Hello. Here I am. I'm just a boy in downtown Chicago with a Starbucks cold brew and EDM tunes in my head, trying to finish this second newsletter for you, the fantastic reader.

Did you miss the first edition? No worries. Just click here, but only after you’ve read the rest of this email and answered the following questions:

• Why is it important to laugh every now and then?

• What’s the right framework for revenue alignment in a high-growth company?

• How should you internalize the quote, “vision without execution is hallucination?”

❤️ kyle

On Humor

My wife and I spent 24 hours in Chicago this weekend with two goals: attend one of Second City’s 65th Anniversary shows and have a delicious bite at Rose Mary, a restaurant started by Chef Joe Flamm of Top Chef (my fav show) fame. 

We accomplished one, and I failed us in the second. 

The Second City show was exactly what my head and heart needed. I haven’t laughed that much over two hours in a long time. And the reason? 

It’s not that the cast is brilliant at comedy (they are) or that the skits are extremely well-written (they are). It’s the moments during the show where they break and laugh at each other because the improv is so absurd or the skit is so f*cking funny. 

It’s why I love The Californians from SNL, or I can spend hours watching bloopers from TV shows like The Office or Parks & Recreation. 

Because unfettered laughter reenergizes the mind and soul. 

It’s the great equalizer. 

We left the show and had two hours to kill before dinner, so we wandered the city laughing at our favorite skits and cast members.

We arrived at the restaurant ready to devour every Italian-Croatian-inspired dish. 

“Hey there, we are a tad early for our 7:30 reservation. Any chance we could get in a little early?”

“Eh, I’m not sure. We are completely booked tonight. What’s the name?”

“Lacy, Kyle Lacy.” (yes, I’m James Bond)

….checking the reservation….

“Well, your reservation was at 6:30, not 7:30. So, you are super late, and we’ve already given away your table. Would you like to wait for an opening at the bar?”

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

Damn it. I failed us. 

And it was EVEN ON OUR SHARED CALENDAR WITH THE RIGHT TIME. 

Old, no laughter, Kyle would have been ruined. 

But here’s the thing: Despite being hungry for the Chef Joe Flamm specials, we laughed it off and kept walking, talking about the Second City show. 

Lucky for us, Ricardo’s Trattoria was within our path, and we had an absolutely delightful meal. 

It’s just a small reminder that laughter, remembering to smile, and taking things a little less seriously can positively impact your day, month, year, and life.  

On Revenue Alignment (and not getting fired)

In a few weeks, I’ll speak at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Summit in Boston on one of my favorite topics, Driving Revenue Alignment and 4 Other Ways Not to Get Fired as a Marketer. 

Don’t worry. We will talk about not getting fired in another edition. I promise. 

Internal alignment is a topic near and dear to my heart, mainly because of its importance to growing a company. I think about it daily; every marketer/revenue professional should do the same.

Nothing is more critical to great marketing teams than supporting alignment and ACRONYMS. YAY ACRONYMS! MQL IN THE HOUSE! So, why not introduce an acronym for driving alignment? 

 CREM de la CREME of Growth

Communication, Revenue, Enablement, and Metrics

Get it? It’s delicious. 

Let’s break each down. 

• Communication - building dashboards, guiding processes, and coordinating the right meetings to communicate the leading and lagging indicators of growth on an ongoing basis. 

• Revenue - aligning sales and marketing towards a few shared goals (pipeline, bookings, net revenue retention). 

• Enablement - taking foundational knowledge and driving continuous improvement, improving sales rep ramp time, marketing domain expertise, etc. 

• Metrics - marketers MUST understand (and track) efficiency metrics driving the sales org. Net: understand how and when reps hit quota. 

For the sake of your eyes and Sunday night, I will only spend time on communication for this email, but I promise we will dive deeper into the rest later. If you want a quick deep dive, here’s an old presentation on what I learned in marketing software for the past 12(ish) years.

Communication.

Great communication strategy should be divided into four time-bound phases: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly. It’s essential to have a cadence. You can pick and choose the right tool and cadence, but it’s the consistency that matters. 

🔥 HOT TAKE 🔥 Too often than not, marketers fail because they do not over-communicate to the company (and help others do the same).

