3 Takeaways from Planning for 2023 with Matt Heinz

In our most recent episode of Talk of the Trade, Matt Heinz returned to share his tips for getting a sales and marketing budget planned during your annual planning meetings. CEO of Heinz Marketing and host of Sales Pipeline Radio, Matt brings terrific expertise for any leader responsible for revenue. Here are his three tactical tips to get a strategic budget approved:

1. Start with Outcomes

Matt recommends beginning not with how many new hires you need, nor the tech stack you require, nor even your social media strategy for driving MQLs. Instead, focus on outcomes. You want to build pipeline. You want to drive efficiency. You want to capture 10% more of the market. Center everything on the outcomes, and then build backwards to figure out what is necessary to reach those outcomes.

“You are not buying media, you’re not buying channels, you’re not buying time with an agency, you’re buying business outcomes. And those business outcomes likely come from a package of things you are spending money on.” 

2. Tell the Story of Your Plan

Once you have built your plan, pitch it as a story to your CFO and board. Since your plan started from business outcomes, this should be pretty easy to do. However, Matt advises that you tailor your pitch to your audience. 

“The CF-‘No’ emerges if she doesn’t understand what you’re doing. If she hears you talk about MQLs and clicks and likes and dark social and a bunch of stuff that just sounds like marketing gobbledygook and has no idea how that actually translates into something that is going to drive business performance. Yes, you may still need a lot of the things I just mentioned. You may still invest in a lot of those things, but in what context does it exist to drive business performance? That’s part of the storytelling you have to do.” 

3. Validate Your Outcomes

Finally, make sure your plan is not all optimism without any reality. Matt points out you will be more successful – and build more credibility – if you keep track of key performance indicators as you execute your strategy. Keep an eye on what is working and know when to pivot (or when to stay the course) when something isn’t. 

“If you are working on a program that was not successful, that does not mean that you were not successful. If you try something based on evidence and variables that we all agreed on, but we say, hey, listen, that test didn’t work. What did we learn from that? And how do we now pivot and adjust to different things? That is success if you stop doing it, if you learn from it and you move forward on it.” 

Whether you are building a plan for a scaling start-up or a massive corporation, these tips will help make sure your plan is aligned with the business and get an automatic “yes” from your CFO. 

Listen to the full 40-minute episode for more insight from Matt Heinz on getting your sales and marketing budget approved!