29:27
Except he’s an Ohio State fan. So, aside from that.
29:30
Yeah, this is If you’re an Ohio State fan, you’re not allowed on this podcast.
29:34
I’ll just say it now. I allow I allow anybody except UT fans and Ohio State
29:38
fans. Those two teams are are banned from this podcast.
29:42
Um, you’re really smart,
29:46
but this isn’t working. But it’s okay because I got just a few more questions
29:50
before we go. Uh, because I think you’ll be able to help somebody with this
29:53
question. Um, how long have you been at LockXO?
29:56
Coming up on three years. So, you’ve done you’ve gone through
29:59
annual planning at least twice. You say this is the third time around. Can you
30:02
talk about an expensive lesson during annual planning that might have cost you
30:06
that was mistake, big learning lesson, did not go
30:10
exactly how you thought it was, how you thought it would. What was it? And then
30:14
how did you pivot? Because I feel like there’s a good amount of people who are
30:17
very conservative on the on the annual planning. And so for you to talk about
30:20
maybe an experiment or just a creative idea that you wanted to run that just
30:24
might have flopped. And then how did you react to it?
30:26
I have no shame in this this past year. Wait, wait, wait.
30:30
We’re going to get I just know it. I know it’s going to one of these is going
30:33
to get them. It’s going to be one that’s actually super sour in there and we’re
30:36
going to get the shot that I’m looking for. I’ll try. If not, I’m the one who
30:39
got the content. Want to freeze fam you. I don’t think
30:48
it’s going to happen. We might have to part two this.
30:50
We are. Do you guys have those um you remember
30:54
those straws? What are the They’re like this long.
30:58
Yeah. We drink like pop out of them. Sorry. From Midwest. Call popnot soda.
31:03
It’s okay. I forgive you. Just I don’t know. Hank, my sour
31:06
tolerance just isn’t. Yeah. I don’t know what
31:09
Not going to happen. Okay. Next time we’ll have Warheads for
31:11
you. Maybe that might help. A bag of citric acid,
31:14
right? And there goes Sam.
31:21
Citric acid missed out for Sam. Let’s go.
31:23
Yeah. All right. So, what’s flopped? Yeah.
31:25
Yeah. this past year um we had some big growth goals. So we had
31:31
we had our normal annual planning which is startup you know need to grow and
31:34
usually any startups like 20 to 40% is solid growth
31:38
and then in Q1 we got a round of investment and
31:44
with that also came growth goals on it. So we had like two years of growth in
31:49
one. Um but as part of the annual plan and that we had I had two big bets this
31:55
year. Two big big bets. ABM SEO. Cool. Those are what every marketing
32:00
needs doing. But they were like proper strategies and everything else. So the
32:04
ABM side huge exercise of okay well one we need
32:10
to get data. We need to figure out how we’re piping this all and map our entire
32:13
ICP. define like what is a tier one, a tier two, a tier three, get the data,
32:20
enrich it, get it into Salesforce, be able to pass it on to sales teams. Like
32:24
it’s all very easy to say, right? It took us
32:28
eight months to get that all together because there’s we had like I called
32:32
like V1.0, V1.1, V1.2 and then like okay, big adjustment, V2.0
32:37
cuz there’s all this stuff that you just learn along the way like oh that data
32:41
didn’t come over right that data is flatout inaccurate. we need a different
32:44
data source or there’s too much filtering that the BDRs n have to do in
32:47
order to act on this data. How can we help clean this up and speed it up? But
32:52
the mistake that I made was forecasting too early when I thought we were going
32:57
to see the results of that pan out. So I’m like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to start
32:59
to see higher ACVs, better win rate sooner
33:04
because we’re going to be pulling in more tier one accounts with our our
33:07
perfect targeting.” So what happened was I started to I built this in Q4 of 2024.
33:13
So I was like, “Yeah, by Q3 of 2025, we’ll start be we’ll see the bottom of
33:16
the funnel. We’ll see revenue start coming in. We’ve got 30-day win uh sales
33:20
cycle.” So it comes through quick. Well, Q3, we’re still working on data.
33:26
So I had my whole annual plan of like how much do we need to be spending at
33:30
the top of funnel and variable? What do we need from overhead and other channels
33:34
to be supporting us funnel? and the whole bottom of the ABM stuff that
33:38
wasn’t filling in. So, I was just like, [ __ ] we were leaving sales high. I
33:43
mean, they weren’t high and dry, but I was just like, we have a gap between
33:46
what we need to be putting into the funnel for sales to be able to act on
33:48
because that’s not there. So, back to the beginning of our conversation, hey,
33:54
LinkedIn ads, what’s up? Because we knew we still had some runway there. So, we
33:57
pushed more in there. But that was to me I was just like oo I get why some people
34:02
are overly conservative with that with like how they’re forecasting and
34:06
everything else. But it’s the I’ve always run on like the deadline with
34:11
school like hey you have an essay due on Friday. Cool. Thursday night. All right.
34:14
Let’s start typing it out. Let’s go. That’s always kind of how I’ve been on
34:17
and that’s why I like the startup world because everything’s just so fast and
34:19
you have to operate that way. But I think that’s one where with the big the
34:25
big rocks, that’s one where I might be a little bit more not conservative moving
34:29
forward, but give myself a little bit more buffer or back to the previous like
34:34
whether it’s a sixquarter planning or whether it’s the how do we phase into
34:38
things and say like, hey, I need no one to cut my losses or push things out.
34:42
Like what are those trigger points to set for yourself with just like hey if
34:44
data isn’t ready yet and good enough to be acted upon pull this lever to make
34:48
sure that we don’t start taking on water.
34:50
Yeah. Okay. I got one more question before the lightning round and I think
34:54
I’m going to just have to use AI to like make a crying face because clearly this
34:58
isn’t working. So I’m just going to say screw the sour until we get to the
35:00
lightning round. Um, if there’s a marketer sitting in a board meeting
35:04
right now and they’re talking annual planning and there is a a number that
35:10
they’re being asked to commit to, but they do not feel confident that they
35:13
will hit it. How would you have them address that?
35:17
How should they go about addressing a number that they just do not feel
35:20
confident that they can actually commit to?
35:22
Do they have to answer on the spot or can they come back?
35:25
Let’s say they can come back. Okay.
35:27
Let’s say they’re at the healthy company where they can come back.
35:29
They can come back. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. If they’re not, say like, “Hey, I don’t
35:34
know about this. Give me some time. I want to, you know, pull some thoughts
35:37
together. This is where I’d go to go to math and
35:42
spreadsheets.” And you and I have run this model a million times. We have our
35:47
blended funnel that so many of us look at. And so what I like to do is take,
35:50
okay, let’s take our average quarter from the last four quarters and just
35:54
say, “Okay, here’s how much we spent in variable. Here’s how much in overhead.”
35:57
than the basic metrics demos ops one if we need to 2x 3x 4x 5x whatever the
36:04
bottom number is and it’s like okay what are the different levers that we can
36:07
pull and what I like to show is one by one each lever being pulled to get to
36:12
that that growth target so say you need to go from 1 million to 5 million you
36:17
say okay here’s what we did past four quarters to get to 1 million if we only
36:21
increase paid media spend to get to 5 million what’s that number look like at
36:24
the top literally just highlight that cell so here’s how much we need to spend
36:27
to do that. If we targeted better, had better ads. So like
36:33
called demoed opportunity conversion rate, we can increase that by it have to
36:37
be like 40% on top of what it is. But like here’s what that would look like.
