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Demand Generation Updated on: Sep 2, 2024

Going from A-players to a team that fits your budget

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A major pitfall I’ve seen in early-stage B2B SaaS companies is building a strategy that requires a team of 20 FTE marketing veterans to execute. 

How do you lead effectively and generate the results your company needs when you can't afford a full team of A-players? 

It’s a common problem for leaders transitioning from mature companies (who can afford fully-staffed, high-performing teams) to an early-stage or bootstrapped company.

Suddenly, there’s time and resources are extremely limited, and each dollar and minute spent has a high opportunity cost. 

This blog post will explore strategies to maximize a small team’s potential to do big things. You’ll learn how to hire effectively within constraints and adapt your leadership style to fit the capabilities of your team.

Ultimately, you’ll unlock your team’s full potential and will create an agile team of masters who regularly beat the larger teams of your competitors.

 

The "moneyball" approach: The art and science of leading startup marketing teams

When transitioning from a company with ample resources to a leaner environment, it’s easy to feel the pinch. 

You have limited capital and resources and you’re often competing against much larger companies. It can feel like an unfair fight because it is. 

More often than not, you’ll be outmanned and outgunned, particularly the earlier you are in a company’s growth cycle. But even though it’s not fair, you still have to fight and win. 

To be successful, you have to take an approach similar to that of Billy Beane, the manager of the Oakland A’s during the late 1990s and early 2000s and popularized in the movie “Moneyball”. 

Unlike Billy Beane, you probably won’t be able to take as statistical an approach to building your team as he was able to. However, you will have to bring a team of relatively inexperienced and inexpensive people together with a common goal to beat much larger, talented (on paper anyway) and better-funded competitors.

Kalungi’s founder, Stijn Hendrikse used to run global SMB marketing for Microsoft Office 365A. In that role, he had a huge budget and almost limitless resources. However, when he transitioned to leading B2B SaaS startups, he realized that it's not just about the team size or talent, but how you strategize, manage, and optimize a completely different set of resources. 

Large enterprises require their employees to all have very specific roles and narrow, well-defined scopes, and they require their teams to have deep expertise in each of those roles. 

In a large company, you may have access to top-tier talent, comprehensive training programs, and the luxury of time to develop strategies. This method works because large companies can afford to pay for that expertise, onboarding, & strategy.  

Startups, on the other hand, require employees to wear many hats, be very comfortable with ambiguity, and often can only afford to hire smaller, less experienced teams. Additionally, your resources are limited, and the timeline for results is often compressed.

This isn't necessarily a drawback—it’s an opportunity to recalibrate your leadership style and team structure. This environment demands a different approach to leadership, where agility, creativity, and efficiency become more critical than ever. If you can do this effectively, you’ll have a more agile team that’s more focused and can actually deliver greater results than the larger, more experienced marketing departments at your competitors. 

Below is a list of a few steps you can take to make sure you have the right marketing team at your early-stage company and that you can generate the results you need, within the budget you have available.

 

Laying the foundation: strategy-first marketing for startups

If you want to be successful with a small or inexperienced marketing team, first and foremost, you need a really clear idea of what you want them to achieve and how they’re going to do it. 

Take the time to build a solid marketing plan that directly flows into your Go-to-Market strategy. Make sure that you know your industry and competition like the back of your hand. 

You must have a clear and well-documented strategy for resonating with your prospects, differentiating from your competitors, and convincing your Ideal Customer Profile to “pay, stay, and refer others”.

This step cannot be skipped. 

It can be tempting to push for results before a strategy is in place, and think that you’ll “test your way into a strategy”, but this rarely results in good outcomes, because testing without direction or a strategy behind it is liable to randomize your efforts and reduce your impact. 

Additionally, the time you spend testing is time not spent building a strategy, and usually results in your team spending more time and effort to get less traction, than if you were to lock in the strategy before turning on your demand generation efforts.

If you can build a good strategy, this gives your team a great idea of where they fit in the company’s vision, where they need to focus their efforts, and what they should spend their time on. 

But more importantly, it tells them what they shouldn’t spend their time on, limits distractions, and ensures that their effort has maximum impact on the business.

Try this:

Hiring: The balancing act between experience and potential

Once you have your strategy, it’s time to make sure you have the right team. 

Hiring in a startup isn’t about finding the perfect candidate with a star-studded resume. It's about finding individuals who are eager to learn, adaptable, and ready to dive into the trenches. 

