SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

Why does Andy think the seat-based pricing model in SaaS will die? Why is volume-based pricing optimal? How does one instil volume based pricing without disincentivizing usage? How can one determine a closer in the interview process? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Andy. Andy MacMillan.

Sales Hiring 189

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 189

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

When you are selling to SMB and MM, you can get away with fairly lean marketing. RELATED: From SMB to Enterprise: A 2-Step Strategy to Boost Adoption & Growth. Make no mistake, this is a long way from the SMB sales motion! Customer and channel partnerships. Sales strategy. Your messaging may be focused on only one persona.

Sales Hiring 71

Sales Hiring Enterprise Technical Review SMB 71

FastSpring

DECEMBER 7, 2023

In this episode of Growth Stage, Carl will dives into his experience running acquisitions of SMB software businesses, including: His thoughts on what makes a software company a good target for an acquisition by a brand. What factors beyond financials makes a target even more valuable. How you should think about building a sellable business.

Software Review 128

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Branding 128

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2019

Why is it so crucial to invest in enablement in the early days? Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Vikas Bhambri. I do want to break the interview today up into a couple of different parts really. It’s not an SMB where you’re getting volumes of 100 a day. Eyal Manor. Number one.

SaaS Payments 132

SaaS Payments Cloud Technical Review Scale 132

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

How does Krish think about purely serving the SMB market? How does he think about the mortality rate of SMBs? How does Krish think your customer acquisition and GTM strategy has to change with the movement from SMB to enterprise? Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Krish Subramanian.

Scale 127

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 127

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

As for pricing, how do you know you’re not leaving value on the table? Joining me to interview Bansal, we have general partner Peter Levine, who also put out a series of 16 short sales videos for founders, which you can find at a16z.com/16sales. What does this mean for product design and product management? Where did you start?

Product Marketing 76

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 76

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2019

This is pretty simple, but when I look at this industry, a lot of times what I see is organizations crafting pricing packages that would enable, for example, an enterprise-wide license, where an organization pays you X amount of money, and they have unlimited seats, unlimited usage. What are these building blocks?

Retention 137

Retention VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale 137

Sales Hacker

MAY 1, 2018

4) Growth in an SMB, mid-market, and enterprise [5:10]. 8) Pricing as an objection [25:30]. During the interview process, he left the company and asked me not to join the company! How to Sell Your Software to a Big Company: SMB Vs. Enterprise. Have they invested in technology? Overcoming Pricing as an Objection.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SMB 47

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2020

Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Jessica. What I will say is different than perhaps SMB is that, in the Fortune 500 with enterprise customers, your contracts are either churning, renewing at flat, or expanding. It’s that 12 to 18 month sales cycle versus the two to three month SMB contract.

Sales Recruiting 174

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 174

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2019

Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Justin Welsh. Justin Welsh: And I took the bus from Allentown to New York and interviewed for the role and I landed at ZocDoc as the second sales hire and the 10th employee and that’s really how I broke into SaaS. Justin Welsh. Zach Perret.

Scale 136

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Interviewing 136

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

And then one of the VCs that had invested in me, Storm Ventures, brought me in as a partner. I’d never done any investments before, but I just invested in some of the founders that were fans of the SaaStr blog and it worked out okay. And at scale, you pay 3x-5x bookings for SMB-enterprise. So that’s changed.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 176

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 11, 2018

A 1×1 interview with Tomasz Tunguz, legendary VC and SaaS expert, to discuss the key operational paradigms leading to SaaS excellence. The optimal pricing strategy to IPO. What Data To Look At When You’re In Series A Investment [26:02]. He invests in early-stage software and infrastructure companies. Welcome Tomasz!

Scale 42

Scale SaaS Investment Construction 42

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Ryan Bonnici. We would generate 10x what we invested into that based on those people. I noticed you were on our pricing page and just wanted to see if you wanted to chat about anything.” Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, that is a s**t ton of people to interview.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 131

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2022

I interviewed him for insights into how to build a global growth strategy, especially when it comes to localization. David Vogelpohl 02:42 We had some fairly large customers in my agency days, but the majority of them would be be what you would consider in the larger scale, like an SMB software company.

Payment Methods 78

Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Software Review 78

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

Then we went on to build another company called SteelBrick, another SaaS configure price quoting solution. And companies in general, are also right now, investing more in software and digital. It’s most severe in the SMB world. And that company grew very quickly. And after just two years, we were acquired by Salesforce.

Software Review 178

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 178

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

Maria : Yeah, I think, coming from a marketing side and thinking about that as a marketer, marketing is all about investments. There’s none of the brands that you’ve seen get to an IPO or continue on to a Fortune 500 company that is not making some significant investments there. Aaron : And they just have to do it.

Sales Hiring 204

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 204

Sales Hacker

APRIL 16, 2018

Why you should spend time with and invest in your new hires. 8) How to interview properly [30:00]. Thinking about pricing strategy and customer segmentation and territories as we realized there was an appetite for access to experts. Making sure that everyone who is interviewing a candidate is looking for something unique.

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Sales Hiring Management Scale Sales Recruiting 40

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2019

And the other job was to be an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. And I was talking to my dad, and he said, “I don’t think you’re an investment banker, Leyla,” which was good advice. I think for me one of the biggest realizations for me, we were a mid market company, right, we grew up in SMB.

