Despite a wobbly economy, CFOs still have growth goals to meet and KPIs to hit. Even those who feel confident they’re making the most data-driven and well-informed decisions still want to keep things lean. So they find themselves looking at their forecasts and wondering, “What do we need to cut?”
Before making any cuts, there are crucial nuances that CFOs should consider — because cutting the wrong things can turn out worse than not cutting back at all. Here’s a close look at those nuances, and how CFOs can make decisions that don”t get in the way of their growth plans.
Do Events Differently
Events held in the real world can get expensive, fast. Yet they’re critical for sales and marketing to build relationships with customers, potential partners, and suppliers. The key is to get more value out of them.
Here are some ways CFOs can encourage revenue teams to squeeze more value out of smaller budgets while keeping the ROI high for events:
- Run online or hybrid events to reduce travel costs, venue rental fees, expenses for on-site food and refreshments, swag, and giveaways
- Reduce the number of attendees for in-person events. Do you need to pay for flights, hotel rooms, and registration fees for 20 reps when 10 would suffice?
- Get assistance from an event management platform that can help you host events, optimize your event program, and measure and maximize your return on event (ROE) with rich data and insights
- Before the event, capture intent data to understand which event attendees are planning a purchase, and use that data to plan outreach and book meetings
Consolidate Tech Tools
Your revenue team likely uses an amalgamation of tools to carry out tasks like:
- Account management
- Email campaigns
- Advertising
- Data analytics
Many tools only serve a single function, which means that for each of the tasks above, you’ll have yet another line item on the expense report.
The best solutions have comprehensive, built-in capabilities that help customers consolidate their tech stacks while making a greater impact on the bottom line.
For instance, the 6sense platform is designed to play nicely with, and enhance, other marketing tools. It also provides direct solutions for everything from account identification to predictive modeling and data management and enrichment, just to name a few.
Top-of-Funnel Ad Spend
During recessions, companies sometimes cut back on new customer acquisition and double down on selling to their existing customer base. Upselling to existing customers is the easiest, least costly way to drive revenue.
But revenue teams need to keep new customer acquisition strong to have a chance for future upsells.
Acquiring new customers is challenging during a recession; the pool of potential customers understandably shrinks. That’s why it’s so critical for your teams to know which accounts are still considering a purchase, so they can focus time and money on high-yield opportunities.
Countercyclical Advertising Can Yield Big ROI
During a recession, industry-wide reduced competition for ads can boost ROI for brands that maintain an ad presence.
Your revenue team can invest in more ad impressions and stay front-and-center with the remaining pool of buyers. Similarly, focusing those ads only on the accounts that are in-market has a higher chance of returning a positive impact.
Less competition also means your company has a chance to dominate mindshare and increase brand recognition among your target customers.
Make Hiring Shifts
If you need to implement a hiring freeze or layoffs, the right sales and marketing technologies can help your remaining employees stay focused on the most important revenue-generating activities. It also puts them in the best position to keep hitting goals despite challenges, so they can keep the company healthy and maintain their own confidence through the downturn.
Once the economy recovers, technology that helps team members stay focused and prioritize efforts can help you quickly ramp up new hires so they can seize new opportunities.
Get More Insight
Account-based intelligence platforms provide insights into the minds of prospects and customers, which help:
- Marketing teams know which accounts to target
- Sales reps know who to talk to and which topics prospects care about the most
- CFOs forecast revenue based on AI-driven insights into which customers are likely to buy, when, and for how much
It’s critical for CFOs to know about — and embrace — these AI-driven sales and marketing technologies to identify sources of inefficiencies and waste, and help spot opportunities for sustained and predictable revenue growth.
