AI to ROI (fka Metrics that Measure Up)

Matt Heinz is the founder and CEO of Heinz Marketing and the host of the Sales Pipeline Podcast.Matt's primary goal is to help modern marketers to implement predictable and scalable, revenue-centric marketing programs.Matt has seen the alignment between marketing and sales for top-of-the-funnel pipeline development significantly improve over the last few years. In addition, he is seeing marketing leaders are more data-driven, especially regarding buyer intent has improved materially. Lastly, he sees marketing being much more focused on the "account" versus the "lead" which reflects the increased use of buying committees.When we discussed the increased complexity of aligning marketing, sales, and customer success, Matt shared that alignment to the buyer journey, and across these three functions is not yet optimal. Culture is a key part of the issue and goes far beyond sharing common objectives. "Hitting the number" needs to be a shared passion that makes each team member in marketing and sales share a common language and feel they each own the revenue goals.What percentage of Chief Marketing Officers believe they own the new ARR and pipeline dollar goals - less than 20% from Matt's experience. Though he sees more marketing leaders discuss the need to focus on revenue and pipeline, the actions and departmental measurements do not reflect this is yet their "North Star".Leading marketers are removing the use of "gated forms" to drive leads and have moved to the open web to identify potential customers in the market (3-4% of companies are in market at any given time) and engage at the point of interest. Unfortunately, vanity metrics such as white paper downloads, web visitors, and even leads still dominate the dashboards and reports a CMO highlights at executive team meetings and marketing department meetings.Forms are often used to ensure companies can "track" activity. However, not gating content can accelerate and increase velocity in the middle of the funnel by removing friction at the top of the funnel. Educating, mobilizing, and creating a sense of urgency are core tenets of modern B2B marketing.Matt highlighted, just because you cannot measure it, does not mean it is not important. Modern marketing channels and techniques such as social media posts, podcasts, and YouTube video presence cannot always be attributed to a lead or deal closed, but are still critical channels for the modern B2B marketer.Matt is a journalist by education and fell into marketing. Matt started his marketing agency by writing blogs, newsletters, and articles. His goal to "tell stories" was a core component of his journalism training. Podcasts were another channel to tell stories, and showcase authors, influencers, analysts, and marketing executives. Matt has found that the "Sales Pipeline Podcast" provides both an opportunity to educate, while developing relationships with the podcast guests who often became customers.When asked where marketers should focus their understanding of the impact they are delivering, Matt said the CRM is an ideal place to measure impact versus in the Marketing Automation system. What this really says is focus more on the "outcome metrics" in the sales system versus the input metrics in the marketing automation system.Matt also said moving towards focusing on the marketing cost per "output unit" like pipeline dollars created or new ARR closed is a good step towards more effective and efficient marketing programs. Any modern B2B marketer or revenue leader will greatly benefit from listening to this conversation with Matt Heinz!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jamie Shanks helped to shape Social Selling through his company, Sales for Life. After certifying 250,000+ sales professionals on the strategies and techniques that led to Digital Selling competencies across hundreds of companies, Jamie has identified some common trends in what led to the most successful pipeline development.In 2020, B2B Sales quickly transformed into Digital Selling. Social Selling has evolved to "selling" and become a part of the digital selling motion. Social Selling efficacy can be measured by pipeline growth, close rates, and sales cycle time for sales, self-directed pipeline. The skills and competencies to be an effective B2B Sales professional have become muddled over the last 10 years, as a new generation has invested more time into learning how to use the tools to become "digital sellers" and have not received the traditional sales training to prospect, discover and qualify high probability prospects who will become paying customers.Even with all of the data and signals being provided to modern B2B Sellers, often they do not understand when and how to "use the information" to increase their prospecting efficiency. An example is the level of investment in "intent data", without providing sellers the ability to interpret and understand the context of what the information is telling the seller. What pipeline signals should be added into the "account intelligence" to better understand "how" and "why" the target company will buy? Human capital (people) migration is a leading indicator as to where a company will allocate investment dollars. Being able to have insights into the members of a buying team, their relationships with competitors, and especially the members' previous relationships with people in your company are critical factors in increasing "prospect intelligence".Seller utilization of pipeline signals information, such as "intent data" is the key to the success of the business impact of digital signals. Sellers who figure out how to use "pipeline signal information" is limited to a small percentage of the seller population. The organizations that do the best job of educating, training, and facilitating the effective adoption of digital pipeline signals will be the winners in 2022 and beyond.Jamie Shanks is not only a pioneer in using digital techniques to increase B2B sales efficacy, he is a true visionary who identifies trends and opportunities to increase the return on investment of B2B Sales professionals before the crowd!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Compensation is one of the more personal aspects of evaluating any new job. Trying to understand a company's culture and specifically, the organization within the company you are evaluating is almost impossible.Ryan Walsh, the founder, and CEO of RepVue may have figured out exactly how to provide transparency in both compensation and culture in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.Ryan possesses a very rare trait, a B2B SaaS sales leader who progressed his career from sales rep to Chief Revenue Officer over 16 years in the same company! Next up, enable every B2B Sales rep the ability to gain the insights of an "insider" into the reality of the variable compensation and culture of a potential future employer.Amongst many data points Ryan shared, 67% of sales professionals (N = 3,000+) said if the role within the company was working for them, they would not want to change companies, still the reality is most companies do not meet the expectations of the modern B2B Sales professional.RepVue has over 20,000 participants resulting in 26,500+ ratings on B2B Sales organizations. When asked what the most important attributes to a sales professional were, the number one answer was 1) Product-Market Fit. Compensation was a highly ranked variable behind Product-Market Fit, and very close to "culture". How do you define culture? In most sales organizations culture is closely correlated to "winning" as measured by achieving quota. Having uncapped earnings is another critical factor, and base salary is much less important IF and WHEN existing employees are meeting and exceeding quota. Knowing if these elements exist is a large part of the RepVue vision.Culture for salespeople is the ability to succeed, be recognized, and make money. RepVue calculates a company score that is based upon two separate and distinct sets of data. The first set is comprised of seven categories using a 1-5 score to determine sentiment. Those seven categories are:- Base Salary- Incentive structure- Culture and Leadership- Product Market Fit- Professional development and training- Inbound lead flow- Diversity and InclusionRepVue then overlays the weight that salespeople rank as most important in each category. Simply stated, if a company is doing better in a category that salespeople rate highly, the best your score. The inverse is also true, meaning that if you score low on a category that is less important, it will not necessarily help your overall score. Scoring low on a highly weighted attribute will hurt your company score. The second section that RepVue uses is based upon the compensation elements of each company's sales organization. Examples include base salary, on-target earnings, average % quota achievement, deal size and most someone can earn in a specific role.In today's B2B SaaS industry, hiring has become a significant challenge and bottleneck to growth. As this industry trend evolves, sales professionals have started to encourage companies to understand how their sales organizations stack up against competitors. One of the interesting data points that RepVue provides is the average contract value, correlated to quota, compensation, and company score. The basis "message" is the ability to message your unique value and competitive advantage in the language that resonates with sales professionals.If you are a B2B Cloud sales professional, sales leader, human capital leader, or talent acquisition professional, Ryan Walsh and RepVue is a name, site, and company you will want to know.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine having access to the metrics and benchmarks over an entire decade for 200+ B2B Cloud and SaaS private companies as they scaled from $0 to $100M ARR.That is precisely the data Mary D'Onofrio, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has access to as the Growth Stage investing partner since 2018. Mary published her findings in the Scaling to $100M ARR report and joined us to share the insights from her research.Mary also maintains the BVP Emerging Cloud 100 Index, is the author of the "10 Laws of Cloud". Mary was often approached by BVP portfolio companies and by other partners within BVP, asking for stage-appropriate benchmarks for metrics such as growth rate, retention rates, and gross margins, to name just a few. So, Mary thought, why not analyze the data over the last decade across the entire BVP B2B Cloud portfolio.The first finding was that Committed Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) growth is the main metric to determine the enterprise value of a private B2B Cloud/SaaS company at every stage of growth. ARR growth captures variables that GAAP revenue alone does not capture.CARR growth is a multivariate metric, as it includes not only ARR growth from new customers but also ARR growth from existing customers. Simply stated, CARR includes New Customer Acquisition ARR + Existing Customer Retention ARR + Existing Customer Expansion ARR.Net Dollar Retention, the amount of ARR from customers that is available to renew versus the same cohort of customers 12 months prior to the current accounting period. This metric was included as part of the "CARR Growth" benchmark.When looking at the decade long data, Mary shared the following average enterprise value to revenue multiples (EV:REV)at each stage of growth under the "Know Your Worth" lesson #3< $10M ARR = 31X EV:REV multiple$10M - $50M ARR = 17X EV:REV multiple> $50M ARR = 13-14X EV:REV multipleThe B2B Cloud market and the associated enterprise valuations continue to increase, with the latest data in 2021 showing the following multiples: 2021* = 34x enterprise value to revenue multiple (up from 9x in 2016)*2021 Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report (Top 100 Private Cloud Companies)Across the BVP portfolio, the EV:REV multiple is closer to 20xGrowth Endurance is a metric that BVP has recently introduced. Growth Endurance is defined as the sustained growth year over year and is fairly consistent across all B2B Cloud companies. Growth rate decay is typically 30% annually for private Cloud companies and 20% for public companies. Public company's growth endurance is stronger primarily due to the leverage they gain, including pricing power, new products to drive revenue, and enhanced access to talent. Growth Endurace is a heuristic and not a deterministic metric. The second lesson Mary shared in the Scaling to $100M ARR report was "Win by wide Margins". The effective point is to optimize gross margin to the average of 65% - 70% regardless of ARR. The middle 50% distribution increases in range to 60% - 80%.Next we pivoted to where Customer Success costs should be allocated - COGS or Operating Expenses. The simple answer is that whatever the percentage of CS time is invested in revenue-centric activities should go to OPEX and the percentage of CS time on support goes to COGS.Another area of "Win by Wide Margins" includes CAC Payback Period. CAC Payback Period is the measure of time it takes to repay the costs of acquiring a new customer after factoring in Gross Margin.BVP.com/scale is a great resource to learn more about Scaling to $100M ARR and download templates to see how your Cloud company measures up to the benchmarks.'See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Benchmarks - a concept for only the most mature and advanced company or a foundational metrics component for any company seeking to make data-driven, metrics-informed decisions?Lauren Kelley is the founder and CEO of OPEX Engine, a leader in capturing and publishing B2B Technology company benchmarks. Lauren's background includes being the revenue leader for an early B2B platform leader, and prior to that as an economist for the US Department of Commerce.Immediately prior to recording this podcast, Bain and Company announced their acquisition of OPEX Engine, which goes a long way towards establishing the VALUE of B2B Cloud benchmarks.Lauren's vision has evolved over the 15-year history of OPEXEngine. Initially, Lauren believed that the real value was in the "operating benchmarks" as they are so much harder to capture and see how your internal KPIs measure up. Traditionally, operating executives would reach out to "known" contacts in the industry who had experience in similar companies.How are companies using benchmarks to inform their decision-making process? The primary use of benchmarks tends to be on an annual basis, or as Lauren calls an informational "benchmark user" to help with the budget and planning process. On the other end of the spectrum, the strategic "benchmark user" understands benchmarking is a management process and will use the benchmarks on a much more regular basis - similar to how they would use internal metrics and data to assist in the decision-making process.Strategic users of benchmarks will work closely with their business partners (operators) to dive into the next level to see why certain "top-level" metrics are out of line with industry benchmarks. Benchmarking is not just to identify problems - it is to find efficiencies that may otherwise not be as easy to identify. An example is that if your CAC Payback Period is significantly better than your cohort - it may suggest it's time to accelerate investment in customer acquisition.What are some of the key "operating benchmarks" that can be used, and how to be confident in the appropriateness of how the benchmarks align with your company's specific attributes? Lauren highlighted that first it takes time working with consistent metrics with consistent definitions across companies. Having a third party who has a specialty in collecting, normalizing, and standardizing the data (benchmarks) collected and ensures a common definition, thus calculation of each metric is a critical component to the ultimate value of benchmarks.The CFO and finance organization is typically the primary "version of the truth" for internal metrics and thus the primary user of external benchmarks. One of the values of using benchmarks is to counter "legacy knowledge" of certain metrics which has evolved. An example here was the decrease in General and Administrative (G&A) expenses as a percentage of revenue over the last few years.One great best practice on using benchmarks was when a company CFO sends the annual budget to the board of directors. Along with the budget, he would include the benchmarks for how similar companies benchmark on expense allocation between each department. This provides "context" for the budget and leads to much easier board approval on the budget, and leaves more time for more strategic discussions during the board meeting.Lauren is a true pioneer in benchmarking for the B2B Cloud industry and is a great listen for any finance or operating leader who is looking to enhance how they make better metrics informed, benchmark validated decisions.