Dave Kellogg

Managing Editor at The Monterey County Herald

There are a million stories on the Monterey Peninsula, as managing editor I help our reporters tell the best ones

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Articles

Should Marketers Say "Business Outcomes"?

Nov 7, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

Sometimes. But make sure it’s not out of laziness or ignorance. Increasingly, you’ll hear the term “business outcomes” popping up in software marketing. While I initially loathed the phrase for its vagueness, over time I’ve come to believe that, much like the frequently-abused word “solutions,” there is a right and a wrong way to use “business outcomes.” Let’s start with two examples.
A Simple Rule For When To Consider Selling Your Startup

Oct 30, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

The cleverest answer I’ve heard to the question “When would you sell your startup?” is, “When somebody offers me more than I think it’s worth.”It’s clever alright, but it’s not that helpful. It’s a meta-answer that sidesteps the question of value. In this post, I’m going to offer a simple rule for when you should consider selling your company if someone comes along and makes a serious offer.
A Box of Rain Will Ease the Pain

Oct 27, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

While I’d been using the Internet since the early 1980s at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the first time I remember using the worldwide web was in the mid 1990s. August 9th, 1995, to be specific. I’d recently moved to Paris and heard about this layer that relied on a hypertext transfer protocol to connect web browsers and web sites. So I fired up a browser and, in order to reconnect with home, went to sfchronicle.com. The headline read:Jerry Garcia Dies“God, I hate this thing,” I thought.
Talking About the Numbers vs. Talking About the Business

Sep 30, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

This is a huge distinction and sadly I think many people miss it. You go a mid-quarter ops meeting. The CMO shows quarter-to-date MQLs. Someone asks how we define MQL. A 15-minute conversation ensues. The SVP of Alliances talks about influenced ARR. Someone asks how that’s defined, but only five minutes are spent on definition. However, a controversy erupts and 20 minutes are spent reconciling different answers from different reports.
Why Great Marketers Look at Pipeline Coverage, Not Just Pipeline Generation

Sep 17, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

“How’s it going at StartCo?” I asked. “Great,” the CMO replied. “We hit 105% of our pipeline generation (pipegen) goals last quarter, and with a healthy pipe/spend ratio of above 10.”“Nice,” I said. “How sales doing?”“Oh, that’s another matter,” the CMO said. “They landed at 82% of new logo ARR plan.”Quick: what’s wrong with this conversation? Answer: if the purpose of marketing is to make sales easier, marketing cannot be “doing great” when sales is 82% of plan. Period. Always.
Slides from a Balderton Launched Go-To-Market Workshop

Aug 7, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

Just a quick post to share the slides I used today in a nearly 90-minute discussion with founders participating in the most recent cohort of the Balderton Launched incubator program. Because this is focused on incubation-stage startups, we walked mostly about $0 to $1M (or $2M) issues, both how to win deals as founder (largely covered through Q&A) and how, once you’re winning them, to transition from founder-led sales to sales-led sales. I’d say there are four key parts of that process, overall.
The SaaS Talk 50th Episode Credits

Aug 2, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

As readers will hopefully know, I’ve been running a podcast with Ray Rike for about the past year called SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers, Growth and CAC. (Ray’s growth and I’m CAC.) If that name rings familiar, it’s because our naming inspiration was Car Talk with the Tappet Brothers, Click and Clack. We ended up not duplicating Car Talk’s radio call-in format, and unlike many podcasts, we’ve also chosen not to center the podcast around guest interviews.
Go-To-Market Troubleshooting: Let’s Take It From The Top

Jul 23, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

So, you’re missing plan and revenue growth is down. Well, welcome to the club. You’re certainly not alone in these times. In this post, I’ll discuss what you can do about it – specifically, how you can apply some of the ideas I’ve discussed in Kellblog to troubleshoot go-to-market (GTM) performance. I’ll focus on troubleshooting new business (“newbiz”) ARR plan attainment, the area where most companies seem to be having the most trouble [1].
Strategy as a Series of Beliefs

May 12, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

I’m always looking for better ways to distill strategy. My favorite strategy author is Richard Rumelt, who wrote Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and the more recent but less acclaimed follow-on, The Crux. I love Rumelt’s work for two reasons:He takes a wrecking ball to the garbage that is often passed off as strategy. Aspirations are not strategy. Goals and OKRs are not strategy. Financial projections and forecasts are not strategy. SWOT analyses and five forces analyses are not strategy.
Does Your Marketing Pass the Duck Test?

May 3, 2024 | kellblog.com | Dave Kellogg

“If a bird walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” — James Whitcomb RileyMany marketers are in such a hurry to talk about topical issues that they forget the duck test: if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then most people will conclude it’s a duck. In logic, they teach that such abductive reasoning can lead to incorrect conclusions — and it can. But here in marketing, we draw a different conclusion from the duck test.