36:41
And then just start going through each um each conversion rate, each cost per
36:46
and you have those levers and then at the end you basically say, okay, now
36:49
let’s sum it all up in this perfect world that’s as balanced as we can get
36:53
and work your way from the bottom. Okay. Do how much do we realistically think
36:56
that we can increase the win rate by? Couple points. Put that in. How much do
37:00
we think we can increase demo to op conversion rate? Put that in. How much
37:03
do we think we can increase spend to just get that top of funnel volume? And
37:06
usually in there, you’ll start to see like this is still outside the realm of
37:09
reality. Or we could get aggressive when we could do this. But what I would do is
37:13
I’d walk them through each step to say here’s all the levers that we have to
37:16
pull and here’s what it looks like combined. So from here either you have
37:20
to commit to all this resourcing headcount, variable spend, going to
37:23
these events, videographer, whatever that would look like in order to do this
37:27
or we have to I don’t want to tell you we
37:31
can’t grow the company, but we just have to have a long conversation about like
37:34
is that the right number or are we ready to invest to make this happen right now?
37:38
Bars. Dang, that was a great answer. Yeah, I hope somebody we’re gonna put
37:43
ads behind this. Somebody needs to hear that. Um, so Sam, we’ve hit the I want
37:48
to say the end of the episode where uh lightning round. We ask you five
37:51
questions. You get to answer in under 30 seconds and you got to eat one per uh
37:56
per question. So I don’t know whichever one.
37:59
You tell me which one you want. Which one which one hurt more
38:01
green? All right.
38:08
You make this difficult. So first question. One metric or KPI
38:13
that every marketer tracks but genuinely doesn’t matter.
38:20
Clickthrough rate. Clickthrough rate. Why is that?
38:23
Cuz they measure it wrong. They’re not using the right medium. They’re looking
38:25
at video and they’re saying, “What’s a clickthrough rate and comparing that to
38:27
a static ad?” Two completely different mediums. One, you need to click to
38:32
consume the content. Video you watch that in feed. You don’t need to click to
38:34
get that message. It’s not apples apples.
38:38
You’re so smart. Next question. Keep them going. That didn’t work, did it?
38:42
Okay, it’s fine. Keep going, though. So, best best piece of advice for a marketer
38:46
building their first annual plan as a leader.
38:49
Don’t overthink it. Okay. How about
38:55
be prepared to change after you talk to the leadership
38:59
team. Your plan’s not going to be perfect. Be okay with that.
39:03
Okay. If you had to choose one, quarterly planning or annual planning,
39:07
uh would you would you prefer to do quarterly annual or is there a third
39:10
option that you feel real good about? I like annual planning just because it
39:16
gives you the overarching vision of what we want to do. But you should be I do my
39:22
main reporting on quarterly to look at what are we seeing in the market and
39:26
have your your levers in play to say like okay I want to tweak this do that
39:31
and that’s where it kind of takes in that sixq methodology of just like hey
39:33
let’s pull this forward this channel forward this investment forward let’s
39:36
push that one out so annual for the vision quarterly for the keeping up with
39:41
the market. Got it. All right. How do you know when
39:44
a tactic or channel is actually dead versus just needs iter iteration?
39:47
Because we hear it all the time. SEO is dead. Demand gen is dead. Everything is
39:51
dead. My dog is dead. What? Like how do we know when like the channel’s actually
39:55
No, he didn’t die. He didn’t actually die. He’s fine. He’s
40:00
in New Jersey. Good. Yeah, I was going to say that’s a
40:02
that’s a heartbreaker right there. SEO is dead. My dog’s dead. Jesus. Okay, we
40:06
went there. Uh Dad,
40:10
you’re just eating these like it’s nothing. It’s
40:12
candy. Journals aren’t dead. It’s a playbook.
40:15
So that’s the I mean, we’ve talked about that time and time again.
40:20
I mean, I’m trying to think of insert an example. SEO. You can go find it’s like,
40:24
yeah, if you’re if you’re pumping out garbage articles. This is I walked into
40:28
this at a client labs was they were doing SEO really well. They’re putting
40:34
out 10 articles a day, hitting all the main keywords with the most volume, but
40:38
then you go to the article, you’re just like, this is the most fluff, unhelpful
40:41
content. So, yeah, you’re showing up, but the people are bouncing because
40:44
they’re just like, “This isn’t even answering the question.” So,
40:47
that’s where it’s the channel is working. You’re getting the people on
40:51
there, but your execution is what’s wrong with it. So, I don’t know. I think
40:56
every billboards aren’t dead. I mean, literally the only things that are dead
40:59
are like what? Horseback messaging. Uh, what’s the Morse code? Like,
41:05
yeah, I I don’t have a good answer for those
41:08
ones, but hey, maybe we’ll bring back Morse for our marketing. Hey, we might
41:11
it might be a fire thing to do. We could we could come up with a skit like that
41:14
for a ding. Yeah, something with Morris code. Uh, last question. As you
41:17
seemingly enjoy these. Um, psycho.
41:22
Literal psychopath. So, you wrote keep the goal, adapt the
41:27
plan. Is there a time when you should actually kill the goal or is that never
41:30
the answer? That’s like life advice. Be right there.
41:36
Damn. Uh,
41:42
all right. Let’s stay at that level. If it’s impacting your health, if it’s
41:45
impacting your family, if it’s impacting your friends, it’s impacting the joy you
41:48
get out of work. Yeah. Kill the goal. If not, keep pushing.
41:56
Well, as Sam finishes enjoying his bag of what I thought would No, no, I don’t
42:01
want it. Yo, Sam, is this your first time in
42:05
Austin? No. No, it was just our first time
42:08
connecting. Well, it’s been a pleasure.
42:10
Last time I missed you. I know.
42:12
I thought you were in Houston and you’re just like, “No, I was in Austin the
42:14
whole time.” Yeah, that was that was my bad.
42:17
All good. All good. Well, we did it. After a few years, three
42:20
years, we finally did it. Uh yeah, now it’s time for Sam to go hit
42:24
the gym and work these these calories off. So,
42:27
Sam, appreciate you, bro, for hopping on the podcast.
42:29
Hey, man. It was fun. Yeah,
42:31
we finally make it happen. Of course. Well, until next time, we’ll
42:35
catch y’all on the next episode of Sour and Sass.
View Transcript
Yo yo, welcome back to Sour and Sass. Uh, fourth episode here. I’m Isaiah,
0:11
student video marketing manager at Directive. And this is one of those fun
0:15
podcasts. It’s not one of these boring podcasts where everybody’s over Zoom.
0:18
And you know, we’re in a nice studio here in Austin, Texas. And I have the
0:22
great honor and pleasure of bringing somebody who’s been very special in my
0:26
career and in my life. uh has been a mentor and a friend for like the past
0:29
three years. And this is actually our first time getting to meet in person.
0:34
But before I tell you who it is, um something that we’re going to talk about
0:38
today is an issue that many of you marketers are experiencing right now,
0:42
which is annual planning. Getting ready for 2026, trying to put budgets
0:46
together, trying to put strategies together that’ll get approved by senior
0:50
leadership that you feel will be will confidently help you hit your pipeline
0:54
targets. But I think this guy right here has some special insights. He’s done it
0:58
before. He’s an operator who’s in your seat. And so, ladies and gentlemen,
1:02
welcome to Sour Sass. Sam Keellay. I appreciate it, man. No, no pressure or
1:06
anything with that tea up right there. Jesus. I hope I live up to this one.
1:11
So, Sam, uh, I hyped you up. Yeah.
