November, 2018

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2018 SAAS Private Survey Results- Part 1

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

For the seventh year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) to share results from a survey of ~385 private SaaS companies. Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the survey! Thank you also to David Spitz (@dspitz) and the team at KBCM Technology Group for their.

SaaS 271
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Live chat for business: everything you wanted to know about live chat but were afraid to ask

Intercom, Inc.

A great customer experience today is about meeting people where they already are. And today, there’s one channel where more potential customers are than any place else: messaging and live chat. Think about the way that you talk to people every day. If you’re anything like me, you use iMessage to talk to your family, WhatsApp for your close friends, and you probably spend your entire day on Slack talking to your teammates at work.

Scale 239
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Do You Lose Sales Opportunities Because of Sales Execution or Product Insufficiency?

Tom Tunguz

You have a good pipeline of prospective customers. You pitch them but things aren’t working out. You can see it in your low close rates. They are below 15-20% conversion from sales accepted lead to closed customer. You need to answer an important question: are you losing these opportunities because of sales execution or product insufficiency? Those are the two possibilities.

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Founders: Please don’t allow anyone to screw your early backers

The Angel VC

Understanding the mechanics of founder re-ups in financing rounds This post will likely not make me more popular and might offend some people. But if your core beliefs on how business should be done are at stake, you can’t try to win the popularity contest. If you know me a little you’ll probably agree that like everyone at Point Nine, I’m a pretty nice guy.

Finance 169
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An Omnichannel Payment Solution––Without the Complexity

Simplify omnichannel payments with a solution that unifies every channel through your platform. By integrating front-end systems like online, mobile, and in-store payments with robust back-end infrastructure, you can deliver a seamless payments experience without the need for heavy engineering. Omnitoken technology enhances security by tokenizing card transactions for reuse, enabling merchants to drive cross-selling opportunities.

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7 Of The Most Common Mistakes Made Building Your First Sales Team

SaaStr

Building your first sales team will be an endless series of mistakes. It’s OK. Plan for me. But there are a few avoidable , key mistakes I see start-ups making > 50% of the time. Just make a few less of these mistakes, and you’ll scale faster, and just as importantly, with less turnover and more stress: Hiring Early Reps (#1 – #3) That You Personally Wouldn’t Buy From.

Scale 168

More Trending

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2018 Private SAAS Company Survey- Part 2

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

We recently released Part 1 results of our private SaaS company survey in partnership with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities). This is the sixth annual survey we’ve produced together, which provides data to help SaaS companies benchmark their performance against their competition. In Part 1, we covered growth rates, go-to-market trends, and CAC Rations and CAC Payback.

SaaS 240
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What is customer acquisition cost and why does it matter?

Intercom, Inc.

Growth is good, but growth at any cost is very, very bad. The best marketers in the world help their companies grow for the long term. However, periodically marketers seem to go through a wave of collective insanity where we forget about the ‘long term’ part of the discussion and start to chase growth at any cost. Whether it’s through inattention, ignorance, or excitement, marketers sometimes make very bad business decisions.

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The Four Stages of Sales Compensation Structures in Early Stage Startups

Tom Tunguz

Your startup is just getting off the ground. You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? I’ve seen four stages in early stage software companies.

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Breaking Down the Ultimate Question – NPS

ChurnZero

Breaking Down the Ultimate Question – NPS (Net Promoter Score). First, let’s start with the very basics- what is a Net Promoter Score ? Net Promoter Score was first developed by Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix in 2003. Since then it has been used heavily by companies, both large and small, to assess customer satisfaction and has become an important metric for growth-driven technology businesses.

Scale 95
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How Clinic Sense Reduced Churn and Unlocked More Revenue

ClinicSense is a SaaS platform that supports over 7,000 massage therapists who use it for appointment management, payments, scheduling, marketing activities and more. Despite having a relatively low payment failure rate, the company discovered that the failures disrupted the customer experience. This often led to churn as customers decided to cancel or abandon their account, preventing ClinicSense from realizing the full lifetime value (LTV) of its users.

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How to Close More Revenue Today — With The Leads You Already Have. Use The “3 L’s”.

SaaStr

If you’re past $4m-$5m or so in revenue, this post isn’t for you. You’ll have figured this out, at least mostly. But if you are on either side of $1m in ARR, there are 3 things you can almost always do from a pure process standpoint to squeeze materially more revenue out per lead. Do ’em now! ??. First, implement Lead Scoring.

