Kellblog

MARCH 29, 2023

Phrasing these strategies in terms of songs/albums: (1) Staying Alive , (2) Get Back [to where you once were valued], and (3) Born to Run [convince VCs that, “tramps like us, baby, we were born to run” — i.e., that we have a lean machine where ARR is a predictable output of VC investment.]

Metrics 123

Metrics Compensation Benchmarks Interviewing 123

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

When we were preparing the 2020 expansion SaaS benchmarking survey, our biggest question was: “How did COVID-19 and the economic downturn affect private SaaS companies?” It now matches sales and marketing spend at the average SaaS company as folks continued to put significant investments into R&D during the pandemic.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Technical Review SaaS 52

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

In these scenarios, investing in larger post sales teams drives account growth. Compensation strategies for customer success are evolving to include a larger fraction of performance compensation. The greater the opportunity to upsell account, the greater the likelihood of performance-based compensation.

Compensation 111

Compensation Scale Benchmarks Customer Success 111

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 2, 2014

This post is part of a continuing series evaluating the S-1s of publicly traded SaaS companies in order to better understand the core business and build a library of benchmarks that might be useful to founders. Some might argue that the relatively heavier investment in R&D should reduce the need for Sales & Marketing expense.

Benchmarks 100

Benchmarks Metrics SaaS Scale 100

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

We’re living in a remarkable era for investing. Benchmarks are the only check on whether or not a business is generating efficient growth. Benchmarks act as a swim lane for operating a business and allow operators to build a hyper-growth business that provide permission to believe. How Do I Know What My Benchmarks Are?

Benchmarks 40

Benchmarks Data SaaS Scale 40

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

If they aren’t involved in interviewing, distilling down, and setting up the processes for the Account Executives, and setting up their compensation/goals, as well as meeting with the first Account Executives regularly, then they aren’t adding as much value as you need. Get someone who will do these things.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

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. For these reasons, accurately tracking key sales metrics and benchmarking your performance against peers and market leaders is critical to getting the most out of your sales resources.

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

OpenView Labs

MARCH 8, 2021

Compensation. A Guide to Creating a Scalable Sales Compensation Plan. In this guide, you’ll find tips for designing sales compensation packages that yield results and actually scale. Metrics and benchmarks. 9 Sales Benchmarks for Building a Scalable Sales Machine. Show Me the Money! Onboarding.

Sales Hiring 80

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting B2B 80

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2015

McKinsey developed the 9 Box Matrix in the 1970s to help GE prioritize investments across its 150 business units. Some should receive investments and others should be divested. The main goal of the 9 Box Matrix is to categorize employees, determine which to promote, retain and invest in, and which to reallocate.

Startup 100

Startup Compensation Benchmarks Investment 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 12, 2015

Because the value of shares increases substantially with the growth of the startup, new invested capital and diminished risk of the business, new employee grants should offer fewer shares over time. The compensation committee benchmarks the company’s offers against industry survey data and adjusts as necessary.

Startup 111

Startup Compensation Finance Benchmarks 111

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

45% of expansion stage SaaS companies now say they have a usage-based or consumption-based pricing model, according to data from OpenView’s forthcoming 2021 Finance and Operations benchmarks report. . Product: Treat product investments as a revenue-generating expense. ARR was no longer a key component of sales compensation.

Pricing 64

Pricing Customer Success Scale Compensation 64

Chaotic Flow

MAY 13, 2014

These stages define a SaaS Metrics Maturity Model that provides a SaaS metrics roadmap along with benchmarks at each stage of development for SaaS companies that aspire to become a Metrics-driven SaaS Business. Sales is compensated on recurring revenue and avoids discounts based on total contract value.

Metrics 135

Metrics SaaS Compensation Benchmarks 135

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 30, 2020

More capital invested, more SaaS offerings, continued expectations of rapid growth are running smack into limits on the availability of qualified employees and a potential economic slow-down which may or may not happen. was invested in the US alone by VCs in 2019. 2020 Benchmarking. billion in 2019. That’s after $136.5B

Sales Hiring 49

Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS Acquisition 49

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

So, having someone on your team who’s thinking and acting on these changes and making an incremental investment in that every year is really important to unlock the potential of what’s next for your organization.”. We also invested in executive presence training for our CSMs.

VP of Engineering 52

VP of Engineering Technical Advisors Compensation Cloud 52

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2018

Compensation in sales is usually tied to revenue (qualifying more leads, closing more deals, etc.), Other times we simply ask customers how they’d define success, and use their input as a benchmark. The best results come when organizations invest in teams centered around customer advocacy to complement other selling efforts.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team 123

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2020

Some of these businesses, maybe even many of these businesses have started investing more and more in selling online to their preexisting in store customers. I mean, including IAA and now four investments over the last month, let’s say. Everybody wants to invest in it or most funds are looking into those.

Investment 151

Investment Scale Travel Venture Capital 151

OPEXEngine

AUGUST 9, 2022

No digital tool can compensate for a lack of discipline at the front line. By benchmarking critical go-to-market KPIs, like the Magic Number – which measures how many new dollars of revenue growth are obtained getting from your sales and marketing investment compared to your competitors. Automate account management.

Scale 59

Scale VP of Engineering Payment Services Underperforming Technical Team 59

OPEXEngine

MARCH 15, 2022

OPEXEngine benchmarking data reveals an interesting trend. Where will it make sense to invest the time, effort, and money to set up a local entity and scale it? Talent Compensation. How do you benchmark salary when the regional market discrepancies may be huge? But scaling your business in the right place is critical.

Payment Services 40

Payment Services SaaS Payments Merchant Services Payments 40

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 17, 2019

Their compensation is directly linked to the revenue that they generate for the business. And no, we didn’t think this up because of the whole WeWork saga from this Fall – we wrote about this back before anyone else cared, in our 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks report. Product Managers Will Own a KPI.

