Strategies to Boost BAL 2025 Performance

In 2025, sustainability won't sell itself. "Doing the right thing" won't get your project funded. If you're leading strategy, pitching a new line item, or defending impact budget you need a business case that speaks the language of finance, ops, and leadership. Here’s your cheat sheet. 6 proven angles to justify sustainability and real-world proof points to back them up: 💸 1. Cost Savings → Energy efficiency: Vodafone UK & Ericsson cut 5G power use by up to 33% at London sites. → Circularity: Patagonia’s Worn Wear turns repair into a revenue-positive loyalty loop. 📈 2. Revenue Growth → Trust drives sales: Compare Ethics' AI platform boosted brand revenue up to 1% through verified green claims. → Purpose = market share: Despite logo fatigue (only 4% of Brits trust them), verified sustainability builds buyer confidence. 🛡 3. Risk Reduction → Avoid fines and fallout: Align early with CSRD, ESPR, and rising global disclosure rules. → Resilience strategy: Mitigate supply chain and reputational risk before it escalates. 💡 4. Innovation Driver → Tech unlocks impact: Lufthansa, with SAP & McKinsey, cut costs and carbon by digitising spend and emissions data. → Efficiency gains: AI and automation create faster, smarter pathways to sustainability. 🤝 5. Customer & Talent Retention → Hiring edge: 1 in 10 job seekers prioritises sustainability in job descriptions. → Buyer behavior: 73% of EU consumers say environmental impact influences their purchases. 🌍 6. Capital Access → Investor alignment: 90% of global individual investors (per Morgan Stanley) want sustainability in their portfolios. Bottom line: Sustainability in 2025 isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a performance driver and your business case needs to reflect that. 🔗 Want the high-res PDF + source links in your DM? ♻️ Reshare this post to help more teams build better business cases. 👤 Follow Abbie Morris

Most GTM strategies fail because they're built for 2020, not 2025. I’ve been fortunate to speak to 50+ founders and operators in 2025 about their GTM. Here's what actually works when buyers have changed, budgets are tight, and your engineering team is drowning in technical debt that's killing your sales velocity. 73% of GTM leaders say their biggest challenge isn't finding prospects, it's getting their own internal systems to work together. Your sales team promises features that engineering can't deliver on time. Your marketing team drives leads that your CRM can't properly track. Your customer success team fights fires that better technical execution could prevent. Sound familiar? After working with 20+ growth-stage companies since the start 2024, here are the 5 strategies that separate winners from the "we'll figure it out next quarter" crowd: 1. Audit Your Technical GTM Stack Stop layering tools on broken foundations. I watched a VP of Marketing spend $180K on a new marketing automation platform while their basic lead routing was broken. Fix your data flow before scaling your outbound. 2. Align Engineering Roadmaps with Sales Promises Make your CTO and Head of Sales best friends. Revenue dies in the gap between "we can build that" and "when exactly?" One product company increased their close rate 34% just by syncing product releases with sales commitments. 3. Build Buyer-Centric Content, Not Feature Lists Your prospects don't care about your API. They care about sleeping better at night. The best performing content I've seen focuses on business outcomes, not technical specifications. Remember what your buyer persona’s pain points are. 4. Create Cross-Functional Revenue Accountability Marketing, Sales, CS, and Product should share the same revenue number. Not just "pipeline contribution." When everyone owns the full customer lifecycle, magic happens. 5. Measure GTM Velocity, Not Just Volume Track how fast prospects move through your funnel, not how many you stuff into it. Velocity metrics reveal bottlenecks that volume metrics hide. Many founders and operators optimize for looking busy instead of being effective. They add more tools, more campaigns, more meetings, when what they really need is better alignment between their technical execution and their go-to-market strategy.

