Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from inside the evolving world of adtech.
After 25 years in high-growth startups, I’ve come to one conclusion: there are only two kinds of problems: revenue problems and everything else. That’s why every organization must cultivate and value Revenue IQ.
We’ve all heard of Emotional IQ: the ability to perceive, communicate, and connect with others. In sports, people talk about “Basketball IQ,” meaning awareness of the game, what’s happening around you, and how to maneuver for maximum advantage. Revenue IQ is the set of qualities, values, and behaviors that enable individuals to maximize company revenue.
Qualities of Revenue IQ:
- Urgency and drive: A deep sense of urgency around revenue is essential. Every day of delay is a day of delayed revenue.
- Be the expert: Industry and product expertise require constant learning and hard work.
- Master your craft: Know your role and master the skills to make the greatest contribution to revenue.
- Skate to where the puck is going: When you work with urgency and expertise, you can anticipate market shifts and detect new opportunities. This transforms companies, as Amazon did with AWS.
- No egos, no assholes: Getting to the right answer requires domain understanding, open communication, collaboration, and market feedback. Ego blocks these processes and kills innovation.
Revenue IQ applies to every role, from sales to engineering to finance:
Sales leaders
Sales leaders need to personify Revenue IQ, and cultivate and train their teams in the same model. Sales leaders must also be able to identify talent that has Revenue IQ potential. These people can come from all walks of life, but they stand out almost immediately because they always seem to find the next deal, or be working on the next “out of nowhere” opportunity. Motivate and mentor this talent, and the organization will get 100X ROI on each person with a high Revenue IQ.
Salespeople
Revenue IQ for salespeople means understanding and executing all aspects of the sales process, from product/industry knowledge to client identification, to outbound prospecting, to pitching and follow-up meetings through the close. A nose for revenue opportunities and the ability to consistently hit revenue targets are essential characteristics of good salespeople.
Customer Success/Account Management
These teams are about growing revenue, not just managing it. Therefore, they must be built with Revenue IQ in mind. It also means connecting patterns - recognizing issues and opportunities across customers to help the organization stay close to the market.
Product and Engineering
Everyone in the company must understand revenue objectives and be able to connect the dots between what they are doing and that revenue goal. Product managers must be experts in their industry and connect the dots between product capabilities and revenue/growth opportunity. Engineers must force themselves to step back and understand the connection between the features they are building and revenue.
Finance
For any growth company, the name of the game is to innovate, grow, then optimize. If you try to optimize too early, you kill innovation, growth, or both.
Marketers
Ironically, marketers often have the lowest Revenue IQ. They must understand the revenue objectives and connect them to their marketing strategies. For example, in traditional media buying, success is measured through reach and frequency against target demos, or GRPs (Gross Rating Points). These abstract KPIs drive literally tens of billions of dollars in annual ad spend, yet they have no connection to revenue. Revenue IQ in marketing means connecting all activities and investments back to revenue impact, with a sense of urgency to drive material ROI for the company.
In conclusion, companies must cultivate Revenue IQ to succeed. Every team member needs urgency around revenue and clarity about their relationship to it. The right answer isn’t driven by the biggest title or the biggest ego. Revenue IQ can transform a company by identifying market patterns and helping shape strategy with the potential to reinvent the business.
Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from inside the evolving world of adtech—cutting through the noise to focus on what really drives outcomes. Subscribe here.