Here’s what I’ve learned works: 

• Weekly: Demand Forecast Email

• Bi-Weekly: Leading Indicators Meeting

• Monthly: Pipeline & Revenue Council

• Quarterly: Revenue Handbook

Let’s break down a couple.

Weekly: Demand Forecast Email

Launch an internal newsletter around all things demand generation and build subscribers within your company. 

I like to take a weather report vibe where three types of weather forecasts are based on how we performed the week before. 

Sunny: great job on the pipeline & bookings last week!

Partly Cloudy: decent job on bookings, but slower pipeline! 

Rainy: miss on both

And then you break down the funnel. Include sections:

• Pipeline progress across source and segment. How are you trending weekly, monthly, and quarterly to the goal? 

• Call out a few logos from new opportunities

• Link to a Gong call of the week

• Include weekly updates from business unit leaders: Inbound, BDR, AE, Partnerships, and Enablement

I’ve switched around the structure and cadence of the email, but the core parts remain the same.

Monthly: Pipeline & Revenue Council

Okay, your newsletter has taken care of the weekly updates, and now you need a lagging indicator to keep everyone on track.

Schedule an hour-long meeting the first week of every month to do a pipeline review with all managers responsible for creating pipeline.

The meeting will discuss quick wins for scaling what’s working, adjusting what isn’t, and progressing against longer-term initiatives.

Remember the humor section? This meeting is the GREAT equalizer to pipeline generation and alignment, especially across sales and marketing.

Okay, some additional questions.

Who attends the meeting? Direct reports to GTM executives. This meeting should be owned by one person and supported by two or three additional people.

Who runs the meeting?  This meeting should be owned by one person and supported by two or three additional people. I would recommend RevOps owning and the marketing executive supporting. If you don’t have revops, you should own the meeting.

What’s the focus of the meeting? Proactively communicate progress & results against priority initiatives defined by the team (with support from the exec team)

What does success look like? Healthy and productive alignment + bookings targets were met, and win rates increased. Easy right?

In closing, my dear alignment friends, remember alignment is a damn marathon, not a sprint. It’s imperative to establish clear communication guidelines and staying consistent. You are building the foundation for becoming BFFs with sales and long-term success. Stay tuned for more tips/suggestions in future editions, where we will cover the bi-weekly and quarterly strategies.

On What I’m Reading: Leonardo Da Vinci

I started listening to Leonardo Da Vinci (for the second time) by Walter Isaacson after finishing his book on Elon Musk last week. I will forever be amazed by Da Vinci’s depth. He was a once-in-a-millenia genius. 

But I’m not going to talk about Leonardo for this edition. I’m going to start with a quote from Isaacson regarding Leonardo’s ability to express his imagination and vision in ways that completely changed how we think about art, creativity, imagination…

“Vision without execution is hallucination.”

I stopped on the street in the North End (in Boston, I was there for our board meeting) and almost “whooped” much to the pain of the couple walking directly behind me. 

Talk about a powerful sentence. 

You can apply this quote to most of the innovators in history. Steve Jobs would be lost in technological history if he didn’t execute his vision for Apple. Musk would have been laughed out of the room if SpaceX or Tesla had never succeeded (we will not be discussing his current activity on X).

I’m no Steve Jobs or Leonardo. I’m closer to Leonardo the TMNT than the artist…

However, I know how to build a brand and cast a vision for a company or product. I can also develop marketing strategies that drive millions in pipeline and revenue. I also know the pain of casting a vision and having it fall to deaf ears because of a lack of execution (on my part).

There are many tips and suggestions around execution, but I’ve found ONE that has been the most effective in helping me execute consistently.

The trusty calendar block. Many people speak to the importance, but few follow through. I think you should be the one to follow through this week.

I want you to pull up your calendar and find four to five 90-minute blocks you can schedule for next week. Here are the rules:

• You will NOT open email.

• You WILL focus on completing one or two tasks.

• You will NOT open Slack.

• You WILL put your phone on silent.

I’ve taken it further and scheduled work blocks for the entire marketing team. They have four blocks every week, where we cannot schedule time unless absolutely necessary.

Yes, I run into the problem of lacking execution now and then.

And you know what? I’m sure Steve did, too.

And remembering that (plus some workblocks) helps more than hurts.