The $1M question

At the end of 2023, someone asked me a $1M question:

“Sergiu, you probably saw and interacted with a lot of companies, what are the things you observed successful companies doing?”.

My answer was pretty simple:

“They focus on the needs of their customers and the transformation they can create. They also focus on the existing struggles and they try to fix them in the best way possible. Last, but not least, they focus on emotions, and how they can improve someone’s life. And then they just communicate these things, at scale.”.

It wasn’t the answer they were expecting:

“To be honest, I was expecting a different answer, more focused on the tactics they are using, but makes sense now.”.

I told him that before thinking about tactics, budgets, or anything else, they need to have these things figured out.

Because each marketing or sales tactic should be correlated with needs, transformation, struggles, problems, emotions, etc.

Everyone is using tactics, but just a few are strategically executing those tactics.