Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

DECEMBER 3, 2013

Besides working through your budget, marketing programs, headcount, and whatever else you need to have in place when the new year rolls around, I’d suggest you add another item: Review your value proposition and messages. This work by Peter Cohen, SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Headcount 100

Headcount Social Media Interviewing Mobile 100

InsightSquared

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

Pulling a rabbit out of the hat to close out Q4 is not a strategy. If you have open headcount for Q1 be interviewing in Q4. Behind headcount equals behind plan. I’ve faced this challenge as a senior sales executive, sales enablement executive and outside sales enablement specialist. Deal with under-performers.

Sales 78

Sales Headcount Sales Enablement Compensation 78

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 28, 2021

20 Customer Success Interview Questions to Ask CSM Candidates. To help you in your search for exceptional CSMs, check out this list of essential interview questions. How do I structure a budget for headcount?”. Customer Success Capacity Planning and Budget Guide. Customer Success Capacity Planning and Budget Guide.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Headcount Customer Success Outsourced Development 52

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

The software company’s stated strategy was to offer great products paired with low pricing and self-service purchasing, a Product Led Growth (PLG) recipe that fueled the company’s sustained profitable growth. Sales now accounts for about 7% of the company’s headcount–a similar share of their workforce as marketing or product management.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

I hosted Max on our podcast, where he shares the strategies he’s used to grow Udemy and Sales Hacker, hiring tips for sales teams, and much more. You need to build an efficient sales team…you can’t just throw money or headcount at things. If you enjoy the conversation, check out more episodes.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 25, 2022

For product folks the pressure’s on to revise your roadmap and short-term strategy to account for a narrowing budget, and shifting customer priorities. Those customer interviews you did 6 months ago that informed the decisions you made for 2022? You probably aren’t going to get all the headcount approved that you did.

Sales Hiring 138

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Headcount 138

OpenView Labs

JUNE 10, 2019

We’ve compiled our favorite articles, advice, podcasts and interviews in this guide. Find out how Brent Tworetzky, SVP of Product at InVision, defines the three major roles of product management: strategy, execution and user understanding. Read on for more insights from OpenView’s interviews with product experts. Product KPIs.

Management 55

Management SaaS Scale Sales Recruiting 55

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Strategy - annually changes. The Horizons Framework is an effective way to categorise projects, which in turn helps with assigning budget, headcount and timelines. They have breadth and depth - essential for disciplines like marketing where the tactics and strategies are constantly evolving. Source: McKinsey 17.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 15, 2021

During one of our BIG RYG Hyper-Workshops on budgeting for Customer Success headcount, Kristen Hayer of The Success League, framed this shift by explaining that as a CS leader, you’re not running a happiness team, you’re running a revenue team. CS moves to a land-and-expand strategy. CS drives towards product packaging.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Benchmarks Scale Underperforming Technical Team 97

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 28, 2019

If you missed episode 80 , check it out here: PODCAST 80: Aligning Revenue Strategy – Death of MQL W/ Catie Ivey. Now, without further ado, let’s listen to this interview with Amyra Rand. Sam Jacobs: And how big is the organization from a headcount perspective? Do we want to have a phone interview?

VP of Engineering 41

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale 41

ChurnZero

JULY 1, 2022

Your CSMs will welcome the efficiency and process that CS ops brings, especially if they’re already maxed out handling difficult executive sponsors, devising customer business strategies, rescuing at-risk accounts, and selling solution upgrades. But your job is to use that data to inform your path forward in the strategy.”.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Technical Review Systems Review 52

ChurnZero

JULY 1, 2022

It’s the best form of self-care you can give your CSMs who are maxed out handling difficult executive sponsors, devising customer business strategies, rescuing at-risk accounts, and selling solution upgrades. But your job is to use that data to inform your path forward in the strategy.”. Bree: “CS ops covers such a broad range.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Technical Review Systems Review 52

Neil Patel

JANUARY 8, 2019

That strategy has helped me get over 3 million monthly visitors of which 1.8 But what’s wrong with that strategy? And to give you an idea of how many companies are making this mistake… I interviewed 208 companies that generate over a million bucks in revenue. million of them are unique. Do you see what’s wrong?

Marketing 111

Marketing Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 111

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 12, 2020

For example, if you listen to a podcast interview or webinar, and they are legion now that we are all nearly remote in the crisis, you can pull a very specific section to reference. It’s the same with scaling your personalization strategy. Obsesses over your ICP (ideal customer profile).

Scale 109

Scale Scaling AI Search AI 109

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 19, 2022

It’s a lot easier to improve what you can measure, and keeping an eye on these indicators to inform your strategies has clearly paid off – the average CSAT is on the rise, increasing by 11 percentage points compared to last year. Then, it’s a matter of investing on onboarding and set them up for success.

Benchmarks 104

Benchmarks Sales Hiring Scale Strategy 104

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Sam. Sam Taylor: So no matter what, I mean, Dropbox, no matter how you slice it, what function you’re in, was just insane from a growth perspective, headcount-wise, user base-wise, you name it. What is the strategy that we have at the company level? Sam Taylor.

Scale 177

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 177

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Authoritative, actionable strategies on how to grow your business. A substitute for strategy or planning. For example, our leadership team might decide to focus our company strategy on targeting the segments with the best revenue retention. Assessing progress on our strategy. Download The Growth Handbook.

Business 184

Business B2C Scale Headcount 184

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 16, 2019

This is not to say that bottom-up adoption is bad strategy; quite the opposite. If you can raise a ton of capital, it’s one strategy for winning and crushing the competition. That’s why one of my favorite interview questions is, “What are you passionate about?” Many great products see exciting initial revenue traction.