In early-stage companies, it’s often more effective to hire someone with potential and train them to meet your needs rather than holding out for an A-player who might be out of your budget. 

If you can spend the time early with high-potential employees, you can create a team of high-performing marketers who have the exact skills you need, have all the relevant industry knowledge, and are exceptionally loyal. This is because you took a chance, leveled them up, and helped them to advance in their career. 

5 proven strategies for hiring top marketing talent on a budget

Look for hunger, not just experience:
A candidate’s drive and willingness to learn can often outweigh years of experience. According to McKinsey, companies that prioritize potential over experience see a 30% higher retention rate among new hires. When interviewing, ask questions that reveal a candidate’s curiosity and willingness to take on new challenges, such as:

  • "Can you describe a time when you had to quickly learn a new skill to solve a problem?"
  • ”Where do you want to be in five years?”
  • “What is the last book on marketing that you read and how did you apply it to your role?”

Verify resilience
You need team members who are comfortable with ambiguity and can handle the unpredictable nature of a startup environment. Consider asking candidates the following questions to learn about their resilience and likelihood to thrive in a startup environment.

  • “Can you describe a time when you faced significant adversity in a professional setting? How did you overcome it, and what did you learn from the experience?”
  • “How do you stay motivated when working on tasks that are new or unfamiliar to you?”
  • “Can you give an example of when you had to work under tight deadlines with limited resources? How did you ensure success?”

Test critical thinking
During the hiring process, challenge candidates with homework to showcase their critical thinking and push past the surface-level responses that are given in an interview.Give them a hypothetical scenario that is vague and requires them to ask additional questions or fill in gaps with assumptions and push them to present a deliverable, strategy, and tactical plan related to what their responsibilities will be at your company. Then pressure test their output with tough questions that examine their assumptions, knowledge, and plan.

Throughout the process, try and get a sense of how they think about tough problems, what resources they use to solve them, and how they take feedback or differing opinions. Ultimately, this process should give you a much better idea of how they’ll perform in their job than you’d get in a few behavioral interviews.

  • For example, if a candidate is applying for an SEO role, you might ask them to audit your website, come up with a top 10 list of keywords to target, and give you a content & optimization plan to improve your performance.

Ensure culture fit
None of the above points matter if your candidate doesn’t fit your culture. Even A-players who are overqualified for their roles can easily become toxic to your team and company if they don’t exemplify your core values day in and day out. Make sure to build culture-fit questions into your interview process to make sure that your new hire will get along well with the team, support & challenge them the right way, and help make your company culture stronger, not weaker.

Get the right person for the right seat
On the other hand, if your new hire is an incredible culture fit but doesn’t have the skill set to be successful in the role, that also doesn’t work for you or your company. Make sure that you have the right balance of culture fit and abilities to fill the right need for your organization. This means you may have to say “no” to really talented people who aren’t a culture fit or who are a culture fit and are talented, but not quite in the area you need.

Both are difficult decisions to make but it’s critical that you stay strong and build the right team for your business to be successful. This piece is critical and will often be one of the main factors that make or break your success as a company.

Actionable takeaways:

  • Add questions around drive, ambiguity, culture, and resilience to your behavioral interviews: Focus on questions that reveal how candidates have handled uncertainty, learned new skills quickly, or taken on roles beyond their job description. Make sure your new hire will enhance your culture and lift your team up, not detract from the culture you’ve worked so hard to build.

  • Give candidates relevant, challenging homework: make sure you’re hiring the right candidate with the right skills and communication abilities for your role. Put them through the paces with homework that is relevant to their role and pushes them to showcase their strategic and tactical abilities. Finally, have them present the homework to you and your team, to stress test their work and to see how well they can present complex ideas simply, and have thoughtful, productive discussions with people who disagree with them.

  • Create a Realistic Job Preview: Give candidates a task or project that mirrors what they would do on the job. This could be a small assignment that requires them to use creativity and resourcefulness, giving you insight into how they perform in a real-world context.

  • Get the right person for the right seat:  Make sure you’re really clear on why your roles exist, and what they’re responsible for. You can even go as far as assigning one KPI that each role owns moving forward. Then make sure you get the right person, with the right skill set, cultural fit, and cost for that role.

