SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

But while the brand and market penetration is strong, the business model is challenging. It forced reps to close 13% more locations per sales rep. At least for now: Sales continues to grow at an epic 29% at $1.5 It did what it had to with its sales team. We’ve all used Toast 10s or 100s of times by now.

Scale 311

Scale Payment Solutions Payments Sales 311

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics. Expensify, Netsuite, New Relic, Slack follow this model. Outside sales teams chase larger accounts, and may close 1-3 per year.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

Owner.com has distinguished itself by consolidating dozens of point solutions into a single, integrated platform that helps small business owners compete effectively online. Sales up 22%! A huge congrats to Team @owner for a record start to 2025!! New restaurants up +31% in 1 month! Join a rocketship.

AI 227

AI Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Systems Review 227

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

Existing distribution channels: While startups are racing to build distribution, incumbents already have it However, the business model disruption around AI pricing remains a challenge for larger players to navigate.

AI 290

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 290

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

I want to spend a few posts and some time on sales comp plans for early-ish stage SaaS companies (up to say $20m in ARR). Because almost all the sales comp plans you are going to read about, and learn about are great — for SaaS companies that are well post-Scale. And buy an M8 Convertible or Model S Performance.

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Business Model 328

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? Lesson #1: Just Say No Once he joined, Kyle quickly discovered that Owner had a leaky bucket and had either bad or no targeting on prospects, was closing a lot of poor-fit customers, and there were a lot of miss set expectations from sales so customer handoff was sketchy at best.

Scale 306

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 306

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Should I Design a Sales Reps Compensation Plan at Just $10k MRR ? Figuring out your very first sales comp plan when you don’t have a repeatable process or much revenue is confusing. And The business model does have to work. but You don’t have the capital to invest here … the rep has to be accretive.

Compensation 246

Compensation Scale Sales Business Model 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

But here’s the real kicker: PLG isn’t just another sales motion. It’s a fundamental business architecture that requires rethinking your entire customer journey. The “SaaS Era” – Online trials, SEM/SEO, inside sales GTM 3.0: Who doesn’t want that?

Enterprise readiness 147

Enterprise readiness Enterprise compliance Acquisition 147

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Together they share the high-velocity techniques they use to maximize sales, including: Sell to SMBs Use round-robin to assign accounts, but you’re not sure if it’s optimal Are stuck in a world of geographic territories Spend a lot of time manually building territories Gusto thinks of the rev ops capability as the brain center and engine builder.

Scale 277

Scale Sales Marketing Construction 277

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2021

For the past 10 years, I’ve been a sales advisor for the portfolio companies of early stage venture capital firm True Ventures. It’s fascinating work for a sales mind like mine that’s focused on helping brilliant people turn ideas into revenue-driving businesses. . A Pair of Sales Development Representatives.

Sales Hiring 252

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Sales 252

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Put users at the center of product decisions, innovate with a hypothesis-driven approach, then align your business model with user interests. This will help you develop a more aligned product with the messaging, marketing, and sales to unlock product-led growth (PLG). Build an exceptional product with your users. Key Takeaways

Enterprise 262

Enterprise Scale Sales Communication 262

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

Wondering how your SaaS business got slapped with a multi-million dollar sales tax bill from one or multiple states? Probably because you, like so many other SaaS companies out there, didn’t even know you had to collect and remit sales tax. How one prominent SaaS company learned sales tax the hard way.

New CTO 232

New CTO SaaS Sales CTO 232

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What do they think the key drivers of the business will be? Does the model even make sense? Do they really understand their business model? Do they really understand how marketing works, and/or sales works? Of course any early-stage (or even late-stage) model is “wrong”.

Investment 308

Investment Sales Hiring Business Model Sales 308

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2022

A successful, growing business depends as much on its metrics as it does on its people. Founder of Marketo, Phil Hernandez, and Marketo’s former EVP of Sales, Bill Binch, have had decades of experience tackling precisely these issues. Even if monthly quotas don’t seem to fit your business model, Bill would suggest it anyway.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2C 245

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2020

Today, the company is a massively successful SaaS business and another example of the flywheel business model that creates demand at the individual user and leverages that interest to sell department and company-wide contracts. Sales Efficiency. Asana pays back its sales and marketing outlay in 10.5 SmartSheet.

Payment Solutions 363

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourced Development Payment Services 363

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2024

Plus, three of the closing sessions will be open to the broader audience of Annual this year: Customer Success in Different Business Models with Slack, Mulesoft, and OpenAI : In this session , these three CS leaders will discuss how customer success strategies differ across various business models.

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Finance Business Model Forecasting 299

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 22, 2023

The main challenges facing B2B startups today are decreases in seat counts as their customers downsize & slower sales cycles which creates volatility in bookings , which has caused more layoffs than an anytime in the last four years. Longer-term contracts & steadier enterprise buyers help smooth shocks for B2B companies.

