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Founder salaries are not a topic I’ve had to spend a lot of time with so far. I usually just “OK” them, since the founders we are working with are all super reasonable people who carefully weigh how much they need against the interests of the company – their company. But sometimes founders ask me for a suggestion or some guidance because they are uncertain as to what is fair, and so I thought it might be useful to create a simple model.
How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? This is a very nuanced question, but benchmarks do provide some guidance for what is reasonable. Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.
In online marketing today, you have hundreds of channels to choose from. Within each, there are thousands of tactics that you could use. If you’re like most marketers, you’re trying to tackle a dozen or more of these channels and tactics at any given time. If you try to do too much with your marketing strategy, it quickly becomes difficult to keep the clarity and conviction you need to simplify, focus, and drive key results.
Over the past 12 months I’ve invested considerable time thinking about, experimenting with and optimising my daily routine. I relish figuring out new ways to become more efficient and better at my work. There’s a limited number of hours in the working week, so the challenge is to use our time so that we not only produce our best work, but also clearly understand what’s going to have the biggest impact.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
No matter how long the list of amazing features you offer, if you’re marketing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, that’s not all you’ve got to sell. You should be talking about the “non-feature” pieces as well. If not, you’re underselling your solution. That’s because prospects are usually thinking about more than just features when they’re evaluating a solution.
Selling to c-level executives is a different ball game. You have to be concise, respectful of their time, and really think about how to differentiate yourself in order to break through the clutter and earn the right to ask for something. Here is a message to sellers from a real c-level buyer: Outbound tactics without strategy are sheer lunacy. We must lead with an insight-driven value narrative (‘hypothesis of value’), otherwise hammering away in blended channels is worthless.
Selling to c-level executives is a different ball game. You have to be concise, respectful of their time, and really think about how to differentiate yourself in order to break through the clutter and earn the right to ask for something. Here is a message to sellers from a real c-level buyer: Outbound tactics without strategy are sheer lunacy. We must lead with an insight-driven value narrative (‘hypothesis of value’), otherwise hammering away in blended channels is worthless.
Product teams have been repeating the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) mantra for a decade now, without re-evaluating whether it’s the right way to maximize learning while pleasing the customer. Well, it’s not the best system. It’s selfish and it hurts customers. We don’t build MVPs at WP Engine. The motivation behind the MVP is still valid: Build something small, because small things are predictable and inexpensive to test.
This post is the HubSpot Sales case study that illustrates the concepts of the 4-Fits Framework, a 5 post series in which I explain the four frameworks you need to align to grow to a $100M+ company. Subscribe to receive the rest of the series. When I joined HubSpot in January 2014 the mission was clear. One, help build the foundation for a new $100M line of business.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
Customer Health Score takes multiple dimensions of customer data metrics and classifies them into a single representation of green, yellow or red. It is a consolidation of all the information the company has about the customer, from all probes, people and systems, past and current. Companies use customer health to speed up and scale communication, prioritization, decision making and forecasting of their customer success operations.
Today is January 10, 2017. That means that in ten days, this jerk will become the leader of the free world. Ugh. It still feels surreal to me. In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update. As a reminder, in the original post I tried to give a "back of a napkin" answer to this question: What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2016?
Over the last seven years, software startup investing has changed quite a bit. In 2010, classic SaaS was booming, the benefits of a subscription model were finally becoming clear to the public markets and the mass-market. Since then, many other types of software businesses have been created in new categories like agriculture technology and robotics.
It was 2008, and I was having a classic founder moment. I had no idea what I was doing. But at least I was doing! I was founding a SaaS business, KISSmetrics. Like any startup, we were flailing, failing, and on fire, all at the same time. It was a wild, insane, and ridiculously exhausting experience. I was in charge of product development, operations, finance, funding, and probably 44 other things.
