Bold Bets:
Choose Your Strategy and Make It Work

At a board meeting, while managing a software company, I told our investors and board that I intended to cut our monthly marketing budget by 90%.

We were spending just over US$100,000 a month. I was proposing to remove most of that spending shortly after the meeting and change our approach completely.

I left a little room for the silence.

They were surprised and concerned, understandably. But I had a reason for the proposal and a plan for what would replace the spending. I wanted to build an affiliate partner network: businesses and website owners who would send us potential customers and receive a percentage of the sales they generated.

The board agreed. We cut the budget shortly afterwards, and I began building the network, one partner at a time. Over roughly two years, it grew to more than 3,500 partners sending us traffic.

That decision became an important contributor to the company’s success. But the announcement at the board meeting was only the beginning. Making the strategy work required sustained effort long after the excitement of the decision had passed.

I wanted a different approach

My concern was our dependence on buying advertising.

Suppose we spent $100 on a campaign and generated $200 in sales. Even before accounting for the costs of delivering the product, I questioned how durable that opportunity would be. If an advertising placement worked well for us, competitors could discover it too. More competition for the same space could increase prices and put pressure on our returns.

That was my assessment of the risk, rather than a prediction that every profitable campaign would inevitably stop working. Paid advertising can be useful. I wanted a stronger foundation for this particular business than continually finding traffic we could afford to buy.

A budget of $100,000 a month was substantial money. But in the US market we were targeting, I did not consider it enough to rely on broad brand building. We needed an approach that could produce commercially worthwhile sales.

The affiliate model offered a different relationship between spending and results. Partners would receive a share of the sales they helped generate, giving them a reason to promote our offer while linking their commission to an outcome.

It also gave us something we could develop over time: direct relationships with a large network of partners.

Choose a bet you can explain

I like finding a horse worth riding and giving it a serious effort. Spreading attention across too many initiatives can leave each one without enough resources to succeed.

But commitment needs a reason. Before asking the board to support the change, I needed to explain what concerned me about the existing approach, how the alternative would work and why it suited our business.

The bet was specific. We would shift much of our customer acquisition effort towards recruiting and developing partners who could benefit from selling our product.

That gave us a direction for our work. It also meant putting aside much of the advertising activity that had previously consumed our budget and attention.

Choosing a strategy has consequences. If every existing initiative continues unchanged and every new opportunity gets added to the list, the decision may have little practical effect. A focused bet requires choices about what receives your time, money and people.

The work behind the decision

The partner network took roughly two years to build.

I recruited partners one by one through hard work. There was no moment when making the announcement magically produced thousands of relationships. The strategy had to become a daily activity.

This is the part of bold decisions that interests me most. A boardroom proposal can sound impressive, but the business still has to deliver it. In our case, that meant finding potential partners, explaining the opportunity and building the network over time.

We managed those relationships directly. The partners still controlled their own websites and audiences, so we did not own every source of traffic. What we had built was a network we could work with and develop, rather than relying solely on advertising placements we purchased.

There were still costs, commissions and dependencies. The advantage was a different commercial structure and an expanding base of partner relationships.

By the time the network exceeded 3,500 partners, the original decision had become a substantial part of how the business attracted customers.

Give the strategy time and improve the execution

A focused strategy rarely arrives fully developed. You learn by putting it into practice.

In sales and marketing, an approach may need repeated adjustments before you crack the code. The offer may be sound, but the explanation is unclear. The audience may be right, but the timing is poor. A script may need work, or the follow-up may be letting promising enquiries disappear.

Changing those things can be part of making the strategy succeed.

The important question is whether you are learning. Are customers responding more positively? Is conversion improving? Are the economics moving in the right direction? What has the latest change told you?

Time alone does not improve a campaign. Testing, observation and useful adjustments can. If you keep changing everything at once, however, it becomes difficult to know what helped. Give each change a clear purpose and examine the result.

Commitment should give an approach enough attention to develop. It should also make you more interested in the evidence.

Be willing to change your own mind

Sometimes the problem goes beyond execution. The underlying strategy may be wrong for the market, the company or its resources.

When that becomes clear, you need to change direction, including when the original strategy was yours.

I see that as a normal part of managing a business. You made a decision with the information available. You acted, learned more and now need to decide again.

The difficult judgement is distinguishing an approach that needs refinement from one whose basic premise no longer makes sense. Poor early results can have several causes. You need to investigate them before either abandoning the strategy or committing more resources.

It helps to decide in advance what progress you expect to see, what you can afford to invest and what would cause you to reconsider. Those questions give the team a basis for discussing results without making every review a defence of somebody’s reputation.

Being committed to a business outcome should leave room to change how you achieve it.

Make your own bet concrete

You do not need to cut a six-figure marketing budget to make a focused strategic choice.

You might concentrate on one customer segment, build a partner channel, improve a particular offer or solve a delivery problem that limits growth. The scale depends on your business and what you can afford.

Start by identifying the problem or opportunity clearly. Explain why your chosen approach could work. Decide what you will stop or reduce to support it, and turn the strategy into practical responsibilities.

Then follow the results. Improve the execution where the evidence supports it, and reconsider the direction where it does not.

My affiliate-network decision was bold because it changed how we allocated resources and attracted customers. Its value came from the work that followed: roughly two years of building relationships behind one clear commercial idea.

For me, that is the appeal of a focused bet. Find something worth committing to, give it the resources and attention it deserves, and take responsibility for making it work.

Choose your strategy. Do the work. Keep learning.