1:14
A little bit. I left a lot of stuff out, but I left that for you. So, tell people
1:19
a little bit about who you are and, uh, how you got here.
1:21
I am how I got here. How I got here literally today. flew in for annual
1:25
planning. So, it’s it’s top of mind right now. I can tell you that. Uh,
1:28
yeah. How I got here though, in-house big big enterprise did that for eight
1:34
years software company and then we were talking about this right before agency
1:38
life. It sweeps us in. We learned so spent a couple years at Refined Labs.
1:41
just learned the the flip side of big corporate red tape to fastoving startups
1:47
and like how do you go from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 25, what that all looks like
1:50
and I was like I love startups and everything just the speed. So yeah, did
1:55
that for two and a half years. We my wife and I wanted to start a family. I
1:58
was like I can’t do agency forever. I want to slow down. No, you’re never
2:02
going to slow down. But I was like all right, let’s just focus on one place
2:05
versus having a client in I had someone in Australia, someone in Europe, someone
2:08
in California. like I can’t be stretched like 18 hours a day. So yeah, came back
2:12
in house. Been here for three years at LockXO.
2:15
It’s a blast, man. It’s a blast. It’s a lot of fun. And especially after going
2:19
from agency where you work with your clients, you’re like, I really really
2:22
strongly recommend that you do this and then you watch them not do it and you’re
2:26
just like, you just watch them scrape their knees over and over. You’re just
2:28
like, let me do this for you. To finally being like, all right, cool.
2:32
I get to make the shots. I get to call what we’re doing with marketing. And
2:34
then it’s like, hey, you either you sink or swim. So,
2:36
it’s fun to just to finally be like, “All right, here’s what we’re going to
2:39
do, and here’s how we’re going to see if it plays out or not.” So, yeah, that’s
2:41
kind of the the full loop that that’s brought us
2:44
here. All right. Well, one thing about Sam,
2:46
he’s he’s a health freak. So, I feel I don’t know about freak.
2:50
No, conscious. Health conscious. Okay. Okay. We’ll call him health conscious,
2:54
but we got some candy for you that might throw you off your health conscious
2:58
journey a little bit. You’re just going to see me pucker up a
3:00
little bit, but I’m dragging your ass to the gym tomorrow morning, so I’m not
3:03
worried about it. Yeah, you’ll hear about it on LinkedIn at some point. I’m
3:06
going to be sore tomorrow. Um, but yes, Sam, you’re on Sour and Sass,
3:10
so we going to rip this bad boy open and we going to give you your first
3:14
question. This time we got sour mangoes instead of
3:17
sour grapes. I heard these are worse than the grapes. So, um, I
3:20
mean, you can’t beat the was it the old blue Warheads?
3:24
Don’t worry, we’re bringing the Warheads back. We’re going to bring the Warheads.
3:27
All right. Yeah. Before you pick before you do it,
3:29
let me ask the first question you got to answer while you’re going through it. Uh
3:32
so question number one so let’s start with the big topic. So you wrote a piece
3:36
about how you approach annual planning. Um and one line that stuck with me was
3:41
more isn’t infinite. Um so most marketers are treating
3:44
planning like an additive exercises like we did X this year so we need to do 20%
3:48
more of X next year. Um you’re kind of saying that’s broken. So walk me through
3:52
why that mindset fails and like what you should do instead.
3:55
All right. You know I’m gonna try this one here. I
4:00
like These are cold. Yeah,
4:03
these are good. He’s not making a face. This is crazy.
4:05
I grew up on Warheads. Really bright colors. You can’t Sour Patch Kids, dude.
4:09
This is straight candy. I love this. You pop five of these at once.
4:12
This is great. He’s a G. All right. Um
4:16
Yeah, you can’t scale more forever. Like, you can’t just do more more more.
4:19
So, our company that I’m at right now, I
4:22
came marketing engine was there wasn’t much. So, it was just like we sell to
4:26
recruiters. Recruiters love LinkedIn. I’m like, “Cool, let’s go run ads on
4:29
LinkedIn because we know they’re there.” So, for the first couple years, it was
4:32
just like, “Hey, the engine’s there. Let’s just throw some more gas in it.”
4:35
And it was scaling well. Fast forward, we’re I’m here three years now, and I’m
4:40
just like, “All right, our growth targets continue to just go, go, go, go
4:45
startup life.” And so I look at the goals that we’ve set for next year and
4:50
I’m just like I could throw more money into this but diminishing returns start
4:53
to come into play or like the it’s not linear growth and everything else. So I
4:59
look at that I’m just like if I keep following this track in two years I’m
5:03
going to have no growth levers left and that’s not where I want to be. Like I
5:06
still want to be able to say you know in case of emergency throw X dollars into
5:10
LinkedIn ads. I don’t want to be redlining that already and being like I
5:14
have no levers left to pull. So that’s why I look at it. I’m just like, okay,
5:18
you can’t just scale more forever. So that’s where you really have to start
5:21
getting to a point of where are we at that’s that that drives
5:23
good, predictable, comfortable growth, but then you look at your other levers
5:27
outside of just spend, but is it leveraging the channel like LinkedIn
5:30
with other mediums? Is it going to what we’re doing, which is like more owned
5:35
and earned type stuff? And so that’s an area I’m just like that scares the crap
5:39
out of me because we haven’t done too much of it and people are going to
5:41
laugh. It’s like emails, webinars, just like basic stuff, but
5:44
it’s like hey, we have to we have to build up from scratch. We haven’t done
5:46
it yet. So it’s the it’s the first principal side of all right, let’s
5:49
figure it out and we’ll see if it works. But yeah, it’s
5:52
the I think it’s just it’s it’s knowing that
5:57
I will hit the ceiling if I keep pressing that and that will be a worse
6:01
look than trying new stuff and having that layer on top of it and those be
6:04
like the ecosystem concept force multipliers make the ads even more
6:07
effective later on. Well, you said something interesting and
6:10
you taught me this a few years ago about the growth levers.
6:13
So for somebody who might not know what these growth levers are, you mind like
6:16
breaking down a few of them as you grow. Another one.
6:19
Another one. Another one. Another one. Yeah. I just need one take of him like
6:24
it being sour to you. But we make a fake face.
6:29
Maybe the grapes will hurt worse. Let me try this for the next the next uh
6:32
question. This one was a little bit more sour.
6:35
Okay, we’re getting somewhere. We’re making progress.
6:37
Let’s go for mainline them one. All right. Growth levers. So you have at
6:43
the high level you have like paid channels, own channels, earn channels,
6:46
and then say we were to focus in on paid. So you have your acquisition
6:51
channels. You can go paid social, paid search, partner, referral. Those um the
6:58
levers that I like to play with more though are looking at like from the
7:01
funnel perspective of if you oversimplify it. So start from the
7:05
bottom up. How many closed deals do you need? How many opportunities do you
7:08
need? How many demo requests or um if your PLG signups do you need? And then
7:15
in between those you have your conversion rates, you have your cost
7:17
pers and that’s where you can usually find a lot of the direction and what you
7:21
need to start doing and figuring out what you need to do. So for example,
7:25
usually the win rate depending on how close you are with your VP of sales or
7:28
someone else or how strong your product market fit is, you can find some stuff
7:31
in there. Um, usually what we do is this is a page from their fine labs playbook.