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The B2B Cloud industry is projected to grow from $350B in 2021 to $800B+ in 2025. This will mean a lot of new companies and the need for many more VP Sales to lead the revenue team.Brendon Cassidy has been part of early-stage B2B enterprise sales organizations as the VP Sales for companies including LinkedIn, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), Talkdesk, and then as a founding advisor to Gong. Now Brendon is the co-founder and co-CEO at CoSell.io.Based upon Brendon's tenure and success at leading B2B SaaS companies, who better to discuss the journey and keys to success for an early-stage B2B SaaS VP Sales.First, we discussed any common themes or trends that Brendon has identified over his start-up journey experiences. A very common theme, at up to 80% of companies Brendon has worked with is that companies have a hard time defining the "problem they are solving". This is critical before you can start to build the messaging the sales team will use to explain who they are, what problem they address, and the benefits of solving the problem.Establishing Product Market Fit requires every company to understand and market validate the problem they are solving and why a company will invest time and money to solve it.Next, we move from what is required to acquire the first few customers to the next one-hundred and beyond. Brendon recommends that the founder lead the first 5-15 deals as the "sales lead" and then hire 2 salespeople BEFORE they hire the VP Sales. Hiring the right "FIRST" VP Sales is a common challenge that the majority of start-up CEO's face. In fact, Brendon believes that over 90% of companies do not hire the right VP Sales the first time. Hiring a "hybrid" VP Sales who manages a small team, but also is responsible for direct sales with their own quota is a mistake that many first-time founders make. Why is the average tenure of a B2B Tech VP Sales only 14-18 months? One factor is the belief that hiring someone from an established, successful company like Salesforce is the best approach. Unfortunately, 95% of the job of an early stage VP Sales is not an experience gains at an established, larger company. Secondly, finding a VP Sales that actually has experience and success in growing a company from the very early days to some level of scale is quite rare. Four potential early-stage B2B Cloud VP Sales profiles that a founder will need to interview:-Been there done that with success- Been there, done that but not successful- Been there done some of that- Big company experience, not done that Defining how much pipeline is required to close "x" deals is one of the first metrics that an early stage VP Sales should measure, understand and act upon. Input metrics to this will include average contact value, sales cycle time and win rate are critical to determining the required pipeline.Other metrics, such as CAC Payback Period, CAC Ratio, Customer Lifetime Value, etc. are not valuable metrics for early-stage VP Sales, as there is not enough operating history to make these metrics valuable or insightful for decision making.If you are responsible for driving sales in an early stage B2B Cloud company, are considering hiring your first VP Sales, or have a goal to become a first-time VP Sales in an early-stage start-up, this conversation with Brendon Cassidy is a great listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeremey Donovan is the epitome of the phrase "Always Be Learning".Jeremey started his career as a semiconductor engineer, transitioned to be an analyst covering the industry, then transitioned to product development, then to product management, product marketing, and finally to sales. To say he is a continuous learner is an understatement!Most recently, Jeremey started his pursuit as a Masters of Data Science while serving in the role of Senior Vice President of Revenue Strategy at SaleLoft.What is Revenue Strategy? First, it's about the people, programs, processes and technology in pursuit of meeting company goals. As the SVP Sales has evolved to the Chief Revenue Officer, and integrated the responsibility for pre-sales, sales and post-sales, the need for an operations function and strategy that reflects the entire customer lifecycle has evolved.One strategy that impacted revenue growth was moving the inbound Sales Development organization into marketing. By moving the team to Marketing, it created more incentive for marketing to generate leads and create a better feedback loop into marketing on what the market was saying. Jeremey thinks that having a CMO and a CRO that are peers is a better model for larger organizations.Jeremey's perspective on Revenue Operations is different He sees value in having marketing operations, sales operations, and customer success operations report into the COO or CFO versus sales or marketing.What is the segmentation of Revenue Operations versus Revenue Strategy? Jeremey's role is unique, and more of a general corporate strategy resource (think Chief of Staff). In fact, the Chief of Staff is a trending new role in the B2B SaaS industry, and one of the four roles that Jeremey serves for the SalesLoft CEO.Jeremey sees the operations team primarily working "IN" the business and Revenue Strategy works "ON" the business. Revenue Strategy is responsible for coming up with strategic initiatives, Go-To-Market strategies, etc., and then initially collaborating with the Revenue Operations team to deploy the strategy and then over time Revenue Operations takes primary responsibility to measure, manage and refine the program as feedback requires.When asked about the top lagging and leading indicators (metrics) that he uses to measure the return on a particular revenue strategy, his answer included an "Issue Tree" which is a process to deconstruct higher-level metrics into their component parts. The example was "Net Dollar Retention" metrics break down into Gross Dollar Retention + Expansion, and then the next level breaks down into metrics such as Customer Success team productivity.We next discussed leading indicators and their correlation to the top-level, outcome metrics like Net Dollar Retention. Jeremey highlights adoption, configuration, and customer sentiment (CSAT and NPS) as part of a composite health score that directly impacts Net Dollar Retention. Analyzing the correlation, using logistic regression is used to predict retention, using the composite inputs of the sentiment score, per the above. They also use similar models to predict the probability of winning an opportunity. Using Bayesian logic, they analyze predict the likelihood of an opportunity closing using inputs such as activity, time, events, and historical trends that predicted opportunity closure. In fact, this customer engagement score (opportunity score) is even available as part of the SalesLoft platform.Every metric may matter, but they may not always matter at the same time or have the same predictive value. Figure out which are "out of kilter" and which enable "decisions and prescriptive actions".Jeremey is a great listen for any B2B SaaS revenue and/or revenue operations professional!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Chris Walker, Founder and CEO of Refine Labs, Host of Demand Gen Live, and a Top LinkedIn Influencer is a B2B Marketing contrarian - that is a primary reason I have been a fan of Chris's for a long time.Chris was a B2B marketing practitioner for 8 years, and his experience told him B2B marketing organizations were executing marketing programs the wrong way! The market had changed, the buyers had changed and the buying process had changed...yet marketing programs were the same, using the same vanity metrics and fake measurements systems.Chris decided he had been provided a gift, and it allowed him to build a marketing agency that was built for demand generation in 2020 and aligned with his vision for the modern B2B marketer. His foundational belief is that B2B buyers are looking to buy things in places that cannot be tracked by current marketing attribution. Those locations included LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, communities, groups on social networks, podcasts, direct word of mouth, and referrals by peers. These are the locations that people in 2021 and beyond are sharing ideas, looking for experiences, and starting the buying journey.Traditional media such as SEO, SEM, display ads, and content syndication are great to show "vanity metrics" and "attribution" but are not delivering the ultimate outcomes - pipeline and revenue. In fact, often the tracking stops at "attribution by channel" but do not track the ultimate ROI down to revenue, CAC Ratio and CAC Payback Period.Brand Awareness - this is not the major issue for many companies, but "RELEVANCE" to the target buyer is an issue for many - such as Salesforce is toomarketing. Logo awareness does not directly impact the way a target buyer feels about a company's value to them as a potential buyer.Chris's goal is to be in the places where buyers "establish" consideration for a product category or content, and not wait until first-party intent at the bottom of the funnel when 70% of the buying process has already been completed. Content that is value-based, customer-focused, and made available as non-gated assets are key to help to shape the buying discussion at the start of the buyer journey versus reacting to the buyer demands.Chris's first key metric is to measure the close rate of inbound leads, that may not be attributed to a specific marketing program, versus the close rate of outbound generated leads. Chris's perspective is that less than 10% of companies measure the close rate and sales cycle time of inbound leads versus outbound generated leads.Chris optimizes for "peak intent conversions" which reflects the serious intent of buyers who put up their hand to speak with a salesperson (1st party intent data) versus buying 3rd party intent signals from external websites, content syndication vendors, and review sites.Next, I asked Chris what specific metrics that a modern B2B marketer should measure and manage. His response: "Blended Marketing CAC and/or Blended Advertising CAC". This metric measures the total marketing expenses divided by the total amount of revenue closed from inbound marketing leads or inbound leads from paid advertising. Chris sees the cost per dollar of revenue closed from "outbound leads" vs the cost per dollar of revenue closed from "inbound leads" being very different. Chris sees an average of 50% lower CAC for inbound leads that close as compared to outbound generated leads that close (for the mid-market). When you factor in the higher close rate for inbound leads, the CAC Ratio can be 50% - 67% lower than traditional outbound lead generation programs.Revenue, Pipeline, and Customer Acquisition Cost are the TOP THREE metrics that every modern B2B marketer should use as their NORTH STAR!!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Holding key financial leadership roles at Qualcomm and Palantir Technologies by itself positions Bijan Moallemi, Founder and CEO of Mosaic Tech as a uniquely qualified finance leader.Factor in his innovative use of technology and automation to enable more efficient hyper-growth and his desire to make this level of automation available to anyone trying to implement a strategic finance function in the B2B Cloud industry, Bijan is a market visionary.His story starts with the challenges he found upon joining Palantir as a 100 person, yet $2B Enterprise Valuation company. Even at that lofty valuation, even the most basic financial questions were difficult to answer with the existing infrastructure, and would often take days, by which time decisions that could have been informed with the data were already made. His first task was to implement the right infrastructure to move from reactive to proactive financial planning, management and ultimately become a forward looking, strategic finance organization. At Palantir, Financial Operations including all FP&A, business operations, budgeting, forecasting and included all of the systems that drove all revenue including financial and CRM systems. By owning the end to end system architecture, it allowed the team to have a scalable, and nimble financial operations function. Most finance organizations face the challenge of requiring source data from multiple systems across the organization. By having the primary underlying systems responsibility, coupled with the ability to define the standard data ontology across the customer lifecycle and organization.When pushed on how Bijan defines a "strategic finance function", he started by highlighting the key components of a strategic finance function "Get the Right Data to the Right People on a timely and digestible basis". The role of the CFO has become more technical, and the toolkit required for a modern CFO have not kept up. A primary cause is that access to the data and insights are not typically available at the speed or context required.52% of B2B SaaS/Cloud metrics required for a strategic finance function are currently being captured and calculated manually in excel and Google Sheets. Unfortunately, many metrics are still siloed within each function, such as Sales, Marketing and Customer Success. Until his data is integrated, normalized and available in real-time, decisions will continue to be made on backward looking, historical information versus the relevant data from yesterday or even today. Think about this, how can you plan for next month or next quarter with data that is only available 10-30 days AFTER the new accounting period has started???One of the key attributes for the modern finance leader is the ability to "tell the story" that the data is telling. Bijan refers this to the "synthesis" of the data deserves a much greater share of mindshare and time.If you are responsible for generating or the recipient of SaaS/Cloud metrics to help make metrics informed decisions, Bijan and his unique insights how to deploy and leverage standardized, integrated and forward looking insights to make better metrics informed decisions while building a modern, strategic finance function are a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Being the CEO of a B2B SaaS company that creates a new market category, grows the company to >$100M ARR, and then purchased for over $1B by a top tier Private Equity firm may be the ultimate goal of many entrepreneurs - but for Nick Mehta and Gainsight, it is just the beginning.Nick Mehta, joined Gainsight as CEO in 2013. Back then, Gainsight had just changed its name, launched its first user conference, and initiated the strategy to build a new market category for B2B SaaS - Customer Success Platform and a community for the recently created profession of Customer Success Manager (CSM).The decision to create a new category + a community was necessary because the evolving role of CSM's were not only the Gainsight users but also the target buyers. Building a category is associated but different from building a community. Creating a community of future platform customers was a core requirement to increase the target addressable market of potential buyers. Pulse was the Customer Success community, and it had to go beyond "customers". It became a forum and community for customer success professionals to discuss topics of interest including compensations, roles/ responsibilities, and best practices for Customer Success professionals.Nick highlighted that building a new category is probably not the best approach if a category currently exists (think Snowflake and Zoom Video). If the market category does not currently exist, think carefully about the steps, and resources required to build a new category and how a community can amplify the category.When I asked Nick about how Product-Led Growth (PLG) would impact Customer Success , Nick started with his belief that PLG will fundamentally change the B2B Cloud Go-To-Market motion. The control and power will accelerate its shift to the customer, and as a result Sales and Customer Success alignment, even integration will be even critical.The Cloud infrastructure companies are the most advanced in the PLG + Customer Success model. Their Customer Success (CS) team works very closely with the customer to ensure they are receiving maximum value and expanding their use of the product. Nick highlighted two approaches to sales and customer success alignment: 1) relay race model where sales hands off the customer to CS to ensure they are successful; 2) Sales and Customer Success work collaboratively across the entire customer journey to ensure engagement, adoption, value, customer satisfaction, expansion and share the related goals and measurements.When asked the top metrics to measure Customer Success, Nick highlighted both leading and lagging indicators. For Customer Success, Nick highlighted the top lagging indicators as renewals (GrossDollar Retention Rate) and expansion (Net Dollar Retention Rate). In fact, recent research conducted by both Gainsight and by RevOps Squared independently, showed that NDR was the number one factor impacting Enterprise Value:Revenue multiples. The Gainsight framework for leading indicators is called DEAR: 1) Deployment; 2) Engagement; 3) Adoption; 4) ROI. Next is the experience side including Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, and even support case trends.Lastly, we discussed the role of product analytics in the PLG model, in concert with how Customer Success will require deeper and broader insights into the customer's product utilization. Insights including which paths most customers follow, which paths end in user frustration and abandonment, and in the WOW category, how to build Customer Success directly into the product!Nick Mehta is a great listen for any founder, CEO, and/or operating executive who shares the belief is that customer value = customer success and the added vision of building a "Human First" company!