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I know what you might think: “Not me. I’m not the kind of person to burnout! I know how to manage my stress. I know how to manage challenges. I’m in the control of my life!” Burnout is only for the others… till it hit you. I experienced a severe form of burnout at the beginning of my career, as I was mentioning in this article about stress. I was exhausted, angry, and I had strong physical symptoms, like dizziness and headaches. I had to stop working for months to come back to a normal state of mind.

From there, I learned more and more about burnout by reflecting on my own experience, as well as seeing colleagues or managers with the same problems.Obviously, I’m not an isolated case. From 1974 to 2008, no less than 6000 different resources (including books and articles) were written on the subject. Some studies reported a burnout prevalence rates up to 69% in a given population (30% in teachers, 31% in medical students for example).

I would like to share with you what my researches on the subject taught me as well as my experience:

What’s burnout, exactly?

What are the possible burnout syndromes you might experience?

What are the common causes of burnout? Spoiler ahead: it’s not only overwork.

How to prevent burnout?

I see burnout as a road which gets desolated as you go forward. This road lead to the Cave of the Burnout Vampire , which can suck your motivation and your mental energy for months.

Indeed, burnout is more a spectrum than a definitive state. If you are at the very beginning of the Burnout Road, you have a mild burnout condition. If you are in the Cave of the Burnout Vampire , you have a severe one.

On this delightful and bucolic description, let’s look at the Burnout Road from above.

What is burnout?

It’s important to understand how people came to speak about burnout before trying to define it. In general, if you want to really understand why something is what it is today, looking at its history is always interesting. It’s true for technologies too.

The concept of burnout was first described by the psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in 1974. Interested by the topic, he conducted studies on his own colleagues (medical practitioners) to find more about it.

Professor Christian Maslach and her colleagues then took over his studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She’s still considered the most preeminent scholar in the field. She extended burnout studies to other profession than medical and social related ones. More precisely, she studied professions requiring creativity, problem solving or mentoring. The kind of work a developer would do.

The studies show that burnout is a preeminent problem which exists in the entire world.

Even if different media spoke a lot about burnout these last 40 years, it’s a fiercely debated topic among psychologist and medical practitioners. Many countries still don’t recognize burnout as a valid diagnosis, for example. In May 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) accepted burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” (and not a medical condition) on the advice of many health experts around the world.

Definition of burnout

According to the World Health Organization:

First thing first, the burnout condition is always linked to your job. The definition speaks about chronic stress too: it’s more than a bad day, it’s something which happens repeatedly.

Everybody responds to chronic stress more or less differently. Freudenberger found that the dedicated and the committed employees have more chance to burnout. They have “significant amount of emotional work and empathy, personal involvement, and intrinsic motivation”.

It makes sense: if you’re involved in your work but the work environment refuse your involvement, you’ll become more and more frustrated and disillusioned. For example, if you work in a working environment which is too chaotic or authoritative, you will feel the pain.

There is two important things which can create burnout: your own personality and the environment you work in. However, the working environment weight more in the burnout balance than the personality, as suggested by this study (see Causes and Outcomes ).

It can explain why burnout is going through the roof the last decades for some type of jobs, like software development, touching all kind of personality and hierarchical levels, from developers to C-level executives (CEO, COO, CTO…).

The possible burnout symptoms

The symptoms described here will raise in intensity the longer you will walk along the Burnout Road. Learning to detect them early is a very valuable skill before your burnout takes a more severe form.

Involvement become cynicism

If you felt involved in your company and this involvement let place to cynicism, something is wrong. Be attentive to these signs:

You begin to criticize often your colleagues, your clients, or your managers, for their decisions and actions.

You have the impress that your work quality decrease, and your colleagues think the same.

You begin to only do the least amount of work you’re asked to do.

These are clear indicators that you’re in the Poisonous Land of Cynicism.

No sense of accomplishment

If you go to work and you have the feeling that it doesn’t have any purpose, you have lost your sense of accomplishment.

We need motivating goals in our life to feel useful. If you spend most of your day wondering why you’re doing what you’re doing without finding answers, you have here a good sign pointing to Burnout Hell.

