SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

When Marc Benioff started Salesforce, he codified the sales playbook. Then Mark Roberge , former Hubspot CRO, wrote The Sales Acceleration Formula with deep insights into quota structures. Six months ago, security was the number one prohibition preventing businesses and software companies from buying AI. It isn’t predictable.

Venture Capital 331

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 331

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2025

85% of Business App Trials (and 82% of All Paid) Start on Day 0. In SaaS, we often push for 14 day trials when the sales team gets involved especially. It Takes Mobile Business Apps 222 Days to Hit $10,000 ACV An interesting remind for SMB and freemium apps … to earn it. Not all of it is relevant to B2B but a big chunk is.

Data 208

Data ChatGPT Mobile SMB 208

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

Dear SaaStr: Should I Let My VP of Sales Go? All Your VPs Really Need to Do is Tilt the Curve A great VP of Sales should show meaningful progress within one sales cycle. All Your VPs Really Need to Do is Tilt the Curve A great VP of Sales should show meaningful progress within one sales cycle.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Onboarding 168

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

When Lindsey joined, she inherited an already built-out self-serve/PLG model for small businesses and a mid-market and enterprise sales, customer success, and post-sales team. But at the start of its expansion play, Checkr’s enterprise motion failed, and sales cycles were slow, taking up to a year for $100k & up deals.

Revenue 293

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2025

Or a great growth marketer paired with a great sales team will punch above their weight class. A bunch of them we hired out of business school, or out of engineering school, and came up through our farm system.” In sales, t he more SMB you are, the more you should lean on your bench. Nothing else matters.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review Interviewing 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Pricing is more than just a number on a contract — when used thoughtfully, it can become a strategic tool for your SaaS product that can drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and business growth. Miro’s pricing strategy evolved with their business goals: Early stage: Minimum five-user paid plans to ensure collaborative value.

Payments 284

Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2024

Selling to developers and technical audiences requires a different approach than traditional B2B SaaS sales. In a recent SaaStr Workshop Wednesday , Komodor CRO Jim Hunnewell who also previously led sales at companies like GitHub, shared his first-hand experience and insights for successfully selling to engineering teams.

Engineering 284

Engineering Development CTO Leadership 284

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Increasingly, you’ll hear the term “business outcomes” popping up in software marketing. While I initially loathed the phrase for its vagueness, over time I’ve come to believe that, much like the frequently abused word “ solutions ,” there is a right and a wrong way to use “business outcomes.” It’s not great.

Marketing 140

Marketing Business Finance Sales Hiring 140

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

From Sales-Led to Product-Led: How Apollo.io 25x’d Revenue and Crossed $100M ARR Apollo.io, an all-in-one go-to-market platform, underwent a significant transformation in its business model that led to remarkable growth. They shifted to a fully self-service model, moving away from the traditional sales-driven approach.

Scale 162

Scale Scaling Outsourced Development Sales 162

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

Consumers now also expect to talk to businesses through digital means. For restaurants, it’s the back end, front end, point of sale, payroll, ERP, and workforce management. So how do you make it work when a business doesn’t have a lot of time or money to get going? Most sales reps hate it. to book an appointment.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 257

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

For many founding teams, pricing is one of the most difficult and complex decisions for the business. 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.

SaaS Payments 277

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 277

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Can a SaaS Business Reactivate Churned Customers? Does the SDR or AE reaching out to see if they can win back your business work? Whatever you do, create a dedicated marketing (and if you can sales) effort here. The post Dear SaaStr: How Can a SaaS Business Reactivate Churned Customers?

Churn 313

Churn Business SaaS Mobile 313

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

Ryan’s previous company, ImportGenius , was the largest provider of business intelligence to the import-export industry, which gave them access to an extremely valuable list of customers, trade data, and understanding of the international trade market. Measure customer NPS early and make it a key KPI for the business.

Sales Recruiting 322

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 322

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

You get a masterclass in how modern SaaS businesses are transforming CS from a cost center into their secret weapon for hypergrowth. Customer success is no longer just a department – it’s becoming the operating system for modern SaaS businesses.