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS founders continue to find new financing options to both grow their business and/or be rewarded for their sweat equity investment.Akeel Jabber's journey from petroleum engineer, to gym founder, to real estate investor and now "micro private equity" investor has one common thread - entrepreneurship focused on how to generate cash flowAkeel's first area of focus to generate returns + cash flow was investing in the stock market. He quickly identified that the large institutional investors on Wall Street had an unfair advantage as measured by technology, access, and sophistication. As he searched for alternative avenues to build cash flow, he identified technology assets with recurring revenue streams as an attractive investment area - especially for the less than $5M ARR B2B SaaS companies that were not growing 50%+ per year.Akeel's first experience at $99 Social highlighted that with the right focus on go-to-market programs, processes, and operational excellence, smaller B2B SaaS companies could accelerate growth, and thus cash flow + enterprise value for founders and investors alike. This experience led to the founding of Horizen Capital. Horizen Capital is focused on investing in <$5M ARR B2B SaaS companies with 10% - 30% growth rates, and then applying their operational and go-to-market expertise to unlock 50%+ growth rates, resulting in increased returns for founder and investor alike.Akeel defines the early stage B2B SaaS market that they invest in three segments:Pre Seed Stage (pre-revenue) - Raised friends and family investments - prove they are the best team to tackle this problem/opportunitySeed Stage ($120K - $1M ARR) - Product built - Market and user feedback received - Money charged to and received from customersSeries A ($1M - $10M)Built good productEstablished Product Market Fit (PMF)Built out initial marketing channelsThe metrics that Akeel and Horizen Capital focuses primarily on when making micro private equity investments include:Historic Growth Rates (10% - 30%)Greater than 30% - 50% founders should evaluate VC investorsChurn< 5% month over month SMB market< 2% per monthCommercial/Mid-MarketCLTV$1,500 - $2,000 at leastSize of company is used to conduct cohort-based CLTV analysis5 Users (higher churn)> 5 Users have different CLTV (lower churn)Blended hides realityWhen asked how does a founder know if it's time to sell or just fund their company, Akeel suggested to ask these two questions: #1: Am I still enjoying running my company? #2: What am I trying to achieve by taking micro PE money? - Exit and go do something new - Accelerate my company growth rate Akeel shared the top sites and companies that a B2B SaaS founder looking for a potential exit/acquisition should know about:1. M&A Advisory Firms2. Empire Flippers3, MicroAcquire4. FlippaIf you are an entrepreneur, especially one in the B2B SaaS business looking for strategic investment and growth support, this Metrics that Measure Up episode with Akeel Jabber is a great listen...as is the SaaS District Podcast that Akeel hosts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Renee Cullinan, founder of "Stop Meeting Like This" is pivoting her highly successful career as a high tech executive and then founder of a pioneering consulting company that focused on how to increased company productivity and employee satisfaction by eliminating the wasted time associated with internal meetings and email overload.In this episode of Metrics that Measure Up, we focus on both the metrics associated with increased employee productivity and then on the increasing importance of understanding and enhancing stakeholder satisfaction.White-collar employees, especially senior executives spend most of their time in meetings and composing and responding to emails. Using a typical executive, they spend approximately 25 hours per week in meetings, which equates to 1,200 hours per year, and on average, 32% of that time is wasted. Think how much more productive you can be with having an extra 400 hours (10 weeks) to invest in higher value, strategic activities?Unfortunately, not enough companies tackle this productivity opportunity, often because of the inherent challenge of the existing culture of a company. Fixing this requires consistent, ongoing executive commitment which means having a long-term employee productivity orientation. Biopharma companies lead the way in being willing to take on this opportunity, due to their historical long-term orientation.In the "very interesting" category, Renee actually found the work from home environment during the pandemic, actually helped to increase the productivity of meetings and the Renee shares 5 questions to determine if your organization is positioned to capture this hidden productivity drain: Are you a manager or maker?How many hours are you in meetings per week?Which of the following statements is more true? - I control my calendar or my calendar controls meGiven my role, the # of meetings I am in is? - too many - just right - too fewWhat percentage of total meeting time is wasted? - late starts - late arrivals requiring repeating conversations - technology snafusNext, we pivoted to Stakeholder capitalism and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG). My first question was if only 50% of companies are willing to invest in tackling internal employee productivity, how willing are they to take on ESG. Renee highlighted that internal productivity and employee satisfaction are too often a "HR" initiative and thus are often dead on arrival.In contrast, ESG is driven primarily by external constituents, by regulatory bodies like the SEC, and potential customers, especially in the Fortune 500 are now requiring ESG responses within vendor RFPs and many board of directors are linking executive compensation to ESG metrics and measurements.Socially responsible investing is also increasing measured by shareholder investment decisions, in fact, the percentage of US-based assets under management that use ESG criteria to make investments increased by 42% over the last two years.I asked Renee if small, high-growth B2B SaaS companies can justify investing in ESG initiatives. The response, if you are selling to Enterprise-class companies, ESG leadership will be a competitive advantage in acquiring new customers AND socially conscious employees.Renee's example of the social impact of "free meals" at high tech companies and its impact on local businesses and the local community are not understood, or at least not prioritized.If ESG and stakeholder capitalism + increasing employee productivity are topics you are interested in promoting within your company, Renee is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Revenue Operations is positioned to be the revenue architect across the customer journey. That is a bold statement and the perspective of one of the leading revenue operations thought leaders, Jeff Ignacio.Revenue Operations hit an "inflection point" in 2021. Jeff believes the rapid growth of B2B SaaS companies has highlighted the incongruency that customers are experiencing due to the "drops" in internal hand-offs between marketing, sales, and customer success.Jeff believes Revenue Operations should act like Product Management. RevOps customers are the marketing, sales, and customer success resources who need the right data, at the right time, in the right context delivered by the right process. This includes understanding the "customer experience" with their company at every stage of the customer journey.Product-Led Growth has led to a new requirement for Revenue Operations, and that is the ability to leverage and integrate the data from product analytics platforms into the revenue tech stack. These new "data operations" skill-set is not typically available in existing RevOps organizations, and may even require a new operations group.Is a Chief Revenue Officer required to make revenue operations fully productive? Jeff said this is helpful in early-stage companies when the customer journey is less mature. In larger organizations with more well-defined and mature organizational structures, the need for a CRO to make revenue operations effective is less important.Jeff defines revenue operations to include 4 pillars:Process Enablement Advisory SupportWhen asked about Revenue Operations being more "strategic" versus "tactical", Jeff's first recommendation was to allocate time slots upfront to strategic activity. Secondly, Jeff said that "ruthless prioritization" in understanding what is critical path to achieving the measurable goals that have been established. This includes becoming comfortable with setting expectations with your stakeholders, including being able to push back when requests are not aligned with the mutually agreed-upon goals.Jeff also recommended that asking "what are you trying to accomplish" upfront when asked to execute an activity will be a good step in moving from reactive resource to strategic asset to the revenue leadership team. Another idea was to start thinking more proactively about what the data you are creating suggests, and start to provide more strategic ideas and recommendations to address negative trends highlighted by the data and reports.When asked about the optimal "profile" for a revenue operation professional, Jeff highlighted a few key attributes, especially business acumen and the ability to clarify, thus understand the real goals of the executive stakeholder. Jeff also suggested using a case study approach to interviews to understand how the candidate has applied their skills in similar situations.Will revenue operations be a must-have experience for the CRO of the future? Jeff's answer was nuanced, highlighting skill sets including data analysis, process design competencies, and system design will be valuable, but having hand's on RevOps experience will be a plus but not a requirement.I then asked Jeff to pull out his crystal ball and predict how Revenue Operations will impact business performance - thus be measured. His responses: 1) Customer Acquisition Costs; 2) Expansion time and profitability to enter new markets.Lastly, Jeff discussed the need for RevOps to move from working "in the business" to "on the business". This will enable RevOps to become a strategic advisor, with a seat at the executive team table.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) and B2B Sales - how do they co-exist in the evolving world of Go-To-Market strategy in B2B SaaS?On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Tim Geisenheimer, Founder and CEO of Correlated. Tim's first experience was leading a sales team in a PLG company where he experienced the change in how customers first experience a product. PLG requires the sales team to truly understand "HOW" customers are using the product, and adjust their sales outreach accordingly.First, we discussed the real and perceived risks that sales face in a PLG company. Tim said that sales is critical in PLG companies, though the skills and approaches change.Sales professionals must become product consultants who can help users gain the most value from the product. This requires the sales professional to have much deeper visibility into how the user is using the product.Second, we pivoted to discuss how PLG may impact pipeline development and the Sales Development function. One of the interesting changes is that the number of inbound leads increases dramatically in PLG companies, and SDRs will be required to learn the skills of inbound lead qualification instead of outbound led generation.This evolved into the creation of a Product Qualified Lead (PQL). A PQL is the scoring of a potential paying customer based upon how they are using the free version of the product. Some of the common variables used to score a PQL include log-in frequency and are they using high-value features. These two primary signals can be used to score a lead and help prioritize which users and accounts to reach out to first.Is "Value-Based Selling" still a key sales skill required to be successful? Tim went back to the need for B2B sales professionals to have better product knowledge, as it relates to the business value delivered.I pushed Tim on 'if" Customer Success is better positioned to help free users become paying customers? His response centered on the need for sales to become product consultants and that sales skills will be critical to optimizing free users converting into paying customers.Tim highlighted that a foundational element required for sales to be productive in PLG companies is having easy-to-access and understandable product analytics information available by the user, by account in the Customer Relationship Management platform. I asked Tim if "existing" CRM vendors can provide the required functionality for this? In response to this question, Tim highlighted that existing CRM tools are limited in providing this functionality, in part due to the relational database model that traditional CRM tools are based. The most common "metrics" that he sees Chief Revenue Officers being measured upon in PLG companies is "existing customer expansion" and "Net Dollar Retention Rate" which highlights one of the most attractive aspects of the "land and expand" model for PLG companies. Average Time to Expansion is a new leading indicator that PLG companies are tracking, with best-in-class companies seeing < 60 days from the time a client first signs up to expanding their "paid" usage.The classic "Close Rate" metric will be different in PLG companies, and not as important as other expansion-centric metrics. The other topic we discussed was if "sales comp plans" are changing in PLG companies. One change is assigning sales reps longer to accounts to shepherd the "expansion" journey. In fact, Snowflake has no CS resources as sales own total responsibility for existing client expansion.If you won revenue responsibility in a PLG company, this is a great listen to understand the evolving world of sales in B2B SaaS and Cloud companies.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Leaders of Growth - a phrase that could refer to many B2B SaaS companies and executives.Today, we speak with Arthur Nobel, principal at Knight Capital and author of Leaders of Growth.Leaders of Growth is the result of 47 interviews with B2B SaaS operating executives and investors. Brand name B2B SaaS executives including Mark Roberge, Matt Chappell, Katie Christian, Nathan Latka, Wes Bush, Patrick Campbell plus 42 more B2B SaaS executives with hands-on experience in scaling companies beyond Product-Market Fit.Arthur first shared three different ways to define the journey and stages that B2B SaaS and Cloud companies go through. 3 views on company journey stage: - Sequential (Series A, Series B, Series C, etc) - Revenue approach ($1M, $5M, $10M, $20M, etc.) - Company Maturity ModelWe then dove into whether investors actually modify their investment thesis and enterprise valuation models based upon the above 3 lenses? Revenue growth, especially the velocity of growth remains a primary variable which VCs use to establish company value.The thing that stood out the most from the 47 interviews was the AUTHENTICITY of everyone interviewed. Also, their openness and willingness to share their experiences and lessons learned...especially those learnings through failure as well as success.The second theme he identified was the top-down view that investors shared and the bottoms-up perspective that the majority of operators used. When asked to explain what "top-down" and "bottoms-up" meant, Arthur shared that operators were much more focused on the more pragmatic "what" drove the business including topics like hiring, culture, tactical approaches whereas investors were much more focused on conceptual thinking, such as frameworks and methodologies.When asked common challenges that the growth leaders faced, Arthur shared six common categories: - Departmental objectives at each stage of growth - Data challenge - including what metrics to measure and prioritize at each stage - HR Challenge - such as hiring the right people at the right stage - Documentation and enablement - critical as employee count increases - Process challenge - well defined. documented and systemized after 20 - 30 employees - Tooling - having the appropriate platforms and systems architecture at each stageI asked Arthur if he has developed a framework to help B2B SaaS companies scale within and across each stage of growth? He highlighted this is a very complex task, as each company's journey is unique, but would try and share his initial thoughts:High-level framework:-Scaling is not a point but a continuum that dictates using a stage by stage maturity model: - Ad-hoc - Process introduction - Repeatability - Predictability - ScalabilityIt is also very important to define the maturity model for each function and against the six common challenges that were highlighted above.We then discussed the concept of thinking, planning, and acting like you are already in the next stage of maturity versus continuing purely executing current state processes, activities and tactics. Some examples that Arthur shared on the traditional "VC" stage basis:Series A = Replicability - Build a strong initial leadership team - Lay a solid foundationSeries B = Predictablity - Establish Senior team - Become more structued and documentedSeries C = Scalability - Be careful of silos - Use shared metrics to align cross-functional teams Learning from those who have already been there is the key theme of this episode!