Your energy is gone

In the past, you had a good amount of energy throughout the day. Now, it seems to be gone. When you wake up the morning to go to work, you feel already exhausted. You didn’t throw a big party or smoked anything illegal, but the mental fog you’re in is real.

There are multiple levels of exhaustion:

Exhaustion is a strong sign that your burnout is real. Some studies suggest that exhaustion is mandatory to take the Burnout Road . However, it’s not enough by itself: you’ll need as well other symptoms to be sure you’ll reach the Burnout Vampire .

Negative emotions

Related to the other symptoms, negative emotions about your work and your colleagues are always a vicious circle. More negative emotions you’ll have, more you’ll blame your company to be the root cause of them, more negative emotions you’ll have.

Of course, negative emotions will affect your mood and, at some point, it might make you angry with everybody, including the ones you love.

Physical symptoms

Freudenberger characterized burnout with physical symptoms such as:

Physical exhaustion and muscle pain.

Fatigue.

Frequent headaches.

Gastrointestinal disorders.

Sleeplessness.

Dizziness.

Shortness of breath.

These are the symptoms for chronic stress too.

The causes of burnout

What can cause all of these symptoms which can, if not taken seriously, bring you into the Dark Cave Of The Burnout Vampire ?

Some studies show that you need at least three of the causes described below to experience the most severe form of burnout. Here’s a very effective recipe to reach it:

When you begin to walk the Burnout Road, it might seem normal to feel that way. You don’t really want to go to work every day, but whatever, you need to pay the bills. This will be worst if you’re a beginner who has tendency to put every faults on yourself.

Remember: more you’ll walk along the Burnout Road, more you’ll have difficulty to come back to your normal mental state.

Overworking / over-commitment

There are many misconceptions or incomplete information about burnout:

It’s true that exhaustion is an important cause of burnout, but it’s not the only one . Working less won’t solve a burnout, at least not entirely. If you work a lot because you love what you’re doing, for example, you might feel exhausted after a while, but not burnout. But if you have other burnout symptoms going on, they will continue to evolve and poison your life.

Furthermore, you can have a normal workload and experience burnout anyway .

Let’s not forget that programming is isolating. If you work non-stop, you will spend your days alone. You won’t have social interactions, or very dull ones since your brain will constantly be busy trying to solve problems, instead of having relaxing conversations.

People have tendencies to only trust what they see. The idea of a developer only working when he’s behind his computer, for example, is wrong. Bugs and features populate our brain even when we’re doing something else. As a consequence, it’s not always easy to see if a developer overwork.

Lack of control and autonomy

A lack of control or a lack of autonomy are often due to a lack of trust.

Lack of trust

It’s easy to see if your managers don’t trust you:

They are always looking at every single commit you’re doing to be sure you’re working.

You don’t have the authorization to do many things. Deploying on pre-production or production, for example.

The management think that employees don’t work when they are out of the office. Home office is therefore impossible.

This list is far from exhaustive. If you have other examples, feel free to let a comment below.

Micromanagement

You’ll recognize micromanagement when somebody will try to take all the decisions for you and question the ones you’ve already taken, systematically .

This can be due to a lack of trust. Some managers think, since they are “above” you in the hierarchy, that they can do everything they want and make everything their own. They want a total control on you and what you’re doing. “We have to do that because I said so” will be their mantra.

It can be more subtle than that: they might listen to you but never take any action. They might not let you experimenting with your ideas, too.

What are the consequences, you might ask? A lack of control and autonomy is a comfy nest for chronic stress. It means as well that you won’t learn a lot either. We need to experiment and make mistakes for that.

Your colleagues

For many of us, we’re working most of our lifetime. Hence, our coworkers affect our life significantly, too. Human interactions can bring the best as well as the worst. Some examples:

Unsolved conflicts which haunt your thoughts.

Bullying.

Power abuse.

Harassment.

Absence of (positive) feedback.

Ultra competitive colleagues.

If you really don’t get along with your colleagues, even after honestly trying, you’ll have difficulty to wake up every morning to work with them. If you have more severe problem like harassment or bullying, run away from your current job.

Absence of fairness

Companies’ management can be very good to create competition among employees, sometimes without even knowing it. They reward some “talents” because of visible achievements they’ve accomplished, forgetting other employees who might bring value more quietly.

