Top 10 SaaS Execution Tactics

Making an impact on a company’s ability to hit quarterly targets consistently is the biggest challenge of any CXO in tech today. Just as the company thinks they have designed the best GTM plan and deliver one good quarter, they then experience two or three quarters of extremely low results. The leadership team can get frustrated as to why the plan is not working to produce more consistent results. This is especially true in the start up and high growth phases where tech companies are still trying to determine their sweet spot in the market and how to differentiate themselves from competitors.

The question is: Is it the Plan? or Is it the Execution? or Both?

Having a Corporate and Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy are fantastic, especially if there is an operational plan behind it that aligns the leadership team on the top priorities, goals and objectives. But, that doesn’t guarantee it will work and produce the planned results consistently.  So, “Why” doesn’t the plan work?

The first thought of many leaders and board advisors is that the strategy is flawed.  While there can be some truth to that, there could just be some areas of the strategy that may need some modifications over time. 

However, there is another element that is the key to driving results. It is the ability to execute with focus and alignment consistently. 

Leaders tend to spend more time chasing everything going wrong or whatever problems are in their face or focused mostly on customers who are paying the most or yelling the loudest. Suddenly the team’s plan for what they should be focused on executing goes out the window and they find themselves chasing random problems that don’t move the needle on the key targets. The time gets away from the leadership team and then the quarter is up with another miss of the targets. Sound familiar?

Good news, I have some fantastic success factors that can turn the entire leadership around to being focused on the right things and working together to drive more consistent quarterly results.

Here are my top 10 strategies for developing a focused execution mindset:

1. Develop a detailed plan for each strategic initiative

2. Divide and conquer with your team

3. Utilize technology to manage the plan

4. Hold each other accountable across other organizations

5. Equip the team with authority and direction to enable them to execute

6. Clear roadblocks quickly

7. Focus the team on the top initiatives and committed dates

8. Evaluate changes to the current plan

9. Stay on course

10. Provide progress visibility to KPIs and Targets

1. Develop a detailed plan for each strategic initiative

The GTM strategy defines how you will achieve the revenue results, and the Operational strategy defines how you will execute; what needs to get done, who is needed and how it will get done. The Operational plan should be aligned across the leadership teams to ensure the executive team is in agreement on top priorities and required timing of deliverables by quarter.

With these well-defined strategic goals and objectives, leaders can define a detailed plan by quarter for each initiative for how they will deliver to achieve the quarterly and year end results.

The GTM and Operational plans should be detailed with the definition of the teams, resources, tasks and activities and timeline required to deliver on the outcomes for each initiative or project.  This is where the leadership team can have discussions and obtain agreement on priorities and timing and which goals and objectives they believe will provide the highest probability of delivering on the quarterly and annual targets.

Remember the teams have a limited capacity; they can’t do it all. It is important for the leadership team to align and agree on what their teams should be focused on. It is better to deliver with quality and excellence on a few initiatives that make an impact, then to work on a dozen initiatives that never get done and have no impact.

It’s important for leaders to take the time with their teams to think through this detailed plan and determine what changes are required to enable better, more effective and efficient execution from their team members. This will ensure the team members are bought into the plan because they were able to contribute to what is required to make the improvements to standards, quality, process, policies and procedures. The most innovative ideas come from the team members because they are on the front lines of execution every day. They have the best view of what is not working and how to make it better.

2. Divide and Conquer with your team

No leader can execute a plan alone. They also can’t be the only one who can make decisions. For a plan to be able to execute with quality, excellence and in a timely manner, leaders need to assign leaders below them or key senior team members to lead and drive each initiative to deliver results. 

I guarantee that every detailed plan will have a long list of activities. Probably more than the team will be able to execute, but that’s OK. Every strategic plan and set of goals are meant to be stretch goals. The best way for the teams to achieve the planned outcomes is to divide and conquer by spreading the load across other key team members and leaders.

The other benefit of this approach is that it will provide Leadership the opportunity to mentor folks under them and build their next level of leaders. Every executive should always be building their right and left hand person. It’s one of the best ways to mentor new leaders on how to strategize, solve problems and drive results that make an impact to the company. As the company grows and scales, Leadership will have a solid set of leaders to promote and lean on.

3. Utilize technology to manage the plan

In order to drive results consistently, leaders need a way to manage the plan and always know where they are at to the plan. There are many technologies available for planning and tracking the progress to a plan (i.e. Workfront, Wrike, Monday, etc.).

It is difficult for a team to execute to a set of goals or outcomes when they don’t have a tool to use to plan out the tasks and activities required to deliver on the goal and then manage their progress to the plan.

A technology solution also allows for the entire company and all team members to have visibility to the top priorities and goals for the quarter and to provide updates on the plan and ask for assistance and support across the departments using online communication capabilities. It encourages global collaboration to remove all excuses from delivering on the outcomes and results because everyone has complete visibility to the status of all goals and has the ability to ask for help anytime they need.

