SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2021

Your sales headcount. Raise prices, one way or another for new customers — as you add more value and build your brand. You can raise prices $1 a month. But usually, at $1m ARR, your product is “underpriced” because you have no brand and no way to justify premium pricing. Align your marketing budgets. And ask for it.

Sales Hiring 313

Sales Hiring Headcount Pricing Market Segmentation 313

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2021

account management, pricing) that is trackable before you venture into complex areas like value realization” – YK Lee, Head of CX, Sendbird. “Adding headcount in customer success dept” — Hoala Greevy, CEO, PauBox. You can’t cut corners in headcount in success with automation.

Churn 329

Churn Sales Hiring Headcount Technical Review 329

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2022

5%+ pricing increases help fuel growth. Cloud product pricing went up 5% a year last year, and legacy server products went up much more. Should you have annual price increases in SaaS? Headcount up 7%, while revenue is up 37%. But that only increases total headcount 7% which revenues went up 37%.

Scale 263

Scale Marketplace as a Service Headcount Cloud 263

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

Freezing Headcount is How They Got So Much More Efficient Again, a common story. But for now, AppFolio is staying leaner, with less headcount this year than last — despite impressive +29% growth. #4. Many that did are now re-hiring, from Monday to Salesforce and more.

Payment Services 291

Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2024

Also focus on identifying areas where you can outperform competitors, whether it’s in pricing, onboarding efficiency, or unique features. Get comfortable with headcount gaps, constantly recruit, and build a network of potential hires so you’re prepared when you need to expand your team. Jason says, “There’s no bandaid in leadership.”

Technical Review 304

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2024

They did layoffs and froze headcount. They raised prices. That they had to get to cash-flow positive, because no more money was coming. And while many couldn’t pull it off, and will go under, a lot actually got there. They cut marketing spend to $0. So now they are, in essence, NRR Zombies.

Headcount 302

Headcount Finance Startup Trends 302

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. Revenues" tab The model assumes that you have three pricing tiers. If you have more or fewer pricing plans you can of course adjust the model accordingly (with some effort).

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Instead of celebrating headcount, focus on growing efficiently in scalable ways.” . Dynamic pricing: Increase pricing periodically until you meet friction. If you don’t experience friction, your product is not priced high enough. Rippling found success with dramatic price increases. Logo acquisition (i.e.,

Outsourcing Services 288

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 288

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

Some like Qualtrics price services to still make money. They are running a -5% to 0% gross margins the past few years, i.e., pricing their services to just about break even. #4. But they need the headcount to grow this quickly. #8. But Confluent’s approach is perhaps the most common. RPO up 91% year-over-year.

Scale 62

Scale Cloud Headcount Scaling 62

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

A fairly standard SMB price point. Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. Series C ($5.35

SaaS Payments 291

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods SMB 291

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

AI Efficiency Gains +2% Headcount Reduction ? Second, many software companies raise prices faster than inflation to achieve NDR of 120% already, so the inflation may be already accounted for in plan that way or through the Gartner estimate. Factor Delta in 2024 Software Spending +15% Inflation +3.7%

Headcount 216

Headcount Sales Hiring AI Cloud 216

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 16, 2024

Today, IT budgets are roughly broken down into: ~50% headcount / personnel, ~25% software, ~15% hardware, and ~10% outsourcing / consultants. As software grows as a percentage, I think we see headcount / outsourcing shrinking. I’m certainly not the first (or thousandth.) to have this view, but I wanted to flesh out why.

Outsourcing Services 274

Outsourcing Services Cloud Software Outsourced Development 274

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

Don’t Tie Revenue To Headcount “You want to get away from a business model where every incremental dollar requires incremental hiring,” says Deatsch. So instead of focusing on scaling headcount quickly, work toward growing revenue quickly.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 265

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

Record inflows into tokens fuel all-time highs in Bitcoin, Solana, & higher performance L1s who offer better price/performance to market. Companies & startups in particular begin to report meaningful improvements in productivity from AI, reducing their headcount growth, butn growing revenue just as much as projected.

AI Search 240

AI Search Headcount Scale AI 240

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

They wait for two reasons: first, it’s another headcount, which costs money, which can seem expensive when you have say just $5k-$10k a month in MRR and 6 months of runway left before you’re out of cash. Yet still … people wait. They wait too long. To hire in customer success. Even when they know they shouldn’t.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Customer Success Headcount Churn 300

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2019

” You might cringe the first time you hear this, as it sort of sounds like a pricing game. But if it isn’t budgeted, and the price tag is anything more than trivial, sales has to start with competing for budget. Not that much given the overall headcount I nominally had assigned to me. But it really isn’t.

Headcount 259

Headcount Enterprise Pricing Onboarding 259

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

If you don’t have tickets, lock in Early Bird pricing today and bring your team! I will really understand, “What is the price I want for my product?” I get to set the price of the apples, because they’re my apples. I actually drive revenue from headcount, but I make sure I have enough stocked away.

Sales Hiring 340

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 340

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. It’s just the price of hypergrowth,” we think. We made our machine more efficient even as we scaled, grew headcount, and skyrocketed our revenue. The post 5 Ways to Keep Your Sales Machine Efficient While Scaling Headcount appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Scale 78

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 78

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

As Google also reported, usage-based pricing models may weather downturns betterbecause the products they meter grow irrespective of headcount growth, a positive sign for infrastructure.

