Sudden Gains

How perseverance and consistency pay off in the end

Years ago, while studying psychology, I was introduced to sudden gains. It's a phenomenon that can occur during psychological treatment, where a patient or client experiences rapid, sizeable changes between sessions. Often, this happens over a period of, say, ten sessions, where after the first five, the client reports feeling no different. Then, suddenly, they experience a remarkable improvement so significant that after that, treatment results almost instantly plateau. 

Initially, experts speculated this reaction to be the result of a breakthrough in the most recent session. However, gradual research into the phenomenon proved nothing magically immediate about the process. It transpires that over the previous sessions, several things had occurred—several realizations, if you like, creating change over time. Something clicked for the client, and they felt better. I imagine a kind of mental switchboard; when specific levers are activated in the proper order, they create change. Now, we don't know upfront which levers. We can build theories and observe patterns amongst different people with backgrounds, but that takes time to explore and document.

Leveraging sales

I often consider sudden gains when coaching my salespeople. We're an enterprise B2B operation, so our sales process is complex, involving multiple stakeholders from different departments like marketing, procurement, legal, and even external parties or advisory firms. Here, numerous levers achieve a sale. This is where multi-channel and account-based marketing come into play. We must look at the account as a whole and convey the right messages to various stakeholders via multiple channels, often repeated, before the necessary levers grind into action. 

So when we look at how we landed our customers, it's usually a combination of them being intrigued by content like our eBooks or engaged with someone from sales while also hearing good things about us from their external consulting firm. Perhaps they read a favorable review on the Salesforce AppExchange. So all of these things slowly pulled levers, and while we don't necessarily know which ones, we develop theories, then test and learn. 

But it's different from one company and person to the next. And sometimes, it can even change over time. That is to say that the right levers for one person today might not be so tomorrow. Here is where the theory of sudden gains is observable, and it's something upon which we entrepreneurs (and GTM leaders in general) must analyze and focus.

Building a business

One of the challenges in building a business is the acceptance that it takes time. As startups, there's often an expectation that we must create an optimal business at break-neck speed to keep up with our fast-moving competitive environments and ecosystems. In our case, it’s MarTech (Marketing Technology)—a fast-paced space indeed. But it's not that simple. Building anything meaningful requires concerted and continued effort. We may not see results from many initiatives for some time, so we must trust our instinct while trying to improve continuously. 

Even today, we're still figuring many things out. I hope we'll always maintain this kind of learned vigilance and stay on our toes, mindful of how those switchboard levers can change over time. We must stay ahead of the game like that. We must even be willing to disrupt ourselves (but that’s a whole other article).

Of course, people get obsessed with fundraising or an excellent press release, but in the end, these are component results of much underlying concerted, hard work. That elemental process is the real journey—the stuff on which to focus and master. There's so much to learn, which, for me, at least, is one of the most rewarding things about building a company.

Pebble by pebble

As a child, I often spent time in the beautiful forest region of the Belgian Ardennes. I loved to build dams in the creeks and waterways, often causing inconvenience to unassuming kayakers. I would make these dams by throwing rocks and pebbles at the same spot. Of course, throwing stones into a wild waterway used for kayaking takes time before any pebbles breach the water's surface. You've to throw pebble after pebble before seeing any sign of your toil. But once the dam appears, it grows and takes shape above the water. With every new stone, the results become more visible. You might even think it's growing exponentially. At least, that's how it might look from above the surface. 

So I encourage fellow entrepreneurs not to give up too fast if they don't see results. With some consistent work and perseverance, eventually, a few pebbles cast into the river can grow into a mighty dam—much to the dismay of passing kayakers. ;)