Delegate and Elevate: Scaling Your Leadership

Just because your team is less experienced, doesn’t mean that you have to do everything yourself. 

In fact, it’s critical that you don’t fall into the trap of making everything your responsibility. This makes you the bottleneck and will simultaneously burn you out with too much work while making it exceptionally difficult to hit your company’s growth targets. You need to “delegate and elevate”. 

That is, you need to give away tasks to your team while empowering them to take on more responsibility, and free yourself up for the big picture, strategic items that are critical to your team’s success, and that only you can accomplish.

As a leader, your effectiveness is not measured by how much you can do personally but by the results your team can achieve, e.g. how well you can enable them to perform. 

This transition can be challenging, especially if you’re used to being deeply involved in every aspect of the work. However, it’s essential for scaling your impact and allowing your team to grow.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you can just dump all of your responsibilities on your team and go play golf or read a book. The key to making “delegate and elevate” successful is to give the team you’re delegating to, everything they need to be successful. 

Before you delegate something away, you need to sit down and put some real time and brain power behind ensuring that they have the following things:

  • Clear objectives and expectations: Clearly articulate what needs to be done, define the expected outcomes, and provide measurable objectives to guide their work and let them know how success will be evaluated.

  • Resources and tools: Ensure they have access to the tools, information, and support required to complete the task. Also, let them know who they can reach out to for assistance or further clarification.

  • Timeline and milestones: Provide a clear timeline with key milestones, including the final deadline for task completion. Arrange periodic reviews to monitor progress and address any issues early on.

  • Authority and autonomy: Empower them to make decisions within the scope of the task, which fosters ownership and accountability, but also be sure to define the limits of their authority and when they need to seek approval.

  • Support and feedback: Make sure your team has everything they need to complete their tasks. Enable them with the right resources and constantly remove blockers. Let them know you're available for questions and guidance throughout the process. Give feedback on their work regularly to help them stay on track and improve their performance.

By addressing these five elements when delegating tasks, you help ensure that your employees have the clarity, resources, and support needed to succeed. You also foster their growth and confidence in their roles.

3 actionable tips for effective delegation in a startup environment

  1. Use the development matrix: Assess tasks based on how much energy they give you and how effective you are at them. Delegate tasks that drain you or where your performance isn’t at its peak. For instance, if you find that administrative tasks are draining your energy, delegate them to an assistant or a junior team member who can handle them efficiently and might find them more engaging.

  2. Encourage growth: Shift tasks to team members who may find them more engaging or who are looking to develop in that area. If a team member is eager to learn about content marketing, gradually transfer related responsibilities to them, providing mentorship along the way.

  3. Continuously reassess: Regularly revisit who is doing what to ensure tasks are still aligned with the team’s strengths and interests. Schedule monthly & quarterly check-ins to discuss workload distribution and adjust as needed.

Actionable takeaways:

  • Start small: Begin by delegating smaller tasks and gradually increase the complexity as your team members grow more confident.

  • Create a delegation plan: Outline the tasks you plan to delegate, who will take them on, and the timeline for transition. Monitor the process closely, providing feedback and support as needed.

Situational leadership: adapting your style to your team's needs

What does “empower your team” actually mean, especially if they’re less experienced? And how do you “delegate and elevate” effectively with a team of different maturity levels? 

Taking a hands-off approach may work with high performers, but will cripple junior employees. On the other hand, micromanaging will stifle high performers, stunt the growth of junior employees, and add a ton of work to your plate. 

So how do you get the most out of your team and use them to fill the right gaps, while extending your talents across the business?

Lead your team from where they are with a framework like Situational Leadership

Situational leadership is a powerful tool in guiding your team, particularly in a startup. The key is to tailor your management style to the current capabilities and confidence of your team members. 

This approach involves shifting between showing employees how to do something, giving close instruction while they do it, being hands-on, and stepping back based on the task and the individual’s experience level.

For example, when a team member is new to a task, they may need more direct guidance (S1: Directing). As they become more competent but still lack confidence, you might shift to a coaching role (S2: Coaching), providing support while allowing them more autonomy. Eventually, as they become proficient, your role transitions to delegating tasks with minimal oversight (S3: Supporting), and finally, empowering them to make decisions independently (S4: Delegating).