Cloud 243

Cloud Azure Headcount Software Review 243

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 7, 2022

Increase your leads without increasing your headcount. But one of the major benefits of live chat for sales is that it allows you to capture and qualify more leads without needing to increase headcount. A great tip is to include it wherever visitors show the highest intent or buying signals, such as on your pricing page.

Sales Funnel 245

Sales Funnel Sales Headcount Subscription 245

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

But specializing across the sales process will take more headcount. You start to become a break-out leader, and there’s a target on your back: Competition leads to price cutting. Whatever it is, you’ll want to move away from a generalist approach. In the end, you can raise AE quotas to pay for this, at least in theory.

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

At what pricing? You need a baked financial model, that includes sales and marketing costs, scaling over time, headcount, and comparison to comps, and when you’ll need the next round(s). Not saying it’s easy, or that you have it all figured out now. Of course you don’t. But a clear path. With comps.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 300

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2023

And when you have partial utility-based pricing like MongoDB does, you see the impact fast. Upselling your existing base and raising prices to keep top-line growth growing isn’t adding real long-term value. They kept the headcount kind of flat. . #1 — 2022 Saw A Slowdown In Usage Growth, But 2023 Saw A Potential Bounce Back.

Revenue 245

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Cloud 245

The Angel VC

MARCH 22, 2012

If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. If you have a tiered pricing model or a per-seat pricing, consider modeling that. Moving down to the costs side – this should all be self-explanatory.

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions 189

Payrix

APRIL 10, 2025

The typical trade and field service business relies on revenue from sales and service to run operations, manage headcount, and drive operational growth. 1 Your annual payments revenue opportunity range is estimated based on go-to-market pricing and estimated interchange fees.

Payments 100

Payments Payment Services Outsourcing Services Payment Solutions 100

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Often, founders are unsure about the headcount split between India and the US. Pricing/Packaging (PP) is a key component of GTM. That means showing up in every quadrant of your category, hiring A players, putting yourself out there. Putting yourself out there, even a little bit, helps. That way, one could get the best of both worlds.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cybersecurity 299

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 4, 2018

While it’s true you may need to incrementally add capacity for this new channel, the impact we’ve seen on our conversion rates has more than paid for the additional headcount. You can opt to have your sales team only talk to visitors who are checking out your pricing page or a product page. Letting humans be humans.

Sales Funnel 220

Sales Funnel Sales Headcount B2B 220

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

This is especially important for small teams, where you need to operate at a scale far beyond your headcount (without burning out your team by working around the clock). Does it have flexible pricing? Using Brex also saves time for your finance team (or, depending on headcount, your finance person ??) Questions to ask.

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Segmentation cannot incorporate all strategic considerations nor changes to product, pricing, and packaging over time. If your customers tend to be larger, public companies, then segmenting by revenue and size is reasonable, as most report financial results and headcount on a quarterly basis. A substitute for strategy or planning.

Business 184

Business B2C Scale Headcount 184

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 6, 2023

That’s a big difference, especially when you layer in the growth in headcount from 2021 to 2022. Essentially companies grew headcount significantly to add less ARR. We’re obviously seeing the rightsizing of this now with headcount reductions. The second chart comes from the latest MS CIO survey (below).

Cloud 130

Cloud Headcount Subscription Payment Features 130

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2023

Many of them said headcount management and spend were common levers they pulled, given the immediate and significant impact they have on spend. Some other strategies for creating a more efficient go-to-market are: Adjusting pricing and contract terms with customers. What are companies doing today to scale efficiently?

Outsourcing Services 183

Outsourcing Services Scaling Venture Capital Forecasting 183

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 31, 2019

But how do you staff live chat for your marketing without ballooning your headcount? Or if you want it to appear to visitors who aren’t signed in and have been viewing your pricing page for longer than 30 seconds, you can do that, too. The Volvo chatbot provides instant price quotes to website visitors. By using chatbots.

Marketing 177

Marketing Pricing Headcount Engagement 177

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

Functionality and feature comparisons Payment Processing Calculating and remitting sales tax, VAT, and GST Checkout Subscription Management Reporting and Analytics Pricing Customer Reviews Note: Information in this article is true at the time of writing but is subject to change. Most companies need additional headcount to manage this.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Software Review 147

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Many partners talk about you in potentially the wrong ways, and it becomes price competitive. What kind of headcount do you have? The idea of an ecosystem is having the right partnerships and people feeding you value for you and your customers. But, if you don’t do this right, it can become a runaway train.

Scale 281

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 281

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 13, 2019

When implemented well, automated customer service allows businesses to help more customers at scale without drastically growing headcount. Customers who ask about pricing, who are identified as at-risk or “high-touch,” or our trial users, are automatically routed to a team member for assistance.

Underperforming Technical Team 279

Underperforming Technical Team Customer Support AI Headcount 279

Clouded Judgement

MAY 24, 2024

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen… The Workday earnings call summarized it well: “But within the quarter, we experienced increased deal scrutiny as compared to prior quarters, and we are seeing customers committing to lower headcount levels on renewals compared to what we had expected.

Cloud 157

Cloud Software Headcount Scale 157

Stax

JULY 1, 2024

Yet it isn’t always cost-effective to hire an in-house team to manage payroll, especially for businesses with a small headcount. So, out of the numerous payroll services on the market that boast different features, integrations, and pricing structures, it can be a challenge to find the best payroll for small business.

Payment Solutions 88

Payment Solutions Payment Services Payment Methods Payments 88