Sat.Sep 28, 2019 - Fri.Oct 04, 2019

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You’ll Lose Customers. It Hurts. But Don’t Let Them Become Angry Ex-Customers.

SaaStr

The other day, I had an experience I’ve never had in 14 years of building and buying SaaS: I became That Angry Customer. Really, an Angry Ex-Customer. I don’t have time or energy to get too angry about a few bits and bytes, or a few nickels. But in this case, the vendor just went too far, too many times, and created disruption all across our little tiny team.

Churn 199
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I’ve Got a Crazy Idea:  How About We Focus on Next-Quarter’s Pipeline?

Kellblog

I’m frankly shocked by how many startups treat pipeline as a monolith. Sample CMO: “we’re in great shape because we have a total pipeline of $32M covering a forward-four-quarter (F4Q) sales target of $10M, so 3.2x coverage. Next slide, please.”. Regardless of your view on the appropriate magic pipeline coverage number (e.g., 2x, 3x, 4x), I’ve got a slew of serious problems with this.

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Marketing Ideas that Rarely Work

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

Marketing 138
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Why churn prediction will save your company

ProfitWell

You love your customers. They enable your business to, well, be. You want to retain them and worry about which ones might be looking slyly around over their shoulder, wondering if they could have it better with one of your competitors. Understanding which of your customers is most likely to churn can be an anxious business for a SaaS company. Churn can appear to happen suddenly owing to any number of potential factors, and customers who do churn are unlikely to write you a “Dear John” letter exp

Churn 61
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Navigating the Future: Generative AI, Application Analytics, and Data

Generative AI is upending the way product developers & end-users alike are interacting with data. Despite the potential of AI, many are left with questions about the future of product development: How will AI impact my business and contribute to its success? What can product managers and developers expect in the future with the widespread adoption of AI?

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The Map and the Terrain

Andreessen Horowitz

“To me it’s kinda funny, the attitude showing a n*&#a driving. But don’t know where the f**k he’s going, just rolling”. —Easy E, “Straight Outta Compton”. Years ago, I remember yelling at my CFO Dave Conte. He built a financial … The post The Map and the Terrain appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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The Early Discipline of Remote Startups

Tom Tunguz

In a recent interview, Sid Sijbrandij, the founder of Gitlab observed something about remote teams that I think is absolutely true. I’ve seen it in many of the remote/distributed companies we work with. He said: Remote forces you to do the things you should be doing any way earlier and better. As company scale, they need to develop infrastructure to successfully manage and coordinate large numbers of people.

Startup 211
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The 4 Key Stages of SaaS Product Growth

Cobloom

Selling a new SaaS product isn't easy. Many of the challenges faced in the day-to-day seem impossible to overcome, but the great companies march forward anyway. They keep executing, breaking each impossible challenge down into smaller, solvable problems. Successful SaaS products typically follow a similar playbook, and go through 4 distinct phases: pre-traction, initial traction, initial scale and scale.

Scale 65
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5 Powerful SaaS Growth Tips to Help You Scale Your Business

Incredo

Just a few words before we start… In the f??t-????d world ?f t??hn?l?g?, growing ??ur bu??n??? ??n b? a significant challenge. The good news ?? th?t “S?ftw?r?-??-a-S?rv???” ?? growing r???dl? ?n popularity, creating perfect ??nd?t??n? for ?x??n???n among both emerging ?nd established ??m??n???. . Not all businesses rent an office for their activities.

Scale 131
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Setting Up Google Analytics and Crazy Egg to Help you Drive More Conversions

The Daily Egg

Author’s Note: We want to focus on giving you actionable advice for things you can pay attention to, evaluate, and implement quickly to make sure you get the most out of the remainder of 2019. First up in this series is our most recent webinar featuring ways for you to use Google Analytics and Crazy […]. The post Setting Up Google Analytics and Crazy Egg to Help you Drive More Conversions appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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SaaS: How They’re Turning Payments Into Profit Centers

Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

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The State of the Startup IPO Market

Tom Tunguz

Over the weekend, there was quite a bit of press about the challenged state of startup IPOs this year. I was curious about the real trends in share prices, so I gathered the data on some of the more salient IPOs. The chart above shows 11 IPOs at different points in their life cycles. The leftmost column is the price of the shares at IPO, followed by the share price on the first day close, followed by Friday’s price.

Startup 197
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How do you re-negotiate an unlimited seat site license SaaS agreement as VP of Sales?

SaaStr

This is a scenario a lot of us will go through. There’s no magic solution here, but a few thoughts: First, build a “better” edition they can choose to upgrade to. Even if they have an unlimited right to your Professional Edition, add an Enterprise Edition. Or Global Edition. Or Unlimited Edition. And truly make it better. This worked well for us when we added a localized version of the product.

Sales 178
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Cost vs Yield in Outbound Sales Might Be the Most Important Concept You’re Missing

Predictable Revenue

Read more on Cost vs Yield in Outbound Sales Might Be the Most Important Concept You’re Missing… The post Cost vs Yield in Outbound Sales Might Be the Most Important Concept You’re Missing appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales 153
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Proven sales plays for skyrocketing growth

Intercom, Inc.

There are no silver bullets in sales – no tricks, hacks, or mantras that can guarantee you’ll hit target. But there are actionable plays that high-growth companies use to scale their revenue. Having led sales teams at Facebook, Twitter, and now Intercom, I’ve developed and executed many of these plays. These sales plays are the answers to mission-critical questions like “What criteria will I use to hire sales reps?

Scale 155
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Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

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Open Source: From Community to Commercialization

Andreessen Horowitz

Editor’s Note: The open source software (OSS) movement has created some of our most important and widely used technologies, including operating systems, web browsers, and databases. Our world would not function, or at least not function as well, without open … The post Open Source: From Community to Commercialization appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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Are there SaaS companies that don’t offer free trial?