2025 won’t be about what you add, it will be about what you remove. The winners won't be those who add more complexity. They'll be the ones who master the art of removing friction. But, HOW do we do that for both sides of the revenue equation for buyers and customer facing teams? 1️⃣ 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: • Make information discoverable (think Netflix, not library) • Enable self-service exploration (let them learn their way) • Connect every touchpoint (stop asking them to repeat themselves) • Provide instant answers (or better yet, anticipate questions) • Match their preferred buying motion (not your selling motion) 2️⃣ 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘆 Customer facing teams 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘀: • Bring insights to where they work (not another tab) • Surface what's working (and who it's working for) • Automate the routine (so they focus on relationships) • Make best practices obvious (not buried in playbooks) • Connect client signals to seller actions (right action, right time) 3️⃣ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆: • Connect platforms that should talk • Remove duplicate data entry • Automate the predictable • Surface exceptions that need attention Remember: Every extra click Every delayed response Every disconnected conversation Every scattered resource ...is friction that stands between your buyers and their success (and your teams and their wins). True enablement as a concept, not the team, isn't a function or a department—it's a strategic pillar that does two things masterfully: 1. Eliminates barriers that slow buyers down 2. Amplifies what helps sellers win 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀: • Buyers get clarity instead of complexity • Sellers deliver value instead of managing processes • Teams achieve momentum instead of maintaining systems The future belongs to companies who understand that the best technology doesn't add steps—it removes them. The best strategies don't create new hurdles—they eliminate existing ones. Success in 2025 won't be measured by how much you can add to your tech stack. It will be measured by how much friction you can remove from your revenue engine. The real unlock? AI isn't just another tool—it's the invisible thread that weaves everything together: • Maps and predicts friction before it happens (across every journey) • Amplifies human expertise (instead of replacing it) • Learns from every interaction (what works, what doesn't) • Automates the routine (so humans focus on relationships) • Brings insights to every moment (right context, right time) • Connects signals across systems (no more blind spots) Any and all tech that I advise for, promote, consult, or evangelize for does this. Old tech requires people, (buyers and sellers) to go to the tech. AI/new tech GOES TO THE HUMAN. Tech that works seamlessly in your workflow instead of another tab or step will win. My mantra next year? Remove friction. I’m not the best at it, but Dagnabit, I’m working on it. #Enablement #ai

Subscription merchants preparing a payment optimization strategy for 2025 should focus on three critical pillars: 1. Develop a robust data environment. A deep understanding of payments and customer data is critical for performance monitoring and improvement. - Build dashboards, reports, and alerts to automate insights and reveal optimization opportunities. Consider solutions like Pagos or Optimized Payments if you don't have the resources to do this yourself. - Use granular filters (e.g., customer cohorts, products, PSPs, acquiring entities, BINs, card brand, card type, billing frequency...) to analyze data effectively. - Employ A/B testing to assess the impact of changes. 2. Fine-tune the customer experience. The payment experience starts when customers first encounter your brand, not just when their card is charged. Poor experiences lead to higher churn. - Ensure explicit consent for subscriptions to reduce fraud, chargebacks, and refund rates. - Clearly disclose terms during checkout, in receipts, and emails. - Offer easy controls like cancellations or pauses. Proactively suggest pauses for inactive users to build trust and prevent churn. - These steps enhance customer satisfaction and approval rates. 3. Maximize payment environment best practices. Once your data and customer experience are solid, focus on refining your payment environment. - Use payment orchestration platforms, either proprietary or third party (e.g., IXOPAY, Spreedly, Gr4vy ) to optimize routing and retries at the BIN level. - Implement tools like Butter Payments or FlexPay to improve retry logic and recapture failed payments. Your in-house logic isn't going to keep up with changes in the ecosystem without considerable overhead internally. - Make sure your retry strategy and other payment practices aren't harming your merchant integrity with issuers, leading to lower approval rates - Use account updater tools and migrate to network tokens as they become available. - Offer the right payment methods and authorization currencies globally - Mitigate fraud with comprehensive tools, as high fraud rates harm approval rates. Use tools from Verifi Inc.and Ethoca to reduce your chargebacks, but keep on eye on your fraud notifications too (are you even ingesting this data?) - Share enhanced data with issuers (e.g., American Express, Capital One) - Use correct MCCs for your business. Good luck optimizing, and give me a shout if you want a second pair of eyes on your strategy.