B2C 321

B2C B2B Headcount Business Model 321

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Many businesses struggle to strike a balance between freemium’s light-touch customer engagement with the more involved enterprise sales process. For every company that’s executing the freemium model successfully, there are hundreds more that struggle and the tension it can create between sales, marketing, and product teams.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review 205

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

This is the secret sauce to Atlassian’s business model. Spends less than 20% of its revenues on sales and marketing. But still, spending half of what most of its peers do on sales & marketing is the secret to Atlassian being so profitable. 8,800 employees, so an impressive ~$350,000 in revenue per employee.

Scale 289

Scale Headcount Cloud Forecasting 289

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

And oftentimes, sales complaints and costs (sales much prefers deals to close faster, usually). And once you go down the path of not having a free trial, or not having one anymore … and engineering and sales may push you to take it out … you’ll never get it back. Freemium is a business model.

Scale 336

Scale Engineering Enterprise Business Model 336

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Stephanie Couzin, the VP of GTM Strategy and Ops, and Roderick De Greef, the VP of Sales and GM EMEA, share Lucid’s transition from a PLG company to a PLG and Sales-Led company. Lucid hired someone with a business background under a special project. This is where product-led sales comes in.

Scale 312

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring compliance 312

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2021

. #2 Category-defining products require new business models. Businesses often build something powerful but don’t create the proper value package, and it fails in the market. When you’re bringing an innovative product to fruition, it requires a business model that’s built for it specifically. Subscribe. #4

Scale 253

Scale Scaling Business Model Company Culture 253

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Practice what you preach to your users, and position your business for faster growth by automating these five processes. #1 1 Sales tax. Have you memorized the sales tax rates for all 14,000 jurisdictions in the U.S.? This means collecting and reporting on sales tax isn’t just a time-suck—it’s a liability.

Business 331

Business Marketplace as a Service AI Search compliance 331

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

The richer the balance sheet & the more solid the business model, the greater the growth rate & ability to win market share. Companies with greater presence in the market will build brand, hire more sales teams, pitch more prospects, close more customers. NDR ; constant sales efficiency. [2]

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Startup Business Model Strategy 278

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

With the Salesforce IPO in 2004, we saw the first sign that institutional investors were comfortable with a standard set of SaaS metrics: Churn, sales efficiency , ARPU, LTV, customer acquisition cost , and so on. . Salesforce’s IPO is also seen as a test of a new business model that could shake up the software industry.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 299

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

However pricing these products is extremely challenging – even more so for incumbents who need to disrupt their current business models. How Sales & CS 4x-ed Glean’s ARR and Top Tips for GTM Cross-Collaboration Strategies with Glean’s VP of Sales and Head of CS. ” #4. ” #6.

AI Search 305

AI Search Scale AI Generative AI 305

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

Marketing hackers, sales hackers, product hackers. AI in Sales and Marketing AI is disrupting sales and marketing, particularly in support and SDR /BDR functions, due to the shortage of skilled workers and the potential for increased efficiency and cost savings. "We all need more hackers on our team. And so much more!

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 306

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

Zhao says, “Our business model is B2B SaaS, but our sales motion is similar to a consumer-like company…there’s a lot of B2C elements to it.”. Zhao furthers his point by emphasizing that: “This B2C plus B2B motion gives us a lot of sales efficiency. A Different Way to Approach Enterprise Leads .

Enterprise 317

Enterprise Scale B2C SaaS 317

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

It took us 2 years just to figure out our ultimate business model. I meet with great VPs of Sales and Product in particular who are Ready. You’re going to have to be the VP of Sales, Customer Success, Marketing and probably Product in the early days. — Aaron Levie (@levie) September 11, 2020.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 305

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2024

Unlike product-led or sales-led growth, Notion is focused on community-led growth. Product Go to market Talent Product is at the Core of Everything Before thinking about sales or GTM motions, you have to start with product market fit. Do you drive revenue through self-service or generate leads for the sales team?

Scale 314

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Innovation 314

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

Strategic finance can be thought of as a project management function for your company’s underlying business model or a BizOps team that operates within a more financial lens. Strategic Finance optimizes a company’s underlying business model to create long-term value by increasing revenue and decreasing costs.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

They credit this growth to their global team, a switch to an enterprise business model switch, and flexible work operations. Moving from self-service to enterprise As your product improves, your user demands change, requiring a revamp of the business model to satisfy high-paying customers.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 245

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

This flexible mindset creates just the right conditions for embracing evolving business models and new metrics. A general understanding of the SaaS business model grew as the SaaS sector matured. as a common language to analyze a cloud business. So, where should cloud businesses go from here?

Metrics 277

Metrics Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Technical Review 277

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

There was also a highly efficient inbound sales model. In fact, there is currently no field sales organization! If the PLG strategy is implemented well with a quick time to value, the cost of acquiring new customers and upselling the customers provides for a very efficient business model.”.

New CTO 287

New CTO CTO Benchmarks Consulting 287

Chart Mogul

JUNE 18, 2021

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, I talk to Adam Jones (@AdamJones85), Vice President of Sales for Thinkific, a product-led company that helps businesses create, market, and sell customized online courses. And just 5 years later, that same sales organization helped them take the company public.

Sales 134

Sales Leadership Business Model Enterprise 134