October, 2017

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Important Changes in Revenue and Profitability Definitions for SaaS Companies

Tom Tunguz

Starting in January, public software companies will report their financials using ASC 606. Normally, accounting changes are not that interesting, but ASC 606 will change several of the key attributes and benchmarks SaaS startups use. The two most important changes are changes to revenue and profitability. Today, all software revenue is recognized ratably over the contract period.

Revenue 215
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As A Software Business, How Are You Preparing For This Holiday Season?

FastSpring

Experts are predicting that 2017 will be the strongest holiday shopping season ever for ecommerce. Why? Because even last year, when many people were feeling uncertain about the U.S. economy in the post-election season, they still spent 13% more online than the previous year.

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Customers need to trust you

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

If you think your customers subscribe to your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution only because they love the features or the price, think again. Of course, customers look at the solution’s features, the fact that it’s easy to use, or the attractive price… but that’s not all they look at. They’re also figuring out if they can trust you. The fact is that if they don’t trust you and they don’t believe they can rely on you to deliver your service as promised, none of that other stuff really matter

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How CIOs are Leveraging AI and Machine Learning to Achieve ITSM Goals

Think Strategies

For the past decade, many IT departments have been on the defensive trying to keep pace with escalating end-user demands and competitive pressures. The emergence of ‘shadow IT’ as a major force within many enterprises raised questions about the role of IT in a cloud-first world. Now, enlightened CIOs are exploring ways to employ artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to actively engage their IT teams as key players in the rapidly evolving digital transformation efforts within the

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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.

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Weak-Link or Strong-Link Sales Enablement?

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

The sales enablement industry has taken tremendous strides in recent years, but by most measures, it's still a relatively immature function. While there’s a talented and growing body of practitioners that are doing sterling work to advance the industry and sales performance, for the most part, there’s a distinct lack of standardised sales enablement best practices, planning models and frameworks.

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The Implication of Secular Increases in SaaS CAC

Tom Tunguz

One of the major trends facing SaaS companies today is the rising cost of customer acquisition. Data on this trend has been difficult to find. Fortunately, Patrick at ProfitWell sent me his survey results across about 800 companies. The chart above shows the increasing cost of customer acquisition on a per company basis. Those surveyed have observed a ~65% increase in cost of customer acquisition over the last five years.

Scale 183
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The 30+ Most Desirable Sales Skills & Traits You MUST Develop To Become An Unstoppable Rep

Sales Hacker

Modern sales teams need competent professionals with a variety of talents, skills and abilities. But in a hyper changing landscap e, which are the most crucial sales skills and traits that reps must possess (or develop) in order to exceed targets and deliver consistent sales success? We’ve done our research and compiled the top 30 sales skills you need to master if you want to achieve complete sales enlightenment.

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The Four Most Important Skills For Sales Operations Professionals

InsightSquared

Guest blog by Joe Rodden, Sales Systems Manager at Catalant Technologies. I get asked, “What should I look for when hiring someone for Sales Operations?” or “What skills should I have to break into Sales Operations?” a lot. Thinking about the best and worst Sales Operations professionals I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve come up with four skills that the best have and the worst lack.

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Map Customer Success To Your Global Organization With SuccessTeams

Totango

Every company, especially a large enterprise, builds an organizational structure around their customer operations. Whether by region, product, vertical, or any other business parameter they define, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are broken into teams to give them focus, tailored processes, and specific metrics that make sense for their line of business.

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Monetizing Analytics Features

Think your customers will pay more for data visualizations in your application? Five years ago, they may have. But today, dashboards and visualizations have become table stakes. Turning analytics into a source of revenue means integrating advanced features in unique, hard-to-steal ways. Download this white paper to discover which features will differentiate your application and maximize the ROI of your analytics.

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Practical Ways To Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Strategies

FastSpring

Creating a sales and marketing strategy has changed a lot in the last few years. While it used to focus on print ads, television and radio commercials, or even billboards, now there are many ways to reach potential customers that are not only significantly less expensive but also more impactful. When you're selling a product that's intended for digital use, and that is sold primarily through digital methods, it just makes sense to target your sales and marketing strategy to the digital realm.