I’ve been doing SEO since 1997. My approach today has evolved radically (and continues to adapt with each new Google or AI update). Here are 14 things you should focus on in 2025: 👇 1. 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝗘𝗢 Make sure your brand has a clear, consistent entity description across the web. LLMs and Google both build their understanding from semantic consistency. 2. 𝗔𝗜 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Backlinks still matter—but citations in ChatGPT and AI Overviews are the new trust signals. If you’re not being mentioned, you’re invisible. 3. 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 LLMs weigh what’s said about you just as much as what you publish. Secure positive mentions across press, partners, and affiliates. 4. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 Mine support logs, reviews, and interviews. Real customer language is fuel for FAQs, FUQs, and product positioning. 5. 𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 Think subject → object → predicate. Write so both humans and machines clearly understand relationships between entities. 6. 𝗙𝗨𝗤𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗔𝗤𝘀 Frequently Unasked Questions are the goldmine. Fill content gaps others ignore and LLMs will reward you with visibility. 7. 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗟𝗟𝗠 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 Track where your brand is showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. It’s the new rank tracking. 8. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Mention competitors on your own pages. Counterintuitive, but it lets you frame the narrative when AI scrapes comparisons. 9. 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: 𝗧𝗢𝗙𝗨, 𝗠𝗢𝗙𝗨, 𝗕𝗢𝗙𝗨 Don’t just optimize for conversions. Make sure your brand shows up across the whole buyer journey—from awareness to decision. Add value at each step. 10. 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, podcasts. AI pulls from all of it. If you’re not present, you don’t exist in the results. 11. 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀 Stop chasing clicks. Focus on impressions, citations, and sentiment. They’re leading indicators of future growth. 12. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 From Wikidata to affiliates, make sure partners, profiles, and press use the same language to describe your brand. 13. 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵-𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 Don’t just chase head terms. Optimize for the 10–15 word “prompt-like” queries; these drive AI citations and conversions. 14. 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵, 𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗲, 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗮𝘁 Audit, identify gaps, optimize, and measure every 90 days. The fundamentals haven’t changed, only the platforms. SEO is evolving. So should your strategy. __ #LLMOptimization #SEO #growthmarketing

🚀The best time to plan your 2025 success isn't January 1st.  It's right now.  After testing various approaches over the years, these 8 strategies help me achieve a lot more with the time I have but I do so by taking time over the holidays for deep reflection and think time. 1️⃣ Start with Reflection 🪞 Take stock of 2024's achievements. Every milestone, skill gained, and lesson learned builds your foundation for 2025. Document wins across work, health, relationships – they're fuel for future growth. Document things that you had hoped to achieve but could not. What got in the way? 2️⃣ Design Your 360° Vision for what 2025 should look like🌟 Map goals across key life dimensions: ➡️Career Growth ➡️Learning & Development ➡️Key Relationships ➡️Health & Fitness ➡️Skills & Learning ➡️Financial Freedom ➡️Mental Wellbeing ➡️Personal Joy 3️⃣ Make space for your "Stretch Zone" 🎯 Set goals that energize but don't overwhelm. Replace "become an industry expert" with "speak at two conferences and publish monthly insights." Ambitious yet achievable. 4️⃣ Build Success Rituals ⚙️ Convert goals into daily habits: ➡️Want to innovate? Block 30 minutes for creative thinking ➡️Aiming for growth? Schedule daily learning time ➡️Building relationships? Create weekly connection rituals 5️⃣ Execute Strategically 📝 Break down 2025 into: ➡️Yearly Vision ➡️Quarterly Milestones ➡️Monthly Targets ➡️Weekly Actions ➡️Daily Non-negotiables 6️⃣ Embrace Adaptation ➿ Markets shift. Priorities change. The goal isn't perfect execution – it's consistent progress. Stay flexible while keeping your vision clear. 7️⃣ Celebrate Milestones 🏆 Track and celebrate progress. Each small win builds momentum toward bigger achievements. Document successes, learn from setbacks. 8️⃣ Practice Self-Compassion ❤️ Growth isn't linear. Some goals will take longer, others might need adjustment. Focus on progress, not perfection. Bonus: Don't jump back into work on Jan 2nd. Ease into the year with careful time for planning on your first day or two back to work. 💭 What key lesson from 2024 is shaping your approach to 2025? Share below. #2024Reflection #2025Goals #PersonalGrowth #Success #CareerDevelopment

2024: Creative is the new targeting. 2025: Creative is STILL the targeting. The rules of the game haven’t changed—creative remains the driving force behind high-performing ads. My 6-step creative process continues to deliver results. Want to steal it? Here’s how it works: Step 1: Research The foundation of every great ad is research. - Analyze historical performance data. - Study your competitors. - Gather customer feedback and reviews. - Organize insights around your customers' pain points to create messaging that resonates. Step 2: Brief A great creative starts with a great brief. - Include ad copy, visual examples, aspect ratios, and audience targeting details. - Make it prescriptive—clear briefs lead to better execution. - Prioritize tasks based on performance metrics and deadlines. Step 3: Production & Editing Your designers bring the vision to life, producing the creative and making necessary post-production edits. Step 4: Quality Assurance (QA) Before launch, ensure every creative aligns with your brand and messaging. Make final tweaks to avoid mistakes later. Step 5: Launch Content Deploy your ad creative on the chosen platform(s). - Monitor performance metrics closely. - Use consistent naming conventions to simplify analysis. Step 6: Analyze Performance Measure success against your KPIs: - Spend amount, purchase amount, and cost per purchase. - Creative-specific KPIs like video hooks, average play time, and click-through rates. Compare results to benchmarks, extract insights, and return to Step 1 to refine and optimize continuously. Creative is—and always will be—the key to scaling your ads. Let this process guide you to consistent wins in 2025 and beyond. — If you’re looking for help in ad creative development to maximize performance, please DM me.