Scale 156

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 156

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

It used to really bug me because I am a firm believer in the strategy of Zero Voluntary Attrition and trying to hire fewer, more committed resources over a higher volume of mercenaries that turn over more often. Because sales is a lead-driven but headcount- closed business. Sales Strategy. What markets should we expand into?

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

ChurnZero

AUGUST 23, 2019

Q: If there is no headcount for a new CS ops person, what’s the best way to incorporate the function until you can get budget? Then what I’ve seen companies do is really look at their customer strategy first. You can have a customer strategy tam that’s comprised of leaders and then create an initiative SWAT team.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Retention 40

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 20, 2022

We surveyed and interviewed key people in our teams to understand how they worked and how they saw Intercom’s internal operations. We’ve done interviews. Velocity is how fast a company can execute their product roadmap and then in a specific direction i.e. their strategy.

Underperforming Technical Team 249

Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Sales Hiring Scale 249

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

What started as a series of interviews by co-founder Des Traynor soon bloomed into hundreds of episodes where we explore how businesses are driving growth through customer relationships and how to build successful products at scale. I’m recording the first in what I expect to be a series of interesting interviews.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. Below is the transcript of Jessica’s session.

Sales Hiring 216

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 216

Sales Hacker

APRIL 29, 2021

To avoid either extreme, when reps are either too involved or not involved enough, the solution is a content supply chain, or a deliberate process for writing, approving, enabling, and sunsetting content in a way that supports your GTM strategy as well as captures the voice of your sales team. Content Management. By Content Type.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 103

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

As VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, Elad Gil was a key player as company headcount skyrocketed from 90 to 1,500 employees. This wasn’t Elad’s first experience with hyper growth – Google grew headcount 10x during his time as a product manager there – nor the last. That was definitely Oracle’s strategy.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

How quickly you’re able to accelerate growth depends on your ability to build a nimble sales org and develop a strong sales strategy. That’s why one of my favorite interview questions is, “What are you passionate about?” We’re just not there yet, so I don’t want to really grow headcount yet.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2019

For a cross-functional role like product ops, it’s not only about convincing leadership for headcount and resources. The following is a summary of some of the best advice I’ve heard in dozens of interviews with products ops leaders: 1. Explain the “why”. Show (don’t just tell) the value.

Headcount 100

Headcount Interviewing Leadership Content Marketing 100

BetterCloud

DECEMBER 16, 2020

As part of this report, Forrester interviewed enterprise IT leaders to understand the current challenges and best practices for mastering SaaS at scale. Last week, BetterCloud’s Chief Strategy Officer Shreyas Sadalgi explored the findings of this report further with its author, Bill Martorelli, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.

Enterprise 52

Enterprise SaaS Scale Headcount 52

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 6, 2022

Enhanced service with tailored benchmark models for go-to-market, cost management, and headcount analytics. It is the beginning of a series of developments that further OPEXEngine’s mission to integrate performance benchmarking for the leading technology brands that rely on best-in-class intelligence to inform their strategy and investments.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Development Team Review Benchmarks Headcount 40

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 25, 2018

There's a certain headcount above which the blogposts on "no managers", "flat structure", "no hierarchy" and the like seem to just… stop. Often, this outlier is right and this is a positive change to your company strategy, but that change needs to be a deliberate decision , not an accident.

Scaling 152

Scaling Startup Headcount Engineering 152

Chart Mogul

MARCH 10, 2023

– Sara Archer, VP of Sales, ChartMogul For SaaS companies, this shift in consumer behavior means adopting a product-led go-to-market strategy and product-led sales. Complement your product-led motion with sales In a product-led growth strategy, you’re using the product as your growth engine.

VP of Engineering 52

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Compensation 52

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2021

The mandate for sales enablement is to increase the effectiveness of their go-to-market (GTM) strategy by providing coaching, training, and introducing sales enablement platforms and tools. Startup hurdle: headcount. What is sales enablement? The types of obstacles will vary based on the size of your company. SMB hurdle: buy-in.

Sales Enablement 101

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Hiring Technical Review 101

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Below is a lightly edited transcript of our interview. This is the second in a series of interviews over the next couple months about unlocking the potential of growth. If you enjoy the conversation and don’t want to miss the rest of the series, check out more episodes of our podcast.

Growth Marketing 174

Growth Marketing Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 174

Point Nine Land

APRIL 21, 2021

As interviewing 100 applicants can be quite draining, I recommend the following process: 1. A quick HR interview 2. Invite the candidate to a face-to-face or a Zoom interview. Culture fit interview. All-in-all, this is not uncommon to screen through more than 100 applicants to find 1 fit. An organizational task.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Startup Scale Software Review 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 13, 2023

First, digital CS will become a way of life due to flat or reduced headcount. It signals to us a growing maturity of understanding of Customer Success leaders for the need to define the right data strategies before their organizations can deliver desired outcomes for all customers. A few common themes emerged. You just need to ask.

Trends 98

Trends Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale 98

Kellblog

JANUARY 2, 2024

The Crux becomes the strategy book of the year. First, I was manifesting this prediction – I wanted it to be the strategy book of the year. It should be in the top ten with Good to Great , Blue Ocean Strategy , Thinking in Bets , The Art of War , and its older sibling Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. Hook ) will help.

AI Search 109

AI Search Technical Review Technical Advisors ChatGPT 109

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Lots of SaaS founders are preoccupied with employee headcount as an important growth metric, but this indicator is not always true. So they always prioritize the most high-ROI projects, the most high-ROI tasks, and because there is a small group of people working on a multitude of things, they have a very 360-view of business strategy.

Compensation 208

Compensation Leadership Company Culture Headcount 208