An example: some managers out there will compliment employees because “they stay late at work” or because “they did a wonderful job on the frontend’s save buttons”. They forget that:

Staying at work late doesn’t mean producing business value or even quality code; quite the contrary, in my experience. Overworking is not synonym of quality.

Knowledge workers are working by thinking and having ideas. This doesn’t necessarily happen behind a computer in an open office.

It creates feelings of jealousy and unfairness.

If you’re a manager, keep in mind that work is not always something visible. Rewards and feedback should be given personally, and employees shouldn’t feel compared to others.

If you are managing people, reward honestly every single developer on your team and show them that you know what they’re doing, that you care, and that you’re thankful about it.

Values and entropy

Psychological safety

Psychological safety needs to be ensured in a company . It means that you are not afraid to express yourself, experimenting, and admitting you’re wrong.

Everybody should thrive to create a generative company culture, where:

The focus is on good results.

The risks are shared.

Failures are accepted and thought upon.

Experimentation and iterations are understood and respected.

On the other side of the spectrum, some company cultures are power oriented (do-what-I-say-because-I’m-the-boss style), with a lot of:

Politics.

Distorted information.

Fear.

Threats.

Remember: whatever culture a company aims for and generously speak about during the recruiting interviews, the reality can be very, very different. Judge on what a company’s doing, not on what they are saying.

Values

Another thing carried by a company culture are the company’s values themselves. What’s the goal, the mission of the company? Why do they want to grow their business?

The difficulties come when your values mismatch the company’s. Let’s imagine you love polar bears because they’re cute, but unfortunately you’re working for a massive gas company which destroy the environment, including the poor bears. Would you feel motivated to work for them, every single day?

Everybody has values, even if you have the impression that Dave, your colleague developer, doesn’t care about anything except new overpraised technologies and trends. This is a value by itself. If your company don’t want to use the new cool stuff, even with good reasons, Dave might close himself in a world of sorrow and pain.

Company entropy

A company can as well be so chaotic that their values and objectives are not clearly defined. One day they will do this because it’s trendy, the other day a concurrent will do the contrary, so they’ll follow. An absence of long term vision can confuse everybody.

Often, you won’t even know if your work is useful, since nobody will dare give you any honest outcomes of the teamwork.

This will damage your motivation and your commitment.

Preventing or solving burnout

Nobody wants to burnout. Preventing it is better than trying to recover from it.

Let’s say you’re more and more tired, you recognized yourself while reading the burnout symptoms, you see some causes which match some aspect of the company’s culture you work with. What can you do?

Acting on the environment

Now that we know the main causes for a burnout, you can try to find the biggest ones in your company. You need to be able to explain them and to illustrate them with concrete examples. You’re a problem solver after all, and the first step is to define the problem.

If you have some colleagues you trust, speak about your discoveries with them first. If they agree with you and share your feelings, it’s likely you might not be the only one on the Burnout Road. Social support inside your company (as well as outside!) can help you tremendously.

Don’t isolate yourself

Then, speak about your concerns with your managers. Be honest. Even if developers can feel ashamed about burning out, keeping the silence won’t help anybody. Heck, speaking about it might even help the whole industry and encourage other developers to follow your path! You can see it as another problem which needs to be solved.

Speak about the problems you’ve spotted in the company’s environment and explain that it can burn other employees, too. Even better: speak to your managers with the colleagues who agree with you.

If you have some possible solutions in mind, it’s even better. You can speak about them and see what can be done.

After that, observe how your managers are reacting for a defined period, what they are doing to improve the situation. If they don’t seem to understand the gravity of your state, or if they don’t seem to care, find another job.

Let’s be clear here: a company which has such problems can’t be successful, and my experience proved it many times. There are exceptions, of course, but they need to have a very solid business model. Not everybody is McDonald, especially when we speak about startups.

Don’t make the same mistakes I made: I explained the problems I had, spoke about them with some colleagues who agreed with me, and told the management that it could easily lead to burnout. However, the management didn’t do anything. I stayed in the company anyway, trying to solve everything. This was a big mistake and it didn’t end well.

If they don’t listen to you now, they won’t listen to you in the future. You can’t enforce your help, especially if nobody asked for it. In that case, find another and better company to work with.

