Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 23, 2022

With increasing business costs and reduced headcount, companies are feeling the squeeze as they also grapple with rising consumer expectations. Shifting focus to customer retention can actually be twice as powerful as customer acquisition. That’s why companies should look to support – and retain – the customers they have.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Retention Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 211

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

As we think of ways to improve sales performance, a number of growth pains may come in the way: High acquisition costs. Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. You don’t have to automatically accept that your customer acquisition machine will become bloated or inefficient during the growth phase.

Scale 55

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 55

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

And once a customer has paid back the initial acquisitions costs to acquire it, all future streams of revenue can loosely be described as a cash flow annuity. Headcount planning, budgeting, fundraising, etc can often be largely based on a top line plan. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

ChurnZero

JUNE 9, 2023

Good sales teams typically get the budget, headcount and tools they desire because the function is tied to revenue. As a result, CS teams often have to work harder to make the case for headcount, technology and even product requests on behalf of customers. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) The churn rate is a good segue to address CAC.

Finance 98

Finance Metrics Customer Success Headcount 98

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

Therefore the key drivers of my imaginary startup are organic growth rate, marketing budget and customer acquisition costs, conversion rate, ARPU and churn rate. If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly.

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Do you need to make tough decisions about team headcount? Acquisitions, quarterly sales results, and new rounds of funding will require teams to work with management and determine the next steps. What products and features are driving the most return on investment (ROI)? Acquisitions. Are there redundancies?

Engineering 52

Engineering Sales Hiring Technical Review Headcount 52

OpenView Labs

MAY 24, 2021

(This new way of thinking about R&D spend also requires companies to rethink the relevance of classic SaaS metrics like CAC payback, which only consider Sales and Marketing costs as part of customer acquisition.). PLG is more of an acquisition channel than a company-wide strategy. Atlassian has an R&D:S&M ratio of 2.9:1.

Scale 98

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Benchmarks 98

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Companies with an equivalent commercial operation- sales headcount, marketing spend, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). For SaaSco, this may mean comparing their sales headcount to other enterprises IT vendors selling a similar average contract value. Companies at a similar stage of growth and maturity.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Software Review 52

CustomerSuccessBox

JUNE 28, 2021

Acquisition-driven growth is dead, retention-driven growth is the future. The Acquisition driven SaaS growth is dead and this era is all about retention-led growth. This will assist you to lead the team planning by including the headcount along with setting up the right technology for Customer Success. .

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Trends Technical Review Headcount 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

Those line charts showing fast-rising user acquisition or explosive ARR have been synonymous with the industry over the past decade. And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. I moved there for university, and then I started working at Goldman Sachs in their mergers and acquisitions team.

Scale 206

Scale Software Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 206

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded. While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

ChurnZero

JANUARY 3, 2020

The new Customer Success Software Momentum Grid from G2 showcases CS solutions with the highest growth trajectory on a product’s user satisfaction, online presence, and employee headcount growth over the last year. com’s most recent funding, a $55M Series C, was announced in October.

Customer Success 69

Customer Success Venture Capital Software Review Technical Review 69

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Sales now accounts for about 7% of the company’s headcount–a similar share of their workforce as marketing or product management. I’d even argue that the company is still under-resourced in sales; sales accounts for only 7% of Atlassian’s headcount compared to 25% of headcount at the average PLG business. This is a good thing.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

InsightSquared

MAY 7, 2019

When scaling the business, sales typically averages roughly 30% of revenue, so therefore sales spend is one of the biggest investments a company can make. At the highest level, SaaS companies look at sales expense, headcount, sales productivity and SaaS metrics like: The cost of new customer acquisition (CAC).

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2022

Even if you don’t control the headcount and even if layoffs come later, help them find a new role. While that poses a number of challenges, it’s also an opportunity for revenue leaders to look at systems, processes, data, and tech to make sure you’re investing your time and energy as efficiently as possible. Invest in training.

Scale 91

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 91

The Angel VC

MARCH 22, 2012

Therefore the key drivers of my imaginary startup are organic growth rate, marketing budget and customer acquisition costs, conversion rate, ARPU and churn rate. If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly.

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions 189

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

burn) by failing to invest in the second half of 2023 for growth in 2024. The next block focuses on headcount: Total employees, at end of period. Bad subscription margins can kill an investment deal faster than a high churn rate. CAC payback period = months of subscription gross profit to repay customer acquisition cost.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Software Review Forecasting Churn 118

ChurnZero

AUGUST 23, 2019

The new Customer Success Software Momentum Grid from G2 showcases CS solutions with the highest growth trajectory on a product’s user satisfaction, online presence, and employee headcount growth over the last year. com’s most recent funding, a $55M Series C, was announced in October.

