Sat.Jul 14, 2018 - Fri.Jul 20, 2018

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Why Your Startup Doesn't Invest Sufficiently in its Differentiators

Tom Tunguz

There are three types of product features, a seasoned head of product told me recently. MMRs, neutralizers, and differentiators. MMRs are minimum market requirements; basic features that every customer expects and demands. Neutralizers mitigate competitive threat. Differentiators are your startup’s competitive advantage. As a product manager, I’d never thought about this type of roadmap segmentation before.

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Try before you buy: how sales can maximize the free product trial

Intercom, Inc.

The fact that SaaS products are so easy to evaluate and buy is a double edged sword. Yes, on one hand it’s easier for people to sign up and try your product, but on the other hand, a lack of commitment means that switching costs between products are lower. People can leave as fast as they joined up. Therefore it’s necessary for your prospects to get the most out of their free product trial, and thus the main challenges of customer acquisition lie in: Getting as many people as possible to s

Sales 137
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How to Use Upselling to Increase Customer Happiness, Retention and Revenue

Groove HQ

Upselling doesn’t have to be a dirty word. In fact, it can help you make your customers happier. What comes to mind when you think of the word upsell? For many of us, it might bring up images of sleazy salespeople trying to line their pockets by selling us extra stuff we don’t need. And, […]. The post How to Use Upselling to Increase Customer Happiness, Retention and Revenue appeared first on Groove Blog.

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5 Questions to Ask in Your Software Demo

FastSpring

You’ve taken the first step and scheduled a software demo to learn more about how an end-to-end ecommerce solution can help you scale your business. Congratulations! But what now?

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Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

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The Startup Founder's Almanac

Tom Tunguz

I first met Elad Gil when I became an associate product manager at Google. Back then, he had an unusual habit I noticed right away. Most people carry their laptop in the same way. The laptop is closed, in hand, between the hand and the hip. Elad carries his laptop open, powered on and by the top or bottom corner. He’s so smart and has so much cognitive bandwidth, he simply doesn’t have time to wait for the computer to wake from sleep.

Startup 205

More Trending

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Is Your SaaS Business Outgrowing QuickBooks? The Alternative Approach to an ERP

SaaSOptics

Where are you with QuickBooks? QuickBooks wasn’t built for B2B SaaS or subscription-based businesses, but businesses create complicated workarounds to make it viable. That process often looks something like this and leads many to question if an ERP is a necessary move.

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Customer Support + Customer Success: Working Together to Increase Customer Satisfaction, Retention, and Growth

Totango

According to data from Forrester Research, almost two-thirds of interactions between a customer and a company take place through the Customer Service department. Customers often turn to Customer Service or Customer Support teams for help throughout the customer journey. From onboarding challenges, to user experience difficulties, to product misfires, the Customer Support or Customer Service agent is often the customer’s “first responder.”.

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Timing Cashflows of Your Sales Commissions and Your Customers

Tom Tunguz

Your sales team is starting to close some terrific accounts. As your startup grows, your sales team will experiment with different sales techniques. For example, qualification, pricing, positioning, incentives and contract structure. This is a wonderful phase for a startup. However, there’s a common mistake to avoid. Your VP of Finance should model the impact and approve each experiment.

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Announcing The 21st Century Guide to Lead Qualification

Intercom, Inc.

It’s time to adopt a more modern approach to lead qualification, one that puts your prospects’ needs first. Today we’re publishing The 21st Century Guide to Lead Qualification to help. In the 1960s, IBM revolutionized the sales process with the introduction of BANT, a framework for finding qualified leads for your product. The mantra is simple: qualify your prospects based on their Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline.

B2B 135
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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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Want to move up the startup ladder? Start managing from day one

CloseSaaS

Salespeople are an ambitious group. We want to close more deals. Blast through quotas. Beat the competition. But it’s not just sales ambitions that we set our sights on. We’re also ambitious about moving up in our careers.

Startup 52
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On a Roll: FastSpringers dominate the lanes at the 2nd Annual Bowling Tournament

FastSpring

Last week, the FastSpring team ventured to Zodos Bowling to celebrate the second annual company-wide bowling tournament.

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32 Omnichannel Technology Tools to Sell Anywhere, All the Time

Sales Hacker

Three-fourths of customers report using multiple channels throughout their shopping journey. Consequently, if you don’t have omnichannel technology tools in your sales stack , you’re already behind competition. Fortunately, there are some great tools on the market to help businesses conquer omnichannel sales. With these solutions in place, you’ll be able to seamlessly take customers from the research phase to final purchase.