Scale 131

Scale VP of Engineering Mobile Scaling 131

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

Now, I just invest in SasS companies. How do I increase pricing? When you hire a VP of Sales and all they want to talk about in the interview is strategy, strategy, strategy, I’m not sure they’re a closer. investing in customer success as a function. He immediately made him head of SMB. You embrace it.

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Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 250

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2019

To date, Amit has raised $68m in funding for Gong from the likes of Norwest, Battery Ventures, Cisco Investments, and Wing Venture Capital, just to name a few. What does Amit think about the differing variable price mechanisms that one can choose? Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Amit Bendov.

Outsourced Development 132

Outsourced Development Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 132

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

5 Reasons I Hate the Rule of 40 by Mikael Johnsson, SaaS Nordic While not necessarily completely useless, I would strongly argue that R40 is a metric applicable to the world of PE and public markets investing and is not a good metric for assessing the quality of venture-stage companies. Because this drives investment decisions.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2023

” Is it something beyond just “we want bigger deal sizes to make our unit economics work” or do they feel they have a strong product market fit and can actually command those prices. Invest in the Right Team This is a big bet. Both from a performance perspective and functionality needed upmarket.

Scale 67

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Enterprise 67

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2020

As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify and Gremlin all prior guests on the show I hasten to add. This interview originally aired as Episode 213 on February 26, 2019. How does this differ when comparing enterprise to SMB? Loving our podcast content? Jason Lemkin.

SMB 26

SMB Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 26

Unbounce

JUNE 16, 2020

especially for SMB SaaS startups. For example, ActiveCampaign’s reseller program offers beefier discounts to partners as they grow, letting them set their own pricing and pocket the difference: ActiveCampaign’s reseller program offers deeper discounts on pricing as more sales are made, creating an incentive to go big.

Outsourcing Services 131

Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting Scale SaaS 131

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

But boy, I can tell you from all the companies I have invested and worked with that have a hardware/software component, it really actually gets brutal as you scale. 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.

Scale 206

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 206

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

Now he’s a partner making investments on the VC side at Foundation Capital with over 20 years of operational experience. SMB Sales & SDRs at (Smaller) Scale [18:20]. We’ve got an interview with Angus Davis. Now, without further ado, let’s listen to this interview with Angus Davis.

Payment Methods 55

Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 55

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

You can watch the full session , and if you missed the podcast with the first half of the interview, you’ll find that here. They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. So number six, thinking you’re getting away with under investing in management, up scaling in HR. We all under invest.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 238

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

If you have a product that is absolutely crushing it in SMB/mid-market, you may be tempted to dive straight into the Enterprise market. Everyone needs to understand the investment and time-frames associated with this decision. SMB products tend to have similarly less flexibility or customization capability. Bonus Takeaway.

SaaS Payments 58

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payments Enterprise 58

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2019

She likes to invest across consumer, B2B saas, and technology infrastructure companies at the earliest stages. Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Eric Christopher. I do want to break the interview up into a couple of different parts that I think we’re both pretty passionate about.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 141

Sales Hacker

APRIL 25, 2019

The SMB Decision: In-House vs. Outsourced Sales Development. As a high-growth SMB, your number-one focus is consistent sales. That means the average SDR could come with a price tag of up to $150,000 per year. You need to create job posts, interview candidates, and negotiate salaries with a constant stream of sales team members.

Outsourcing Services 75

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 75

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

How does this differ between SMB and enterprise? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Pete. Something that we did really poorly at TalentBin early on was not really focusing on a very crisply defined ICP and insufficiently investing in customer success. Harry Stebbings. Pete Kazanjy.

Part-Time VPE 193

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 193

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Karen made her way into the world of SaaS as one of the first employees at Box and then how that led to her transition to the world of investing with B Capital. How does Karen think her mindset will shift when making the move from angel to now institutionally investing with B Capital? Karen Page.

Scale 172

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Investment Sales Hiring 172

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2019

Prior to Oracle, Des was the CMO @ Kerio Technologies marketing to over 60,000 SMB customers and 5,000 channel partners. Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Des. Prior to Oracle, Des was the CMO of Kerio Technologies, marketing to over 60,000 SMB customers and 5,000 channel partners. Harry Stebbings.

Sales Hiring 131

Sales Hiring Cloud Mobile Technology 131

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

It’s like we’re going to put pictures online with a price and you’re going to start marketing it and that’s the thing. It doesn’t take the massive amounts of infrastructure investment that it required before. We are still heavily oriented to SMB and to entrepreneurs. ” Right?

Payment Methods 189

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 189

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Invest in your development internally and externally. These types of experiences will allow you to show up strongly when it comes time for the interview because you will have examples and experiences to demonstrate your skill set. Invest in your cross-functional partners. It was my seventh interview for my first leadership role.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2019

Matching pricing to value. Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Dave King. I did a short tour through investment banking where, like I say, I learned math. Marketing, most of the investment in technology and tooling has been focused on the channel. How to continuously level up talent.

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B2C Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Branding 133

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2019

Now I use that term charitably about myself and in over the course of a year after I made the investment of just going on walks with our dogs and talking about this business, I slowly convinced him to let me in the front door. Having said that, most of our salespeople do come into our SMB segment, and this is intentional. We built it.

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Scale Sales Hiring Systems Review Marketplace as a Service 100