Scale 151
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If I Had to Start a Blog From Scratch, I Would…

Neil Patel

You’ve seen me and thousands of other marketers talk about how to make a blog popular. But if you don’t set up your blog correctly, you won’t do well no matter what kind of marketing you do. And no, I am not talking about the technical setup of your blog. I am talking about the foundation. From what you are blogging about, to how you structure your content… there are a lot of basics people get wrong.

Branding 111
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WebSummit Presentations

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

I presented on two topics at WebSummit 2018 in Lisbon on November 6th. The slides and videos of those two presentations can be found below. The videos are provided courtesy of WebSummit: 9 Secrets for Startup Success, A roadmap for B2B Founders Lean Startup taught the world how to find product/market fit, but in the.

Startup 225
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Assembly required – 45 sales tools to build the ultimate tech stack

Intercom, Inc.

As your sales organization grows, your tech stack almost always does too. But figuring out which sales tools you should buy and invest in – let alone what each tool even does – can be a daunting task. This is especially true when you consider the seemingly endless list of sales tools to choose from. With at least 830 vendors in the space and more being added daily, building your tech stack can quickly become an overwhelming exercise, even for the most experienced of us in sales operations.

Scale 192
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Usage-Based Monetization Musts: A Roadmap for Sustainable Revenue Growth

Speaker: David Warren and Kevin O’Neill Stoll

Transitioning to a usage-based business model offers powerful growth opportunities but comes with unique challenges. How do you validate strategies, reduce risks, and ensure alignment with customer value? Join us for a deep dive into designing effective pilots that test the waters and drive success in usage-based revenue. Discover how to develop a pilot that captures real customer feedback, aligns internal teams with usage metrics, and rethinks sales incentives to prioritize lasting customer eng

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SAP Buys Qualtrics; 2018 Catapulted to $65B in $1B+ M&A Volume

Tom Tunguz

Another week, another blockbuster software acquisition! This time SAP has agreed to purchase Qualtrics for $8B. Qualtrics is a Utah based provider of experience management software. Qualtrics writes and sells software to ask questions of employees and customers to help businesses improve customer experience, employee satisfaction products, and brand.

Scale 116
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How Zapier Reached $35M ARR With This SaaS SEO Strategy

Ryan Berg

Want to drive more search traffic to your SaaS? In this case study, we’ll step outside the usual content marketing tactics most SaaS companies use. And look at how Zapier leverages SEO to drive millions of high intent searchers to their product every month. This strategy has nothing to do with blogging (although we’ll take a look at how they added a blog later to enhance this approach).

Strategy 111
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Converting with Extra Copy: 5 Long-Form Landing Page Examples

Unbounce

We all know how effective a short, concise landing page can be. It’s quick to read and, depending on the offer up for grabs, can convince visitors to purchase or opt-in fast. But there are benefits to building long-form pages too. For starters, longer pages can provide in-depth info visitors need to make informed decisions, helping you attract more qualified leads from the start.

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How to Write a Follow-Up Email That Actually Works

Sales Hacker

In sales, it’s almost never an immediate “yes.” In fact, “92% of salespeople give up after four ‘no’s’, but 80% of prospects say ‘no’ four times before they say ‘yes’.” That’s why failing to follow up on the sales emails you send can have a disastrous impact on your sales performance. Unfortunately, effective follow-up these days isn’t as simple as shooting off a “Just checking in” message ( although this phrase has been recently proven to be more effective than we originally thought ).

Scale 107
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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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2018 Private SAAS Company Survey- Part 2

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

We recently released Part 1 results of our private SaaS company survey in partnership with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities). This is the sixth annual survey we’ve produced together, which provides data to help SaaS companies benchmark their … The post 2018 Private SAAS Company Survey- Part 2 appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.

SaaS 130
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Data-driven sales: 18 sales KPIs and metrics to grow your revenue faster

Intercom, Inc.

There are many parts to a high-performing sales organization – the right people, processes and strategy, to start. But today, the underlying backbone of all of it is the right data. That’s not to say there’s no art to practicing sales. Much of what defines our most outstanding sales reps is their ability to deeply understand our prospects’ and customers’ business needs and speak directly to them.