Speaker: Ben Epstein, Stealth Founder & CTO | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO, Aggregage
When tasked with building a fundamentally new product line with deeper insights than previously achievable for a high-value client, Ben Epstein and his team faced a significant challenge: how to harness LLMs to produce consistent, high-accuracy outputs at scale. In this new session, Ben will share how he and his team engineered a system (based on proven software engineering approaches) that employs reproducible test variations (via temperature 0 and fixed seeds), and enables non-LLM evaluation m
The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes - strategic communication is an integral part of successful sales enablement. Communication matters in business. And the success (or failure) of a sales enablement function is intertwined with its ability to influence a sales organisation and change behaviour. While it may not be immediately apparent, communicating well with and managing stakeholders is a prerequisite for successful sales enablement.
If you think your customers subscribe to your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution only because they love the features or the price, think again. Of course, customers look at the solution’s features, the fact that it’s easy to use, or the attractive price… but that’s not all they look at. They’re also figuring out if they can trust you. The fact is that if they don’t trust you and they don’t believe they can rely on you to deliver your service as promised, none of that other stuff really matter
Ever since the 4-Hour Workweek where Tim Ferriss wrote about using virtual assistants (VAs) as a way to outsource your inbox – hiring virtual sales assistants has hit the mainstream. What is a Virtual Sales Assistant? A Virtual Sales Assistant is a remote contractor that you hire as a means of outsourcing a specific task or set of tasks in order to build a more efficient sales process.
For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.
Forget work/life integration for a minute. How much time do you have, regardless of partitioning? From your 24-hour daily allotment, the 1950s-style break-down is 8 hours for work, 8 for home and commute, and 8 for sleep and ablutions. So, “work” and “home” are the two things in which you can spend 40+ hours per week. This is the amount of time it takes to tackle something huge.
Corporate executives know that if they don’t transform their companies into digital enterprises they are going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage going forward. Yet, many corporate leaders have been unable to make significant progress transforming their organizations. These executives have found that changing their corporate cultures is a lot harder than adopting the new generation of cloud-based applications and services that make the digital enterprise possible.
As a sales leader, you’re only as good as your team, and it starts by managing a team effectively. It’s important to create a process to systematize the way your reps generate, manage and close opportunities. To encourage the right behaviors, you must provide evidence that shows your process is effective, and straightforward. A team of some of our top customers recently brainstormed ideas for how a sales leader can institute an effective, data-backed rep management process within their organizat
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.
In the first part of this post , I looked at what some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry said about Product/Market Fit (PMF) and how they try to define and measure it. While everybody seems to agree on the broad concept of PMF there is (unsurprisingly) no consensus on how exactly it can be defined and measured, and some people set the bar much higher than others.
Disagree and commit. I first read about this idea in the 2016 Amazon Shareholders letter. But the idea can be traced back to Andy Grove at Intel. Grove wrote about this topic in High Output Management. Disagree and commit is a management technique for handling conflict. There are two parts to it. First, expecting and demanding teammates to voice their disgreement.
Building a company is a lot like trying to predict the future. You’re looking through a crystal ball to see where the market is moving, and how you can adapt your product accordingly. You have limited cash, which means that you only have a finite amount of time and resources to scale your business. The longer you take to make decisions about your company, the more time and money you burn.
In today’s world of data-driven marketing, it’s easy to get fixated on what’s measurable. While leveraging data is both important and smart, I increasingly find myself wondering if we, as SaaS marketers are overlooking the human dimension of marketing in favour of what’s easy to track, analyse and optimise. Undoubtedly, brand building falls into the “hard to measure” category, but as we see within the business to consumer (B2C) world, brand is hugely important.
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
If your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution is relatively new to the market and you’ve already managed to bring on a group of early customers, congratulations. That’s usually solid proof that your product works, somebody’s getting value from it, and people will pay for it. No small feat. But before you go overboard celebrating, I’ve got a bit of bad news: It gets more difficult from here.
This is part of the Winning By Design Blueprint Series in which we analyze and provide practical advice for SaaS sales organizations. In this blueprint, we’ll breakdown how to structure your SaaS metrics, and measure the right data for your business. Many organizations are excited about the amount of data that is flowing into their platform. However, with the explosion of data, they soon are lost on how to interpret it.
You've created a fantastic product, but it's not getting the attention you hoped for after you launched your SaaS business. Why? The intended audience isn't aware of its existence. It's time to examine some potential tools to use in order to gain a better understanding of your online presence. Here are five tools that will help you improve your SaaS's marketing strategy.
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