ChurnZero

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

There are several different models of compensation plans , but not all can be guaranteed to produce the same results for your organization. We’ve found that, when looking to build a strong team of Customer Success Managers (CSMs), an incentive compensation plan, otherwise called a variable compensation plan, produces the best results.

Compensation 52

Compensation Customer Success Churn Retention 52

Totango

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for designing customer success compensation plans. Each company is unique and has different goals and KPIs in place that affect CSM compensation structures. 4 Factors to Consider in Your CSM Compensation Plan. Let’s take a look at four important factors. .

Compensation 74

Compensation Customer Success Revenue Churn 74

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2021

Q: What is a good model for SaaS product sales commission? Sometimes for very transactional, low ACV sales, the percent can be lower. Sometimes for very transactional, low ACV sales, the percent can be lower. Ultimately, it should all solve out to say 20% of the bookings goes out to sales comp, one way or another.

Scale 164

Scale Sales Compensation Churn 164

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 27, 2016

Many times startup teams ask how to compensate a sales team for renewals and upsells. In addition to mitigating churn, startups spend 2-10x less on acquiring a marginal ARR dollar when expanding and upselling accounts. Sales Type Median CAC Ratio 25% Percentile CAC Ratio. New Customer 1.13 Expansion 0.20

Compensation 100

Compensation Scale Sales SaaS 100

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

Q: What is the better SaaS sales compensation plan: paying reps the 12 months up front for the contract value or paying them pro-rated 12 monthly payments? So my vote is: Assuming your churn is fairly low. And if your churn rate is low enough and NRR high enough, none of this will really matter. And life will be simpler.

SaaS Payments 173

SaaS Payments Compensation Payment Services Sales 173

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

You Have to Train Sales Reps 3–10. You have to start formal sales training by rep #3. Tie compensation to these metrics to incentivize performance. A classic on founder compensation, always one of the most searched topics. A classic on founder compensation, always one of the most searched topics. Or they fail.

Sales Hiring 233

Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 233

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2023

On commissions / pay-out: For start-ups where cash matters, I strongly suggest compensating the reps mainly on cash brought in. If it’s too high, it’s not worth it in many cases, unless your churn is high. But if your churn it high, incent these deals even without all the cash up front. Approaches vary here.

Compensation 221

Compensation Churn Revenue SaaS 221

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 193

Tom Tunguz

MAY 12, 2015

In 2015, the company prioritize on-boarding to mitigate short-term customer churn by investing more time at the beginning of a relationship. This shift in customer success team emphasis is analogous to the changes in sales team focus described by Mark Roberge in his book about Hubspot called The Sales Acceleration Formula.

Compensation 100

Compensation Customer Success Sales Recruiting Churn 100

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

AUGUST 1, 2018

Churn is bad for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. But knowing there’s a churn problem is one thing; fixing it is something else. To bring down churn, we need to understand what’s behind the numbers. Wrong customers Sometimes high churn happens when SaaS providers sell to the wrong customers.

Churn 122

Churn Metrics Compensation Software Review 122

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2023

Leveraging decades of experience in B2B market intelligence, analytics, content trends, and predictive intent, DemandScience delivers healthy data and prioritized buyer insights that align sales and marketing professionals with more qualified audiences. Domo transforms business by putting data to work for everyone.

Scale 204

Scale Compensation B2B Innovation 204

CustomerSuccessBox

JANUARY 10, 2022

A good relationship with the Sales department in order to be able to sell new services will also be highly valued by your managers. To help you, you watch over your churn, the proportion of customers lost by your business over a given period. The CS team is also becoming more and more responsible for achieving their sales goals.

Compensation 52

Compensation Customer Success Trends Management 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

What it all means is that if you do it right, you’ll make 6x or more the revenue from your customers after the sale itself. Churn, upsells, renewals, and all that, and compensating against it. And about measuring and identifying Almost Churn. The details on that math here. But they get to meet you.

Customer Success 290

Customer Success Compensation Churn Enterprise 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold. They have low attrition.

Sales Hiring 323

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 323

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2020

Q: What is a good model for SaaS product sales commission? 500/mo is $6,000 a year so that’s a big enough deal size to support a traditional SaaS inside sales rep: Pay 20% of the expected ACV (annualized contract value) in total comp — but that might mean less commission until they’ve covered their base cost for the month.

Scale 172

Scale Compensation Subscription Payment Features 172

Incredo

OCTOBER 17, 2019

common software sales comp plans, 2. what factors to consider before defining your SaaS sales commission percentage. We will share 8 ideas on how to increase your sales team’s productivity and help them close more deals. We will share 8 ideas on how to increase your sales team’s productivity and help them close more deals.

SaaS Payments 150

SaaS Payments Compensation Payment Services Sales Recruiting 150

CustomerSuccessBox

JUNE 8, 2022

The capacity to forecast that a specific customer is at a high risk of churning while there is still time to do something about it is a major new possible revenue generator for any company. We, at CustomerSuccessBox , spoke to some of the Top Customer Success Influencers to know how they manage churn! Q: Please introduce yourself.

Churn 52

Churn Management Customer Success Subscription 52

Incredo

OCTOBER 17, 2019

common software sales comp plans, 2. what factors to consider before defining your SaaS sales commission percentage 4. and finally figure out how much that SaaS sales salary should be. In the end, a bonus section is waiting for you! What are 5 common SaaS sales compensation models? We will write about: 1.

