Was just taking a look at Xero and I noticed that we did two things at DemandMaven:
1. We reached our revenue goals for the year back in August. 🤯
2. We grew 36% from last year — and we still have a whole quarter to go. 📈
Considering the past two years we’ve had, I’ll take it. Proudly.
Here’s every little thing I did to help us get there
On productivity and operations
1. I delegated every little tiny thing off my plate. Everything from booking customer interviews and discovery calls to updating something on the website.
2. I delegated some of the big stuff off my plate. This included hefty client deliverables, running customer interviews, configuring paid acquisition campaigns, and so much more.
3. I analyzed where our team lost the most time during our projects and planned ways to help them save time.
4. I invested *tons* into client operations by creating SOPs for our big and small functions of the business.
5. I added internal strategy meetings for each client after our first wave of customer interviews. This helped get everyone on the same page about what we were hearing.
On hiring
6. I hired a client services manager to help keep us on track and improve the client’s experience of working with us.
7. I hired more growth strategists to own more of the strategic process during client projects (and take pressure off of me to do all the thinking and executing).
8. I streamlined our hiring and onboarding process to make getting up to speed smooth and fast.
On communicating ideas
9. I designed internal strategic frameworks that my team could use to enable them to arrive at strategic conclusions on their own.
10. I taught my team just about everything I knew about growth for SaaS through content and internal wikis.
11. I also created an internal Client Strategy Meeting where we discuss each client in detail, ask questions, and get feedback on our work.
12. I brought in copywriting experts (hey, SNAP Copy 👋).
On service offerings
13. We became certified in Customer-Led Growth! 🎉
14. We also dramatically increased the quality of work thanks to CLG.
15. We split our main strategic engagement into two offerings to better satisfy the needs of both early-stage and later-stage clients: the GTM Engagement and the Growth Engagement.
16. We actually didn’t really raise rates at all; just took certain low-quality deliverables out.
On marketing
17. I spent my time on just two channels: Twitter and Linkedin.
18. I created and published video content to our YouTube channel.
19. I completed another season on the In Demand Podcast.
20. I spoke at relevant virtual conferences such as Business of Software and Wynter.
21. I even spoke at in-person conferences such as Traffic & Conversion, MicroConf Local, and soon-to-be SaaS North.
22. I’m currently giving away some of my best work for free through #Ship30for30.
There’s more, too, that I could list, but I think it’s a strong start. Here’s to the rest of 2021, and looking forward to 2022! 🎉