4. Hold each other accountable across other organizations.

There will be several initiatives or projects that require support or tasks to be accomplished by other departments and organizations to deliver on a goal and achieve the results.

As the team creates a detailed plan and determines what is required to execute and deliver on the goal, there may be tasks that require specific knowledge, experience or skills that is within another department. It is important to have alignment across the leadership team on the priorities so if support is required across the teams, the leaders will allow the team members to support each other based on the quarterly goals and priorities.

5. Equip the team with authority and direction

When assigning the top initiatives, goals and objectives downward give them enough authority and direction to be able to execute. Asking a team member to lead a project without authority and clear direction will create bottlenecks and roadblocks unnecessarily as well as a result that may not be what was intended. 

When allocating a team member to lead a project or initiative try to ensure they do not need to come back to you for every decision or you will defeat the purpose of dividing and conquering with your team. The goal is to maximize the effectiveness of the team’s ability to produce results.

Provide clear direction of the outcomes desired and any parameters that must be met. Giving project leaders the authority to make decisions and guiding them on how to utilize data analysis to back their decisions is part of the mentorship they require to learn how to make good decisions.

The idea is to set each project leader up for success by ensuring they are equipped with all they need to deliver on the outcomes, goals and objectives. Do they have the right people, technology and direction to achieve the goal with minimal help from the executive leader? If so, then Leadership has done a good job with supporting the operational plan and the team’s ability to deliver on results.

6. Clear roadblocks quickly

Provide a process for any team member assigned to a top goal or initiative the ability to escalate to the right leaders to assist in clearing the roadblocks quickly.

The teams should be able to continue to execute each of the tasks on their own or with their team. As long as the team members are maintaining the plan accurately and the goals and initiatives are reflected as on target with no risks, then the leadership and executive team will know that there are no roadblocks to clear.

There are several ways to provide team members the ability to discuss challenges and ask for help or support;

1. Use an online chat channel for each initiative or project with all team members required to support the outcomes

2. Email supervisors or leaders as needed to answer questions or clear a roadblock issue

3. Use an escalation process to bring up roadblock issues that require executive support during a weekly executive meeting.

The reason for the online chats, weekly meeting or daily stand ups (as needed) are to provide the teams with the leadership or cross departmental support to clear any roadblocks and enable the team to execute each initiative and project on time and make the business impact as designed.

7. Focus the teams on the top initiatives and committed dates.

As a quarter progresses from week to week, team members get busy working on their normal daily activities and job responsibilities. It could be product deliveries, customer requirements or supporting sales activities that derail team member’s focus on delivering on an initiative, project or activity assigned to them.

Use weekly team meetings to emphasize the priorities this week and month that are key initiatives or projects that the team is committed to deliver on. Remind them of the due dates. This is also the best way to find out from the team members what risks are in the current plan and why. Share with the team how these initiatives and projects are making a business impact and the importance of their assignment. The weekly team meeting can be a good place to discuss a change in the plan, priorities or commit dates and the ideas the team may have on how to deliver on the quarterly results.

The leadership team can help support their team members with assignments by reviewing their current activities and offer assistance and mentorship on how to incorporate delivering on the quarterly initiatives, projects or activities along with their daily responsibilities. Help them set weekly goals and understand their priorities for each week. They may need support with managing their time and calendar to be more efficient and effective.

Some team members may be afraid to reprioritize meetings or activities with other key leadership team members. It’s important that executives and leaders provide air cover for their team members. If meetings and activities on their calendars need to be reprioritized to provide the team members the time in their calendars to deliver on their assignments, then the leadership team needs to ensure the team members that they have their back.

8. Evaluate changes required to the current plan

Even the best laid plans may need to change based on several elements that could impact the business from internal changes to market changes. Not that you want to have a plan that changes drastically or too frequently, but you do want to allow the teams to share their thoughts on what changes may be required as well as how and why they impact the business.

The best approach is to design a process for team members to escalate to leadership their suggestions for changing priorities, outcomes or goals for the quarter. The leaders can educate their team members on the process and the elements to consider when deciding if the ideas or suggestions should be considered as a higher priority than the initiatives or projects in the current plan. The process should include sharing how it would impact the business and support delivering on the results better or faster than the current plan.

The leaders of each department would then present to the executive team any suggested changes in priorities. The executive team would agree on changing priorities or swapping out a new initiative or project for one on the current plan. The idea is to not just add additional initiatives, but to consider the capacity to complete all the initiatives and meet the goals and objectives. Keep in mind, if you have too many projects and initiatives with limited capacity, it will spread the teams too thin and the quality and delivery will suffer.

It is best to have a few goals and initiatives that the teams can execute with quality and excellence that deliver results and make an impact, then just checking off a long list of tasks that have no impact on the quarterly results.

