SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2020

Q: How can anyone start a big business by small startup? Why would any big business take a risk on a start-up? Put that 10x feature on your T-shirt and business card. That’s hard when you are small. Write very high-value blog posts. A bit more here: Corporate Blogs Always Work. They wouldn’t.

Startup 255

Startup Business Technical Review Enterprise 255

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2021

social followers, and blog views are up, and more. But it’s also a real business, run by a tiny team. As well as a small but pretty successful venture fund. Too small really, as we got lean-and-mean during Covid. Want experience closing $50k-$150k deals routinely? Want a chance to close $2m-$5m a year?

Technical Review 209

Technical Review Social Media Software Review Cloud 209

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

First, figure out how much revenue you need to close in the next twelve months. If you do small deals, reps may struggle to close $400k a year. But in practice, you can’t ask AEs to pay for the help they can closing. It’s a tough business, with sharp elbows, and half promises. Move on and focus on your business.

Scale 254

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 254

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

My second boss was generous enough to give me a small team to manage a few months into my job. He said he didn’t know how to fix all our problems, but he knew getting on jets and going to visit prospects and customers in person would help us close. My list: “You need to start managing people.” So at first I turned it down.

Management 200

Management Business 200

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

For Sam, an SDR has always been the most challenging hire within the sales organization because they are often fresh out of college or moving from a different career path, and they don’t have historical performance and back-channel references to lean on — yet you rely on them for net new business. What can the SDR control?

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 253

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

So I’ve been doing SaaS for a while, and the costs of doing business have just gone up. And you can also pay up a bit if you sell to customers Small, Medium and Large. In that case, SMB sales doesn’t always have to be quite as efficient as it does if it’s your entire business motion. Inflation is everywhere.

SMB 273

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 273

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2021

Sales is there to close a deal, yes, but that should just be 10% of it — 90% of the “work” should be to solve your prospects’ and customers’ problems. No matter how big or small. Small businesses care just as much about their businesses as big ones. As fundamentally as you can. Probably much more.

Sales 361

Sales SaaS Startup Branding 361

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2021

Q: If 90% of start-ups fail, then why does everyone want to make a start-up instead of a simple business? Having the chance of some sort of outcome like this, or even one vaguely close to it, even a 1/10th of it, even 1/100th of it is enough. That’s the biggest difference between a small business and a classic tech startup.

Startup 280

Startup Scaling Investment Product Marketing 280

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking. This is pretty impressive from SMBs, but the key is that every small store, every small business does need to market and acquire customers. 130,000 Customers, So About $5,000 on Average A Year Per Customer. 110%+ NRR for 3+ Years.

Scale 229

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 229

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

But most importantly, they’ve found a way to continue to close more and more SMBs, especially bigger SMBs. 40% of their revenue comes from agencies, partners, and others deploying HubSpot for small businesses. New customer count slows to the teens, or even lower. But HubSpot has found a way. A lot has helped. Pretty epic.

Scale 245

Scale Cloud Scaling Pricing 245

Buffer Resources

APRIL 11, 2024

From my experience, nonprofits and startups have startling similarities: Both have small teams of employees who wear multiple hats, and both depend on outside funding for operations, whether it's from investors or donors.  What’s your most popular newsletter or blog?   Manual errors. Crankiness.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Startup Social Media Marketing 108

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

Can’t we all close $1m deals on Zoom now? Even though the leads sure took a long time to close. They quickly closed the week after meeting at Dreamforce for a nice six-figure deal. But the small ones often just don’t have enough buyers. To help the reps close deals before the end of the year!

Cloud 287

Cloud Marketing Enterprise Pricing 287

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

I.e., would the business be at risk if you went down or away? Now by contrast, some accounts are more at risk than they seem: At risk: small groups / silos at a large customer — within a larger division or organization. You haven’t truly closed the customer at an enterprise level – yet. I think it’s fairly easy.

SaaS 243

SaaS Enterprise Sales Business 243

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

E.g.,: CAC of < 12 months is Good-to-Great Paying sales reps 25%-30% of what they close is Good A burn ratio of 1 or less is Good These metrics do sort of work, if you have some capital to spend (i.e., In fact, Very Small Businesses often see 3% a month churn or higher. That’s great, and it enables their software.

SaaS Payments 208

SaaS Payments Metrics Payments SMB 208

Nimble - Sales

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs, a well-managed sales pipeline is more than a strategic asset; it’s the backbone of your business. It can mean the difference between a thriving business and one that struggles to close deals.

Sales 61

Sales Management Business 61

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

Today that would be a dream, but in 2011, people didn’t understand the metrics around recurring revenue businesses, so investors weren’t sure it was a good business. You Need A Business Model with Economies of Scale As you’re trying to reverse engineer whether your business model makes sense, you have to look at your business model.

Engineering 250

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 250

Buffer Resources

MAY 16, 2023

The Buffer blog is a resource for creators, small business owners, and marketers that covers everything you need to know about creating content and growing an audience on social media. Our Content team will work closely with you to ensure a polished final product. Interested? There are more details below.

Social Media 25

Social Media Banking Education Trends 25

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2021

In the companies I work closely with, roughly, the conversions vary fairly widely from about 60% to over 90%. Similarly, companies I’ve invested in strive to provide value within the first day of deployment — plug the device in, fire up the mobile app and website, and you can start tracking your small fleet on Day 1.

