Hey — It's Ed. Welcome to my weekly briefing, scale smarter. 

Quick Reminder: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my weekly newsletter or downloaded one of my content assets. It's not a link dump of "hey, here's what I'm listening to and reading." It's 7+ articles, with summaries, notes, views, and commentary, spanning topics on leadership, B2B SaaS marketing, SaaS GTM, sales, well-being, or other interesting finds from around the web. Occasionally, I send long-form articles on leadership, marketing, and personal growth.

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==> Here’s what I thought was worth sharing ↓

• The power of ultradian cycles and focus 
• Access my free ABM playbook 
• 3 Critical Tips for Leaders Who Don’t Have Team Alignment Yet 

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IDEAS FROM ME  📈

1. We all struggle to focus when working on tasks (well, I do at times), which is often a mental blocker for many reasons, i.e. distraction, context shifting, calls and more... A strategy to try out is two-fold.

The first is to block your day into "ultradian cycles, "essentially 60 - 90 minutes. When these blocks start and finish will depend on how you understand your mind for maximum attention.

The second is before each of these sessions starts, or to prime to start a session; you say this to yourself:

"You tell yourself. This is very painful. Because it's painful, it will evoke an increase in dopamine release later. You must tell yourself that in that moment, you are doing it by choice and doing it because you love it." 

2. On the subject of focus. Use this app called Brainwaves to help you get deep into the work with no distractions. It's an app that plays binaural beats similar to when you are a baby in the womb. It does wonders for keeping focused and productive.

Download binaural beats.

3. I work with VCs and CEOs of scaling companies each week. One thing that keeps coming up repeatedly is the issue of alignment. One of many alignment issues concerns vision, value proposition, narrative, sales story, ICP and ideal audience profiles.

You solve this through "narrative alignment, " a methodology I'm building out with customers.

Reach out for a discussion if you want to understand what narrative alignment means and the system to solve this massive GTM problem.

Misalignment kills growth. I'll be putting a full paper blog post in the coming weeks. 

SAAS GTM  📈

4. Whether you are a CMO, CRO, CCO or C-1, you need to learn the fundamentals of pricing. I needed to dig into it more when working as an operator. The insight here is if you clearly understand your products/ services pricing model, you can effectively impact how you think about the marketing GTM and sales execution approach. If you don't, you often deploy the wrong approach. The value proposition must connect to your pricing model. 

5. If you missed this one last week. Please do read. Why? Because it makes you rethink your model of building a scaling commercial org. It helps you work out the math behind marketing and sales harmony. 

• Key Insight: 
It would be a mistake to hire a swath of salespeople, assign their quotas and then fail to provide them with enough inbound lead flow to succeed. In that case, marketing would be the limiting factor in the business. I believe asking salespeople to generate leads in addition to closing them is suboptimal in most cases. 

6. I just released my free ABM (Lite) Playbook.

The printable PDF includes the following:

• A practical guide on how to build a successful ABM strategy to scale revenue growth
• You will find a checklist of critical items in 4 phases. From Readiness, MarTech, Launch and Post-Launch (being always-on). These are the foundational basics of ABM to help you plan and execute a GTM strategy in simplistic terms.
• How to launch the pilot ABM programme in 4-6 weeks.

With ABM LITE, you get a 20+ page-plus manual where I take you through all the steps of creating and sequencing your ABM campaign. That means you also get my swipe files… including ICP templates, messaging architecture, lead scoring models and ROI analysis explainers.

It will spark you to think differently about marketing growth strategies. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a popular concept that needs to be understood. This ABM (LITE) Playbook will give you the frameworks and tools to plan effectively for ABM in 2023.

You can download the beautiful (and free!) printable PDF here