Customer Success 269

Customer Success Scale Government Systems Review 269

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Why Do Some People Loathe Sales? People loathe sales because they are making the mistake of mapping their experiences as, essentially, Very Small Businesses, as the general experience of a corporate buyer. But that’s not what a sales professional does for a Fortune 5000 buyer. Just think about buying a car.

Sales 292

Sales Business 292

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

Jean Dwit (Chief Business Officer at Stripe) and Lindsay Scrace (COO at Checker) have done it multiple times at companies like Google Cloud, Stripe, and Checker. You’re winning true enterprise workloads, not just “fins” (side projects or experimental business lines that don’t represent real adoption).

Scale 272

Scale SMB Enterprise Enterprise readiness 272

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 6, 2024

I quickly saw how much more impactful this approach was, how showing up for podcast interviews and other media opportunities and offering my unique expertise and point of view on PR and business-related topics made new clients much more excited to work with me.  For adding your insights to multi-expert articles, try Featured.

Social Media 114

Social Media Business Leadership Sales Hiring 114

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Before I started my business three years ago, I never would have called myself an activist. Simply by existing as a Black, female business owner, I was practicing activism as is explained so well in Ebonyjanice Moore’s book All the Black Girls Are Activists.

Business 107

Business Social Media Government Education 107

User Pilot

OCTOBER 19, 2024

In this article, we explore the concept of customer satisfaction – how to measure it, why it is important for your business, and how you can improve customer satisfaction levels. However, what satisfies customers differs from one business to another. What does customer satisfaction look like for SaaS businesses?

Business 111

Business Underperforming Technical Team Customer Lifetime Value Systems Review 111

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2023

Sales cycles shifted dramatically in 2023. Slower sales cycles create pipeline shocks & startups are feeling the impacts. The average startup saw a 24% increase in sales cycle from early 2022 to 2023. 60 day sales cycles are now 75 days. But the latency isn’t evenly distributed.

Startup 350

Startup SMB Headcount Sales 350

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2024

So in the earlier days especially, you’ll be tempted to lean on the sales team to do more than just … sell. It has some positives, the more you ask sales to do. Some reps build a whole book of business here. Some reps build a whole book of business here. Don’t rely on sales to do true customer success.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Customer Success 322

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 10, 2024

Apple is competing using the challenger sale : Apple is telling the market, to use AI, you should want private AI, you should want to control your own data because it’s valuable 1. Fool me once… The broader market has realized how valuable data can be - both users who provide it & businesses who leverage it.

AI Search 266

AI Search AI VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Sales 266

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2024

So G2 put out a survey and report on customer success recently that was an eye-opener: 67% of CS execs report having a sales quota 53% of CS execs now view their job as primarily a sales role Now some of this may be semantics. Business software companies have had “account managers” responsible for upsell since the earliest days.

Customer Success 324

Customer Success Sales Trends Retention 324

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Does A Salesperson Need To Do To “Earn Your Business”? The beauty to sales in SaaS is as sales professionals, for the most part, you aren’t selling a commodity or a fungible product. This is why the best sales execs have real relationships with their customers. Solve my problem.

Business 301

Business Pricing SaaS Sales 301

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 290

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 301

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 301

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. They really are a great checklist when you are starting to scale sales in SaaS: #1. And sales go down, not up. #2. It’s a tough job.

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 311

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Just had a check-in call with a $50k a year vendor we use for SaaStr They sent a new sales rep to call who didn't know the account They just walked through a deck with data they didn't collect or know That we'd already read What a waste of everyone's time The Death of the… — Jason ✨????SaaStr

Customer Success 312

Customer Success Revenue Sales Data 312

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2024

How much more could you accomplish with your sales organization? Justworks CRO, Robert Lopez, and Director of Sales, Valeria Avila, show you how to create longevity in your sales organization and why it matters. They’re more productive in less time, which reduces turnover costs for the business. But how do you do that?

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Education 287

SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2024

112,000 Views: “What’s New at WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and Co-Founder of WordPress” #3, 79,000 Views: “A Step by Step Guide to Revenue Growth with Mark Roberge, Harvard Business School” #4. 46,771 Views: “From Burn-Out to $100M in ARR with Jason Cohen, Founder of WP Engine” #6.

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Innovation Startup Engineering 284