"What can make my team more effective in 2025?" I'd love to share some practical advice to help your teams become more effective in 2025. This is based on guidance I talk about more in my "Leading Effective Eng. Teams" book (https://leet.addy.ie) but hope is valuable: 1. Everyone should understand the customer and their needs "If you want to create a great product, you have to start by understanding the people who will use it." In addition to understanding the business, empathy and understanding of your users is absolutely vital. One way to foster this is have the team (e.g. engineers) participate in customer support occasionally. This provides direct insight into user experiences, leading to more user-centric solutions. 2. Foster autonomy and ownership Proactively find somewhere in your projects where each team member can (1) have a real stake in and (2) be both engaged and excited about. Empower team members by assigning them ownership of specific areas related to this work. Give them space to own, succeed, fail and most importantly grow. "The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." 3. Cultivate psychological safety Create an environment where team members feel safe to express ideas, ask questions, and acknowledge mistakes without fear of retribution. This openness encourages innovation and learning. Psychological safety in teams can actually create happiness when done well. If your team doesn't have this safety, especially at a pivotal time like this AI moment, you won't get the best ideas shared. 4. Encourage incremental progress with milestones Break down projects into clear milestones (with deadlines, even if flexible) to help teams focus on achievable goals and maintain momentum. This promotes a sense of accomplishment and continuous delivery. I'm a huge fan of setting a date you ideally want to ship by. A team with psychological safety will give it their all, while knowing it will (likely) be okay if we need to adjust. "Little by little, one travels far." 5. Align with a shared purpose A clear sense of purpose motivates team members and guides decision-making. If you're a manager, your reports are either engaged because the work is interesting or the product and mission is meaningful to them. As a manager or lead, you should make sure the shared purpose is clear to all. If the mission is fuzzy or unclear ("why are we doing this? are we still going to be relevant in a year?") work to make the direction as clear as you can and have remaining fuzziness be intentional. "Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction." Wrapping up... Thank you for reading my content this year. I was pleasantly surprised to find my book below in a small-town shop while on vacation today. If you pick it up, I hope you find advice such as what was in this post useful. Wishing you and your teams a very happy new year! #motivation #leadership #softwareengineering

How to outperform in 2025 & beyond? Likely one of the most frequently asked questions by our FMCG CEOs clients, especially in this unprecedented context 7 brief thoughts: 1) Remember the lessons learnt from the last 'lost decade' (organic growth is the key TSR driver coupled with modest continuous margin improvement, mega M&A is the key shareholder value destruction driver) 2) Move from a top-down (portfolio adjustments, increase in A&P on top brand/ country couples, acceleration in innovation) to a bottom-up growth acceleration approach fully embedded in the organization (cf. Zero-Based-Growth - https://lnkd.in/er9PS_FU) 3) Craft tailored strategies for Emerging Markets (2/3 global share of FMCG growth, where top 50 FMCGs lose most MS (cf. https://lnkd.in/e4_eFdcM) 4) Address the increasing value at stake behind e-commerce (elevated share of growth, increase in cost of growth, increasing competition) with a rigorous consumer-back approach aimed to unlock incremental omnichannel value (cf. https://lnkd.in/ePw97bjP) 5) Take advantage of the increasing differential between cost of organic growth & cost of inorganic growth to accelerate synergistic high ROCE bolt-on M&A (cf. https://lnkd.in/ekUx5jyA) 6) Address the areas with the highest future-back value-at-stake: => DTC & Gatekeepers Ecosystem on Beauty, Pet, VMS - cf. https://lnkd.in/eGGVyEcM => EB2B in fragmented channels (impulse Beverage, CHC, professional - https://lnkd.in/epk3A6Mk 7) Strategize rigorously Sustainability (future back value at stake quantification with true costing of water/ co2 but not only; strategic intent commensurate to the value at stake, tailored enablers) More on all the above in our latest publication: Open letter to FMCG CEOs: 7 Thoughts To Outperform In 2025 & Beyond And 10 Predictions For 2025-30 https://lnkd.in/eCJUJWqv Exciting times 𝐓𝐨 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 30,000+ 𝐅𝐌𝐂𝐆 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞r: https://lnkd.in/eR8vDpvE 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝘀: FF&A solves the most complex strategic problems of the world largest FMCG companies across Corporate Strategy, Organic Growth, Digital RTM (Ecommerce, DTC and EB2B) and M&A