Scale 255

Scale SaaS Mobile Branding 255

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. They know sales processes, objections, and timings, so they bring in a few deals in the pipe to close faster. PLG aren’t magic letters that fix a broken business model.

Part-Time VPE 185

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 185

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2023

“Great to learn about your business! Good for very small businesses, but not someone you can trust for bigger deals.” If you don’t ask, you won’t know which tools in your sales toolkit to use to compete, win, sell, and close. Is there anyone else you are looking at to _”? Competitor 2] is about 1/10th the size of us.

Mobile 196

Mobile Branding Sales Business 196

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2023

New Workloads Are Only a Small Percent of Today’s Revenue, But Are The Majority of Tomorrow’s. New workloads, new uses of Mongo are actually just a small percent of revenue. And here you can see the magic in Mongo’s business model. You don’t always have to close a $1m deal … upfront.

Scale 185

Scale cloud efficiency Cloud Business Model 185

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Close more of them. And close them for more money, on average. Sometimes this can work, especially in a heavily freemium model, and especially when you sell to very small businesses or individual developers or small teams. More on that here. You are growing fast enough. And are they growing fast enough?

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 291

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

You close a customer for $120 in annualized revenue, you only get to recognize $10 of that a month. Think of trying to get a train out of a station with a very small engine. Next year, you will have a $14m, or an $18m, or maybe even a $20m+ business. Get the revenues going, even if they are small. This will be painful.

SaaS 317

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 317

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

We worked in a small office above a smog shop on 4th Street, had a handful of customers, and 100k in ARR closed by our CEO. Companies often underestimate the size of the market they are selling to and try to define a broad scope of businesses that can use their product. How do you use this to optimize for close rate?

Scale 263

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 263

Stax

APRIL 18, 2024

Not only are there a number of ways your customers could be using their mobile devices to give payments, but you as a business owner could be leveraging mobile devices to accept them as well. It pays to know exactly how mobile technologies will be impacting your business, or potentially already are.

Payment Services 88

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

Here’s what to consider: Pain: The first thing every business should consider is the pain point. It’s better to start getting traction in a small TAM than spread yourself too thin, too early. Closed Won” means that the paid date is known. This goes beyond focusing on your TAM. What pre-determined persona do they fit into?

Sales Hiring 167

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 167

SaaStr

JULY 19, 2023

You want to have a baseline understanding of how the business is performing at a very early stage.” Step Two: Diagnose the Bottleneck to Closing More Revenue When your company doesn’t hit target revenue, it can be tempting to zero in on conversion rates. But this is not necessarily the cause of the missed target.

Revenue 217

Revenue Acquisition Technical Review Systems Review 217

Subscription Flow

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

This is the blog to read if you are a business owner trying to manage your transactions more effectively. In today’s blog, to help you streamline your financial processes, we will be going over Square integration with QuickBooks which can easily integrate to help you simplify accounting duties and streamline business operations.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Payments Payment Features Merchant Services 52

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2020

Large, Medium and Small. Maybe it’s just 10% of your customer base, but there’s often at least a small piece that is growing faster, at least for now, than before these crazy times. And retention should remain close to pre-Covid 19 rates. Maybe they can at least close later. Maybe it’s healthcare.

Scale 255

Scale Sales Healthcare Retention 255

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2023

At least, not too closely. You’ll see that small checks consume too much of your time for not enough absolute returns (usually). If you can invest in great companies — then it’s really not that “hard” of a business. So we all feel this. The job is to deploy capital, after all. See, e.g., WhatsApp.

Investment 288

Investment Cloud SaaS Management 288

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2022

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Constant Contact delivers for small businesses with powerful tools to simplify and amplify digital marketing.

Banking 181

Banking Consulting AI Revenue 181

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

The Bank provides community banking products including lending and comprehensive deposit and treasury management services to small and medium-sized businesses through our California-based branch offices and Denver, Colorado branch office.

Banking 233

Banking Payment Features Venture Capital Subscription 233

Buffer Resources

JUNE 19, 2023

” Reflecting on this article is interesting because our stance then and now is the same – let it handle the small stuff, so you can better handle the big, creative work. Our interest in AI has only grown since then, as ChatGPT went public, we published several articles mentioning AI on the blog, and we launched an AI Assistant.

AI 123

AI Social Media ChatGPT Interviewing 123

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Being open about mistakes helps others see that you can win at business while still being human-first. Whatever you care about in your business, whether high achieving, innovation, values, or making money, make sure your team feels the same way. For the Enterprise deal, they closed their first gigantic deal at $2.6M

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 241

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

I hired the person with a great resume but who didn’t get our business, culture, or community. I need to constantly run small experiments and scale only based upon clear leading indicators. But much more often, I swung and missed. And inevitably, these folks ended up not working out, despite being very talented in other settings.

Sales Hiring 267

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 267

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2022

A small customer cares just as much about their business as a large one does — often more. Small businesses have more on the line than larger ones, not less. They buy less software, and the risks are higher, and they don’t have anyone to manage business process change. And after you do, ask to close the deal.

Pricing 180

Pricing Startup Branding Sales 180

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Large enterprises use lots of tools, widgets, and software in their businesses, but they tend to use the obvious, trusted solutions. The general idea is to bring in 1–2 new vendors a year that don’t risk taking the core business down, but could have a material impact on the bottom line. At least 90% of the time.

Enterprise 238

Enterprise Startup Scale Innovation 238