SaaStr

Lots of SaaS companies don’t offer a free trial — intentionally. A free trial is a bad idea if: Your product has a lengthy and/or complex deployment process. If it’s going to take 30–60 days to go live, a Free Trial will just lead to failure. That’s way too much work just to see if you might want to buy a product. Most prospects will give up and quit.

SaaS 175
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The ins and out of hosting a sales kickoff event: when to do them, why to do them, and how to do them great with Emarsys’ Meganne Brezina

Predictable Revenue

We explore in detail how to host a sales kickoff event. We'll look at when to do them, why to do them, and how to do them great! The post The ins and out of hosting a sales kickoff event: when to do them, why to do them, and how to do them great with Emarsys’ Meganne Brezina appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales 113
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Fix My Churn’s Val Geisler on how to supercharge your email onboarding

Intercom, Inc.

? ?. On this week’s show, we catch up with email marketing strategist, Val Geisler, as she walks us through some practical emailing tips, her process for onboarding, and why she likens career progression to a spiral staircase. Val has experience in a number of different sectors, having started out as a stage manager for operas before moving onto life as a virtual assistant and eventually setting up her own consultancy firm, Fix My Churn.

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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.

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How I Beat Google’s Core Update by Changing the Game

Neil Patel

Google released a major update. They typically don’t announce their updates, but you know when they do, it is going to be big. And that’s what happened with the most recent update that they announced. A lot of people saw their traffic drop. And of course, at the same time, people saw their traffic increase because when one site goes down in rankings another site moves up to take its spot.

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Why do tech companies pay their employees so much money?

SaaStr

Historically, there has been 1 good solid reason to pay top employees at software companies a lot: leverage. Historically, a very small but mighty team could build a piece of software — say even just a team of 10–20 — and with a lot of hard work, and quite a bit of lucky, many millions could buy it. If once piece of software can sell $10m, $50m, $100m+ a year … and you only need a handful of engineers to build and ship it and distribute it … the truth is, it doesn’t matter too much, within limit

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Why Validate an Outbound Strategy?

Predictable Revenue

Read more on Why Validate an Outbound Strategy?… The post Why Validate an Outbound Strategy? appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Strategy 127
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How Hyper-Targeted Marketing Helped Zola Take Over the Wedding Industry

Unbounce

By now, you’ve probably heard something about Zola. If you haven’t, suffice to say that they’re kind of a big deal in the wedding industry. After exploding onto the scene in 2013, Zola quickly became the fastest-growing wedding startup in the United States, trouncing old-school competitors with their headache-free approach to big-day planning.

Scale 111
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How Embedded Analytics Gets You to Market Faster with a SAAS Offering

Start-ups & SMBs launching products quickly must bundle dashboards, reports, & self-service analytics into apps. Customers expect rapid value from your product (time-to-value), data security, and access to advanced capabilities. Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) tools can provide valuable data analysis capabilities, but they have a barrier to entry that can stop small and midsize businesses from capitalizing on them.

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Seeking the ‘Google Maps for Money’

Andreessen Horowitz

When you enter your desired destination into Google Maps, the app plots out the fastest, most efficient route, even adjusting for traffic and coffee stops along the way. You don’t even need to enter your current location—Google Maps already knows … The post Seeking the ‘Google Maps for Money’ appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Finance 104
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How to Create a Secure Mobile Payment Acceptance Strategy

SaaStr

By Rob Nathan, EVP, Integrated Solutions at CardConnect. Payments can be facilitated on a mobile device in a variety of ways. This is a huge advantage for SaaS companies looking to diversify recurring revenue streams in a way that also delights customers. Tablets or phones can be transformed into a formidable payment platform by swiping or inserting cards with hardware plugged into the mobile device.

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3 Top Tips: How Camps Should Communicate with Major Donors

Nimble - Sales

When you run a summer camp, you know the majority of your funds come from the registration and attendance fees you collect during the warmer months of the year. However, more general donations from your camp’s community are another source of income for you to improve your programming and keep kids coming back year after […]. The post 3 Top Tips: How Camps Should Communicate with Major Donors appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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3 Onboarding Strategies to Spur User Adoption and Empower Customers

CustomerSuccessBox

No matter what product or service you offer, seeing a new customer experience success with said offering is what it’s all about. First of all, it’s proof positive that your service provides the value you’ve aimed for it to provide. . More importantly for your business, helping your customers succeed will lead to increased satisfaction—which, in turn, leads to increased engagement, improved retention, and potential brand evangelism.

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Driving Growth, Customer Satisfaction, and Retention through Usage-Based Pricing

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

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Anduril

Andreessen Horowitz

As Steve Blank has documented in his “ Secret History of Silicon Valley ”, the origin of the American high-technology industry traces back nearly a century to the creation of such critical defense technologies as radar, electronic navigation, and satellites. … The post Anduril appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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SaaStr Podcasts for the Week with Pleo and Talkdesk — September 4, 2019

SaaStr

Ep 270: Jeppe Rindom is the Founder & CEO @ Pleo, the simple spending solution for your company automating expense reports and simplifying company expenses. To date, Jeppe has raised over $78m in funding for Pleo from some European favourites of mine in the form of Creandum and Vaestfonden and then also their most recent round led by Stripes Group in NYC.

Scale 141
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Essential CRM Trends of 2019

Nimble - Sales

Currently, the CRM software market is the fastest-growing segment of the entire software development. According to Grand View Research, it will reach $80 billion by 2025! It’s pretty logical. Customers demand a better and better experience. They want to get the most convenient service regardless of the target goal so all industries require elaborate CRM […].

Trends 88