7:35
Find where you win consistently, whatever stage that is at 25%. and then
7:40
work backwards from that to say, okay, if we’re starting to taper off and that
7:43
what used to be 25% is 20%. It’s like why? Go dig into your loss reasons. Loss
7:47
due to functionality, loss due to competitor, loss due to price. Some of
7:51
those you can control competitor price. Okay, one’s an offer, one’s like, hey,
7:55
we need to we need to show up our marketing against this competitor or
7:59
figure out why they’re beating us. If it’s functionality, you have to work
8:02
with your product team. So that’s one. But usually when you go up from the
8:06
opportunity creation or qual SQO to the demo, that’s
8:11
where you have a lot more flexibility as a marketer to figure out, okay, is it
8:14
why are we not converting? Is it people are dropping off? They’re not qualified.
8:18
They’re not getting in touch. So go back what, three years to the whole uh I
8:25
submitted a dumb request, you’ll hear back from someone in 72 hours. That’s
8:28
the easiest problem to fix. Now, I mean, Chili Piper exists for a reason and you
8:32
can find any tools to do that now. So, that’s one of the biggest ones, but um
8:35
there’s a lot of levers you can play with just and that’s where you have to
8:38
get tactical like you and I you and I always talk about just like get your
8:41
hands wet, figure out where can we improve these different numbers,
8:46
conversion rates, but that’s where a lot of the levers sit for you as a marketer
8:49
is is in that, not just like, hey, let’s just go put more ad dollars in and hope
8:53
this leaky bucket fixes itself. 100%. Well, one of the things you were
8:57
talking about with like expanding something that you’re doing now, which
9:00
is earned and owned media for you, what does that look like in practice? Because
9:04
we hear it a lot like paid media, earned media, own media. Yeah.
9:07
And there these big marketing terms that people use, but
9:10
nobody ever breaks it down. What does this look like in practice? And even
9:13
when they try to break it down, like saying doing a webinar, doing email,
9:17
they use these very fluffy terms. They never get into the weeds. So, you’re
9:20
building from kind of from from zero. So, what what has it been like for you
9:24
doing earned and owned and how has that played into like the bigger planning for
9:27
you for next year? Earned is going to be an interesting
9:29
one. Uh I came up in the era of like PR doesn’t do much. So, and I know people
9:35
are like oh like don’t say that like hey everything comes back and forth.
9:38
Everything comes in seasons. It’s coming back. LLMs have kind of forced that
9:41
because of how they go and find out like okay who are you credible not just based
9:46
on how much you want to pat yourself on the back but are other people talking
9:49
about you? More specifically credible sources. So if you’re getting the big um
9:53
you know publications uh the big industry insight places even like if you
9:59
get CNN to reference you or anything else that’s where you can get some
10:02
earned stuff. So scraping the surface there to be honest I don’t know that’s
10:05
going to be one of our just full on first principles. Let’s figure this out
10:08
and see see what works. The owned one is we were spoiled in the co era. people
10:15
just came to us like we’re just like yeah just hey brand you know just make
10:19
like do funny stuff get people interested create some education around
10:23
yourself they’ll they’ll come to you your website mattered but the whole like
10:28
should we make our our CTA red or blue like that level of conversion
10:31
optimization that doesn’t really matter unless you’re
10:35
talking millions of visitors per month which people listening to this probably
10:39
don’t have that problem and if they do I wish I was you um so on the owned side.
10:45
Yeah, it’s like you have your website, you have email, you have if you have
10:49
like podcast distribution and what that looks like and then you have just your
10:53
your expertise. So the blogs or um people are pushing into like Substack,
10:59
Beehive, those different places where where you you own some of that. So
11:03
that’s a one where we haven’t done much email. We haven’t needed to. We have
11:06
BDRs and AES who do it like very targeted cadence stuff, but if we’re
11:10
talking like the one to many type outreach, our
11:15
audience universe is huge. So, we sell to recruiters, we sell globally, we sell
11:20
to small and large, we sell to in-house recruiters, we sell to agency
11:23
recruiters. So, you can you can get the scope of like, hey, let’s go email all
11:26
these people. You’re talking millions of people and
11:29
that’s just to hit them once a month. Well, we know what email domains and
11:32
Google is doing to people like that. Even if we just send one a month,
11:35
we’re going to burn our domain so fast if we just try to send two million,
11:38
three million emails a month, even if they’re so valuable because that
11:41
threshold of what is it’s like if seven out of a thousand people report you as
11:46
spam or it’s some it’s a really small number, then all of a sudden your domain
11:50
takes a hit. You just catch someone on the wrong day, you’re going to get
11:52
reported as spam, even if it’s the best email ever to them. So that’s the part
11:56
where I’m just like, well, we have to do email. Recruiters live in their inboxes.
11:59
is I mean they’re they’re emailing people all the time, but how do we how
12:02
do we build this out and use this as a growth channel? How do we provide value
12:05
while not being spammy but still being frequent enough to be relevant? Because
12:10
if you just pop in once and it’s not really following a consistent theme,
12:13
like that’s why I love Substack and certain newsletters, you know, certain
12:16
days of the week I’m always going to get something like Kyle Pyer is always going
12:19
to drop a killer report on a certain day or Kaylee Edmonson every week she’s
12:23
dropping a great newsletter. So I know what to expect, but when you do extend
12:27
that out to like monthly or kind of off, then it’s a little bit more jarring for
12:31
people. So trying to find that balance there, that’s another another fun one
12:34
that we’re going to figure out this year.
12:37
Exciting things for for Lock then. Hopefully hopefully exciting things. So
12:41
then since we’re talking about 2026, um if you wouldn’t mind walking us
12:46
through the process of annual planning for you, not the not the pretty final
12:51
deck that you show to leadership, but what’s the what’s the messy first step?
12:55
What are the questions you’re asking yourself right now going into 2026?
12:59
What’s the messy first step? Am I cut out to do this? I mean, that’s
13:05
the I used to joke cuz in Refined Labs, people would always be like, I have
13:09
imposttor syndrome. And at first, people were like, “Oh, I
13:12
don’t want if I tell them that, like, they’re not going to trust me with that
13:15
account or they’re not going to hire me or this or that.” But we started to
13:18
realize the people who had the most imposter syndrome were the people
13:21
driving the best results for our clients. And we’re just like, oh, they
13:25
feel imposter syndrome because they feel like there’s always something more to be
13:28
learned, something to be gained, something to be improved upon. That’s
13:30
just performance mindset. So when you look at it from that angle,
13:34
that’s a one side of me that it’s a it’s a thin edge to walk, but I like being
13:41
scared by certain things sometimes. And like I look at the growth goals that we
13:44
have set for this year and the stage that we want to be at in the next two,
13:46
three years, and I’m just like, I’ve never done this before. So that’s your
13:49
imposttor syndrome. Then you have the growth side. It’s like, but I’m going to
13:51
figure it out. And you’re going to bet your ass I’m going to figure out like
13:54
whatever I have to do to to get to that result. And that’s why it’s funny, our
13:58
our company, we found with a lot of our best performing people here, and then
14:03
I’ve looked back at previous hires we’ve made, former athletes, people with
14:08
military background, um, people that have been part of competitive team
14:13
environments. I mean, that could even be like Quizbull. Um, doesn’t matter what
14:16
it is, but they have that drive where it’s it’s the team first mentality of
14:22
I’m going to learn. I’m going to put it all out there. I’m going to help us
14:24
achieve this result. not look at how high I can blow my quote out of the
14:28
water and not help this other AE who’s struggling. But we have this whole
14:31
concerted effort. So that’s a part that I love because I’m just like we’re going
14:34
to figure it out as a team one way or another to to get to it. But back my
14:38
mind there always is that like can I though? Is there someone else
14:41
better suited to this? Probably. But that’s the fun part.