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6 SQL Data Warehouse Solutions For Big Data

Rakam

Are you confused about which SQL Query tool is best for your organization? In this technically dynamic world where data is king, many data analysts are faced with making the difficult choice of what querying engines to employ. Beyond that, they are tasked with sifting through the data storage systems these engines support, and weighing what they stand to gain (or lose as the case may be).

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The Rising Stakes in SaaS

Tom Tunguz

Last week, I participated in two discussions about the changes in the SaaS world. I believe they are fundamental. The most important force shaping the industry today is competition. The level of competition in many core SaaS segments is intense. Why? The SaaS era is about 20 years old. Salesforce was founded in 1999. Since then, many major categories of software have been saasified.

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Jobs To Be Done: The Secret Weapon for Boosting Cold Email Response Rates

Sales Hacker

Have you ever been misunderstood? Even in a time when you were 1,000% sure you explained yourself clearly? Of course you have, and it can feel maddening. But still, it happens. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening to your customers. You think you know exactly what they’re thinking and feeling… H ave you asked them? If not, you don’t fully understand the reasons why they’re buying.

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People, Passion & Perfection: The Key Ingredients for an Awesome Product

Need help launching innovative software quickly? Dive into "People, Passion, and Perfection" and unlock the secrets to building excellent products in the digital age. Fast-track your journey with Tech Accelerator: Agile and Cloud-Native for flexibility & scalability AI-powered innovation for faster results Quality at every step for a flawless user experience See real impact across industries: Healthcare: Empower patients and medical professionals with intuitive solutions Education: Transform cla

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Operations problem solving: how to start and finish backwards

InsightSquared

Guest blog by Joe Rodden, Sales Systems Manager at Catalant Technologies. It’s nearing the end of your company’s fiscal year, the sales team is gearing up for another year end close, holiday parties are being planned, and your leadership team is determining 2018 initiatives. These initiatives will likely trickle down into your lap in the form of a whole heaping of new projects, sometimes with little more than a one sentence headline.

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Connect with Totango at TSW Las Vegas!

Totango

The Totango team is headed to Las Vegas to talk customer success at TSIA’s Technology Services World (TSW) October 23-25 at the ARIA Resort & Casino. Don’t miss us at booth #26 and read below for info on our exclusive happy hour and lounge! TSW is a must-attend conference if you’re looking to stay at the forefront of the services industry.

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5 Must-Have Internet Marketing Tools for SaaS Businesses

FastSpring

You've created a fantastic product, but it's not getting the attention you hoped for after you launched your SaaS business. Why? The intended audience isn't aware of its existence. It's time to examine some potential tools to use in order to gain a better understanding of your online presence. Here are five tools that will help you improve your SaaS's marketing strategy.

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SaaS Sales For Startup Founders (free book)

CloseSaaS

SMBs in the U.S. have quadrupled their spending on SaaS subscriptions in the past two years. There's a lot of competition in the SaaS market today. And it's increasingly more difficult to attract new customers—startups release cheap versions of SaaS products every day.

Startup 52
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Driving Growth, Customer Satisfaction, and Retention through Usage-Based Pricing

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

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Monte Carlo Simulations of Inside and Outside Sales Teams in a SaaS Startup

Tom Tunguz

Recently, a VP of sales told me about the way he views the dynamic between inside and outside sales. Inside sales is the drumbeat, a highly predictable sales organization whose consistency enables outside sales to swing for the fences. I never heard it expressed quite this way, but I do think there’s some truth to it. To prove it to myself, I ran a Monte Carlo simulation for hypothetical startup.

Scale 144
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Quer Aprender Mais Sobre Marketing e Vendas?

SaaSHolic

Eu acho que você vai gostar deste material de marketing! Saber fazer uma boa curadoria de conteúdos é uma arte. E o meu amigo @Thiago Reis tem feito um trabalho enorme de curadoria e criação de bons conteúdos no seu canal “ Máquina de Crescimento ” no Youtube. Se você ainda não viu, recomendo que você dê uma olhada. Uma compilação MASSA! O Thiago selecionou um monte de materiais super bacanas em um kit gratuito, em parceria com a @RockContent e o @12minutos.

