Awareness of Awareness

Learning to Align My Sales Process with the Bowtie - starting with Awareness

As I work toward aligning my sales process with the bowtie model, I’m discovering some valuable lessons along the way. One area that’s front and center for me right now is Awareness. It's the first step of any buyer’s journey, but what I’ve come to realize is that Awareness isn't as simple as getting someone to know your name—it’s about helping your prospects move through two critical stages: problem-aware and solution-aware.

In this article, I’m going to share what I’ve been learning as I experiment with LinkedIn ads, refine my approach to lead generation, and strive to hit my goal of $83K MRR by the end of the year.

Awareness Has Two Phases: Problem-Aware vs. Solution-Aware

One of my biggest realizations lately is that Awareness has layers. The first step is helping prospects become problem-aware. For the sales leaders I’m targeting, this could mean they don’t even realize that their Salesforce or HubSpot setup is inhibiting traction. They might not yet recognize how broken their tech stack is.

Once they’re aware of the problem, I have to help them become solution-aware. Do they know that Fractional RevOps is a thing? Do they know they can hire someone like me to solve their Salesforce or HubSpot issues without the overhead of a full-time employee? For me, Awareness isn’t just about brand recognition—it’s about guiding prospects through these two key stages.

Constraints: What’s Blocking the System?

As a RevOps person, I think of Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success as a Revenue Engine System. Just like any other system, it’s only as efficient as its least efficient process. Right now, my biggest constraint is a lack of discovery calls. My conversion rate from discovery to closed-won is solid (20-25%), but I need more meetings to hit my revenue goals.

This is where constraints come into play. The key is to focus on solving the largest constraint first because that’s the one blocking the whole system. In my case, the constraint is new meetings. But once that gets solved, another issue could pop up—like realizing I don’t have a great way to track why prospects are booking these meetings so I can follow up properly.

It’s one of my favorite parts of being in RevOps: We’re so good at solutioning, you’ll have a whole new set of problems!

Rethinking My KPI for Awareness

Another big realization for me is that I’ve been tracking the wrong metric for Awareness. I’ve been focused on booked meetings, but I now see that’s more of a lagging indicator. If my biggest driver of new meetings is actually direct messages (DMs), and the biggest driver of DMs is profile views, then that’s the KPI I should be focusing on.

Shout out to Steven Morell at Teamfluence for helping me understand this. LinkedIn Premium’s analytics allow me to track profile views and direct messages, but I’ve also realized I need to focus on the input that drives those: comments.

I’ve been using my 5x5 Method, which is simple but incredibly effective. It’s about leaving five thoughtful comments on five influencers in your target persona’s domain, five days a week. People often assume publishing content is the key, but I’ve learned that engaging with your target persona’s network is far more effective.

Leveraging Data from Teamfluence

Speaking of Teamfluence, their data has been a game-changer for me. They’ve shown that the more intertwined you are in your target persona’s network, the higher your connection request acceptance rate is, and the more familiar your name becomes. For me, my sweet spot is sales leaders who are transitioning from founder-led sales to a more structured sales-led growth model. I’m most effective with B2B tech companies in the 30-80 employee range, and that’s where I’m focusing my efforts.

LinkedIn Ads: A Learning Curve

I also took the plunge into LinkedIn Ads recently, using their new AI-helper tool. I’ll be honest—it saved me a ton of time by suggesting headlines, intro text, and even images. It felt like I had a mini copywriter by my side. But despite getting 850 website clicks for $650 in ad spend, I ended up with… zero booked meetings.

What went wrong? The issue, as I’ve come to realize, was that my ads weren’t actually aligned with the customer journey. I was targeting the Awareness phase, but my call to action (CTA) was in the Education phase. I was asking people who barely knew I existed to book an intro call.

Lesson learned: People need time to get to know me before they’re ready to hop on a call.

Aligning Ads to the Buyer’s Journey

This brings me to my next hypothesis. I need to create ads that help my prospects discover a problem first. I’m toying with the idea of making the next ad campaign about aligning their sales process to the buyer’s journey (because that’s meta, right?).

I’ll also be focusing more on making sure my ads are tailored to attract the kinds of sales leaders my team loves working with—those who will get promotions and raises because we helped them execute on their vision.

Networking Through Pavilion’s GTM 2024

In addition to digital tactics, I’m also attending Pavilion’s GTM 2024 conference this month. My goal? Start conversations. I’m not planning on pitching my services to every sales leader I meet, but rather to let natural conversations flow. I’ve found that when you’re networking in a pool of ideal prospects, they’ll eventually ask you what you do—and then the conversation feels authentic.

And yes, I’ve doubled the number of stickers I had last time. (I’m a big believer in swag.)

Final Thoughts

If you’re reading this, take it from me: Don’t assume disco calls will magically get scheduled just because someone sees your ad on LinkedIn. Awareness is a journey, and it’s about guiding your prospects through the right stages. Whether you’re engaging them with thoughtful comments, experimenting with ads, or starting conversations at conferences, the goal is to create genuine connections and move them through problem-awareness to solution-awareness.

On a final note, this process has required me to embrace a beginner’s mindset. Yes, I’ve sold millions of dollars in real estate, generated tens of millions in pipeline, and even raised $74,000 at UMass Amherst. But that doesn’t mean I know how to sell anything to anyone. And, spoiler alert: throwing money at the pipeline generation problem isn’t the easy way out—there’s a whole learning curve ahead.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is real, my friends. Stay humble, stay curious, and keep solving for constraints.