Trends 67

Trends Sales Recruiting Technical Review SaaS 67

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

If you truly are ready to invest in a region or a locale, hire someone who represents the culture bridge that you’re trying to create and have that local person run the show for you. They understand that a certain number of their investments in a given portfolio will fail. Paula: I see this, and I find it sad.

Artificial Intelligence 75

Artificial Intelligence Sales Hiring Technical Review Machine Learning 75

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 8, 2020

As a result, we really had to educate the core company about how making leads product users would be the most important investment we could make for both our customer experience and HubSpot’s long term growth. These reps, who we call “Inbound Success Coaches” are not salespeople and they don’t have variable compensation.

Strategy 41

Strategy Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Compensation 41

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

This is the process I use to hire a full-time Account Executive at ChartMogul: Initial phone screen: the purpose of this 15-30 minute interview is to get on the same page on three things — competencies, culture, and compensation. Beware, though, of investing your limited resources in CRM dashboard perfection when your processes are evolving.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Startup 93

Baremetrics

MAY 7, 2019

More recently, the concept of “fund-strapping,” aka taking outside investment or external funding options with the intention of not having to raise any more funding again, has become another viable option for businesses. Build your startup in a way that you don’t need investment. The primary investment is usually time.

Finance 111

Finance Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods 111

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

JULY 30, 2017

Why we ran the programme As an individual contributor (IC) I’m constantly thinking about where I can invest my time to support HubSpot’s sales reps and have the biggest, rather than incremental impact. This may seem unfair, hard and controversial, but it would provide us with valuable data to evaluate and benchmark the programme.

Sales Enablement 100

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Underperforming Technical Team 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

Here’s how: Align Compensation: If you plan to close enterprise deals, you must be prepared to pay for the right salespeople. At TripActions, the sales reps are compensated based on the customer’s adoption and successful use of the platform. So it’s worth the effort to invest in bolstering your credibility for enterprise customers.

Scale 257

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 257

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

As a CCO, the first thing you need to do before presenting your case of budget for customer success in front of the CFO is to look at numerous factors that contribute to customer success investment. You need to promote personnel who are performing well with the right compensation. These will make your company and CSMs more efficient.

Customer Success 10

Customer Success Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 10

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 2, 2023

and as far away as Morocco Initial capital invested: $5,000 Financial support for business: Sold stock from a former employer for startup costs; $7,000 loan from family Revenue streams: The Global Grant Writers Collective : An online course, community, and coaching program priced at $500 per month. Business Snapshot Years in business: 6.5

Payment Methods 114

Payment Methods Sales Hiring Payments Business 114

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify, and Gremlin all prior guests on the show, I hasten to add. Assisted vs unassisted: What does Tom believe are the leading benchmarks for both? What is Tom’s most recent investment and why did he say yes? Listen on Spotify.

Scale 115

Scale SMB Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 115

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

5 Reasons I Hate the Rule of 40 by Mikael Johnsson, SaaS Nordic While not necessarily completely useless, I would strongly argue that R40 is a metric applicable to the world of PE and public markets investing and is not a good metric for assessing the quality of venture-stage companies. Because this drives investment decisions.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

Something that we did really poorly at TalentBin early on was not really focusing on a very crisply defined ICP and insufficiently investing in customer success. Then also we’re going to invest like crazy from a customer success standpoint, to make sure that people onboard and then utilize well, and instrument that on an ongoing basis.”

Part-Time VPE 198

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 198

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Base Salary refers to an agreed-upon amount of payment an employee received as compensation for work rendered. A bonus is a gift or additional compensation given on top of the standard pay or fee, often serving as a reward for outstanding performance or for achieving certain business targets. Compensation. Channel Partner.

Scale 99

Scale Payment Methods Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 99

The Angel VC

MARCH 3, 2015

SaaS Benchmarking” Tunguz we can see that the 18 publicly traded SaaS companies that were founded within the last ten years took five to eight years to reach $50M in revenues, with 14 out of the 18 being in the six to seven years range. (1) So how fast do you have to grow in order to become a $100M company? 1M, T2D3, 50%?

Compensation 185

Compensation Business Model Startup Benchmarks 185

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

And most of our data now as a software company it’s because that’s my background, but you as a sales professional can go to RepVue and view detailed analytics about sales organizations related to compensation data. Do you create broader richer data sets and sell those back to companies for benchmarking purposes?

Marketplace as a Service 94

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Data 94

CustomerSuccessBox

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

This is the benchmark of a successful SaaS model even with negative cash flow. If the customer churn equals the acquisition rate, then the number of new customers exactly compensates for the number of departures. The need to compensate for the business loss will always increase along the path. What are the advantages of SaaS?

Business Model 52

Business Model SaaS Business Software Review 52

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

When we benchmarked ourself, when we started this company, we didn’t say we wanted to be the biggest company in Raleigh. So, I would encourage you just to … When you’re traveling, when you’re meeting with people, invest in getting coffee, getting intelligence. The world’s your market, right?

CTO Hire 156

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 156

Baremetrics

AUGUST 11, 2021

By using a standardized best practice methodology, the company can benchmark accurately against its competitors. Investors will usually prefer to work with GAAP-compliant companies, so it’s a good idea to follow the principles if you hope to secure additional investment. How Is GAAP Used in Accounting?

Payment Methods 59

Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Features Payment Services 59

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2020

As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify and Gremlin all prior guests on the show I hasten to add. Assisted vs unassisted: What does Tom believe are the leading benchmarks for both? It’s such a privilege to be investing in all these wonderful companies.

SMB 26

SMB Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 26