Know yourself and where you’re going

In most modern and stable societies, it seems we have never enough: never enough money, never enough time. It’s a vicious circle: more time and money you’ll have, more afraid you’ll be to lose them, and more you’ll try to have more.

This can definitely push you to work for companies for the wrong reasons (money and glory), without listening to your mental health.

You need to be aware how much pressure and chronic stress you can endure, to know how long you can sustain your walk on the Burnout Road. This is useful since, even if you quit your job, you might have to go through some notice period. Weeks or months can seem an eternity when you’re burnout.

Listen to yourself, and don’t play the superhero which can endure everything forever. Meditation is a good way for me to get some information about my mental state, for example. If my brain is full of cynical thoughts, if I think constantly about my company and the problems I have there, I need to be careful and act quickly.

Asking yourself these questions can give you strength when you need it the most:

What do you want to accomplish in your life? Why? Since this is bigger than your work, try to keep your goals in mind.

How much money do you need to be happy? Write a specific amount. We don’t need as much as we think, most of the time. Your mental health is more important.

Can you define what makes you happy?

Is your definition of success related to the way you define happiness?

Do you feel you’ve chosen your situation? If not, what can you do in the future to live your life more deliberately?

You won’t be able to answer these questions from one day to another if you never really thought about them. That’s fine. Ask yourself these questions from time to time. Don’t put pressure on yourself. You’ll find the answers, and they even might change overtime.

Knowing yourself well can help you find a job which is aligned with your values , too. It’s the best way to prevent a burnout.

Hobbies against burnout

Doing something different from programming can help you a lot to distance yourself from your source of stress.

Something inspirational you enjoy and you can learn from is the best bet. It could be another creative activity, like drawing or writing, for example. It doesn’t cost anything to try new things, you just need a bit of courage not to procrastinate.

A hobby is best when it brings you some sense of accomplishment. As developers, we all know this feeling when something we create finally works and does what it has to do.

You should try to come back to a more detached and playful state concerning your interests, programming included. Try to learn a new language for example and experiment with it. Begin a side project which really interest you. Don’t expect too much, focus on the process, and enjoy!

A playful state is looking at things like a child. You want to play, to have fun with whatever you’re doing, without expecting any result.

Professional help

Depending on the intensity of your burnout (correlated, again, with the time spent on the Burnout Road), it can take months for you to get better. You’ll know it when you’ll be out of your job, trying to recover.

If you see that you’re drowning down and down, even after you stopped working, it’s time to see a specialist. Actually, you should seek one as soon as you feel the need to do so. Your health, mental or physical, is the most important thing you “have”. Don’t let your pride neglect it: we all need help, we should give some when we can and not be afraid to ask for it when we need it.

Take seriously the burnout vampire

Also, for this statement to be true, a company needs motivated, responsible and involved employees. It means that the culture of the company needs to nurture these ideas. If it’s not the case and burnout begins to creep in the environment, you need to take action as soon as you can.

To summarize, what did we learn in this article?

Stress related to your work can push you from mild to severe form of burnout.

Burnout can manifest itself via a mix of cynicism, a lack of accomplishments, a feeling of exhaustion, an obsession regarding your job, and negative emotions.

The causes of a burnout are multiple too. Do you overwork? Do you feel a lack of control and autonomy in your job? Is the company culture nurture open communication and experiments?

To prevent yourself going further on the Burnout Road , you should try to explain to your managers that the work environment needs to change. Trying to “fix” an employee’s burnout won’t save his colleagues, and it won’t improve the company culture.

Rely on your family and your social interactions to escape the Burnout Road. Strong social bounds are the best medicine against chronic stress.

This article was written by Matthieu Cneude and was originally published on The Valuable Dev , a blog focusing on the important and timeless concepts in software development. You can read the piece here .

Europe’s diversity gap can only be solved with proper data

When it comes to ethnicity and gender nonbinary diversity, Europe has a massive problem: the data doesn’t exist.

said Matteo Renoldi, Impact Specialist at Dealroom, a Dutch data provider on startups, investment activities and overall tech ecosystems in Europe and around the globe. “Of course, there are many more elements to diversity than just gender. Ethnicity is a very important one.”