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Make it, Don't Fake It is a mantra that has long lived in the entrepreneur start-up culture in the B2B tech industry!Sabrina Horn is not only a pioneer in the B2B Tech public relations space, she is one of the most networked executives in the B2B tech industry.After only 4 years in the corporate world, Sabrina took the plunge to found The Horn Group, with a specific goal to help B2B tech companies exploit the impending business transformation created by the personal computer. Her first "pitch" to bring on her first customer was to an early stage, enterprise software company with less than 50 employees - that company was PeopleSoft which became one of the world's largest B2B enterprise software companies.The rest of her 24 year+ run as the CEO of the Horn Group is one of the most successful and admired companies in B2B tech public relations. To determine the return on investment for public relations, she has two recommendations: 1) Ask yourself what does success looks like one year from now; 2) look at outputs versus outcomes like increasing inbound leads, social engagement, market sentiment, etc. Secondly, she recommended having a range for success versus a single point and having the right tools to measure the impact of PR.Public relations goals also need to be dynamic and evolve with both the company and the market that the company exists and the market it targets to acquire new customers. PR is part science and part art, and cannot be successful without continuing to evolve the strategy and the measurements of success.The "founders curse" was one of the first topics we discussed that was highlighted in Sabrina's book. This happens to entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs who have an emotional bond to their company that is similar to a parent/child relationship. This can lead to the effect of having blinders on and not listening to the market's feedback on your company and what they really need. Having a founders agreement might be prudent, and even identify key inflection points in the company growth that may require the founder to take on a new role. Also, having mentors who are not part of the company and will provide objective, unbiased feedback is critical to maneuvering difficult moments and decision points. Sarina even recommends founder performance reviews by the board and conduct an annual "self-assessment" to ask yourself where my company is headed, what is needed to achieve the next phase of growth and am I still having fun!As a founder, surrounding yourself with an executive team that is not like you, has different experiences, and even disagrees with you is a critical skill to develop. Having a team that shares your passion and excitement for the company vision is a foundational element for every member of the leadership team to share. This materially impacts building culture and building a strong brand.Establishing "founding company values" early on is foundational to the company culture. As a company grows, the values may evolve by shifting in meaning and/or priority, but remain as a beacon throughout the company's evolution. Being a CEO is a never-ending, learning journey. Being in the CEO role is key, as learning on the job cannot be replaced by reading, theory or external advice alone...experience matters. In fact, Sabrina highlighted that the experience from losses is typically the largest learning opportunity. Being a CEO is a "lonely" place to be, and having a network of advisors and mentors who have shared the role of CEO is an incredibly valuable resource. The "isolation iceberg" is real, and Sabrina even mentioned how giving back was a great outlet to feel more connected.MAKE IT, DON'T FAKE IT! is a great read for any founder, CEO, or aspiring entrepreneur considering embarking on the founder's journey!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jordan Henderson is a lawyer by education, who transitioned into a B2B tech career that has spanned sales operations, customer sales, sales management, and ultimately revenue operations. This well-rounded career journey led Jordan to a career in Revenue Operations.RevOps can be the "canary in the coal mine" for a B2B SaaS company. Revenue Operations are problem solvers. Being able to monitor the day-to-day "Go-to-Market" operations provides a unique opportunity to be an early warning factor when things are not performing as planned. Being a trusted "canary" requires building credibility through the consistent use of foresight and insights into the customer acquisition, retention, and expansion processes. When asked about RevOps being a "tactical, reactive" function versus turning strategic, proactive insights into predictive foresight, the conversation took an interesting turn.To move from tactical to a strategic function, Jordan recommends proactively taking a larger role in "business operations". Go beyond providing reports and dashboards to the executive team, and instead analyze what the reports/dashboards you developed are telling you about the future of the business and Go-To-Market performance.A pre-requisite to becoming a strategic partner, RevOps professionals need to first learn everything possible about the functions you are supporting, including marketing, sales, and customer success. Then instead of just responding to administrative requests, come back with not only the requested deliverable but also recommendations on how to improve the information you just delivered.Jordan also highlighted why it is imperative to understand how the company level objectives, like ARR Growth, CAC Payback Period, and Net Dollar Retention are impacted by the "leading indicators" that RevOps has unique insight and access. If you focus on the "outcomes" that your boss's boss cares about, you are much better positioned to be a strategic advisor to the CEO and CFO.The path to RevOps is well served by having experience in the operating roles you are supporting. Jordan has sales, sales management, customer success, and business operations experience which has informed his orientation to the strategic impact that Revenue Operations can have on revenue growth and pipeline performance. When I asked about being held to "objectives" that you do not ultimately "CONTROL", Jason highlighted that RevOps can have more impact on company and revenue performance than any single, quota-carrying rep.Next, we turned to how the customer journey can be impacted by RevOps. Jason agreed that in theory, this is a good goal, but that Revenue Operations does not "YET" truly understand the internal customer buying process, and is something that should be factored into how internal processes and inter-departmental hand-offs are managed.Finally, we discussed the sales technology tool landscape and the potential evolution of a revenue operations platform. The first step Jordan takes towards the goal of a revenue operations platform is the consolidation of existing Martech and Salestech. Vendors like Syncari, Clari, and Kluster are three early market leaders. The RevOps Squared Revenue Operations framework, which is comprised of three layers: 1) Data; 2) Process + Platform; 3) Business Insights.If you are aspiring to be or already are a revenue operations professional, or a Chief Revenue Officer considering the creation of a Revenue Operations function, Jordan is a great listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marketing Operations to Sales Operations to a VP, Customer Success. This carer path serves as an amazing foundation for a Revenue Operations executive.This is exactly the career path that Alison Elworthy, EVP of Revenue Operations at HubSpot. Alison's experience as a customer success executive was an eye-opening experience for a career-long operations professional who had not previously invested time interacting with customers.Alison's experience working with HubSpot customers led HubSpot from being a "function-out" to a "customer-in" focus for Hubspot's recently formed revenue operations function.How to bring the customer needs into revenue operations? Alison created a "Voice of the Customer" team that resides within Revenue Operations. The primary goal of this group is to ensure that every member of the RevOps team shadows customer conversations to life. Monthly "customer first" meetings include all HubSpot executives to listen to the most recent, highest priority customer needs.Next, we discussed how to staff a "Voice of Customer" function, which centered on bringing in both internal CS resources and external personnel with outside perspectives. One tool is the "customer roadblock" portal which enables customers to be part of the voice of the customer data collection process. One topic that came through loud and clear from this process was that hand-offs between marketing, sales, and customer success were negatively impacting the customer experience.As we dove into the "hand-offs" issue, the concept of the "revenue flywheel" evolved. First, the revenue operations team identified that there were not common metrics across the internal functions and/or the customer journey. After developing a holistic "revenue model", they were able to define metrics across three levels of operations including Vital Signs, Pulse Signs, and diagnostics. Vital signs are the top 5 KPIs that the CEO and Chief Customer Officer ( CCO) tracks. The pulse signs are the top 10-15 metrics that directly impact the company-level metrics. The diagnostics enable internal resources to double click into the source data that impacts both the pulse signs and vital signs. By doing this, Alison highlighted this helped to increase the RevOps team investment on forming strategic insights (foresight) versus reactive activities and historical "hindsight".Next, we pivoted to the role that platforms and systems play in a "Customer-In" focus while enhancing internal alignment. Alison highlighted "systems as the foundation" for efficient Go-To-Market operations. As the conversation evolved, the importance of "DATA" was highlighted as a co-equal, foundational priority for Revenue Operations. In fact, Alison highlighted the same question to marketing and sales results in different answers due to the inconsistency of the data.If you are contemplating or just starting your "Revenue Operations" journey, Alison's experiences, insights, and ideas are a great place to start!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Wes Bush, founder and CEO of ProductLed.Wes's journey to founding ProductLed and becoming a leading voice on Product-Led Growth started when he was responsible for demand generation for B2B SaaS companies. Specifically, when he led demand generation at Vidyard, they launched a new product that allowed them to evolve from "hosting videos" to providing a self-service tool that allowed end-users to quickly film, edit and share videos across email and social media channels.This launch quickly led to over 100,000 users and eclipsed the value to Marketing Qualified Leads almost overnight.This experience started Wes to think that there were not well-defined "playbooks" for companies to leverage as they started to evaluate and take the first steps into a Product-Led journey.Wes shared the PLG "Layer Cake" model, which highlights the foundational elements required for any PLG program: 1. Data Layer - getting a solid product analytics infrastructure in place 2. Product Layer - gaining deep insights into the User Experience 3. Conversational Layer - when and how to interact with the userIn a sales-led motion, traditionally only sales and marketing are deeply engrained in the process and the metrics that predict outcomes. In a PLG motion, every function can benefit from having access to the product analytics to inform their decision making such as: - How users are finding out about and then to start using a product (Marketing)- When users are at a point of activation, that the probability of converting to a paid user or enterprise-wide license is most likely (sales)- Where in the product on-boarding process do users start to attrite or stop using the product (products)- What features are used in the product that most correlate to customer retention (Customer Success)Tooling and platform infrastructure will need to evolve in Product Led companies. Specifically Wes sees a day when a platform that natively includes both product analytics information + internal outreach resource process information resides natively. Integrating product utilization information into existing CRM tools is a good short-term band-aid, but not an optimal solution long-term.Freemium versus Free Trials each have appropriate use cases, One of the primary variables for which model to use is how long does it take to reach that "aha moment", often referred to as the "Activation Point". For products that inherently have longer journeys to achieve real user value, a freemium product may perform much better than a time-restricted free trial period.Product Qualified Leads (PQL's) the #1 metric for the PLG motion. A critical component of the initial PQL is proven activation point(s) that predictably lead to higher conversation rates to paying customers. Another variable to consider is the ability to supplement product utilization data with Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona data to optimize both the conversion rates and validate the current understanding of the best target customer cohort(s).Time-to-Value is another key metric to capture, and factor into both the PQL criteria, but also into the product roadmap. The "SOONER" a user can experience value, the higher returns on your PLG investment.We wrapped up this episode with Wes providing three things to consider if you are evaluating whether PLG makes sense for your company:1. Technology is deflationary - users want to pay less over time2. Enterprise customer buying process is up 55% - find a way to decrease that for them3. Product experience has become part of the buying experienceDon't "TELL" them - "SHOW" them - a key tag line in the Product-Led Growth economy!!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product Analytics + Product Led Growth are critical partners for success.Ken Fine, CEO of Heap Analytics recently joined me on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast to discuss the inextricable linkage between these two concepts.PLG currently exists in a continuum of maturity, with some companies managing the entire customer lifecycle using a product-led motion, while the majority still using a traditional sales led motionKen believes the dominant Go-To-Market model in the future will be an artful combination of both a product-led and sales-led motion with a key focus on reducing friction across customer acquisition, expansion, and retention.Some products are better suited for PLG, and others that require more configuration, integration, and implementation assistance will be better served with a combination of product and human assistance.Ken highlighted that PLG is applicable across every stage of the customer lifecycle.PLG requires developing a hypothesis, testing the concept, then using data to determine the efficacy of the experiment, and then continuously iterating to optimize the performance metrics.Activation is the point in a journey where a user finds value from using a product in a PLG motion. Often, activation is referred to as the “aha moment” for a user.Identifying the “activation point” is a blend of art and science, with a strong focus on data that directly impacts company value impacting metrics such as new customers, revenue, share of wallet, etc.Ken’s experience includes being the CEO of a company that deploys Product Led Growth in combination with a Sales Led motion. When asked about the “predictive” data they found to predict conversion to paid, Ken highlighted that when users progressed to using their query tool "x" number of times, conversion rates are higher. In addition, when users leverage their integration feature, that provides a “step level function” in conversion rates.The number of times a PLG company reaches out to a free trial or freemium during free product utilization is an evolving process. Based upon a user reaching an “activation” point, they have a product specialist resource reach out, and are still developing a global heuristic using a “test and learn” approach to determine the number of outreaches that optimize the conversion rate.When asked about the best “resource” to reach out to free or freemium users, Ken highlighted that “it depends”. In their model, a solution consultant with deep product knowledge is the initial resource to reach out to provide product-centric assistance but also are trained to identify sales opportunities.Product Qualified Led’s (PQL) is a new metric that highlights when a free trial or freemium user has reached an activation point and is in a position to convert to a new or expanding customer. PQL’s are scored on different levels of qualification, similar to an MQL, though much more qualified based upon actual product usage and engagement. PQL’s go beyond hypothesis and use proven product usage analytics that are predictive of conversion.In summary, Ken shared that if you have traditionally had a sales-led model, that change management is a critical, yet often overlooked element of deploying a PLG model. In short Ken shared - “NAIL IT BEFORE YOU SCALE IT”!If you are considering or recently started your PLG journey, Ken and Heap Analytics are a great follow.