Why CAC is Usually Irrelevant in Early-ish Stage SaaS Companies (vs. B2C Where It’s Critical)
I recently meet with a very high-growth “XaaS” company. Not software as a service, but one that provides some version of humans-as-a-service. And after huge top-line growth, they were struggling now with CAC. They’d fueled their hyper growth with a combination of Adwords and Groupons and Facebook Ads and Twitter Cards. And when that party […]
How to Ensure Your First 2 Sales Reps Actually Work Out
A long-time reader, first time caller recently wrote in to ask a question that pretty much everyone asks some variant of: If you had to force rank these items in terms of what we should primarily be looking for in these first sales reps, how would you rank them? – has sold SaaS before (as […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part III
This is the third and the last post in the three-post series on challenges associated with sales of disruptive platforms such as Big Data and how you can effectively work with your prospects and others to mitigate them. If you missed the previous posts the first post was about “why buy anything” and the second […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part II
This is the second post in the three-post series on challenges associated with sales of disruptive platforms such as Big Data and how you can effectively work with your prospects and others to mitigate them. If you missed the first post in the series it was about “why buy anything.” This post is about “why […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part I
I think of enterprise software into two broad categories – products or solutions and platform. The simplest definition of platform is you use that to make a solution that you need. While largely I have been a product person I have had significant exposure to enterprise platform sales process. I have worked with many sales […]
Here’s Why a Booming Tech Market May Fool You into Thinking You’re Successful
Since 2009 we’ve been in an unequivocal bull market. Venture capitalists have raised increasing amounts of money from their investors (LPs) every year. An impressive number of new VCs have been created – most of them with new seed funds. We’ve had an explosion of alternate sources of financing from crowd-sourcing, angels, accelerators, incubators, corporates, corporate […]
Helping Startups Understand Salespeople & the Sales Culture
Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. My first startup was […]
The $2,000 Customer Service Call
This morning, I had the misfortune of having my car’s transmission conk out while I was on the freeway. Fortunately, I was able to exit the freeway and park on the street, where I could safely call GEICO for roadside assistance. But this post isn’t about the $2,000+ I’m going to have to spend on […]
Don’t Ever Make Anyone “Head of Sales / Marketing / Engineering / Whatever” in SaaS
A few months ago, I gave a great SaaS Founder CEO a Gift. A real gift. This founder CEO was at about $1m in ARR, doing well, but with only a smidge of angel funding and limited resources. And I gave him an insanely great VP of Sales candidate. An amazing fit for his company, […]
Why The Greatest Sales Teams Just Kill It On Dec 31. When Everyone Else Has Gone Home.
There are some real mysteries in SaaS. Even now that I understand them, I still seem them as a bit of a mystery. Let me list a few: Why do customers buy a ton of seats up front, when they could start with a few and buy more later? Why do customers buy so […]
Everything is Sort of the Same at a Given ACV (Annual Contract Value)
As you try to hire up for your SaaS company, you’re going to faced with a lot of choices and trade-offs. No hire is the perfect package. Do you take a risk on someone a little more junior than you’d like? Someone from a company a little larger than you’d like? Someone from a very […]
Around $4-$5m in ARR, You Probably Will Need a Chief MRR Officer
At Dreamforce, Gainsight, a leading SaaS company/service for managing customer success, was kind enough to invite me to speak at their session on Customer Success together with Dan Steinman, their COO. Prior to Gainsight, Dan was VP of Customer Success at $100m+ ARR and IPO’d SaaS leader Marketo and really knows his stuff, as you’d […]
If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. I’ve done it right, and I’ve done it wrong. When it’s good … it’s just so good. It all clicks. But when you make a mis-hire, it’s about the worst mis-hire you can make. Because you’ll lose not just […]
How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. And No, It Wasn’t Magic.
Recently I was fortunate enough to give the final talk at the inaugural Sales Hacker Conference, entitled How to Hire a Great VP Sales (And Not Screw It Up). The Sales Hacker Conference was terrific, with several hundred sales process afficionados in attendance, and speakers including VP, Sales from Hubspot, Box, RelateIQ, and other leaders, […]
Curse of the ‘Middlers’: Why Happiness Officers Can’t Stand In for True Sales Professionals
We’ve spent a ton of time on SaaStr talking about how to think about sales and sales teams; revenue/demand-focused marketing; and keeping those customers over their lifetime. A more fundamental question we’ve touched on but mostly bypassed is this: Do I Even Need Salespeople at All? I mean, Atlassian doesn’t have any. Can’t I just […]