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InsightSquared’s Dreamforce 2017 Sessions for Sales & Sales Operations Professionals

InsightSquared

Last week, our CMO Joe Chernov explained why InsightSquared is going “all-in” at Dreamforce 2017. As part of our increased presence this year, we are teaming up with customers, partners and industry experts to host three interactive break-out sessions throughout the week. The sessions will offer sales and sales operations professionals with case studies, lessons learned and the tactical takeaways needed to become even more strategic within their organizations.

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Marketing Must Own Strategy (not just funnel management)

Joel Caparella

Once upon a time, the strategic element of marketing resided within the marketing department, but today the discipline is often absent from the marketing team and sadly may not have found a new home. One of the biggest reasons for this is that the onslaught of marketing automation tools and the drive to content marketing has pushed more marketing teams to become quasi-creative agencies focused mostly on the conversion metrics of early demand.

Scale 55
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How to Achieve Product-Market Fit

Speaker: Dan Olsen - Product Management Trainer and Consultant, Author, and Speaker

Everyone working on a product is trying to achieve the same goal: product-market fit. But most products fail to do so. In this webinar, product management expert Dan Olsen will share his simple but effective framework for achieving product-market fit from his book The Lean Product Playbook. He will explain his Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process, a 6-step methodology that guides you through how to: Determine your target customer Identify underserved customer needs Define your

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8 Tips to Create an Indispensable E-Commerce User Experience

FastSpring

From 2015 to 2016 total U.S. retail ecommerce sales increased from $294.45 billion to $322.17 billion. Trends suggest 2017 will top off somewhere around $353.68 billion. For perspective, total estimated retail sales in the U.S. came in around $5 trillion. Ecommerce grew faster in 2016 than ever before, booming by 15.6%. In other words, ecommerce is here to stay.

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How to improve your cold emails in one simple step

CloseSaaS

Most salespeople think they’ve mastered the art of communication, but 99% of all cold emails suck. Feature Announcement Email Sequences: email drip campaigns for salespeople. Schedule sequences of emails to be automatically sent over days or weeks.Learn moreortry for free.

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Buy vs. Build: The Subscription Billing Iceberg Effect

Chargify

We have heard it hundreds (if not thousands) of times: “But I simply need to bill my subscribers $xx/month. Why shouldn’t I just build my own logic on top of [insert gateway name]?” Although we can make a compelling argument, it doesn’t always win over prospects. Luckily, we hear back from many 2-3 months later with….“I wish we would have gone with Chargify from the beginning.”.

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How to Build a Data-Driven B2B Sales Process

Sales Hacker

The post How to Build a Data-Driven B2B Sales Process appeared first on Sales Hacker.

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Addressing Top Enterprise Challenges in Generative AI with DataRobot

The buzz around generative AI shows no sign of abating in the foreseeable future. Enterprise interest in the technology is high, and the market is expected to gain momentum as organizations move from prototypes to actual project deployments. Ultimately, the market will demand an extensive ecosystem, and tools will need to streamline data and model utilization and management across multiple environments.

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7 Sales Influencers to Follow on Twitter at Dreamforce 2017

InsightSquared

We are in the final two weeks of preparing for Dreamforce 2017 — building our session agendas, RSVPing to countless events and creating a list of hashtags to follow to ensure we stay informed throughout the week. To help you stay up-to-date on the latest sales intelligence, sales operations and sales leadership discussions happening during the conference, we curated a list of seven influencers you should follow on Twitter, and included their speaking sessions. . 1.

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LEADING MATTERS FRAMED #65: EARNED AND LEARNED WISDOM

Joel Caparella

Wisdom is a currency that is substantially undervalued today. Not surprising when you consider the current media climate of instant reaction and immediate satisfaction, and wisdom has much more to do with patience and time. The much-maligned millennial generation is not that different than generations before them; they have just been weened on immediate satisfaction of curiosity and want.

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The Top 3 Mistakes in Mobile Payment Systems

FastSpring

As more and more consumers use their mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to shop, it has become increasingly important for savvy companies to invest in mobile payment systems.