SaaS Payments 144

SaaS Payments Compensation Payment Services Sales Recruiting 144

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. There were also a number of customers who turned us into shelfware or essentially churned. After getting slapped on the wrist a few times for my after-sales support, I knew things had to change. I was very successful in my work.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Sales Hacker

JULY 29, 2021

It’s hard to find a “better” example than in sales, where the annual turnover rate in the United States averages at 34%. Sales is one of those jobs where you sink or swim based on your efforts. All of that can lead to a lot of pressure and stress on sales teams. What is sales productivity? What causes sales burnout?

Sales 109

Sales Systems Review Compensation Metrics 109

User Pilot

MARCH 25, 2024

To improve your company valuation, reduce churn by optimizing the customer journey , use feedback to improve customer experience, optimize your pricing strategy, focus on account expansion , and leverage product virality for customer acquisition. It helps you set realistic expectations and choose the best timing for the sale or IPO.

SaaS 92

SaaS Customer Lifetime Value Acquisition Metrics 92

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Oh, Sales and Customer Success, you are my two favorite disciplines! My career started in Sales, or rather, I was slowly talked into a Sales career by a string of managers who knew I had the drive to be a great salesperson. As a consultant, I often see Sales and Customer Success teams battling over little things.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Compensation Churn 98

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 19, 2018

Churn Monster #5: Manic Customer. With Halloween approaching there’s all sorts of spooky things around us, which makes it a perfect time for us to talk – churn monsters! These churn monsters take big bites out of your customer base, which can be very scary. This month’s churn monster installment is about a manic customer.

Churn 49

Churn Compensation Customer Success Retention 49

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 178

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 178

ChurnZero

MARCH 15, 2019

Churn Monster #10: Bad Fit Customer . This month we are going to take a look at a churn monster that we’ve all experienced but is different than all the rest, for one very specific reason, that we will get into. Let’s take a look at a scenario involving a bad fit customer and how we should handle this one of a kind churn monster.

Underperforming Technical Team 45

Underperforming Technical Team Churn Software Review Compensation 45

InsightSquared

MAY 7, 2019

Sales is the Growth Engine. Sales is the engine driving SaaS company value. Top and bottom line performance are totally dependent on the sales organization and its performance. And sales expense is typically the largest expense item on a growth SaaS company’s income statement. Typical SaaS Sales Metrics.

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

ChurnZero

JANUARY 22, 2021

“But I didn’t want a job in sales!”. If you’ve internally cursed the idea of selling or simply desire to take your sales skills up a notch, then this webinar is for you. Apply a language framework to “get into” the sales conversations. I’m not a huge fan of the sales being blended in with normal CS conversation.

Sales 98

Sales Compensation Pricing Customer Success 98

Chargify

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

The title says it all…calculating sales commission shouldn’t be a pain in the SaaS. Yet, after countless conversations with SaaS sales teams, including our own, we concluded that everyone shares the same sentiment—it IS a pain in the SaaS. . Compensating Other Revenue Generators. But it is just math, right?

Payments 61

Payments SaaS Payments Scale Compensation 61

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2018

Some sales teams consider a customer success manager as the post-sale counterpart of an account executive. At Intercom, our customer success team sits side by side our account executive and relationship management teams in sales. Why onboarding is a part of sales. The role of customer success teams.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team 123

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 9, 2017

One of the hardest thing to do in sales, especially for early stage SaaS companies, is to disqualify customers. More business means better quota attainment, higher compensation, and not having to defend the question, “why did we turn away that Fortune 500?” ” A SaaS startup’s advantage is the speed of execution.

Sales 100

Sales Compensation Market Segmentation Startup 100

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Customer Success Compensation Strategies. TSIA Resource: Pointing Due North – Customer Success Compensation Trends. Efficient Sales Models. TSIA Resource: 3 Tips to Lower Sales Costs Using Your Customer Success Org. ChurnZero Resource: Why Your Customer Success Team Needs Proper Sales Training. Reduce Churn.

Customer Success 78

Customer Success Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 78

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 30, 2020

Top SaaS CEOs Talk Compensation, Automation, and Investors. Customer Success Compensation Catches Up to Sales. For a long time, Customer Success and Sales have been working together but not in equal footing,” says Mehta. “In So much more happens after that initial sale. What’s Next For Customer Success?

Customer Success 93

Customer Success Technical Review Systems Review Compensation 93

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes - strategic communication is an integral part of successful sales enablement. And the success (or failure) of a sales enablement function is intertwined with its ability to influence a sales organisation and change behaviour. Communication matters in business.

Sales Enablement 112

Sales Enablement Sales Business Consulting 112

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 2, 2021

From sessions on building variable compensation plans and Customer Success tech stacks to fostering customer advocacy and community, BIG RYG explored how today’s Customer Success leaders are tackling major industry challenges and advancing their Customer Success game. Not that the [sales] commission is delayed until deployment or renewal.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Technical Review Scale Compensation 98

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales @ Logz.io, the startup that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to provide monitoring, troubleshooting and security. Before Logz, Bridget was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. How does one structure commissions for the sales team with that in mind?

Sales Hiring 115

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SMB 115

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2015

Because of the nature of SMBs, the startup must battle the higher churn rates of smaller customers which slow growth, creating the S curve above. At some point, the startup pursues the enterprise market to continue to achieve high growth rates with decreased customer churn. Smaller customers churn at higher rates.

Innovation 178

Innovation Startup Scale SMB 178