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Crowell Richard is responsible for growth across the OpenView Partners portfolio. OpenView Partners is a leader in advocating Product Led Growth strategies across their portfolio, which includes leading PLG companies including Calendly.Sam has invested in her career preparing for a growth role in a PLG focused venture capital firm, including learning the secrets of digital marketing in a digital agency, and then for 5+ years at an early stage, PLG company, Dispatch, ultimately acquired by Vista Equity, a leading Private Equity firm in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.Product Led Growth companies see 80% - 90% of their initial freemium/trial users acquired using digital marketing techniques such as SEO, though conversion to paid customers only occur 50% - 60% of the time without the involvement of a human resource. The type and complexity of the solution directly correlates' to the requirement for the engagement of a human resource to assist the user to become a paying customer.The approach and skillset of the resource initially reaching out to the PLG acquired user is different than in a traditional sales-led environment. Additional insights, including how they are using the product, possibly areas they have not yet experienced, and allows the vendor's initial outreach to be with a much warmer, engaged led.Product usage, often derived from a Product Analytics platform is a critical foundational component for a PLG company. One of the areas of focus is how product usage information is provided to the resources responsible for user outreach. A new consideration for revenue operations is how to provide product usage information within the construct of CRM environments. Though not a primary topic today, the need for a different CRM for PLG companies may be a new market opportunity.Top Metrics for PLG companies:1. Organic Search: What % of traffic and new users come from SEO2. User Journey Metrics: 3. Activation Rate: where people are finding value in your product4. CAC Payback Period: - must be much quicker for PLG companies, with < 12 months being great and some even reaching < 6 months. Price point is a key factor in this benchmarkActivation rate is a nuanced metric, as it is different for every solution.1. Does action correlate to positive business outcome a. 50% conversion rate to paid2. Activation point activity or task completed by > 50% of trial users3. Activation point reached quickly a. 1 week - 1 month40% - 60% of PLG free users represent "Zombie Users" which will never convert. Activities by agents, robots, and poor fit users represent this category and should be identified as early as possible.We also discussed "Product Qualified Leads" or PQL's. This is a key metric that is calculated based upon product utilization by free/trial users. It's interesting that only 35% of PLG companies are using PQL's. This is an increase over the past year, but still not being used by a majority of PLG companies. PQL's provide a unique opportunity to decrease the friction and resulting lack of alignment that MQL's have introduced between sales and marketing.Natural Rate of Growth is a new "PLG" centric metric that OpenView Partners uses to understand the organic growth rate of PLG companies.Lastly, if you are an early-stage professional considering a career in B2B SaaS, Sam shares her advice that you create your own rotational program to gain a well-rounded understanding of how B2B SaaS companies operate across all functions in the company.Sam provides a wealth of insights and advice for any B2B SaaS company considering or are in the early days of a PLG strategy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Clayton Whitfield founded SaaSOptics to provide B2B SaaS founders and operators a platform that made it easier to capture, calculate and make better metrics informed decisions.Clayton shared that the core metrics that form the foundation of B2B SaaS company value have not evolved significantly over the 12 years since he founded SaaSOptics, but the understanding and comfort with the metrics have evolved. Clayton also highlighted that because there are no "standards" governing body in the industry, so there are multiple variations and interpretations of the exact input variables of the core metrics.The discussion evolved into a "hammer and nail" analogy, where if you only focus on one metric, say Customer Acquisition Cost Payback Period (CAC Payback Period), and do not understand the inter-dependencies of other key metrics, such as Rule of 40 or Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio or even Gross and Net Dollar Retention can lead to incorrect decisions.Next, Clayton shared the importance of "Cohort" analysis, and why calculating metrics based upon groups of customers that share a common trait, such as industry or timeframe they became a customer. As an example, if Financial Services is a well-represented industry segment across your customer base, it would be instructive to understand the Gross and Net Dollar RetentionRates of all customers in the Financial Services industry that became customers in 2016 vs 2017 vs 2018, etc. Lifecycle Renewal Curves allow you to see the churn rates after annual term renewals in year two vs year three versus year four. This is an often-overlooked cohort-based metric that can directly inform Customer Success resource allocation and materially impact retention rates for underperforming cohorts.As an example, Clayton highlighted a cohort that became customers in 2017 that represented a time when the customer on-boarding process was less robust, and thus customers were churning at a higher rate than in later years after the new customer on-boarding process was enhanced. As a result, the company allocated more Customer Success resources to that cohort to re-train and support that customer cohort to course correct the lower than average retention rates for that specific cohort.Next, we discussed the difference between leading versus lagging indicators in the metrics ecosystem. Clayton highlighted why usage data, made available via a solid product analytics infrastructure can be a great leading indicator of customer churn risk. Another example of a good leading indicator is Net Promoter Score (NPS), which has a strong correlation to Gross Dollar Retention. A caveat is to measure NPS for both the buyer and the user which normally provides different NPS scores and inform you where to prioritize increased Customer Success and/or sales resources. The discussion evolved into the importance of having a well defined Key Performance Indicator framework that identifies the top tier leading indicators, by function that have a direct, causal relationship to the industry standard lagging indicators such as Rule of 40, CAC Ratio, Gross and Net Dollar Retention and Customer Lifetime Value to CAC.Finally, we discussed the stage appropriate use of metrics. As an example, we discussed Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio, which is a metric that requires the understanding of customer churn over time. If a B2B SaaS company only has 12-24 months of operating industry, the churn rate is not established with any historical significance, which will result in an artificially high Customer Lifetime Value which can lead to investment decisions based upon false positives.Speaking with the founder of a B2B SaaS company, turned Chief Customer Officer who uses metrics daily to increase customer satisfaction, retention, and thus company value is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Usage-Based Pricing is all the rage across multiple B2B SaaS news outlets. Subscription-based pricing has been the standard pricing model for over 20 years, which has provided B2B SaaS companies more predictable revenue growth over time versus the famous end of quarter "hockey stick" of perpetual licensing software companies.However, companies such as Twilio, Snowflake and DataDog have been using "Usage-Based" pricing to achieve Net Dollar Retention Rates of 130% - 150% and associated Enterprise:Revenue multiples of 20x - 25x.On this episode of Metrics that Measure Up, we speak with Adam Howatson, long-time subscription software executive, and currently CEO of LogiSense, a leading Usage-Based Billing platform company to better understand the trend and what is required to deploy a successful Usage-Based pricing strategy.The first topic we covered was the transition from a perpetual license model to subscription pricing, which was really a cost-plus model that included value for the hosting and intellectual property. Adam believes we are in a similar pivot from subscription-based pricing to Usage-Based Pricing.One main component of the trend to Usage-Based Pricing is the customer requirement to have more transparency on what they are being charged for and to ensure those variables are directly linked to the value they are receiving. Adam believes the trend to Usage-Based Pricing will be long-lived, and the next material transformation for the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.Usage-Based Pricing is a very strategic decision, as it impacts the entire monetization strategy of your business. A key starting point is to ensure you put yourself in the shoes of your customer, and then confirm with your customer/buyers that the element you are using for Usage-Based pricing is validated as a key-value contributor to the buyers.Using a "hybrid model" may be the most prudent way to deploy a pricing model that uses a fixed subscription pricing to cover the vendor's cost, and then adds on a usage-based subscription billing element that becomes the primary profit driver for the B2B SaaS company.Another key element to model out prior to any Usage-Based Pricing strategy is to understand what the minimum baseline of pricing is required is to cover fixed costs of providing the service. This evolved into the importance of having the right resources, especially data analysts and monetization experts who provide a balanced approach to the impact on both the vendor and the customer using multiple scenarios on the usage, that include the usage of variables such as seasonality, macro, and micro-economic trends and internal expense trends.Product analytics is another trending topic across the B2B SaaS due to the increasing use of Product Led Growth as a primary customer acquisition motion. A solid product analytics foundation will be critical to understanding customer usage patterns and trends. This analysis will provide insights for pricing and monetization resources to facilitate which usage variables are best positioned to serve as the foundation for a Usage-Based pricing strategy.The conversation kept coming back to the central theme of "ensure the Usage-Based Pricing variable used" is validated as directly aligned to the VALUE the customer receives. Most importantly, ensure this value is tested with the actual customers and potential buyers, and not based upon INTERNAL assumptions within the vendor.If you are considering Usage-Based pricing, it will be important to understand the increasing requirement for transparency, value for money, easy access to usage data and even stakeholder value will contribute to the emergence of the "USAGE ECONOMY".Adam is a true expert on all things Usage-Based Pricing and Billing, and is a great source of information for any company evaluating how to operate within a Usage EcSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS Metrics are talked about in board meetings, investor diligence, executive team meetings, and recently across every corner of the internet from industry influencers and thought leaders.As the host of the Metrics that Measure Up, I was thrilled that I could speak with Dave Kellogg, one of my long-term follows, and a master of all things B2B SaaS metrics.Dave is a multiple-time, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer of B2B Software and SaaS companies, and a highly sought after advisor, board member and speaker.During this episode, we discuss the top five metrics that Dave advises every B2B SaaS founder and CEO to calculate and they include:✔ Committed ARR (CARR)✔ Committed ARR Growth✔ Net Dollar Retention Rate (NDR)✔ Net Promoter Score (NPS)✔ Employee Net Promoter Score✔ BONUS METRIC - Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (CAC Ratio)Next we discussed why Net Dollar Retention (NDR) is a less fungible metric than "Churn". One example of "gaming" churn is to include all customers, including multi-year deals in annual churn calculation. Survivor bias is one caution for NDR, where a company will look at a cohort of customers today and look at how much ARR they represented a year ago - which is not a best practice for NDR calculation.The next thing we discussed is which metric(s) have the highest impact on Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples. Traditionally Rule of 40, and company growth rate were the two highest impacting metrics to enterprise value. I suggested to Dave that we are seeing NDR having a much higher impact on EV, and in real-time, Dave calculated the R^2 of NDR which was .35, and three times more causal impact on EV than growth!The other item we discussed was "selection bias" which happens when you look at the public B2B SaaS/Cloud company's metrics, and target their metrics as the benchmark. It's important to remember that these are the BEST of the BEST, and many SaaS metrics will look much better at scale (> $250M) and in those companies that were able to go IPO.We also discussed how some metrics, even something as seemingly simple as "Win Rate" can be miscalculated. Dave has seen several companies take the number of opportunities at the beginning of the accounting period, dividing that into the # of closed-won deals, without considering that many of the opportunities that are still open will close in subsequent accounting periods.Dave once wrote a blog entitled "Don't be a Slave to Metrics". A couple of pithy, and easy-to-remember quotes included: "Metrics work for us, we do not work for the metrics" and " Metrics reflect strategy - they do not drive strategy".If you are just learning B2B SaaS metrics or are a seasoned SaaS metrics veteran, this episode is a must-listen for anyone responsible to led a SaaS company and/or calculate and present your top-level performance, company value-creating metrics.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Benjamin Shapiro started his internet marketing career at eBay, one of the first, largest and most data-driven marketplaces in the world. Ben's 7 years at eBay provided him the foundation of being a great digital marketer, including SEO and content marketing.Ben caught the Silicon Valley start-up bug, and spent the next 8 years in marketing leadership at B2C early-stage companies, and then he started the MarTech podcast in 2015.Ben's initial experience with podcasting was "an experiment that went wrong". In this case, wrong meant it was more successful than he could have even dreamed, and quickly he had over 1 Million downloads and a business that usurped his consulting business.The MarTech podcast was launched to be part of a content marketing program to drive awareness for his consulting business. When Ben first started the podcast, there was not much quality content on MarTech. Within just a few months, the MarTech podcast hit 10,000 downloads and began to provide monetization opportunities, and quickly evolved to be the centerpiece of his career.Ben shared his perspective on the MarTech industry, and his definition is broader than just "software" that marketers use, but also includes all of the technology, including platforms including Google, Facebook, Snap, etc. in concert with traditional "MarTech SaaS" vendors.C-Level executives have become more focused on MarTech and how it can positively impact brand as well as traditional customer acquisition and expansion metrics. They also are becoming much more focused on how their company can harness the power of the leading platforms in concert with their internal marketing technology platforms.Ben shared how MarTech has impacted his podcasting business growth. When building a MarTech stack, he started with what his customers needed, how he could measure their engagement and conversion rate, and thus how he could optimize revenue generation for the podcast to leverage MarTech best practices.One example was being able to capture unique identifiers for each listener on his podcast, and then drive advertising revenue through re-targeting campaigns for his sponsors. When I asked Ben about the metrics he uses to measure the health of his podcast, he first defined the differences between impressions, downloads, unique listeners (a listen is not a listener). The problem with using downloads as a key measurement is that a download is often not a listener. What really matters is to know when a download is really a listener and you can target the unique listener via re-targeting to develop a valuable outcome for sponsors.Being able to map an IP address to a unique mobile identifier is one key data capture that will make your podcast much more valuable to potential sponsors and customers. Ben shares the MarTech stack he uses to accomplish this, including Libsyn, ART19, Podsites, and Choozle.Ben shared that once you hit 10,000 downloads per month (3K-4K listeners) is a good initial point to start seriously monetizing your podcast. This number is fungible based upon the target audience. In fact, Ben recommended that your "target audience" needs to be broad enough to monetize the podcast, versus it being primarily a component of your content marketing program.Ben also highlighted that he has found that having a podcast of 20-30 minutes in duration will lead to a much higher listener completion rate. By taking a 50-minute podcast, and dividing it into 2 episodes has multiple positive effects, including being able to place ads at the end of the podcast which is actually heard.If you are an aspiring podcaster or a marketer desiring to learn about building a great podcast as part of your brand awareness and content marketing strategy, this is a great listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