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The FastSpring Team Meets Up for 2nd Annual Fall Summit

FastSpring

At FastSpring, we take our company mission, vision, and values seriously. They are a big part of what makes FastSpring the leading all-in-one ecommerce platform for digital businesses around the world, and a great place to work. One of the ways we showcase our mission, vision, and values is our annual Fall Summit event. Employees from all over—Nebraska, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, and Amsterdam—came together at the Santa Barbara headquarters this month for three days of learning,

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How to Build a 100-Day Plan to Grow Revenue

InsightSquared

We recommend that every quarter you pick one thing to improve about your sales process. If you improve the conversion rate during each key moment in your sales process by just a small percentage, you can end up doubling your revenue or more. But how do you know what key moments or metrics to focus on? In the past, we’ve discussed three key measurements: Volume based metrics (the change in amount at any given stage i.e. # of leads).

Revenue 94
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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, and Terrence Sheflin

As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.

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Getting Software as a Service (SaaS) Accounting and Financial Operations Right from the Start

SaaSOptics

By 2020, more than 80 percent of software providers will change their business models from “traditional” perpetual license and maintenance to subscription-based models. A perpetual model requires customers to pay a fee upfront to purchase a license for the system or application, whereas a SaaS model requires a monthly subscription fee. While some providers, such as Dropbox, were created “as a service,” thousands of other software vendors that started out with traditional licensing models are rea

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How to Use the Right Sales Data to Shorten Your Selling Cycle

Sales Hacker

Like a long and arduous hike that seems to go on and on, a prolonged sales cycle can leave your team feeling drained, exhausted, wondering if they’ll ever reach the summit … and if they do, whether they’ll have the energy to climb the next mountain! We’ve all had at least one instance where we’ve felt overstressed, overworked, and under quota due to a long, drawn-out sales cycle.

Data 82
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2018 SAAS Private Survey Results- Part 1

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

For the seventh year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) to share results from a survey of ~385 private SaaS companies. Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the … The post 2018 SAAS Private Survey Results- Part 1 appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.

SaaS 130
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Tips for creating a great support experience during the holidays

Intercom, Inc.

The holidays are quickly approaching, and for ecommerce businesses, that often results in significantly higher support volume for your team. . To help you stay on top of your support this season – without increasing overhead – we’ve curated a few tips for automating your support load. These tips apply broadly to many different automation products, but if you’re an Intercom customer, they’re actionable today and require no engineering work.

B2C 183
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Launching LLM-Based Products: From Concept to Cash in 90 Days

Speaker: Christophe Louvion, Chief Product & Technology Officer of NRC Health and Tony Karrer, CTO at Aggregage

Christophe Louvion, Chief Product & Technology Officer of NRC Health, is here to take us through how he guided his company's recent experience of getting from concept to launch and sales of products within 90 days. In this exclusive webinar, Christophe will cover key aspects of his journey, including: LLM Development & Quick Wins 🤖 Understand how LLMs differ from traditional software, identifying opportunities for rapid development and deployment.

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FastSpring Visits Innovative Cleantech Incubator

FastSpring

FastSpring finds inspiration in a cutting-edge incubator for cleantech startups — also known as the LACI. One of the things that truly sets FastSpring apart as a business is our values. We are constantly pursuing new ideas that not only help businesses selling software, SaaS, or digital goods but also shape the evolving tech landscape at large. Our exploration of innovative tech often pushes us beyond the beautiful coastline of Santa Barbara.

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Your Sales Year is Coming to an End. Are you ready?

InsightSquared

It’s two weeks until December. Holiday music is already playing in every store you set foot into, your weekends are starting to fill with egg-nog and apple pie induced festivities and every morning you find yourself layering up with an extra hat or scarf before you step outside. Tis’ the season! December around the corner also means your sales year is coming to an end.

Sales 78
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19 Killer Tips for Great Sales Lead Generation

Teamgate

Having problems with lead generation tactics? “ Wow! I love your new website. Really slick. What kind of visitor numbers are you attracting? ”. “ That’s the strange thing, we’re not getting as many hits as we’d hoped for. Everyone keeps telling us how cool the site is, but that’s about it. Our CRM software is telling us that we’re not generating the numbers of leads to match our sales forecasts ”.

Sales 77