14:45
Okay. Uh I’ll let you get two questions without eating the
14:50
I need to try one of the sour ones. King’s over here waiting for me to try
14:53
this one. Dude, let’s see if the green grape
14:56
green grapes actually gets you. I hope it does.
14:58
All right, so the green one. Melissa, she has been all over the cotton candy
15:03
grapes. Have you guys had those? Those are so good. Oh my goodness.
15:05
She put those in the freezer. Yes, those are dangerous,
15:08
bro. While you’re chewing on that, uh, how do
15:13
you balance killing your darlings with doubling down on what’s working? Where
15:16
do you kind of draw the line? Because a lot of people
15:18
One more time. So, how do you balance killing your
15:20
darlings? Cuz some people have ego put into their strategy for next year and
15:24
they’ll go the entire year on something that’s not working and they won’t kill
15:27
it. So, how do you balance killing that thing where it’s like, man, that’s my
15:30
love child. I I know that’s going to work next year and then it doesn’t. And
15:32
then you have to double down on what sounds boring.
15:35
Yeah. Is that any more sour by the way?
15:39
I’ll try another one in a minute. I mean, I’m going to do two at the same
15:42
time. Next one. Um, it’s part of it’s just it’s Yeah, it’s
15:49
ego. It’s that. So, you can have the just get away from yourself for a
15:53
second. Set that aside. If this was someone on your team running it and you
15:56
looked in on them, what advice would you tell them? Should I keep pushing this?
16:00
Hey, let’s revisit, see what’s going on or like you need to stop. You’ve you’ve
16:04
seen how this plays out already. So, that’s one way you can do it. You can
16:07
just kind of like take a step back, third person view it. Another one is one
16:12
that we Chris Walker kind of pioneered this with the whole um framework that we
16:17
came out with, but set guard rails for what does success look like to get to
16:22
the next stage or what’s the cut off point where it’s just like hey if I’m
16:27
not seeing X result in Y days we need to either pivot and figure out like we we
16:33
have to tweak something else to make this work or we have to pump it because
16:35
it’s not going to work. So that’s a second part of it is usually we just go
16:40
into this like hey I know Google ads are going to work. We just put money into
16:43
it. Oh it’s going to come next quarter. It’s going to come next quarter. But you
16:46
never really put like well what what does success look like? What’s the
16:48
definition of that? Because without that then it’s kind of like yeah I think it’s
16:52
working you know versus something something real. So there’s that and then
16:58
there’s just the honest conversation with yourself. So even us with LinkedIn
17:01
ads I look at this stuff and I’m just like we kill LinkedIn ads. But half of
17:06
the playbook that we’re running is what has been working for the past 5 years.
17:09
And so I also know like that doesn’t have a forever shelf life
17:14
on it. So as it’s still working, figuring out what are the experiments,
17:19
what can we start playing with so we know like, oh, if we get ahead of this
17:22
trend, what does this look like? So a bad example is like the personalization
17:25
tokens that just came out on LinkedIn ads. Like you know how you can say like,
17:27
hey Isaiah, like do you want to improve your marketing results? Like that’s
17:31
going to have a really short shelf life because everyone’s going to adopt it
17:33
before long. But if you jump on that trend early, you’re going to get the
17:35
disproportionate lift from that. So if you do that though, are you pulling
17:40
money away from what’s not working? Pulling money away from maybe something
17:43
that has a little bit of lower diminishing return. So that’s the whole
17:46
the whole give and take of it that I think we have to figure out. But it just
17:50
starts with just scrap your ego. And honestly, one thing I will say, if you
17:54
go into I’ve learned this just from watching other leaders on our team and
17:59
different board meetings is the more you go into meetings with leadership with
18:02
board members honest and just own, hey, we’re not doing well with this. The more
18:06
they’re actually going to respect you than if you’re just like, “Oh, this has
18:08
worked forever. I promise it’s going to work.” Like they they see excuses. They
18:11
read all that. But if you’re just like, “Hey, we missed. Here’s what we’re doing
18:15
about it.” That’s the part they care about right there. And that’s what they
18:17
want to hear that you’re acting on. Because if you’re just like, “Hey, we
18:19
missed.” That’s still and so what like that’s what they want to hear is like oh
18:24
this person they know what they’re doing they’re in a position where they can
18:27
figure out like okay we know what’s going on we know the problem and here
18:30
are the different paths that we can take to rectify or change course if needed.
18:35
Okay we’re going to stay on that topic of ego for a second as you eat two of
18:38
these now matter of fact you hold the bag at that point just down it.
18:42
Yeah just down the bag. I need I need a I need a face for the for the content
18:46
bro. You’re making this look too easy. Sour Patch Kid.
18:49
It looks like it’s just sour sweet now. These are straight sugar bombs.
18:53
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to hit the gym tomorrow. We’re going to make up
18:55
for it. There you go. There’s your picture.
18:59
I have no shame. I hung upside down last week for Clay.
19:02
You for sure did, which is crazy. I I’m getting used to the the playful side cuz
19:07
you’re you’re being on video now. Although I still get talking talking
19:10
about Clay like I think I should get a world record for the first person to get
19:13
Sam Keellay on 4K. I feel like I deserve an award for that.
19:16
Clay table real quick. Submit it. Oh, this is true. You might want to pull
19:19
that up. We might actually do it. Bring the screen over.
19:25
So, when it comes to ego, because now you’re in house, um, how do you navigate
19:29
annual planning with the sales team and not have it turn into like the old
19:34
school team turf war, sales versus marketing? It’s like how how are you
19:37
planning with the sales team and navigating through that?
19:40
Yeah, I’m you know, talk about southern
19:44
phrases. I’m blessed. Um, we were talking about that right before this.
19:48
No, but all all jokes aside, so that was one of the big things I looked at when I
19:51
came to lock. So, after working at Refined Labs, I saw startups with old
19:55
school mentality, lead genen, lead genen, lead genen. I saw startups with
19:58
sales is the darling, everyone else just bow down to sales. And then I saw
20:02
organizations that like they worked really well like CEO, CMO, CFO, VP of
20:07
sales, CR, whoever. They were all on the same page working together. So, I was
20:10
like, okay, that’s the bar for when I go in house. that’s going to be the
20:14
environment that I need to be at. So, reason I preface that is our VP of sales
20:19
and I we’re we get along great. Um
20:25
we over the last two weeks have been talking about how do we want to approach
20:29
it because the way that we look at it is so there’s different ways that we can
20:32
figure out like annual planning and ultimately the question that we are
20:35
trying to answer is how do we resource ourselves appropriately to hit our goals
20:39
this growth target and that’s what led to like is it more or is it something
20:43
else and so that is then the thread that gets pulled to be like okay well what’s
20:48
working and the whole attribution mirage whatever you want to call that starts to
20:52
come into play. We have a couple different ways that we
20:57
measure that. So there’s the the last touch lead source. Do they come in from
21:00
a demo request? Did they come in from a BDR call? Did they come in from an
21:03
event? Whatever else. So we track that. And then we also look at what was the
21:09
the department that brought them in. Was it marketing? Was it BDR? Was it AE?
21:13
Because what happens is we’re dual motion. And so what we usually see is
21:17
we’ll have people come in through our PLG side. they they start for free but
21:21
then BDRs nurture them and they get them to take a call with sales. So there’s
21:26
one question I always like to ask and that’s like who gets credit for that?
21:28
It’s marketing, is it sales? Is it BDR? Like it’s all of them. You have you none
21:32
of them are successful if one of them doesn’t work.