This data gap has huge consequences for Europe’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, which is estimated to be worth $3tn according to a European Startups report and makes up 43% of European job growth . That’s a huge chunk of money that ethnically diverse and gender nonbinary founders and talent could be missing out on — and data is key in pushing these conversations forward. Renoldi says:

After all, if you can’t prove there’s a problem, how can you tackle it?

Where’s the data?

The underlying reason behind Europe’s lack of diversity data is a legal one; in the UK, US, and Canada, it’s common for public institutions , like the national census, to ask for participants’ race or ethnicity. But in many European countries, this kind of data collection is illegal; neither France nor Germany, countries with a significant startup presence, for example, keep official stats on how many of its residents are Black. These laws extend to the private sector.

“Some of the information with regard to other types of diversity is you’re either, as a company, not allowed to keep that information or ask for that type of information,” says Pauline Wink-Zaanen, co-founder of 4impact, a VC fund focusing on European impact tech startups, specifically the environment, economic inclusion, and health & well-being.

According to Wink-Zaanen, there’s also a social reason as to why there’s not as much data on ethnicity and the gender nonbinary: identities are complicated, making them more difficult to track.

“The division line is more complex. If you look at [4impact cofounder Ali Najafbagy], for example, he wasn’t born in the Netherlands,” she says. “He was, however, raised in the Netherlands and has a Dutch passport. He considers himself from a different ethnic background, but he’s Dutch. So how do you classify this? There are many gray areas which make data collection difficult.”

It was this complexity that inspired Dealroom to launch its own data collection initiative called “ Closing the diversity data gap ,” in which they invite founders, investors, and startup employees to claim their Dealroom profile and self-report their ethnicity and gender. Renoldi tells TNW:

And while it’s possible to automate the process and use AI to recognize ethnicity based on images, Renoldi calls it “technically difficult and unethical.”

“Binary gender studies are relatively straightforward, which is why gender is the most covered area of diversity research in tech (the binary thing’s not ideal though we’ll get to that too),” Dealroom wrote in a blog post .

The data bottleneck

One founder familiar with Europe’s data diversity gap is Christina Caljé. A born-and-raised New Yorker, Caljé started her career at Goldman Sachs in London before starting her own tech consultancy to help US-based web and app development companies expand to Europe. She was then COO of Peerby, a Dutch B2C company working to promote more sustainable consumption, before becoming cofounder and CEO of smart video platform Autheos, which has since been sold.

As a Black Latinx female founder, Caljé refers to herself as “an outlier, in a positive sense,” and she sees Europe, and the Netherlands in particular, as being “five to 10 years behind” the USA in the ethnic diversity conversation, in part because of the lack of data.

“There’s not really a conversation yet from a professional perspective [on ethnicity],” she tells TNW. “Is the diversity of this country really being represented in the leading economic sectors such as technology?”

Caljé was also the only founder from the Netherlands accepted to the Google for Startups Immersion Program for Black Founders in 2020, which she said provided her valuable resources and a supportive network of founders to talk to. She says that when she raised a discussion about the need for a similar program for other minority founders back in the Netherlands, particularly helping to address the underrepresentation of VC funding, the absence of related data on ethnicity quickly became a bottleneck.

Caljé is similarly working on a diversity data collection project, in partnership with Google for Startups and Andy Davis, ​​angel investor at Atomico and ex-Director of Backstage Capital London, which she hopes will not only shine a light on the black founder experience across Europe, but also turn into a supportive network for founders.

“​​The goal is to also showcase the innovation, and that this as an overlooked commercial opportunity… it’s meant as a first step towards creating a cross border network for Black and brown founders, and investors who want to invest in them,” she says.

Solving Europe’s talent problem

Diversity isn’t just for diversity’s sake. Research proving that more diversity and inclusion means better performing teams , smarter decision-making and higher financial returns is well documented.

Gillian Tans, former CEO and chairwoman of Dutch hotel booking platform Bookingom, spent years working on corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives. She says that while conversations around diversity are further along today, companies should be even more focused on diversity data to improve their talent pipelines — something a lot of European companies notoriously struggle with .