During 2020, over 96% of B2B SaaS companies updated their messaging and positioning to counteract the short and long-term impact of the pandemic.Fortunately, there are experts on how to position your messaging and value propositions, including Bob Wright, Managing Partner at Firebrick consulting who has helped over 400 B2B tech companies develop and launch new positioning.The first topic we discussed was why an outside consultant is required when the Chief Marketing Officer is well-positioned to led a messaging initiative. The answer was the expertise developed from conducting positioning with 400 different companies, an experience base that no single CMO can possess.Bob highlighted why any positioning effort must start with the understanding that a cross-functional approach is critical to developing any new messaging platform. At the end of the day, messaging and positioning must be about the buyer, and that the messaging must be about the buyer, not about your product, and its feature/function.Any positioning initiative must include sales and pre-sales consulting, in concert with customer feedback. Customer feedback is critical to gaining validation on the value that the buyer is receiving from your solution. Being a "got to have" versus a "nice to have" is critical to success. One key example is the "digital transformation" inflection point that has opened the door to new, innovative vendors. One key to successful positioning is to ensure you align your value to the buyer's and reality, not to your assumptions.B2B SaaS companies have to run three different businesses today including new customer acquisition, existing customer expansion, and retention. This dynamic requires a "spin" on each of these three revenue-generating motion's messaging. Though the foundation of the story needs to remain consistent, that words will need to resonate with the stated purpose.Positioning must be directly linked to key performance metrics. Short term, it should center on increased revenue growth, higher selling price, and increased win rates. A second measurement is how external influencers, including industry analysts who start to use components of your updated positioning.Positioning needs to be centered on the "buyer", and not industry analysts. Positioning must shift when speaking to the user versus the executive buyer. A short version will resonate best with users/buyers and a longer story is best for analysts and investors.Operationalizing positioning needs to cover sales, marketing, services, support, and product. Having enablement, which includes a certification process that includes sales, services, and customer success is critical. Do not forget to communicate the updated positioning with customers and factor their feedback into enhancements.Once everyone in the company is sick of hearing the new positioning, that is a great indication that it has stuck!Lastly, we discussed a customer's return on positioning investment. This customer deployed a new "business-ready data" message, and within twelve months they increased ASP from $30K average contract value (ACV) to $70K ACV, and even closed eighteen new seven-figure deals in the two years following the updated positioning.We closed with the keys to success which including ensuring creating new positioning is a cross-company process that the CEO owns, not drinking too much of your own kool-aid, and removing overused words like scalable, easy to use, flexible, agility, and collaborative - these words mean nothing anymore and worse are boring!If your messaging and company are not standing out from the crowd, this is a great listen to hear the insights and advice from 400+ positioning programs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product Led Growth and Usage-Based Pricing are two of the hottest trends in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Annual subscription pricing has been a hallmark of the financial model for SaaS companies. Lately, the move to Usage-Based pricing has attracted investor demand that is pushing Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples up to 15x-25x. Chris Mele, CEO of Software Pricing Partners discussed the caution around moving too quickly to Usage-Based pricing, and provides advice developed from consulting with hundreds of software and SaaS companies on their monetization strategy....yes monetization goes beyond just pricing!First, Chris highlights that "Consumption-Based Pricing" has been around for decades, and that there is not one model - there are many gradients of usage variables. As an example, pricing based upon the number of locations or even the number of users are examples of consumption-based pricing, so it is critical to understand how the usage variable selected is directly aligned to customer value received.Next, we discussed in greater detail how critical it is to ensure that any usage-based pricing model is carefully evaluated and then validated by the customer as to the value they are receiving from the "pricing variable" that you select. Customer Advisory Boards are one great source of pricing model feedback, specifically as it relates to the value they receive. In fact, these sessions will often uncover value nuggets that you were not aware existed.Chris highlights that when considering a pricing model change, a foundational premise is to do "NO HARM" to your existing customer and revenue base. Even as you test pricing models with existing customer's feedback, ensure they understand that their current pricing will be honored with a grandfather clause IF the new pricing model is deployed.A best practice is to implement new pricing first with either a new product and/or a new target market as not to do any damage to the existing customer base and their revenue.As Product Led Growth models continue to evolve, pricing models will be impacted. Pricing is more than a one-time event, or even a single-dimensional subject, as packaging, product functionality, product roadmap, and go-to-market strategy are all impacted by pricing. This is why Chris is recommending the need for a Chief Monetization Officer, who reports to the CEO. It is their primary responsibility to ensure that all cross-functional impacts and requirements of a monetization strategy, including pricing, are considered and understood prior to any decisions or roll-out of a Usage-Based Pricing strategy.For some companies, the primary responsibility for pricing may reside within Marketing, but in the Product Led Growth economy, Chris recommends that monetization is best positioned within a Chief Product Officers domain if the company decides that a Chief Monetization Officer is not the best path at the present time.If you are considering a Usage-Based Pricing model, this episode is chalked full of insights and perspectives that can only be gained from the depth and breadth of pricing model experiences that someone like Chris Mele possesses.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine being asked by Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce to ensure that every member of your sales organization can effectively deliver and communicate the latest presentation and messaging that he had just developed. Then after traveling around the world to execute this directive, Marc informs you that the messaging and presentation has been updated, and you need to do it all over again!Our guest, Elay Cohen founder and CEO of SalesHood experienced that exact situation when he was Vice President of Sales Productivity at Salesforce. His experience as Salesforce was a catalyst to Elay founding a SaaS company focused on using technology to make sales enablement more scalable, automated, and on-going.One of the first topics we discussed was the metrics that should be used to measure the business impact of the Sales Enablement function. Elay highlighted "time to ramp" and "time to productivity", defined as time to first deal and second deal closed, and time to hitting quota as the first metric to measure, followed by win rates, average contract value, and sales cycle length.The conversation highlighted the above sales productivity metrics are leading indicators that directly impact higher level, company metrics such as ARR growth, CAC Payback Period, and other critical, company value-creating metrics that the CEO and CFO track and present to investors and the board.Sales productivity, defined as the percentage of sales professional meeting quota was also discussed. Elay called this as distribution of sales attainment, and this metric is indeed important, but not as a leading indicator of sales performance.Benchmarking current sales productivity metrics is a requisite baseline activity to measure the impact of sales enablement. Then the conversation progressed to whether sales enablement will evolve to revenue enablement or Go-To-Market enablement. Elay highlighted that Sales Enablement is a good place to start the introduction of modern learning techniques, and then the results will encourage other departments to adopt the program.The growing importance of Net Dollar Retention was introduced as a company-level key performance indicator that foretells why Customer Success will become a great next candidate to apply the enablement techniques deployed in sales.We then discussed that enabling sales management is just as critical to individual contributor sales resource enablement. Front line management requires a program that includes coaching, recruiting, interviewing, running forecast calls, and conducting territory reviews. Simply providing a playbook on "what to do" will not work and sales enablement needs to sit down and coach alongside the manager to ensure they benefit from feedback from coaching.If increasing customer acquisition and customer expansion performance and productivity is an opportunity you are interested in learning more about, this is a great episode for you.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Experience is the best teacher. In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up with Scott Leese we take a deep dive into how experience has informed his career journey.Scott has over twenty years of experience as a six time SaaS VP of Sales, and most amazingly, his average tenure for each role was greater than 3 years in a role that typically experiences a 14-18 month tenure. Scott shares some of his lessons learned and secrets to his sustained success.First, Scott highlighted how critical a Sales Operations leader is to become the foundation of success. Secondly, Scott talked about his own journey to learning how to hire better candidates which has a material impact on a VP Sales ability to be successful in early stage SaaS companies.Next we talked about the important of "sales process" and why Scott says he would even design and implement a structured sales process even before he would hire the first sales resource. Scott says one of the most common mistakes founders make is not to document the sales process that got them the first few deals, and provides insights into the initial scaling of the sales organization.Stage appropriate VP Sales is a common topic and discussion amongst investors, founders, CEO's and even VP's of Sales. Scott's recommendation is to ensure that you design your VP of Sales career journey to embrace and experience every stage of growth. Scott loved the role of being an early stage of VP Sales at SaaS companies, but did find that bias was created that certain "VP Sales" profiles get labeled as only an early stage VP Sales. This discussion led to why stock option programs that are historically based upon time - 4 years is the standard but should be aligned to size/growth accomplishments to reward achieving the goal versus a time horizon that is seldom achieved by the VP Sales in early stage SaaS companies. The other option discussed was to agree on a one-time bonus based upon hitting a pre-defined revenue level, such as $25M or $50M.Scott has leveraged his 20+ years of VP Sales experience to launch his own his own VP Sales consultancy, writing two books including "Rep to Sales Manager", a quickly growing, weekly Thursday Night Sales event, the Surf and Sales event and most recently his own private patreon. Scott highlighted that he built his network and the foundational elements of his entrepreneur journey while he was a full time, VP Sales.Scott also shared how his side hustles, including real estate, his books proceeds and even hold the initial Surf and Sales event during his annual two weeks of PTO. One caveat was ENSURE you are hitting your quota and goals before even considering taking this approach. During the episode we created the concept of "micro-entrepreneurship" which is an interesting step by step approach to moving from employee to entrepreneur.Lastly, Scott discussed that his initial catalyst to building his LinkedIn following was trying to save money on sales rep recruiting. As a result, not only did Scott eliminate the majority of his recruiting costs, he quickly saw the secondary benefit of building his LinkedIn following. He supplement his outreach with content that he thought sales professionals were in desperate need to see, read and learn from and not be charged for this type of educational content.If you love the world of B2B Sales, and are considering creating your own company some day, this is a great listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, we speak with Alex Theuma, the founder and CEO of SaaStock and the SaaS Revolution podcast.Alex started his career as an enterprise sales professional, and identified his passion for SaaS as he started to write a blog on all things SaaS, called SaaScribe. SaaScribe quickly morphed into a community blog, and enabled Alex to build deep and broad connections across the SaaS ecosystem.Based upon the community of SaaS entrepreneurs that developed, Alex identified the opportunity to launch a European SaaS event. Even though Alex was preparing to be a first time father in three months, Alex jumped head first into launching SaaStock and the first event in 2016 included 700 attendees from over 34 countries.Alex's initial vision behind SaaStock remains consistent to today - to help SaaS founders grow and find success in their SaaS based entrepreneurial venture. The SaaStock Mission is to make a real difference to those participating in the SaaS industry across the world. Being global was not part of the initial vision, as SaaStock was started to focus on SaaS founders across Europe. However, the first SaaStock event in Dublin attracted attendees from 34 different countries. With that as the backdrop, SaaStock expanded quickly to be the first global events company for SaaS founders with events in multiple countries around the world. As the event began to grow, Alex started to partner with communities, initially in Brazil to develop a global footprint. In fact, SaaStock started their global expansion by partnering the Brazil SaaS Forum and now has expanded to SaaStock LATAM. Then, Alex expanded into Asia-Pacific. One material finding was that most SaaS companies in Asia-Pacific need to think globally early on to have a meaningful Target Addressable Market. With the largest SaaS event competitor being headquartered in Silicon Valley, SaaStock initial decided to enter the US market with conferences in New York. Then in 2019 they identified the opportunity to hold an event in downtown San Francisco.2020 brought the reality of needing to pivot from in-person events to virtual events, and was the catalyst for SaaStock Remote. True to their global vision, SaaStock remote could not be conducted just in the 8AM - 5PM US time. So, they pulled the time forward to start at noon in Europe to 10PM in Europe, allowing for European and US SaaS entrepreneurs all to attend. SaaStock Remote LATAM and SaaStock Remote APAC are being held as focused, dedicated virtual events for those specific geographies.Even though 2020 was a down economic period due to the impact of COVID, the SaaS economy continued to thrive. Much like the larger, public SaaS companies, after an initial reaction to cut expenses in March, SaaS start-ups started to quickly emerge into hyper growth in 2H20. Hopin is an example of a European SaaS company that experienced hyper growth, which grew to a $2B valuation within 18 months of launching!When I asked Alex which area of the world he saw the fasted growing for SaaS companies, he first answered that the SaaS world is becoming much flatter, and that San Francisco is not longer the only place to start a SaaS company. Alex did highlight Latin America as a force to be considered for great SaaS unicorns over the next few years.If your goal is be a global SaaS company, this is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we discuss the revolutionary concepts of Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math with Todd Abbott, CEO at InsightSquared.Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math are critical competencies to successfully maneuver in todays B2B SaaS reality of compressed sales cycle and the changing customer buying journey.The good news - traditional metrics including lead conversion rates, close rates, pipeline coverage ratio, and sales rep productivity still are helpful to calculate basic sales math. Basic sales math is essentially what level of “X” inputs are required to achieve “Y” outcomes. X being primarily marketing + sales investments and Y being new revenue.Advanced Sales Math takes this concept to another level, and will dramatically increase the performance of the #1 reason why B2B SaaS CRO’s and VP Sales lifespan is less than 18 months. The #1 reason the average CRO / VP Sales tenure is so short - the inherent challenges and low performance of FORECASTING!Research highlights that only 54% of opportunities forecasted to close actually close in the original “closing” accounting period. The average number of times an opportunity “pushes” or changes forecasted close data is 3+ time.A key, new variable in advanced sales math is the ability to factor in buyer engagement metrics, across each step of the buying process across every resource at both the buyer and the seller. The challenge of traditional “event” based sales processes and forecasting were dependent upon the accuracy and timeliness of data in CRM systemsThe proliferation of point solution in martech and salestech has led to even more complexity of filtering through the noise to find the right signals to increase forecast accuracy. Having integrated Go-To-Market teams coupled with an integrated and unified GTM data source is mandatory to enhance revenue intelligence leading to improved forecast performanceThe concepts covered in this episode of Metrics that Measure Up are thought provoking, and even possibly career preserving for any CEO, CFO and CRO in todays B2B SaaS ecosystem.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you are contemplating VC funding, this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast is like receiving a master's degree in pitching to VCs from Bill Reichert and his book "Getting to Wow"Key concepts covered include: Ensure your pitch follows the three C's- Clear- Compelling- CredibleCLEAR is removing the complexityDo not fall into the "experts curse" - only you have the depth of expertise on the topic- Ensure anyone can understand what you do in 1-2 sentences- Test your message with fresh brains before your pitch to VCsCOMPELLING - Investors are human - they invest with their "heart" - not just their "head"Ensure your pitch invokes emotional engagement- Go beyond the facts and use short stories ofhow customers are being positively impacted- Imagine if..."CREDIBLE - phrases like "disrupt the entire health care industry" or "we can capture 10% of the market and have $1B in revenue" - can negatively impact your credibility- real life customer stories and proof points go much fartherPITCH DECK - their is no template that fits every pitch but a common theme is - LESS slides is much better (15 or fewer)STORY TELLING - Do not use a single story arc or start with a personal story that led to your creation-use small stories to highlight key pointsEnsure you highlight the SPEED and EFFICIENCY of your Customer Acquisition to highlight your customer acquisition process is repeatable and scalable. Key metrics go beyond just sales cycle length and customer acquisition cost, but also efficiency metrics like Customer Lifetime Value to CAC ratio and your gross margin.Getting to WOW is based upon observing and participating in thousands of entrepreneur pitches to VC's and has been distilled into a guide for any first time or even experienced founder evaluating VC funding.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine the experiences gained and lessons learned from founding your own SaaS company, selling it to Saleforce and then becoming the CEO of a Salesforce Business Unit.That was the journey Mike Micucci, who recently left Salesforce eleven years after selling his start-up to Salesforce in 2009 and ultimately rose through the ranks to be the CEO of the Commerce Cloud business.Mike shares the story behind founding GroupSwim, an early B2B collaboration platform that became the foundation for Salesforce Chatter. Then Mike shares the story behind how community cloud and commerce cloud came together, with both a B2B and B2C - or even a B2B2C offering. Over the last 10 years, Commerce Cloud has grown to be over a $1B business and you can rest assured that Metrics were at the heart of most of Mike's strategic decisions.Mike's experiences started when I first met Mike in the initial "vortex" of B2B eCommerce in 1997 - 2001 where he was an integral part of the product management senior leadership teams at Netscape and Commerce One. Then in 2005 he founded GroupSwim, and had firmly established Product Market Fit by the beginning of 2009 when he received two different offers to purchase GroupSwim.Following the GroupSwim acquisition, Mike decided to accept the opportunity to be part of the Corporate Social Network initiative within Salesforce - yes Chatter which launched in 2010. From that experience, Mike pitched the concept of "Community Cloud" to Marc Benioff and Parker Harris. The vision was to build a solution to connect the different "communities" within Salesforce to other communities and companies.By 2020, Community Cloud had reached 650 million users. Interesting that Community Cloud is measured by usage, growth and how much revenue they influence on the other core clouds. Mike shares the Salesforce relentless focus on customer input and feedback into the product lifecycle, especially through the use of Customer Advisory Boards (CAB's) which provides a primary to the product roadmap. In fact, the concept of Commerce Cloud was originally stimulated by a customer who had built their own commerce capability into Community Cloud in 2014.Later in 2014 Salesforce launched Commerce Cloud at Dreamforce. By 2016 Community Cloud and Commerce Cloud became one Salesforce Cloud business unit. Mike share how Digital Commerce grew more in 2020 then in the past few years combined. When COVID first hit, Mike saw his dashboards showing how volume on Commerce Cloud spiked starting in March. Finally, Mike shared he segments metrics into usage metrics and operational metrics. Operational metrics on commerce starts with GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) which hit over $50B GMV in 2020. DAU/MAU (Daily Average Users/Monthly Average Users) was a key metric used to evaluate the health of his business unit. ACV (Annual Contract Value), AOV (Average Order Value) and churn was also tracked daily as key operational metrics. Mike also shares why "branding" and "pricing" are the two hardest aspects of building a Cloud business. In fact, he went into detail on the benefit of a blended pricing model that uses both a subscription model plus usage based pricing levers. One of the hardest parts of a variable usage based pricing model is how best to forecast variable revenue.Mike's story reflects the opportunity, reality and journey that so many corporate leaders in the Cloud have experienced over the last 20+ years. If you are looking for inspiration coupled with detailed insights into how an entrepreneur's journey can evolve from the corporate world to being a founder and then on to the CEO of a $1B+ cloud business, this is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Breaking into B2B Sales, especially Enterprise level B2B sales is still a challenge for many in todays Cloud and SaaS industry. Even more difficult for those who do not have relevant experience, ore connections and thus the access and opportunity that comes with many forms of inherent privilege.Gidget Pugh broke through those barriers, not in 2021 but beginning in 1998 with the power of self-confidence, drive and often the most important stimulus of all - a compelling reason to bet on yourself.In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up, we speak with Gidget Pugh a 20+ year veteran in B2B sales who has recently transitioned into founding and launching her own social media agency focused on the community that she is so passionate about - small business - starting in the town that made Gidget who she is - Oakland, California.Gidget shares her journey from mortician - yes a mortician to her first role in B2B Sales at QRS. QRS was the world's largest subscription platform for sharing UPC codes in their product catalogue across the retail industry supply chain in 1998. Then she leverage that experience to working at household technology brand names including Oracle and Facebook.One of the main topics we discussed was how Gidget maneuvered within an industry and companies where often she was the only female, African American in the sales organization if not in the entire company. A recurring theme of "self-confidence" and "color blindness" were critical to her in every environment she entered.We then move on to her decision to leave the corporate world to launch her own social media agency, Socially Focused to help small and medium size businesses to harness the power of social media and on-line engagement building to counter the impact of COVID on their physical presence business and prepare them for the world of digital commerce that has been accelerated by the experiences and resultant digital transformations of every industry.This is an amazing story of drive, determination and self-confidence that provides everyone looking to move beyond the environment of their current state into the future of opportunity a great story of inspiration and reality all in one.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

M.R. Rangaswami is an enterprise software executive, angel investor, entrepreneur, corporate eco-strategy expert, community builder, and philanthropist. Wow, is right as his accomplishments are admirable. M.R., as he is known across the software and Cloud/SaaS industry, and around the globe founded the Sandhill Group and sandhill.com in 1997. In fact, the Wall Street Journal placed MR on their front page to highlight his early commitment and success as a leading angel investor in the early days of the Enterprise software movement in Silicon Valley. With over forty years in Silicon Valley, M.R. is probably the most networked person in the industry, through his experiences and connections from founding the Enterprise Software Conference, the Enterprise Retreat for the top SaaS CEOs, the Eco-Forum which is a membership only community of the top 100 executives responsible for driving sustainable green initiatives in Fortune 500 companies, and most recently, Indiaspora to transform the success of Indian American's into meaningful impact worldwide.In this episode, MR discusses the secrets to building his network in Silicon Valley and beyond. He highlights the importance of understanding the difference in building your network versus networking. A key attribute to building a strong, lasting network is to have no expectations beyond helping those in your professional network. Don't sell, don's solicit business, just identify how you can help each person in your network and watch the dividends pay back over the long term.MR and I cover the evolution of the Enterprise software industy to the Enterprise Cloud/SaaS market, the impact that leading cloud and technology companies are having on energy efficiency and green initiatives. If you are a fan of the Silicon Valley experience, and curious to understand how one of the industry's best and most well respected connectors has built his network and reputation, this is a must listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you are responsible for driving revenue growth at a SaaS company that is preparing to raise Series A or Series B funding, what are the key metrics investors will expect you to know cold?That is exactly what Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital shares on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast.Doug's journey to becoming Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, the first Venture Capital firm created specifically to invest in SaaS companies, is one of pedigree. Starting at Google as a skills productivity manager, then on to corporate sales productivity at Salesforce, followed by the position of Chief Story teller at Box and now, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital.During this episode, we discuss a wide variety of topics including the top metrics that every Chief Revenue Officer and SVP Sales should now before having a meeting with a growth stage fund, when trying to raise a Series A or Series B round of financing.The conversation moves on to the importance of understanding your customer acquisition and retention metrics on a cohort by cohort basis. Sales and Marketing integration versus alignment became a critical topic, and one that directly impacts the role of the CRO and the performance of the key customer acquisition performance metrics.Finally, we discuss the concept of pattern recognition, which is a key skill that VC's and experiences revenue leaders alike must develop to be successful. An element of pattern recognition is that it is critical to understand industry benchmarks that are relevant and appropriate for your company, including stage, size, annual contract value and distribution model.This is a fast moving, high energy discussion that highlights why Doug is known as an excellent story teller!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As businesses shift towards the Cloud, SaaS has become the de facto distribution method for modern day software solutions across the US and increasingly so in Europe. Joyce Mackenzie Liu, Founder of Pegafund which provides go-to market strategy and financial planning services to early stage, high growth B2B SaaS companies shares her perspective on the European ecosystem.In this episode, Joyce shares that the majority of investment volume in European SaaS companies occurs in the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages of funding in large part thanks to generous government support. European and country-specific governments remain the largest investor in technology and entrepreneurship, providing direct and indirect funding in the form of individual tax credits, startup grants, and VC equity and debt fund managers.The beauty and challenge of scaling an European SaaS company is the fragmentation of the continent and the distinct business cultures in each region. Europe can be broken down into 8 smaller "target markets" : 1) UK and Ireland; 2) Scandinavia/Nordics; 3) Baltics; 4) Germany and DACH; 5) Benelux (Netherlands and Belgium); 6) Spain and Portugal; 7) Italy; and 8) Eastern Europe. Each country within a sub-region has its own legal and tax framework as well as business customs. This market reality requires different go-to market motions for each region, making it more difficult to scale across Europe. This phenomenon encourages more creative and out-of-the-box thinking which Joyce believes leads to a relative higher likelihood of European SaaS companies having successful US expansion when go-to market fit has been achieved across Europe.The main KPI's for SaaS companies across Europe are very similar to the U.S.; the metrics also evolve in tandem at each stage of business maturity: < $2M ARR, $2-5M ARR, $5-10M ARR and > $10M ARR. In order to get to the right metrics, it requires a business, its leaders and Board members to invest early into data quality and SaaS reporting & metrics, ideally before raising an institutional Series A funding round.We also talked through some examples of private and public B2B software companies in Europe and the US, and how those with impressive growth metrics and unit economics command much higher valuations from investors and buyers alike. In fact, at over $400 million in ARR, UiPath, a business founded in Romania, is one of the fastest growing global enterprise software companies today.The episode closes off with some tips and best practices for European SaaS companies launching and expanding into the U.S. market.