21:36
So the reason I say that is when we look at revenue charts, if you look at by
21:41
lead source, that tells you one makeup of what drove what revenue, what
21:44
percentage of the total total AR this year. If you look at by department, that
21:49
tells a different story of how much is BDR carrying versus marketing. And so we
21:53
look at it from two lenses. One is the lead source. So marketing when you
21:57
account for the PLG that gets nurtured by BDRs. I’m like, well, I have to keep
21:59
pumping in at the top for BDRs to act off of. So from a resourcing
22:03
perspective, I need to be hitting whatever that percent is to to get us to
22:07
growth, but I know that I’ll lose some of that percentage because we have to
22:11
pay BDR commissions, which if the BDRs weren’t there to nurture those, then
22:14
those wouldn’t be closing. So I’m fine. We’ll do that all day long. So, needless
22:19
to say, that was the hardest discussion our VP of sales and I had was just like,
22:22
what are those numbers? Like, how do we want to present this to the leadership
22:25
team at the offsite to our board so that they understand this is how we’re making
22:28
our decision. It’s not about who gets credit for it because at the
22:33
end of the day, it’s just like we’re we’ve got we’ve got a huge growth
22:36
target. We know that if we don’t work, we’re not going to hit it. So, both of
22:39
us will be out of there if we don’t do this well. So, as I say, I’m
22:44
1% of people listening to this probably have that luxury of being like, “Oh,
22:49
that would be nice, Sam. That’d be great.” Like, but for those growing in
22:54
your career or if you’re thinking about career move, that’s something I would
22:56
say like go look for. And when you’re interviewing, like it’s not just a
22:59
one-way street. Interview them back. Say, “I want to talk to the head of
23:01
sales. I want to talk to BDR manager and understand what’s the dynamic.” And get
23:06
get what that actually looks like because that will tell you quickly if
23:08
you’re going to be walking into a what a lot of people experience today or
23:12
if it’s like, oh, like we can actually accomplish some really cool [ __ ]
23:15
together. Okay. Well, it seems like these are not
23:19
phasing you at all. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m just
23:24
I think you need to start taking some. You know what? I think I will.
23:28
There we go. How are you approaching annual planning?
23:31
What are you doing with some of your clients?
23:33
Eat one. You don’t get to just one way this. You got to eat one while you
23:36
answer it. I don’t got the tolerance. Oh.
23:47
Oh my god. I’m going try to answer so quick.
23:51
That’s worth it right there. Oh,
23:54
and ah that wasn’t even the green one. Um I mean cuz it’s similar to yours.
24:01
It’s like work from the target backwards. It’s something you even
24:03
taught me like three years ago like work start at the bottom of the funnel.
24:06
Yep. Everybody starts at top of the funnel.
24:08
We need more leads. More leads. No, no. How many opportunities do we need at the
24:11
current win rate in order to hit X AR? It goes back to the growth levers.
24:16
Once we’re able to figure out what those growth levers are, we can start playing
24:18
with them. And the thing is, it only takes one to two small percentage points
24:22
per like lever to make a very big difference.
24:25
Oh yeah. You go from talking to sales and them
24:27
having an 18% win rate to 20% and then you’re increasing demo opportunity rate
24:31
by a few basis points as well. And now you’re seeing so much more AR come
24:35
through the pipeline. And so we’re always starting there when it comes to
24:39
uh annual planning, but then also trying to figure out what channels like trying
24:43
to it’s like what you said the diminishing returns. Everybody thinks
24:45
it’s always do more channels. And that’s something that I am not a fan of. Like
24:50
just because your uh CEO read some article about yo go do Tik Tok for B2B
24:55
does not mean it was it’s going to work well for you. And so you’re putting
24:58
$100,000 worth of resources and budget into a channel that’s not going to work
25:02
for you right now instead of doubling down on what’s actually working. So,
25:05
it’s a part of knowing the northstar metric. Like, we have to aim at
25:09
something. If we don’t know what we’re aiming at, then we’ll never be able to
25:13
to fully focus on that. And then secondly,
25:16
can we channel our focus? Like actually channel our focus and not spread
25:20
ourselves then across five different channels trying to context switch
25:23
between them all. Can you get one to two that works for you? Go to market motion
25:26
and then just run the play. Like you don’t need to over complicate annual
25:29
planning. Like get the goal, get the motions in place, run the play, and just
25:33
know how to measure. Attribution is probably the last aspect of it. It’s
25:36
like you know what you’re doing, you know what channels you’re on, but you
25:38
have to be able to measure and defend it against senior leadership. And so once
25:42
you get those three things in in order, I think annual planning becomes a bit of
25:45
a piece of a cake other than having to put together a 100page pretty deck for
25:49
next year. Yeah.
25:51
Yeah. On the flight over I was just like I don’t even want to put this into a
25:53
deck. I don’t blame you.
25:54
The week I was like honestly we just we just discuss. So I’m like I’m not even
25:57
going to present this cuz so much of this is going to be changed the next 3
26:00
weeks after this. I’m like why am I spending up time designing this? This is
26:03
true. It’s like what’s actually going to work.
26:05
So, two things I want to follow on from what
26:07
you said there. Remind me because I’m notorious for only remembering one
26:10
thing. Dang. You might have to remind me.
26:12
Say 6Q. 6Q.
26:14
6Q. You got to remind 6Q. I don’t know.
26:16
Yeah. All right. So, what you’re talking about
26:19
with the CEO, they send you over Slack like, “Hey, we should do YouTube.”
26:24
That’s dangerous because what often happens is you go and start the channel,
26:28
you do minimum, not minimum effort, we start dumping videos in there. CEO
26:34
follows up with you a month later. How we doing? We got 75 views. That’s not
26:38
working. Turn it off. You literally just use it as like a video repository. You
26:41
didn’t do thumbnails. You didn’t write it the the titles. Well, you didn’t
26:44
figure out everything else. like this is a channel we’re going deep on for next
26:47
year because we’ve been doing YouTube in the sense that like we’ve been putting
26:51
stuff there but no real effort behind like actually growing it as a channel.
26:56
And so that’s one that I see a lot of people get in is just like well if
26:59
you’re going to do a channel like you need to go deep on it before you can
27:03
rule it out versus if you just do that shallow level work saying it’s a success
27:07
or a failure that’s not even a real result because you didn’t do the work to
27:10
figure out like is it act is it the channel or is it the playbook that you
27:13
used and usually it’s the latter in that sense. Um six Q I remembered it. Um so
27:19
annual planning. Look at you.
27:20
I know I’m just on it. Sugar’s got me wired man. Uh,
27:23
please, please. I hope this one works. All right. So,
27:28
should I try a purple one? Is that Yeah, try a purple one.
27:31
Yeah. Try one, green, one, purple at the same time. There it is. There’s stuff. I
27:34
think this one’s going to be the one. That’s awesome.
27:42
I feel like he’s faking it. I feel like you’re faking that that reaction.
27:46
I had some at first. Okay.
27:47
I grew up on Sugar, man. I did, too. But I still get shocked by
27:51
this. Sorry. 6Q before I forget.
27:55
Those are good. You can have the bag after we’re done.
28:00
Uh, 6Q. Yes. One of my mentors, Chris Dailyaly, told me about this when we
28:06
were when I was talking about all the annual planning lately, and he runs I
28:10
forget where he said he learned it. It might have been like Bane or Mackenzie,
28:13
one of those he picked it up from, but it’s a six key methodology where it’s
28:16
just like what are we doing for the next six quarters? Because he’s like annual
28:18
planning, you do all this work. And I’m totally going to butcher what he told
28:22
me. Go, he either posted about it or I’m going
28:26
to get him to post about it because he shared this with me and it’s so
28:28
valuable. Um, basically like you put all this work into annual planning, most of
28:32
it changes or I mean look at marketing and everything that comes about like in
28:35
a quarter the whole market’s shifted, dynamics have shifted, new channels
28:38
enter the equation. Yep.
