"Get to the choppa!"

This is a famous quote. Well, a relatively famous quote. At least to those that watch(ed) action movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I catch myself quoting him every now and then. Not intentionally. ?I’m also not using the exact same words and pronunciation. That is a unique talent of Arnold. But I have recently had conversations in which I heard myself say that it is important to get into the helicopter. What I mean by that is that it is important to zoom out. Get a helicopter perspective. Take some distance from what you are doing in that particular moment and look at the bigger picture (and see the peaks).

Every now and then this is needed. Especially when there is a big transformation going on. When many of the things that the team is doing is a first. New processes, new tooling, new ways of working, new ambition levels. Such a journey is never smooth sailing. There are frequent moments that you find yourself battling to meet a deadline, facing difficulties in getting things done. I see it happening in the team. In my own work as well. Of course. We are all heads-down into the subjects, into the tactics. Frantically trying to make it work. And sometimes you just face some blockers. An automation workflow that in hindsight is not functioning as expected, a new event management tool for which the integration may proof to be slightly more complex than anticipated, a new go-to-market process that is still in its infancy and therefor naturally does not cover all aspects of launching a new product, or data frenzy…….the time spent on making sense of the data to demonstrate impact on the pipeline…it’s all part of the challenges that a modern revenue marketing team faces.

We certainly face such challenges on a daily basis. At Aareon this is a team of more than 40 marketeers working across Europe. (I initially wrote ‘40+ marketeers’, but quickly realizing that it could be wrongly interpreted which would probably not be appreciated by some of the young talents in the team). A team that is moving mountains, has to face challenges head on as we transform the marketing function to one that is truly collaborative and a driving force of revenue growth.

Here’s to all the things gone wrong, to all the set-backs, to the blockers, the struggles and hardships. We know you will be back (is this another famous quote?). We will again face you head on.

And when we find ourselves being stuck (for a moment), we know it is time to get into that chopper. To look down from above, seeing the big picture. A picture that shows us the peaks, the massive progress that is already made:

• A rapid expansion of our MarTech stack, with of Hubspot as the center piece
• A new brand and product positioning rolled out internationally
• Completely modernized websites for the different product brands within the Group
• Implementation of a Demand Planning process which serves as the foundation for the marketing planning
• First successful use cases in the adoption of AI to accelerate marketing output and creativity
• All this while continuing to remain close to our customers via the many in-person and digital events

Not a small achievement. One that you recognize better when zooming out of the daily tasks. Thanks to all your teams for making this happen Pieter Van Heijst , Emilie Baugé ?sa Lundborg-Ling James Dilgul Peter Koerhuis Jesus Marqueta Sebastian Loska . Let's keep going.

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Thanks for reading. Share your quote or helicopter perspective in the comments…