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you ever thought it would be cool to see a website from 5 years ago, 10 years ago, even 20 years ago?That is exactly the vision that Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and The Wayback Machine first started to develop in the late 1990's!In fact, Brewster was developing the Wayback Machine simultaneously to running Alexa Internet, one of the first internet browser plug-ins to track user web activity, which was ultimately sold to Amazon in 1999 for $250M in Amazon stock!Over the last 20 years, the Internet Archive has built the worlds largest archive of internet content - think the LIBRARY of the Internet. The magnitude is incredible:- 516 Billion Web Pages- 70 Petabytes of Storage- 6 Million Movies and Videos- 600,000 Software Programs- 1.5 Million Audio Files- 1.5M Daily UsersBrewster was voted into the Internet Hall of Fame (yes, their is an Internet Hall of Fame), and is one of the most visionary, insightful and visionaries in the Internet ecosystem.Listen to this 30 minute session with Brewster and you will come away with a sense of excitement and possibilities that we have not yet realized in the internet economy!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The most interesting dilemma for a CEO? The decision that comes with having the option to go public or accept a strategic acquisition offer.Tom Reilly, former CEO at Cloudera has been a CEO with the experience of selling a company to IBM, another company to HP and then taking Cloudera public after raising $766.5M from strategic partner, Intel.Tom says a CEO should invest 20% - 30% of their time working with strategic partners - do not outsource to your partnership team. In fact, this advice comes from the experience of Tom working closely with the CEO at Intel which led to their strategic investment in Cloudera.Strategic buyers use partnerships to evaluate the value and fit of a strategic acquisition. It is critical to have well defined performance metrics for strategic partnerships, including close rates, annual contract value, gross and net dollar retention rate and CAC payback period to highlight the financial performance and efficiency of strategic partnerships.We then turned to discuss the decision to go public versus accepting a strategic acquisition offer. Tom shares that IPOs and being a public company do have their challenges - and that there are many great options including Private Equity, Growth Equity and now SPACS!Being public comes with heightened scrutiny on quarterly performance and transparency - which can be distracting. Developing the capability and culture of being able to accurately forecast quarterly revenue, margins and provide longer term guidance needs to a be a focus and competency developed three to four quarters before an IPOHot take #1 - being capital constrained can led to learning how to operate more efficiently - it may not always be best to take a lot more capital than needed OR at least ensure the culture of efficiency is maintained even after taking a large sum of investmentHot take #2 - companies have to start early to instrument, capture, analyze and make metrics informed decisions earlier and faster - numbers do not lie!!!#IPO #SaaS #cloud See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B Communities caught fire in 2020 - especially B2B sales communities. Revenue Collective, Sales Hacker, Modern Sales Pros, RevGenuis, and Bravado all dramatically increased their membership and levels of engagement following the onset of COVID.Who better to discuss the trend of B2B communities, than a founder of the world's largest B2B network, LinkedIn. Konstantin shares the key differences between a B2B community and a B2B networkKonstantin shares the four variables that are required to build a scalable, sustainable and engaging B2B network. He also discusses the techniques that LinkedIn used to quickly reach 1M+ members, and how "Social Capital" was key to gaining initial momentum.Did you know that Inmails used to cost $10 each, or that the only way to join LinkedIn initially was through a referral?In a classic entrepreneurial pivot, we moved quickly from the back story of LinkedIn's early success to how walking meetings were a hallmark of the early days at LinkedIn, and have retained their allure to Konstantin as he mentors and advises new entrepreneurs.Lastly, we discuss Konstantin's founders' journey and he shares some advice based upon his own experiences at LinkedIn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Smerklo is by any measure a story of entrepreneurial success. Mike founded a search fund which led to the early stage acquisition of ServiceSource, and he took it to over $300M in revenue, took the company public, and was the CEO for over 13 years.Then Mike followed his passion to help fellow entrepreneurs and founded Next Coast Ventures in Austin, Texas long before Austin was being heralded as the next Silicon Valley for software.His secret, which threatened his success throughout his founder's journey is now out in the open, in his book, Mr. Monkey and Me. Mr. Monkey is a symbol for the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that every entrepreneur and founding CEO will face.During the podcast, Mike shares his "SHAPE" framework, to help fellow entreprenuers understand and mitigate that inner voice of doubt...the imposter syndrome. SHAPE is an acronym for Self-Awareness, Help, Authenticity, Persistence, and Expectations.During our conversation, we also talk about the "strength" of showing vulnerability by asking for help, even when you think as the CEO you need to always portray strength by having the answer to any problem...an impossible expectation.Mike shares that you are not alone with those private thoughts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that comes with the entrepreneurial and CEO journey, and provides some helpful advice and even a framework to make your "Mr. Monkey" for favorite frienemy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we continue the discussion with the authors of Selling the Cloud. Building upon the first half of our conversation where we discussed the need for grit and passion to be success full in Enterprise sales, we move into several new topics. The Power of No is a key skill to develop. A great enterprise sales professional is qualifying prospects out every step of the process to reduce time investment on low probability to close opportunities. Often the most important "no" is to walk away from blind RFP's that you have had no opportunity to influence or understand before receiving. The other skill is to understand "no means no" but also to ensure the prospect understands you are available to help if they need to re-evaluate their decision that did not include you.The importance of credibility and trust, often starts with the enterprise sales professional knowing when to walk away from an opportunity where you know your solution is not appropriate. Buyers will respect your integrity, and your trust capital over the long term will grow.One fundamental step to being able to walk away from poor fit deals - investing more time in building a high quality, healthy pipeline. If you build more pipeline than you think is required, you will not force-fit your solution into opportunities you should have walked away from in the first place.We discussed their hot take that "opportunities close themselves". If the enterprise sales professionals manage the process by ensuring the buyer has all of the information they need to make a decision, that closing is a natural step, and not the primary objective!?We also discuss why Customer Success is not just a department - it is the responsibility of everyone who touches the customer, especially sales. In today's land and expand, recurring revenue model, having a Chief Revenue Officer who owns customer acquisition, expansion and retention is a key element to ensuring customer success is a culture...not just a function.Finally, we bring out the crystal ball by having Mark and Paul share their perspectives on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact Selling the Cloud...if you are an Enterprise sales professional you will like what they have to say which is AI will serve to decrease the time spent on administration and increase the time available to invest in serving the prospect!!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Paul Melchiorre and Mark Petruzzi - authors of Selling the Cloud.Paul has over 30 years of experience in enterprise sales leadership, at leading companies including Anaplan, Ariba, SAP, and now in Private Equity. Mark brings over 30 years of experience in strategic consulting firms including Deloitte, N3, Accenture and operating roles at Oracle, and Ultimate Software.GRIT was the first topic we covered as a required attribute for every enterprise sales professional. Paul shared some of his best tips to identify grit during the interview process. Mark added the importance of passion as a critical component of the "WHY" behind grit.We also discuss "process versus playbook", and why flexibility differentiates good versus great in the SaaS industry. Paul shares why he believes that no one sales methodology is that much better than another and that the primary benefit is the standardization of language while also maintaining the flexibility to embrace the reality of each company.Playbooks that work at a large, established entity like Salesforce is most likely at a < $10M company without the same brand name recognition....flexibility is key.My favorite topic was discussing why "Discovery" is the most important phase of the sales process. Being able to ask meaningful questions, listen to the answers, and learning everything possible about why the buyer will really buy by putting yourself in their shoes...and it's not about your product's feature/function.Next, we discuss "3 Level Listening", which includes gathering data, identifying what is meaningful to the buyer, as an individual first before their company, and then applying it to your efforts. Mark shared how Charlie Green and his trusted advisor approach highlights the need to control your own ego, be present in listening, and focusing on truly understanding what the buyer is saying - active listening + thinking aloud.Paul then shares why "balance" of performance across the entire sales organization is so critical to building a high-performance organization. Balance was defined as having at least 70%+ of sales reps hitting quota.Finally, Mark shares the lessons he learned from Hollywood and why storytelling is so important to being a top-performing enterprise sales professional - especially customer stories!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B Sales communities are all the rage in 2020. Sales Hacker, Modern Sales Pro, Bravado, Revenue Collective and now RevGenius are building B2B sales communities to provide experiences, connections, ideas, and research.Jared Robin, co-founder at RevGenius recently joined the podcast to share the story behind Rev Genius and his vision for the community."Necessity is the mother of invention" a catalyst for RevGenius as Jared contemplated the next step in his career journey due to the impact of COVID. Jared felt too many communities felt "exclusive" and were not truly open RevGenius started as a LinkedIn Group to share events for B2B sales professionalsJared's desire to include members across revenue teams, including marketing, sales development, RevOps, etc. was a goal to enhance "revenue team alignment" . Jared shared his thought that the path to CRO is not only through sales, so it's critical to gain insights, experiences, and connections across every revenue team functionThree key metrics to measure the success of RevGenius- Member Acquisition- Member Engagement- Monetization - not a top priority.....yetJared strongly believes that professionals need to take responsibility for growth, and not depend solely on the training and experiences you gain from their current employer. If you want to level-up or grow = community involvementTwo key thoughts for everyone to make the community vibrant- Always be Helping- Always be LearningIf you are interested in learning more about building on-line communities or to evaluate why you will join a revenue team community, this episode if chalked full of insights.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Howard Brown, Founder and CEO of ringDNA.How does being a clinical psychologist lead to founding a Sales Engagement Platform company? Howard shares the common theme - helping individuals and companies overcome THEIR challengesKey topics discussed include that if B2B companies are too focused on internal processes leading versus the customer's motivation to buy. Sales training represents a major opportunity to improve alignment to the buyer's journey, especially the prospect's personal needs. Howard discusses why increasing business acumen is a significant area of opportunity.We also discuss that "coaching" is different from training and a large opportunity to increase sales productivity. You should be asking yourself, how much time are sales managers investing in 1:1 coaching versus administration, planning and managing versus coaching.Sales #1 job is to HELP buyers make a decision and it may not be your solution - play the long game. Too much focus on quarterly numbers versus customer needs can lead to short term gains at the expense of long term company valueHoward shares his insights are why Marketing, Sales and CS alignment STARTS with aligning to the buyer's journey AND starts at the top with the CEO! Howard experience is that Go-To-Market models need to be re-designed, centralized, and informed by customer journey dataHoward summarizes our discussion with the quote " We are moving to an Experience Economy" and companies that align to the customer journey will be the long term winners!!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Founding a B2B SaaS company is an exhilarating, yet high-risk experience. Creating a new market category at the same time even higher risk and often serves primarily to pave the path for second-generation market entrants who learn from the successes and failures of the first generation.Anurag Khemka, is a founding father of B2B Marketing Automation. Back in 1996, when the internet was first being commercialized, most B2B marketers were just starting to think about how to develop more personal, 1:1 relationships with potential customers.Anurag founded MarketFirst, the first generation of enterprise-class marketing automation technology. Developing the software was the easy part, educating an entire market on how to design, build, and execute B2B marketing campaigns on the internet was the real challenge.Marketing Automation is now one of the most mature segments of the MarTech market (8K+ companies). Marketing Operations is a mature, yet still evolving profession that was spawned out of the need to manage and maximize the return on Marketing Automation investments.Anurag is a founding father of both Marketing Automation and Marketing Operations, and for anyone who seeks to better understand how history predicts the future, you should listen to this episode!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast - Court Lorenzini, Founding CEO at DocuSign discusses his journey to co-Founding DocuSign and then his decision to leave after five years to found two more companies.During our conversation, Court shared his unique path to DocuSign, including his father's legacy as a founding father of Silicon Valley and his habit of recording his observations of how people managed difficult situations starting at the age of 13.Court shares his belief that most CEO's are strongest or prefer one of the three stages that every start-up moves through including: 1) Napkin to Product-Market Fit; 2) Rapid Growth and; 3) Profitability. Court loves, and used the term "Fills my Cup" when discussing the joy he finds from starting companies and achieving Product-Market Fit.Court also shares his two key pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs including: 1) Pressure test your idea rigorously to the point of trying to kill it early and often and; 2) Learn from predecessors who have attempted to blaze a similar path in your same market previously.Finally, Court shares his premise that founders created 70% of Terminal Value in the first five years of a companies life. So, if your cup is filled by creating and establishing product-market fit, and you believe in statistical probability, it may serve founders better to repeat the company creation process multiple times to optimize the probability of great success.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast - David Appel, Head of the SaaS Vertical at Sage Intacct shares his insights and lessons learned from over 1,500+ SaaS financial solution implementations.During our conversation, David and Ray discuss several key attributes and approaches that SaaS CFOs take to ensure the data, metrics and KPIs they collect can tell the story of what the "financial data" is telling.Great finance leaders make sure financial information and KPIs get out to everyone as soon as possible to enable timely, data-driven, metrics information decision making. Great CEOs and CFOs ensure the measures that each department have in place are directly linked to the corporate objectives, and not allow functional leaders to primarily highlight those metrics that show their function in the best light, but not for the benefit of the entire company.Dave ends this episode with a quote from Steve Jobs "Building great companies is not dependant on the hierarchies that run companies, but they are built upon the ideas that run companies".See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.