9. Stay on course

It is tempting to shift gears when the results are not seen quickly. Be careful not to shift too quickly or too often from the plan. Some plans need more baking time to come to fruition. Allow an appropriate amount of time on each GTM play and initiative to make sure the data supports the decision to make a change.

Some initiatives or projects will have weekly goals, while others may have monthly or quarterly goals. It depends on the initiative and process it is affecting.

For example, if a decision is made to add a new GTM play, this will usually need to replace a play on the current plan if the capacity isn’t there to just add. This is due to the fact that a new GTM play could require new content, branding, sales enablement and demand generation campaigns to be created before it can be put into action to produce results against pipeline and revenue targets. This change alone affects many KPIs and revenue targets for the quarter. These targets will need to be established for this play and then begin tracking results to see if this play generates a pipeline faster with higher conversion rates, shorter sales cycle times and higher win rates. Even with all those KPIs working, the question is: Will this affect this quarter revenue results or next quarter? This is the thought process that will help you decide if you should stay the course or make a change and when to make the change.

Keeping a team on course to the plan is important to ensure they complete the activities, tactics and tasks as defined. As the leadership team reviews the reports showing the progress to KPIs and targets, they will be looking for how the initiatives are making an impact and have an appropriate expectation of the percentage improvement and timing.

If an initiative or project is not making the expected impact within the planned timing, it may require further analysis and deep dive into the initiative around the quality of the delivery and execution to ensure there isn’t a short fall associated with how it is being executed. If the execution is found to be solid and sound, then the next consideration is if there has been changes in the economy, market or other conditions that may require the initiative, tactic or activity to be changed or continued longer to see if can still make the expected business impact. For each initiative and project that is not delivering on the expected results and targets, the process for deciding whether to continue, change or abort should be thorough and backed by data for at least a quarter or two, depending on how it impacts the business.

There are some companies that make changes to the strategic goals too fast when the results aren’t immediate or as planned and they miss out on the opportunity for the investment to provide the returns because they pulled the plug too soon.

Be careful not to become a company that is changing priorities and goals too fast and too often where nothing ever works well enough and the company is unable to find the consistent sweet spot where they can deliver results consistently. It is best to find the right sweet spot as the main focus and then the company can make minor changes and adjustments around the focused sweet spot in order to produce faster results.

10. Provide progress visibility to KPIs and Targets

Providing the ability for teams to have full visibility to the progress to quarterly and annual KPIs and Targets is the best way to get buy in to the plan from the teams. It also allows the teams to view their contributions to the results. If they can see the results, they can correlate their activities to the company’s success.

The departments should include a discussion around the results on a weekly and/or monthly basis with their entire team and discuss any priority or target changes. It’s helpful for team members to understand the plan and the priorities and how they impact the success of the business and growth plan.

How do you know if the plan is working?

The best way to know that a plan is working is to monitor the progress to the KPIs and targets. In practice, some leadership teams have a weekly executive meeting where they just run down the status of each KPI or metric. The challenge is that this doesn’t actually drive results.

A better way to drive results is to have each leader and/or executive share their analysis of how the current plan is impacting the results whether that is positive or negative. If the impact is negative, they should follow up with a plan to course correct and still achieve the results at the end of the quarter.

At the executive level, this type of discussion will lead to the harder discussions of whether the team believes they need to change course mid quarter or stay the course. When you think about a quarter, there are only 13 weeks to hit the targets. The leadership team should be meeting each week to not only review where they are at to the target, but with the perspective of how many weeks are left in the quarter to achieve the target.

For example, if it is week 6 of the quarter and 46% through the quarter and the current progress to the quarterly target is showing only 20% achievement, then what is the plan to get back on track to hit the target by the end of the quarter. That is the discussion each executive leader should be sharing with the leadership team, not a weekly status update of what has been done.

With full visibility to the progress of each KPI and target, the executive team has the opportunity to discuss what’s working and not working and why. Then the focus should be on the plan to course correct to drive to the target.

SUMMARY TAKEAWAYS

The executive team can be more effective in the weekly leadership meetings by coming to each meeting prepared with a comprehensive analysis and understanding of what is working and not working in the current plan and providing recommendations for changes to the plan that will provide the highest probability of delivering the quarterly results.

If the executive leadership team adopts this approach to create an operational plan that is aligned across the leadership team that is designed to hit the annual targets with a quarterly focused and disciplined approach described above in the 10 steps, they will be set up for the highest success rate.

As the leadership team stays focused on delivering the quarterly goals and outcomes with quality and excellence within a committed timeline, the company will become more consistent at achieving their targets.

Your thoughts are always welcome. Please share our newsletter with colleagues that could benefit from this discussion. If you would like any guidance or advice on GTM planning and execution best practices, please reach out directly at [email protected]. Cheers!