Only a handful of SaaS marketing leaders I spoke to in Q1 expected that they'd even be close to their pipeline goals And almost certainly, CMOs, VPs, Directors, Heads of, will be asked by the higher-ups what happened The answers will be simple: Whether it's the relentless cutting of teams and budgets, deals taking longer to move through pipeline or a decrease in demand across the market It has been... unpleasant I've been reflecting on my own performance this quarter and I'm OK with admitting I'm behind what I'd normally expect in Q1 But I'm also not beating myself up and here's why: 1. The client-product fit is extremely strong We've been talking about how bad this period will be since Q2 last year! So as a team, we decided to focus on revisiting the quality of our pipeline By refining our targeting and our messaging, we were able to attract more perfect-fit prospects than ever before And because the messaging was pain point focused messaging for right now, those prospects are converting into customers at an extremely satisfying rate 2. The infrastructure we built in Q1 is future-focused It's likely going to be a bad Q2 compared to historical performance too. Maybe even worse than we expected because of aftershocks from the emerging banking crisis That said, we fully expected it to be uncomfortable in Q2 too and made the choice to focus on building out foundations for new channels that would pay dividends in Q3 and Q4 when everything (we hope) picks up again What does that look like? – Building a total addressable market audience – I personally reviewed thousands of companies for fit – Built systems for getting in front of those companies today – Built systems internally for managing the different kinds of companies who we are already seeing fill our pipeline (it's a trickle, but it's an early sign) 3. We got problem focused and scrappy again We've been in years of plenty and that breeds an attitude of entitlement: "we do x and we get y" But the past 90-120 days have been all about trimming the fat in what we do We removed heaps of stuff that wasn't serving us in reaching our best customers, redistributed investment to channels that we're building, tried stuff that made everyone feel uncomfortable (see basically any post I've done since Jan 1 on LinkedIn 😂) It's been great to approach a bad year with positivity and proactivity Let's do it! === SaaS Marketing Bites is produced by B2B SaaS marketing agency Powered by Search. It's hosted by Head of Growth Marc Thomas. You can follow @iammarcthomas or Powered By Search CEO Dev Basu @devbasu on Twitter for more updates and marketing insights.  If you enjoyed this episode, you can do the following things right away:  1 Claim your Free SaaS Scale Session. If you’d like to work with us to turn your website into your best demo and trial acquisition platform, claim your FREE SaaS Scale Session. One of our growth experts will understand your current demand generation situation, and then suggest practical digital marketing strategies to double your demo and trial traffic and conversion fast. 2 If you’d like to learn the exact demand strategies we use for free, go to our blog or visit our resources section, where you can download guides, calculators, and templates we use for our most successful clients. 3 If you’d like to work with other experts on our team or learn why we have off the charts team member satisfaction score, then see our Careers page. 4 If you know another marketer who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via email, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook.