SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. According to ICONIQ’s data, many successful companies hit a growth plateau at around $15M ARR. Founders are still leading sales and are very good at it.

Scale 233

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 233

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Few people have more experience with this move than Linda Lin , Director of Customer Success at the revenue intelligence platform Gong. Moving upmarket means larger customers and higher revenue, but it’s not without its challenges. For Linda, it all comes down to your approach to customer success.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

Sales Hacker

JULY 28, 2021

In providing a neutral ground for marketing, sales, and customer success, RevOps must also analyze contexts to convey insights quicker. To win at this will take great RevOps leadership. How to invest in data that actually drives insights. Revenue Operations is the business version of Switzerland.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Marketing Sales Innovation 98

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

After switching to SaaS, she started as an SMB sales leader with no prior management or SMB sales experience. She wanted to jump into a full cycle capacity as a sales leader, but she said yes. Shifting from an operator and loving operations and data to a sales and revenue leadership role felt like a big jump.

Scale 237

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 237

Totango

JUNE 10, 2022

As we saw in our 2021 State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Report , the role of Customer Success Manager (CSM) is one of the fastest-growing jobs in the industry. In a recent webinar titled “Navigating Your Customer Success Career Path”, Totango’s Sr. Customer success is still new.

Customer Success 101

Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring Leadership 101

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

But the drive and passion remained, and leadership didn’t give up. Because when we looked at our data, we saw that we had much more success sub 5,000 employees,” Blosser says. After the shift, the sales reps stopped chasing whales and working outbound ops with more than 5K employees. Sometimes it can take longer.”

Scale 204

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 204

Totango

AUGUST 14, 2020

In our latest installment in the CXO Series , we sat down with Stephanie Comardelle, Vice President of Customer Experience, Success, and Solutions at Lucid to discuss what it takes to implement a stakeholder engagement plan at a time when there is so much going on as well as how they are managing their new customer success program. .

Customer Success 155

Customer Success Systems Review Engagement Leadership 155

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

In leadership, there’s a great expression that “to those who much is given, much is expected.” This is a common mistake founders make — getting a new Head of X when you get to a certain point in business, missing a sales number, the product isn’t what you want, there’s too much churn, etc. Your average sales quota is $1M.

Scale 236

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 236

ChurnZero

SEPTEMBER 28, 2022

In the business landscape today, Customer Success is a bit of an outlier. It’s newer when compared to more established departments like sales and marketing. One other thing that makes Customer Success particularly unique in an organization: formal Customer Success training, or lack thereof.

Customer Success 94

Customer Success Sales Hiring Onboarding Investment 94

Sixteen Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2020

For those who wrongly consider Customer Success an altruistic endeavor, rather than a profit-seeking business strategy, you will want to try to make Bad-fit Customers successful at any cost. That’s why we call them Bad-fit Customers. There is no “good percentage” of Bad-fit customers so don’t ask.

Customer Success 128

Customer Success Churn Leadership Interviewing 128

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Level Up Your Customer Success Organization. In the subscription economy, there’s no debate about whether or not to invest in Customer Success (CS); 70% of rapidly growing businesses say that Customer Success is extremely important ( Hubspot , 2017). The fourth challenge is complexity.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2022

Mistake #1: Being Risk-Averse to Investments Outside of Your Area of Expertise. Many founders find themselves confident in one area of their business, whether it be the product, customer success, or, in Schuck’s case, sales. So Schuck’s advice is to be more aggressive and invest in more ways to accelerate growth.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Acquisition Investment Leadership 229

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2024

The #1 issue I see is not understanding what investments really are accretive — and which aren’t. Venture capital, if you raise it, is there to invest. But … but: A sales rep that can’t hit quota in a few months = cash drain. But … but: A sales rep that can’t hit quota in a few months = cash drain.

Sales Hiring 194

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Venture Capital 194

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 2, 2021

12 Key Takeaways from ChurnZero’s BIG RYG Virtual Customer Success Conference. It’s a wrap on ChurnZero’s 2021 BIG RYG Virtual – our online Customer Success conference. An acronym for Red, Yellow and Green, RYG represents the common indicators of customer health. Then, back into the tech stack from there.”

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Technical Review Scale Compensation 98

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

9 tips to get your CSMs to adopt Customer Success software. Have you ever worked at a company where the Customer Success team had to beg for its own tools? The CSM perspective: how to encourage the adoption of Customer Success software. That’s okay. I have a few tips to help you drive adoption that sticks.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Software Compensation Leadership 98

Totango

MAY 17, 2023

When it comes to understanding customer needs, marketing, sales, and CS teams are the experts, so it’s on us to work together to define today’s most valuable growth opportunities. VP of Customer Success at Veriforce, Andy Kearney. The idea that CS can own the entire customer journey is both unrealistic and outdated.

Generative AI 106

Generative AI Marketing AI Sales 106

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

Customer Success Metrics that Your Investors and Board Care About. They care that you’re staffed appropriately to serve the needs of your customers, because ultimately that results in revenue. A huge part of how customer success collects intel and feedback from customers is by talking with them.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Metrics Engagement Software Review 98

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

But what I learned, after years of procrastinating on tough moves for our leadership team, is that the leaders’ teams suffer greatly through that inaction. Instead, I set a big sales number for each of those years (based upon the biggest trap ever—a sales rep capacity model) and totally missed each time!

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 261

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

As a Customer Success leader, do you find yourself watering down your budgetary requests? According to our 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study, CS teams are already underfunded and under-resourced. How Customer Success can win more resources, budget, and credibility with Jeff Heckler.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98

ChurnZero

MAY 20, 2021

When you build a Customer Success organization from the ground up, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of doing the wrong things well. Chasing the wrong priorities and investments can quickly snowball and compound over time, resulting in stunted progress and flatline growth.

Customer Success 90

Customer Success Payments Payment Services Scale 90

Valuize Consulting

JUNE 9, 2022

If you’re a CCO or CRO at a B2B technology company, ask yourself these 3 critical questions: Is your existing Customer Success management team struggling to keep up with your customer’s needs and your business goals? Is collecting, analyzing and acting on critical customer data a challenge in your organization?

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Leadership 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

A great VP of Sales to keep the engine scaling A great VP of Marketing to keep the leads coming in A great VP of Customer Success to make all those hard won customers happy After $5m-$6m in ARR or so, it’s really hard to scale without a strong VP heading most core functions. Upgrade the management team.

Scale 258

Scale Sales Hiring Banking Engineering 258

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

With sweeping layoffs, forecast misses, and budget cuts in the news, there’s one question running through the mind of every Customer Success leader right now: What can I do to prepare my department for the impacts of the economic downturn? Customers will respect and trust you infinitely more when you’re upfront with them.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Scale SaaS Finance 98

CustomerSuccessBox

MARCH 4, 2022

Congratulations on being promoted to the VP-Customer Success ! Especially, in the field of Customer Success. That’s understandable; you’re probably your company’s first Customer Success executive, and this is your first time in the position. VP-Customer Success Job Description (Sample).

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value Interviewing 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. Define your ICP as early as you can and segment your sales team accordingly.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 227

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 18, 2020

With each passing year the Customer Success industry matures and meets new challenges along the way, and this year has been nothing short of challenging in many ways. . Q&A Recap: Speakers: Megan Macaluso , VP Customer Success & Operations, ESG. Jay Nathan , Chief Customer Officer, Higher Logic.

Customer Success 87

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Finance Sales Hiring 87

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

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. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

ChurnZero

JUNE 12, 2020

This is a guest post by Jason Conrad, Advisory Board Member of Customer Imperative. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a high-velocity Sales, Marketing, or Product team without a designated operations function. To find out if you’re prioritizing Customer Success productivity, let’s look at these common questions and answers.

Customer Success 80

Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 80

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Many of you are familiar with this visual, most likely created by an investment firm. Will you have an overlay team that only sells the new product, or will you enable your entire sales force? This question exists whether you have 2, 12, or 50 sales reps. Marketing It’s hard to evolve your brand and your story to customers.

Scale 230

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 230

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 14, 2021

Customer Success(CS) is the most efficient way to grow your MRR/ARR. Yet, Customer Success is looked upon as a ‘ cost center ’. Customer Success teams, typically, follow the recurring revenue model (followed by almost every SaaS business). It wasn’t deployed to manage each and every customer relationship.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Customer Lifetime Value Headcount Retention 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Overcoming challenges by optimizing for success In the early stages of setting up your SaaS business, it’s always a good idea to invest time thinking about the direction you want to take. Delivering the best customer experience With the surge in inbound leads, the business was growing exponentially. Support sales early.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 229

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Wondering what is top of mind for companies when it comes to Customer Success? Here are the top business challenges in descending order for Customer Success professionals according to TSIA, along with some recommend resources to help in each of those areas. TSIA Resource: The State of Customer Success: 2021.

Customer Success 78

Customer Success Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 78

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 11, 2020

A s much as I hope you enjoyed this poem, it’s time Customer Success leaders stop hoping for approval and watering down their budgetary needs for fear of rejection. . The best investment your company can make is in its customers – and that means investing in Customer Success. .

Customer Success 59

Customer Success Scale Leadership Churn 59

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 1, 2022

Why is it that the need for operations in marketing and sales is never questioned, yet Customer Success isn’t given the same allowance? Organizations invest in MQL and SQL processes without fail. Q: Is there a difference in CSQL growth with B2B and B2C customers? The reason for that is actually product-led growth.

Scale 97

Scale Customer Success Revenue Retention 97

Valuize Consulting

MAY 4, 2022

In the vast majority of B2B technology enterprises today, a Customer Success (CS) strategy is firmly in place. However, this strategy often begins and remains as a program that is focused on the minority high ARR customers. Rally Your Organization Around A Strong CS Scale Strategy. Identify Your North Star Metric.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Scaling Strategy 52

Totango

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Counteracting this stigma and laying the foundation for a successful and long-lasting tenure as CMO starts with the first 60 days. The first months in a leadership position are critical to setting the tone for your future with the organization. years on average. It’s so easy for us leaders to focus on our team.

Leadership 97

Leadership Investment Branding Customer Success 97

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 12, 2019

Since the last 5 years, Customer Success has become a buzzword in not only the B2B SaaS industry but several other industries too. As companies have started understanding the benefits of customer success, they have started rushing into the field in the hope of getting quick returns on their investment.

Customer Success 59

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 59