“It’s becoming more and more challenging for everybody to hold on to talent or even to attract talent in the first place,” she tells TNW.

Tans says data should play a key role in not only recruitment and hiring, but also HR and company culture — companies can then track not only how well they’re attracting diverse talent, but how good they are at retaining it.

A better European ecosystem

A better startup ecosystem comes from better innovation — and better data can improve both.

“Data is really what underpins the strengthening of our startup ecosystem, because ultimately, more diversity from a functional perspective, from an age perspective, ethnicity, gender…” Caljé says.

“That’s going to create better products, that’s going to create more marketable products and it’s going to create more creative business models.”

7 telltale signs your go-to-market strategy won’t work

Throughout my several decades-long career in the software industry , I have encountered scores of companies that have had great ideas , but never achieved success.

They checked all the boxes: they hired a talented team , built great products , established a global presence — yet they were not nearly as successful as they could be. Why not? The complex mix of strategy , messages , products , and overall execution, known as their go-to- market strategy , just wasn’t right.

That is one of the primary reasons that over 90% of startups ultimately fail . Unfortunately, just one flaw with a company ’ s go -to-market can make success seem like a distant mirage in a desert. Why is it so hard to get your go-to-market right?

There are many critical factors to a successful go -to-market, but I’d like to focus on some of the most common, yet acute, flaws I see. Most of these are based on my experience in the software world, but they apply broadly to almost any business .

Is it the right product?

I have been part of more than one company that had not yet achieved what is known as “product-market fit.”

This means that the solution is not carefully aligned with the needs, pains, and desires of the customer. Often, it takes time to get these aligned, but out of sheer enthusiasm, many founders, companies, boards, and investors hit the gas pedal and blow through their capital before they have answered these critical questions.

In short, everyone is “drinking the Kool Aid,” just not the customer. I recently met a CEO who had hired four sales reps before many critical — and basic — questions were answered about the customer, and well before a product-market fit was established.

I’ll go on record to state that “this may not end well!.”

Make sure you test for product market fit and understand the problem you are solving well before you start to scale your business.

Are you knocking on the wrong door?

Are you targeting the right buyer? Can you easily get to them, and do they have the authority and the budget to acquire your product?

Every additional approval stage you need to go through makes your sales cycle longer, and less likely to succeed.

Is there urgency to buy your product in order to eliminate a painful problem, or is your product in the dreaded “nice to have” category?

I previously worked with a company where I restructured the sales aspect of their go-to-market and moved the sales process up the chain to a more senior buyer.

While this buyer was harder to gain access to and required that we replace some junior sales reps with more senior sales reps, the outcome was much greater — the company’s growth went from flat to filing an IPO with a great exit.

Had we not made this critical change to our go-to-market strategy, the company would never have grown. Even if you feel that you are successful with the products you’re selling today, carefully consider whether you are missing out on a much bigger opportunity.

Your elevator pitch requires 100 floors

A surprisingly common issue I encounter with many companies is a lack of simple product positioning.

Many companies start with talented technical founders — they have vision, they can build products that can do great things…yet, they lack the ability to succinctly explain what they do.

For example, an engineering-driven company will rush to explain features and capabilities: “Our lithium polymer battery now has double-layer capacitors.”

That may sound great to the team that created the product, but a buyer may have a difficult time understanding how that will benefit them.

Conversely, a market-driven company might simply state: “Our battery will power your car all day long.”

Not being able to clearly articulate your business value will redirect potential buyers to your competition.

Simply stated, if you focus on whiz-bang features instead of how it will help your buyer, you are almost guaranteed to kill an opportunity to sell your product.

Furthermore, if your own team hasn’t nailed the pitch, don’t expect channel partners or resellers to do so either.

Your growth will be constrained until you overcome this problem. I see it almost every day in the software world.

To be a market-driven company, it is critical that you tailor your message for your audience and keep it as simple as possible.

Tell me again, how much does it cost???

If you cannot explain your pricing in less than 10 seconds, it is too complex, period.

If you need to run calculations, or if your pricing model is a disincentive to using your product heavily, it’s a lose-lose situation.

Keep it simple and easy to understand. And — if applicable — always look for ways to structure your product licensing to create a long-term relationship.