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Convert more leads with our new HubSpot and Marketo apps

Intercom, Inc.

Today, we’re announcing our new HubSpot and Marketo apps, which allow you to seamlessly sync your customer data so that you can nurture and convert more leads. Sales and marketing teams today have access to more tools than ever before. These tools help with everything from increasing website traffic to upselling customers, but the abundance of tools on offer brings its own challenges – not least of which is having your customer data in many different places.

Data 120
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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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How to increase your sales conversion rates (Q&A webinar)

CloseSaaS

Here's the recording of today's webinar about how to increase your sales conversion rates (and stop leaving leads on the table). Tune in below!

Sales 52
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SaaS Finance Terminologies: Acronyms of the Trade

SaaS Metrics

Introduction Many users find SaaS terminology confusing at first, especially people new to the cloud technologies. Understanding SaaS terminology is essential in building a solid SaaS strategy or buying SaaS services. Below we outline all of the important terminologies and acronyms related to SaaS and provide a brief overview of each. Some of the terms included here are also common to other fields such as finance, but they make sense when you are dealing with SaaS (that’s why they have also bee

Finance 49
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PODCAST 16: From Idea to Scale — The Inside Story of Building Gong.io

Sales Hacker

On episode 16 of the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Amit Bendov , CEO and Co-Founder at Gong.io about how to scale a tech startup in 2018. He walks us through the inside story of how he developed the idea for Gong — the market testing and market feedback he used to design and refine the product. Tune in to listen to insights from Gong about the ideal types of outreach and how to structure sales conversations.

Scale 51
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How To Earn Editorial Links And Rank Higher On Search Engines

Backlinkfy

Guest blogging has become quite popular and for a good reason. If you are looking for a foolproof way to improve your reputation and build your SEO as well providing quality content for good backlinks, guest blogging is your answer. Here, you can request a website for a backlink to your site in exchange for good content on their site. A lot of small online businesses have adopted this trend to achieve numerous and high quality backlinks.

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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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Here’s What Makes Altitude Different from Other IT Conferences, According to PopSugar’s Senior Director of IT

BetterCloud

Altitude, our annual customer conference, is taking place October 2-4 in Denver, Colorado. If you haven’t registered already, you should, because it’s a little different from your typical IT conference. What you WON’T get: sponsors. We purposely keep Altitude free of vendors, partners, and resellers so you can speak candidly and not feel pressured to buy anything.

Travel 40
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Keeping cool when things heat up: how to support angry customers

Intercom, Inc.

One of the unavoidable realities of working in customer support is responding to customers who are upset or angry. Learning the best ways to handle those situations helps not only satisfy the customer, but also to keep your cool. Before starting in customer support at Intercom, I worked as a bartender in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood. The area was exciting, busy and filled with people who had started drinking early and kept going all night.

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Why Growth Hacking Isn’t Growing Your Bottom Line

Sales Hacker

I asked Gaetano to join me in a discussion about permission based marketing and growth hacking – and where the boundaries lie with user consent. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation. [link]. Gaetano DiNardi pissed off a bunch of marketers recently. We run in the same circles on LinkedIn, and I’d been watching his content for a while when I saw him post something that stopped me in my tracks.

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Meet The Australian Digital Companies You Will Hear About In 2018

Backlinkfy

The digital world is growing, with numerous opportunities for different brands and businesses to take advantage of greater connectivity and new technologies. The near ubiquity of the internet in modern life has led to advantages for customers and retailers alike, with online shopping only becoming more common. Even those who prefer to go to a store in person still do their research online to work out where to go to find the kinds of things they want – who among us hasn’t checked the online catal

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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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How To Increase Customer Contacts By 200% With Relationship Analytics

Sales Hacker

The post How To Increase Customer Contacts By 200% With Relationship Analytics appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Sales 63
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Everything You Need to Know About Account Based Sales [Guide]

Sales Hacker

Account Based Sales (ABS) is hardly a new concept but many business leaders are giving it more than just a second look. Gartner predicted it will become the default selling framework for most tech vendors that exceed $5 million in annual revenue. Moreover, 7 out of 10 surveyed corporate leaders revealed they are increasing their budget to improve their account-based strategies.

Scale 54