Software Review 56

Software Review Customer Success Software Venture Capital 56

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

The new Customer Success Software Momentum Grid from G2 showcases CS solutions with the highest growth trajectory on a product’s user satisfaction, online presence, and employee headcount growth over the last year. com’s most recent funding, a $55M Series C, was announced in October.

Venture Capital 40

Venture Capital Software Review Technical Review Headcount 40

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded. While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

SaaSX

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

For example, a 1:1 capital efficiency ratio means you’re earning one dollar for every dollar you invest into company growth. Ideally, as a company scales, headcount doesn’t scale exactly in tandem. In the simplest terms, capital efficiency means growing profitably , without overinvesting to land customers and drive revenue.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Software Review Software Payments 52

OpenView Labs

MARCH 10, 2019

Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x. Focusing on Customer Success from the very early days of Typeform has been instrumental in improving both retention and acquisition, and has played an important role in our overall achievements. The challenge was retention. Education team.

Scale 69

Scale Customer Success Scaling Sales Hiring 69

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

What’s the return on investment of your mom? And in this article he explains why, and proposes a different approach to thinking about the optimal CSM headcount to help you build a more effective customer success organization. Plus, the Product Marketing Alliance drops the Product Marketing Salary Survey. And Sprinklr acquires Nanigans.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2024

Customer acquisition. How do you invest in the positive attributes of the community while protecting that special connection with people? One thing about moving away from paid acquisition to higher quality revenue is it requires a re-emphasis and reinvestment into free. That’s the opportunity here. It’s a pain.

AI Search 215

AI Search SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 215

ProfitWell

MARCH 3, 2020

We invest in business software companies as they’re scaling through the awkward teenage years of that expansion stage—but they’ve found product-market fit, they’ve found some customers, they’ve got a great product, and they’re really ready to 10x their customer base in their teens. Now Hire Sales. Here’s some intel from our conversation.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 59

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

Where should you invest your resources? If you’re short on time, here are a few quick takeaways: You can’t balance short-term and long-term investments without considering the existing product strategy. Choosing the right investment is a balancing act of art and science. And yet, now might be a good time to hit the accelerator.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Brokers and accountants were two of the channels that Rippling identified would help them scale quickly, so they invested in them from early on. You have to invest a lot of time to get a channel going, to get referrals, to acquire customers…and then work on customer satisfaction. Logo acquisition (i.e.,

Outsourcing Services 206

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 206

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Knowing where to you invest time and resources as everything seems to get more complicated creates complexity as well. Some of these motions are much larger investments, especially in sales-led — hiring people, commission planning, etc. You can also get a halo effect out of that investment in a market. Kady said no.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 188

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader. To date, they have raised over $73M from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Point Nine to name a few.

Scale 171

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 171

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 5, 2021

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a key SaaS metric that accounts for how much it costs your company to procure each new customer. This strategy is good for those who want to grow their business slowly over time without major equity investment or a flashy exit. However, this metric calls for discerning judgment.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Acquisition Customer Lifetime Value Scale 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

We’ll also hear Andrew Chen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talking about the changing landscape of customer acquisition. Adam Risman , a former host of the podcast, asked Rachel what made that point when Rachel joined Slack in 2016 the right time to invest in growth marketing? Here’s Rachel.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 4, 2019

Despite the exponential growth they’ve gone through, Stripe have been refreshingly conservative about how quickly they grown the company from a headcount perspective. We are a very engineering-centric company, so 50% of headcount is always going to be on engineering. We just were never going to get that headcount.

Scale 162

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Payment Services 162

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

As investors, we keep a close eye on customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback. We use it as an indicator that a company has the right fundamentals in place to effectively ramp up customer acquisition. In turn, these headcount costs can go directly towards building and selling the product. .

Headcount 73

Headcount SaaS Compensation Acquisition 73

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Ask yourself first, why would your CEO or CFO invest in such a program? Compare this figure with the acquisition cost and document the loss in ROI due to early churn. Compare the cost of acquisition (which would be much higher) with that of investing in building brand advocates. Less referrals could be another.

Outsourcing Services 10

Outsourcing Services Customer Success Technical Review Business 10

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

Hiring is one of the biggest areas of investment in your business, so it’s essential to go to great lengths to recruit (and keep) happy employees. “We’ve got close to 500 employees now, and we have to invest a lot of time to make sure we stay true to that culture. Are you prepared to invest?

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

As VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, Elad Gil was a key player as company headcount skyrocketed from 90 to 1,500 employees. This wasn’t Elad’s first experience with hyper growth – Google grew headcount 10x during his time as a product manager there – nor the last. If you enjoy the it, check out more episodes.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120