Kellblog

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Management teams should prepare themselves for activist investors and adapt their financial profile to keep valuations high. As companies prepare for a potential wave of churn , they put more emphasis on retention than ever before. Why are companies afraid of churn in 2023? Their mission is to drive your churn.

Software Review 120

Software Review Development Team Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 120

Totango

JULY 8, 2021

To move away from this pattern, we suggest organizations put in place an early customer warning system that enables their customer success team focus on proactive customer retention. We find this solution works best for teams operating in a high- to medium-touch engagement model. How to Build An Early Customer Warning System.

Systems Review 65

Systems Review Underperforming Technical Team Payment Features Churn 65

ChurnZero

JUNE 11, 2021

Customer health scores give Customer Success teams a deep understanding of a customer’s health and are a leading indicator that there may be an issue with an account or customer. As you accumulate more customer data, and tweak your scoring based off that data, the better your health score will be at predicting churn. The customer left.

Software Review 96

Software Review Systems Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 96

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

We trust leaders to make decisions on what tools they need to get the most out of their teams. Guide to SaaS Revenue Recognition and Deferred Revenue in SaaS by Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO SaaS revenue recognition is an ongoing priority for SaaS accounting teams. Keep an eye out as we will be making regular updates.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

Let’s say your ICP is a web developer running a startup on the East Coast. This will result in poor open and response rates. Apollo’s full plan comes with an SMB level price tag; as a startup, you probably want the basic plan. Get deep insights into your company's MRR, churn and other vital metrics for your SaaS business.

Scale 97

Scale Startup Sales Hiring Sales 97

FastSpring

JANUARY 27, 2022

Each of the companies Jon worked with lowered churn by creating a better notification process, including a reminder about their renewal six weeks prior to the billing cycle. In this piece, we offer seven case studies from SaaS companies — small tweaks they made to reduce churn and increase customer LTV. Small things matter,” Jon added.

Merchant Services 110

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 110

CustomerSuccessBox

OCTOBER 5, 2021

Know your North Star KPI Setting up CS team as per those KPI Choose the right CS tool Track, Measure, Improve and build collaborative teams. Business KPIs- NRR, Renewal rate, MRR churn, etc. NRR = [(Revenue from renewals + Revenue from upgrades– Revenue lost due to churn and downgrades) / MRR at the beginning of the month].

Customer Success 59

Customer Success Technical Review Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 59

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

In my experience, getting caught up in shiny objects (like great numbers) during the hiring process is a straight line to Disasterville, and when the cost of a bad hire is painfully significant , it pays to take a measured approach. Also: What are the top performers in my current team doing? This is a team effort.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 93

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2020

Before Slack, Rachel spent 4 years at LinkedIn where she led the product marketing team for content experiences. 318: The first step in success with SMB clients is to recognize that it’s not a one size fits all scenario. Companies need a specialized approach for SMB accounts, different than the tactics used for Enterprise.

SMB 179

SMB Scale Startup Marketplace as a Service 179

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Lots of us fantasize about moving upmarket, but are unsure of how to get started, is it just a matter of hiring a team of SDRs and getting them to hit the phones? So as Lauren sort of alluded to, we started by focusing on SMB’s. Today we’ll be talking about five ways to effectively move up market.

Underperforming Technical Team 150

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring compliance SMB 150

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. So how do you create a strong, enterprise-ready team? Not just support on steroids: How to build a customer success team.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

Jason : And two things, I founded EchoSign because we had SMBs and enterprise customers. The SMBs during the recession churned at a massive rate, right? Our monthly self-service churn went from like 3% to like 9%, right? If something bad happens, you’re going to have to cut your burn, probably. We were wrong.

Sales Hiring 204

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 204

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

But as the business becomes more successful – and there are resources to build a support team – additional layers begin to separate executives from their customers. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. Short on time?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2019

Firstly- Happy New Year Churn Fighters! the stuff that Customer Success teams are really meant to do). One customer success trend I’m seeing is the need to develop more repeatable customer education programs. Internally owned by the CSM, and collaborated on across teams. Let’s talk 2019 predictions.

Customer Success 73

Customer Success SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 73

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

In a year like this, SMB is doing worse, with a lot more churn and startups going out of business. But in other years, SMBs are jumping in the boat, so you get amazing growth long-term with a multi-segment strategy. Sometimes, it might look like SMB churn when they’re really just moving into mid-market.

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 203

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. That means your focus should be on building the right customer profile and developing precise messaging to reach them. Short on time?

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

As for Krish, under Krish’s leadership the team has grown to over 300 people and over 5,000 clients making it one of the next generation in truly global SaaS businesses started in India. How does Krish think about purely serving the SMB market? How does he think about the mortality rate of SMBs? What questions reveal the most?

Scale 127

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 127

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2019

Here’s what Eyal and Megan talk about: How to develop software faster. But I think what it boils down to is also how newer technology is being developed and the ability for it to inter-operate with other platforms. It’s not an SMB where you’re getting volumes of 100 a day. Missed the session? So it’s that.

SaaS Payments 132

SaaS Payments Cloud Technical Review Scale 132

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

I’ve been in software since the ’90s and for over 20 years, nearly that entire time, we’ve been talking about digital transformation, developing strategies, architecting new technologies, and moving beyond digitization to rethinking our businesses, our products, and our services in a way that’s optimized for a digital world.

Scale 158

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Branding 158

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Before I joined the venture capital industry many years ago, I was a software developer, and I worked for a startup around the 2000 time period. Contrast that with companies that might also sell into the SMB segment of the market where the ASPs, the average deal sizes are lower. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2019

Firstly- Happy New Year Churn Fighters! the stuff that Customer Success teams are really meant to do). One customer success trend I’m seeing is the need to develop more repeatable customer education programs. Internally owned by the CSM, and collaborated on across teams. Let’s talk 2019 predictions.

Customer Success 49

Customer Success SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 49

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Tara and her team used it to take a deep dive into the customer’s journey through the product and make a focused effort to truly understand each step along the way. Ultimately, that leads to churn. ” She adds: “We actually don’t use the term ‘churn’ anymore. A different approach is the Jobs-to-be-Done framework.

Retention 34

Retention Scale Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 34

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

You have to create a repeatable process if you’re going to scale up the sales team. The Number One Job of a VP Sales is Recruiting a Great Team. But let’s step back a minute, you’ve got three reps on your team already, doing whatever revenue, four, and you want to triple your revenue. Whatever you do, hire two.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 251

Upscope

JANUARY 4, 2021

Intercom developed one of those typical guidance systems you see when you sign up to a new website. They want to understand the pricing, the team management options, the possible future cost and lots more. You could ask them to book a demo with your sales team and some people prefer that. Well, that's how I think of it.

Software Review 52

Software Review Systems Review Technical Review Scale 52

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 15, 2018

If you missed episode 28, check it out here: PODCAST 28: How High Growth SaaS Companies Build and Lead Sales Teams w/ Chris Degnan. Aircall is a phone system designed for the modern sales team. Outreach triples the productivity of sales teams and empowers them to drive predictable and measurable revenue growth.

Customer Success 47

Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team Retention 47

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Turns out a founding team of six MBAs creating a full suite of products sold solely to SMBs can become a multi-million dollar public company in nine years – and continue growing rapidly ($77.6 Dharmesh : …said, “This is a very bad idea. million in 2013 to $115.9 million in 2014.). I said, “Holy crap.

Part-Time VPE 212

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 212

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

Before Optimizely, Travis spent 6 years at Salesforce in a number of sales roles including building the first Platform Sales team. What does Travis advise founders when it comes to uniting customer facing teams? * What does Travis advise founders when it comes to churn analysis? Loving our podcast content?

Underperforming Technical Team 158

Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Payments Payment Services Technical Advisors 158

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. It’s an SMB SaaS company in the healthcare technology vertical. We’ll talk about some of the stuff that you do as you grow your team a little bit and then we’ll sort of wrap it up with some advanced stuff.

Sales Recruiting 254

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 254

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

What are the core metrics founders should measure to determine the effectiveness of their reps and sales teams? How does this differ between SMB and enterprise? So what would end up happening, of course, is they wouldn’t adopt, they wouldn’t utilize, and of course, they’d churn. I had to onboard reps.

Part-Time VPE 194

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 194

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

But it sounds like the bad news is you’ve got a limited runway. It’s not the investor’s problem if you have an expensive team. They know everyone, and if they don’t, someone on their vast team does. Like if you have a three people in a team, what do you think that is recession proof right now?

Scale 185

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 185

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2019

Is it best to start at enterprise and work down to SMB or does SMB and work up to enterprise work best? When does SMB pricing turn into enterprise and mid level pricing and so much more. What can founders do to optimize revenue per lead? How does the product have to change with the scaling to enterprise? How do I increase them?

Outsourcing Services 114

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring SMB 114

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

374: ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like…the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. If you think of this from a market size standpoint, there’s often this debate, is that good or bad?

Sales Hiring 153

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Cloud 153

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2018

During a talk about the future of sales leaders , Jacc o vanderKooij (Founder @ Winning By Design) and Rob Jeppsen (CEO @ Xvoyant) emphasized that most sales teams are looking at the wrong metrics. Top sales teams chase conversion metrics. Selling is a Team Effort. The Analytics You’re Looking at Are Outdated.

Sales Hiring 43

Sales Hiring Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Sales 43

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

There was another company I invested in called Automile, that for a while was quite successful in SMB fleet tracking, tracking where your fleets of vehicles are. And we’re about to add basically a team collaboration tier on top of the product. And you have to allow that, in fact, you have to support that in your sales team.

Scale 207

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 207

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Its implementation can be time-consuming and challenging for non-technical team members. Product-led growth may be a bit of a buzzword, but achieving no-code growth is particularly important for SaaS companies with low ACV, freemium models, and generally those in the SMB sector. A great alternative to Pendo and WalkMe is Userpilot.

Software Review 52

Software Review Technical Review Onboarding Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

So let’s take a look back to a deep dive with the CEOs on what they learned building their first senior teams: ———-. As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. What makes you feel that you need to level up your management, set up your first management team?

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 253

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 23, 2020

The situations that portend failure are varied and unfortunately common – no product-market fit, no cash, bad product, burnout, to name just a few of the most obvious. Poor marketing. A better strategy is to prioritize building your audience alongside developing the product. In this world, growth trumps all other priorities.

Underperforming Technical Team 183

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Payments Payment Services 183