Mastering situational leadership: 4 steps to guide your marketing team

  1. Teach and dhow (S1: Directing): When team members are inexperienced, be hands-on and guide them through the tasks. This might involve step-by-step instructions, frequent check-ins, and clear expectations. Example: If a new marketer is learning to use a marketing automation tool, walk them through the process, showing them how to set up a campaign.

  2. Encourage and support (S2: Coaching): As they gain skills, shift to a more supportive role, allowing them to take the lead while still offering guidance. You might ask questions that help them think critically about their approach or offer feedback on their performance. Example: When the marketer is ready to run their first campaign, review their plan together, offering constructive feedback but letting them execute.

  3. Empower and delegate (S3: Supporting): Once they’re confident and capable, step back further and let them run with their tasks, intervening only when necessary. Example: The marketer now runs campaigns independently and comes to you only for strategic guidance or to discuss major decisions.

  4. Let them lead (S4: Delegating): At this stage, your role is to provide overall direction and check in periodically. Trust your team to handle the day-to-day without your constant involvement. Example: The marketer is now leading a small team, mentoring new hires, and setting the direction for the company’s marketing efforts.

Actionable takeaways:

  • Assess your team regularly: Regularly evaluate where each team member stands in their development. Use a simple tool, such as a skill-will matrix, or a 9-box framework to track their progress and adjust your leadership style accordingly.

  • Tailor your feedback: Match your feedback style to the team member’s development stage. In the early stages, be specific and directive; as they progress, shift to asking questions that prompt them to think critically and solve problems independently.

Managing through turmoil: leading your marketing team through transitions

What if you aren’t building your team from scratch, but you’re taking over during a transition? 

Usually, when you’re taking over in a transition, there’s a reason for that transition and things may not be going as well as they could be for your team. Maybe performance could improve, you have a challenging quarter or year ahead, or you’ve inherited a marketing team after the leader they loved left (by choice or by force). 

Kalungi often takes over marketing teams during times of transition, where team morale is low, and there’s a lot of uncertainty. 

To turn these rough waters into smooth seas,  we try to quickly establish trust, set a clear vision, give the team opportunities to improve and take on new responsibilities, and align the team’s goals with the company’s strategic objectives. Additionally, building a culture of transparency and open communication is vital to our success. 

We especially like using techniques like the "I intend to" framework from David Marquet's book, Turn the Ship Around!

This framework shifts the responsibility for decision-making to the team, empowering them to take ownership of their roles while holding them accountable for the results the team needs to achieve. 

Instead of waiting for orders, team members say, "I intend to [action]," which prompts a discussion if needed but otherwise allows them to proceed. If the action is wrong, the leader will correct and discuss why the action is the wrong one. If the action is right, the team member has given the right level of visibility, and gotten the green light from their superior. 

Overall, this approach fosters accountability, encourages proactive behavior amongst a team, and keeps the marketing leader from becoming the bottleneck, which can happen all too often in marketing teams that try to do too much and are stretched too thin.

Proven strategies for leading through marketing team transitions

  • Be hands-on initially: Dive in and really learn how your team does things on a day-to-day basis. This will allow you to see the team’s processes, fully understand their strategic/tactical ability, and will give you a great sense of the team’s capability. It will also show you the team’s priorities, where focus needs to increase, and what initiatives should be put on the back burner.

  • Give the team opportunity & responsibility: Try to give every team member a number that each of them “owns”. Show them that it is their responsibility to move that number and show them how that number impacts marketing’s goals, as well as the company’s goals. Further, show high-potential employees a path to more responsibility and higher pay, allowing you to “delegate and elevate” while allowing them to advance their careers and stay loyal to you and the company.

Your path to a high-performing marketing team starts here

Navigating the complexities of marketing leadership in early-stage SaaS companies requires a thoughtful and adaptive approach. 

The strategies outlined in this post emphasize the importance of maximizing your team's potential, even when operating within tight budget constraints. By setting a clear strategy, making strategic hires based on potential rather than just experience, and tailoring your leadership style to match the team's evolving needs, you can transform a small, inexperienced team into a powerful force that drives significant results.

Remember, the key to success lies in your ability to adapt, lead with agility, and empower your team to grow alongside your company's ambitions. 

As you refine your leadership approach, you’ll not only build a team that can outperform larger, more resource-rich competitors but also foster a culture of resilience, innovation, and continuous improvement. 

With the right mindset and strategies, your lean marketing team can become a competitive advantage, driving your startup's success in a challenging and dynamic market

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