Have you ever noticed that most marketing and sales agencies offer one size fits all solutions that feel generic?
But your business is unique. So it stands to reason that a prescription like that can’t really help you meet your capital-raising goals.
That’s why GK3 takes a different approach.
In the digital age, gaining the trust of potential investors requires effort it didn’t used to. No longer does a relationship typically begin with a cold call; instead, it can begin long before your sales team ever becomes aware of a lead.
That means you have to work to gain trust at every opportunity. Every brand touchpoint should serve that purpose. Naturally, you’ll need to rely on the performance of several channels aside from your wholesalers.
Marketing and sales goals are the perfect place to start defining this channel-diversification effort. Maybe you want to:
Your needs could also be more immediate: build a new pitch deck, for example. Every business is different. Additionally, your goals may (and probably should) change over time as you learn and grow. By focusing on the desired outcome — capital raised — you can maintain consistency and direction throughout the process while remaining nimble.
That’s how GK3 approaches our client engagements. With the final outcome in mind, we design our digital programs to allow you to streamline the journey from investor interest to sales, no matter what your goals are. The Agile methodology, which involves 30-day sprints and 90-day plans, keeps us flexible enough to meet unique needs within unique systems.
Let’s look at the details.
30-day sprints and 90-day planning are both critical to the success of using an Agile methodology in our service delivery. While connected, they serve different purposes:
90-day planning refers to the process of setting long-term goals and understanding the trajectory of results over the next three months. (Note that this is markedly different from simply combining three, 30-day sprints.) The longer-term plan allows teams to take a step back from the day-to-day work and focus on the bigger picture.
During this planning period, teams may conduct research, gather feedback from customers, and develop a high-level roadmap that outlines the major milestones and objectives for the upcoming quarter.
Those objectives will then inform the deliverables in the 30-day sprints.
A 30-day sprint allows teams to focus on short-term deliverables that will deliver the most value — all in service of the larger objectives laid out in the 90-day plan. For example, if your goal was to increase sales-qualified leads within the 90 days, then your sprint planning would prioritize activities that work toward that end.
The limited timeframe of a sprint means your account team will have to prioritize based on both effort and impact. In other words, the 30-day sprint helps us focus on low-hanging fruit, but it’s also the best fruit.
Additionally, the limited time frame allows you to frequently course correct, making adjustments that will create greater impact than the original plan might have accounted for.
Within a 30-day sprint, nothing is set in stone. It’s more like it’s set in sand. You can build something beautiful and impactful, but if you need to start over, there’s no re-permitting required. The plan can change, and change again, and you can still stay focused on the ultimate outcome: Growing AUM.
The combination of 30-day sprints and 90-day planning provides several benefits. For one, it allows teams to be flexible and adapt quickly to changing circumstances. By breaking down work into small, manageable chunks, teams can adjust their priorities and goals as needed, rather than being tied to efforts that no longer fuel impact or fit your immediate marketing and sales objectives.
Secondly, it helps our teams stay focused on regular delivery of real value. Our clients know we are working toward raising capital in the longterm (and that’s the ultimate value). The 90-day plans promote that vision and influence cohesiveness.
But a 30-day sprint puts the emphasis on momentum. We don’t stall out — we progress. By setting short-term goals and working in a time-bound environment, we can avoid getting bogged down in lengthy planning cycles and ensure that we deliver consistent, quality work as we drive toward critical outcomes.
Finally, using Agile planning practices lets our clients escape the types of relationships they’ve had with partners before, where results are always secondary to deliverables.
How many times have you released some piece of content or updated a process only to ignore the results and performance and move forward with the next piece? Agile dispenses with that non-improvement cycle, replacing it with continuous improvement. There’s no set-it-and-forget-it (which rarely works with technology, content, or process) when you build flexibility into the plan.
Continuous improvement is a tenet of the Agile methodology and an inevitable outcome of its successful implementation.
For GK3 clients, this arises from the sprint-and-planning mix. Sprints allow us to iterate quickly on ideas built from the long-term vision, which is reinforced through the 90-day planning. This aspect of the methodology is probably where “Agile” gets its name: continuous improvement is agility in action. It’s going with the flow. When you’re not fighting against the current with fund raising, the swim feels a lot more refreshing.
In conclusion, 30-day sprints and 90-day planning are major value-adds within the GK3 framework for raising capital. They help both our team members and our partners be flexible, focused, and growth-motivated. By focusing on outcomes, breaking down work into small, manageable chunks, regularly reflecting on progress, and building flexibility into the foundation, GK3 helps clients grow iteratively — so they don’t leave a single opportunity on the table.