Why sell a one year license when you can secure a three-year license? Even if you have to add a small discount, the chances of losing the customer to the competition are reduced, and your team can focus on growing the relationship or selling to new customers, not processing a tedious renewal.

Your pipeline is a “pipe dream”

The relationship between marketing and sales is ripe for tension and discontent because of a lack of alignment.

It is easy to talk about leads and pipeline and sound like you have full command of the sales funnel.

Yet it’s shockingly common that I receive a blank stare when I ask, “What is your conversion rate?”

Sometimes, companies aren’t able to calculate conversion rates due to system or data limitations, but more often, they just don’t take the time to do so.

I recommend that companies spend time focusing on fewer, yet more relevant metrics.

You don’t need a dashboard with 20 different metrics, you just need to agree upon a small number of critical measurements and desired goals.

For example: Your conversion rate is a critical metric — you are measuring your marketing and sales success rate, and the ROI of every dollar you spend.

Take a step back from building your pipeline and sales funnel and make sure you have an agreed-upon answer to these fundamental questions: “What is a qualified marketing lead?” and “how long will it take for an average sale to close (your sales cycle)?” and “what is our current and desired conversion rate?” and last, “what is an acceptable cost to acquire a customer?”

Until you do so, avoid reporting the number of leads delivered to sales, as the data is not useful or accurate, and you definitely shouldn’t be wasting hard-earned venture capital on marketing programs you aren’t accurately measuring.

Get accurate answers to these questions fast and make sure you have alignment between sales, marketing, and executives at your company around these answers.

I always strive to look at a rolling pipeline and aim for at least 4x what you need.

Of course, this depends on the key questions posed above; if you have low conversion, 4x may be insufficient.

Ultimately, you must know your performance metrics and use them to properly fuel your go-to-market.

They do it “this way,” we do it “that way”

Very few companies have a globally consistent go-to-market.

Often this happens for completely benign reasons. I was helping a company understand why conversion was inconsistent and they told me that, “In the UK, buyers want a product demo, not a presentation.”

The same sales team informed me that they “only use presentations in the US and avoid showing products altogether.”

Make sure you have a consistent approach to your go to market and overall sales cycle.

Otherwise, coaching and measurement will be very difficult. This takes constant effort — sales process and messaging will drift if you do not actively manage a consistent sales enablement and coaching process.

Embrace a single, consistent sales methodology so your team is aligned both in terms of the language they use and their process.

It doesn’t matter if it is based on, The Sandler Sales method, Selling Through Curiosity, or Spin Selling.

If your team does it “their way,” instead of achieving global consistency, you will never be able to accurately measure and understand what is working and replicate success.

You need a game plan to tie it all together

When the quarterback on a football team calls out a play, all 11 people on the field know exactly what to do.

If your marketing and sales team are on the field, yet lack a common playbook, how will they know what to do?

Very few marketing teams are aligned with sales teams. They need to work together to create simple, repeatable sales plays to become aligned as one to execute a simple process, from lead to qualifying, closing, and onboarding the customer.

Why is it just so damn hard to achieve success with your go-to-market? As I have detailed above, there are many complex variables that must be optimized for an effective go-to-market.

Often, there is no single person who owns a company’s go-to-market. Instead, there is a separate sales perspective, marketing perspective, and a product perspective. This forces the need for constant adjustment and realignment and tends to create tension.

I recommend finding an executive with broad experience who can oversee and continuously optimize your go to market.

Sometimes this is referred to as a “GM,” but ideally, someone who has experience in marketing, product management, sales, enablement, and partnerships.

Sometimes this can be done by the CEO, but time and bandwidth are often limiting factors. Unless you have one senior executive who oversees the overall go-to-market, and owns the metrics and is fully accountable, you are likely to fail.

Whether your approach requires many functional leaders to work together, or if you have a single “go to market owner,” you will need to invest a lot of time on introspection.

You must take time to step out of the day-to-day execution at your company (leave the office) and convene as a team to focus on the overall go to market.

As I like to say, you need to work ON instead of IN the business at least once a quarter.

I have helped many companies go from zero to over a million active customers, and from no growth to hyper-growth and experience great exits. I hope my experiences shared in this article have been thought-provoking for you.