28:40
So half your playbook, half your plan is needs to be altered. And so what he does
28:45
is he has a six quarter plan where it’s just like okay what do we need to do in
28:48
this next quarter to be successful to hit our targets what’s on our two
28:52
quarters out what’s on our six quarters out and then he’s just like every
28:54
quarter then you have your overarching vision okay maybe let’s move this thing
28:58
up that’s five quarters out to two quarters out because of this new dynamic
29:00
that’s coming into play or you know I wanted to go into video but I haven’t
29:04
made that higher let’s push that out a quarter so it’s much more fluid and it
29:08
takes a lot of the weight off so I haven’t done it I want to do it he told
29:13
me I was already in the thick of this one. So, that might be one next year.
29:16
But, I’ll um I’ll definitely get him to share his thoughts cuz he I mean, he’s
29:19
been running this model for for years now.
29:21
Yeah, Chris is genius. I read his com. I’m like, “Bro, this guy’s
29:23
he’s way too smart for good.” He really is.
29:27
Except he’s an Ohio State fan. So, aside from that.
29:30
Yeah, this is If you’re an Ohio State fan, you’re not allowed on this podcast.
29:34
I’ll just say it now. I allow I allow anybody except UT fans and Ohio State
29:38
fans. Those two teams are are banned from this podcast.
29:42
Um, you’re really smart,
29:46
but this isn’t working. But it’s okay because I got just a few more questions
29:50
before we go. Uh, because I think you’ll be able to help somebody with this
29:53
question. Um, how long have you been at LockXO?
29:56
Coming up on three years. So, you’ve done you’ve gone through
29:59
annual planning at least twice. You say this is the third time around. Can you
30:02
talk about an expensive lesson during annual planning that might have cost you
30:06
that was mistake, big learning lesson, did not go
30:10
exactly how you thought it was, how you thought it would. What was it? And then
30:14
how did you pivot? Because I feel like there’s a good amount of people who are
30:17
very conservative on the on the annual planning. And so for you to talk about
30:20
maybe an experiment or just a creative idea that you wanted to run that just
30:24
might have flopped. And then how did you react to it?
30:26
I have no shame in this this past year. Wait, wait, wait.
30:30
We’re going to get I just know it. I know it’s going to one of these is going
30:33
to get them. It’s going to be one that’s actually super sour in there and we’re
30:36
going to get the shot that I’m looking for. I’ll try. If not, I’m the one who
30:39
got the content. Want to freeze fam you. I don’t think
30:48
it’s going to happen. We might have to part two this.
30:50
We are. Do you guys have those um you remember
30:54
those straws? What are the They’re like this long.
30:58
Yeah. We drink like pop out of them. Sorry. From Midwest. Call popnot soda.
31:03
It’s okay. I forgive you. Just I don’t know. Hank, my sour
31:06
tolerance just isn’t. Yeah. I don’t know what
31:09
Not going to happen. Okay. Next time we’ll have Warheads for
31:11
you. Maybe that might help. A bag of citric acid,
31:14
right? And there goes Sam.
31:21
Citric acid missed out for Sam. Let’s go.
31:23
Yeah. All right. So, what’s flopped? Yeah.
31:25
Yeah. this past year um we had some big growth goals. So we had
31:31
we had our normal annual planning which is startup you know need to grow and
31:34
usually any startups like 20 to 40% is solid growth
31:38
and then in Q1 we got a round of investment and
31:44
with that also came growth goals on it. So we had like two years of growth in
31:49
one. Um but as part of the annual plan and that we had I had two big bets this
31:55
year. Two big big bets. ABM SEO. Cool. Those are what every marketing
32:00
needs doing. But they were like proper strategies and everything else. So the
32:04
ABM side huge exercise of okay well one we need
32:10
to get data. We need to figure out how we’re piping this all and map our entire
32:13
ICP. define like what is a tier one, a tier two, a tier three, get the data,
32:20
enrich it, get it into Salesforce, be able to pass it on to sales teams. Like
32:24
it’s all very easy to say, right? It took us
32:28
eight months to get that all together because there’s we had like I called
32:32
like V1.0, V1.1, V1.2 and then like okay, big adjustment, V2.0
32:37
cuz there’s all this stuff that you just learn along the way like oh that data
32:41
didn’t come over right that data is flatout inaccurate. we need a different
32:44
data source or there’s too much filtering that the BDRs n have to do in
32:47
order to act on this data. How can we help clean this up and speed it up? But
32:52
the mistake that I made was forecasting too early when I thought we were going
32:57
to see the results of that pan out. So I’m like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to start
32:59
to see higher ACVs, better win rate sooner
33:04
because we’re going to be pulling in more tier one accounts with our our
33:07
perfect targeting.” So what happened was I started to I built this in Q4 of 2024.
33:13
So I was like, “Yeah, by Q3 of 2025, we’ll start be we’ll see the bottom of
33:16
the funnel. We’ll see revenue start coming in. We’ve got 30-day win uh sales
33:20
cycle.” So it comes through quick. Well, Q3, we’re still working on data.
33:26
So I had my whole annual plan of like how much do we need to be spending at
33:30
the top of funnel and variable? What do we need from overhead and other channels
33:34
to be supporting us funnel? and the whole bottom of the ABM stuff that
33:38
wasn’t filling in. So, I was just like, [ __ ] we were leaving sales high. I
33:43
mean, they weren’t high and dry, but I was just like, we have a gap between
33:46
what we need to be putting into the funnel for sales to be able to act on
33:48
because that’s not there. So, back to the beginning of our conversation, hey,
33:54
LinkedIn ads, what’s up? Because we knew we still had some runway there. So, we
33:57
pushed more in there. But that was to me I was just like oo I get why some people
34:02
are overly conservative with that with like how they’re forecasting and
34:06
everything else. But it’s the I’ve always run on like the deadline with
34:11
school like hey you have an essay due on Friday. Cool. Thursday night. All right.
34:14
Let’s start typing it out. Let’s go. That’s always kind of how I’ve been on
34:17
and that’s why I like the startup world because everything’s just so fast and
34:19
you have to operate that way. But I think that’s one where with the big the
34:25
big rocks, that’s one where I might be a little bit more not conservative moving
34:29
forward, but give myself a little bit more buffer or back to the previous like
34:34
whether it’s a sixquarter planning or whether it’s the how do we phase into
34:38
things and say like, hey, I need no one to cut my losses or push things out.
34:42
Like what are those trigger points to set for yourself with just like hey if
34:44
data isn’t ready yet and good enough to be acted upon pull this lever to make
34:48
sure that we don’t start taking on water.
34:50
Yeah. Okay. I got one more question before the lightning round and I think
34:54
I’m going to just have to use AI to like make a crying face because clearly this
34:58
isn’t working. So I’m just going to say screw the sour until we get to the
35:00
lightning round. Um, if there’s a marketer sitting in a board meeting
35:04
right now and they’re talking annual planning and there is a a number that
35:10
they’re being asked to commit to, but they do not feel confident that they
35:13
will hit it. How would you have them address that?
35:17
How should they go about addressing a number that they just do not feel
35:20
confident that they can actually commit to?
35:22
Do they have to answer on the spot or can they come back?
35:25
Let’s say they can come back. Okay.
35:27
Let’s say they’re at the healthy company where they can come back.
35:29
They can come back. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. If they’re not, say like, “Hey, I don’t
35:34
know about this. Give me some time. I want to, you know, pull some thoughts
35:37
together. This is where I’d go to go to math and
35:42
spreadsheets.” And you and I have run this model a million times. We have our
35:47
blended funnel that so many of us look at. And so what I like to do is take,
35:50
okay, let’s take our average quarter from the last four quarters and just
35:54
say, “Okay, here’s how much we spent in variable. Here’s how much in overhead.”
35:57
than the basic metrics demos ops one if we need to 2x 3x 4x 5x whatever the
36:04
bottom number is and it’s like okay what are the different levers that we can
36:07
pull and what I like to show is one by one each lever being pulled to get to
36:12
that that growth target so say you need to go from 1 million to 5 million you
36:17
say okay here’s what we did past four quarters to get to 1 million if we only
36:21
increase paid media spend to get to 5 million what’s that number look like at
36:24
the top literally just highlight that cell so here’s how much we need to spend
36:27
to do that. If we targeted better, had better ads. So like
36:33
called demoed opportunity conversion rate, we can increase that by it have to
36:37
be like 40% on top of what it is. But like here’s what that would look like.
36:41
And then just start going through each um each conversion rate, each cost per
36:46
and you have those levers and then at the end you basically say, okay, now
36:49
let’s sum it all up in this perfect world that’s as balanced as we can get
36:53
and work your way from the bottom. Okay. Do how much do we realistically think
36:56
that we can increase the win rate by? Couple points. Put that in. How much do
37:00
we think we can increase demo to op conversion rate? Put that in. How much
37:03
do we think we can increase spend to just get that top of funnel volume? And
37:06
usually in there, you’ll start to see like this is still outside the realm of
37:09
reality. Or we could get aggressive when we could do this. But what I would do is
37:13
I’d walk them through each step to say here’s all the levers that we have to
37:16
pull and here’s what it looks like combined. So from here either you have
37:20
to commit to all this resourcing headcount, variable spend, going to
37:23
these events, videographer, whatever that would look like in order to do this
37:27
or we have to I don’t want to tell you we
37:31
can’t grow the company, but we just have to have a long conversation about like
37:34
is that the right number or are we ready to invest to make this happen right now?
37:38
Bars. Dang, that was a great answer. Yeah, I hope somebody we’re gonna put
37:43
ads behind this. Somebody needs to hear that. Um, so Sam, we’ve hit the I want
37:48
to say the end of the episode where uh lightning round. We ask you five
37:51
questions. You get to answer in under 30 seconds and you got to eat one per uh
37:56
per question. So I don’t know whichever one.
37:59
You tell me which one you want. Which one which one hurt more
38:01
green? All right.
38:08
You make this difficult. So first question. One metric or KPI
38:13
that every marketer tracks but genuinely doesn’t matter.
38:20
Clickthrough rate. Clickthrough rate. Why is that?
38:23
Cuz they measure it wrong. They’re not using the right medium. They’re looking
38:25
at video and they’re saying, “What’s a clickthrough rate and comparing that to
38:27
a static ad?” Two completely different mediums. One, you need to click to
38:32
consume the content. Video you watch that in feed. You don’t need to click to
38:34
get that message. It’s not apples apples.
38:38
You’re so smart. Next question. Keep them going. That didn’t work, did it?
38:42
Okay, it’s fine. Keep going, though. So, best best piece of advice for a marketer
38:46
building their first annual plan as a leader.
38:49
Don’t overthink it. Okay. How about
38:55
be prepared to change after you talk to the leadership
38:59
team. Your plan’s not going to be perfect. Be okay with that.
39:03
Okay. If you had to choose one, quarterly planning or annual planning,
39:07
uh would you would you prefer to do quarterly annual or is there a third
39:10
option that you feel real good about? I like annual planning just because it
39:16
gives you the overarching vision of what we want to do. But you should be I do my
39:22
main reporting on quarterly to look at what are we seeing in the market and
39:26
have your your levers in play to say like okay I want to tweak this do that
39:31
and that’s where it kind of takes in that sixq methodology of just like hey
39:33
let’s pull this forward this channel forward this investment forward let’s
39:36
push that one out so annual for the vision quarterly for the keeping up with
39:41
the market. Got it. All right. How do you know when
39:44
a tactic or channel is actually dead versus just needs iter iteration?
39:47
Because we hear it all the time. SEO is dead. Demand gen is dead. Everything is
39:51
dead. My dog is dead. What? Like how do we know when like the channel’s actually
39:55
No, he didn’t die. He didn’t actually die. He’s fine. He’s
40:00
in New Jersey. Good. Yeah, I was going to say that’s a
40:02
that’s a heartbreaker right there. SEO is dead. My dog’s dead. Jesus. Okay, we
40:06
went there. Uh Dad,
40:10
you’re just eating these like it’s nothing. It’s
40:12
candy. Journals aren’t dead. It’s a playbook.
40:15
So that’s the I mean, we’ve talked about that time and time again.
40:20
I mean, I’m trying to think of insert an example. SEO. You can go find it’s like,
40:24
yeah, if you’re if you’re pumping out garbage articles. This is I walked into
40:28
this at a client labs was they were doing SEO really well. They’re putting
40:34
out 10 articles a day, hitting all the main keywords with the most volume, but
40:38
then you go to the article, you’re just like, this is the most fluff, unhelpful
40:41
content. So, yeah, you’re showing up, but the people are bouncing because
40:44
they’re just like, “This isn’t even answering the question.” So,
40:47
that’s where it’s the channel is working. You’re getting the people on
40:51
there, but your execution is what’s wrong with it. So, I don’t know. I think
40:56
every billboards aren’t dead. I mean, literally the only things that are dead
40:59
are like what? Horseback messaging. Uh, what’s the Morse code? Like,
41:05
yeah, I I don’t have a good answer for those
41:08
ones, but hey, maybe we’ll bring back Morse for our marketing. Hey, we might
41:11
it might be a fire thing to do. We could we could come up with a skit like that
41:14
for a ding. Yeah, something with Morris code. Uh, last question. As you
41:17
seemingly enjoy these. Um, psycho.
41:22
Literal psychopath. So, you wrote keep the goal, adapt the
41:27
plan. Is there a time when you should actually kill the goal or is that never
41:30
the answer? That’s like life advice. Be right there.
41:36
Damn. Uh,
41:42
all right. Let’s stay at that level. If it’s impacting your health, if it’s
41:45
impacting your family, if it’s impacting your friends, it’s impacting the joy you
41:48
get out of work. Yeah. Kill the goal. If not, keep pushing.
41:56
Well, as Sam finishes enjoying his bag of what I thought would No, no, I don’t
42:01
want it. Yo, Sam, is this your first time in
42:05
Austin? No. No, it was just our first time
42:08
connecting. Well, it’s been a pleasure.
42:10
Last time I missed you. I know.
42:12
I thought you were in Houston and you’re just like, “No, I was in Austin the
42:14
whole time.” Yeah, that was that was my bad.
42:17
All good. All good. Well, we did it. After a few years, three
42:20
years, we finally did it. Uh yeah, now it’s time for Sam to go hit
42:24
the gym and work these these calories off. So,
42:27
Sam, appreciate you, bro, for hopping on the podcast.
42:29
Hey, man. It was fun. Yeah,
42:31
we finally make it happen. Of course. Well, until next time, we’ll
42:35
catch y’all on the next episode of Sour and Sass.
