SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

The SMB sales team was incentivized purely on logo acquisition rather than revenue. The team lacked visibility into key metrics like average revenue per customer. Whereas in usage-based you have to be laser-focused on making sure that your customers are going live, adopting, and using the product as intended.”

Revenue 286

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 286

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2025

For SMB sales, quotas closer to 3x OTE are common, while enterprise sales can push closer to 5x. Quotas should be tied to metrics like pipeline coverage, opportunity-to-close rates, and historical data. You might also shift from focusing solely on revenue to incorporating metrics like logo acquisition or customer retention.

Scale 170

Scale B2B Benchmarks Sales 170

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

So over the past decade-and-a-half we’ve come up with a lot of yardsticks, metrics and rules for SaaS companies. E.g.,: CAC of < 12 months is Good-to-Great Paying sales reps 25%-30% of what they close is Good A burn ratio of 1 or less is Good These metrics do sort of work, if you have some capital to spend (i.e., They don’t.

SaaS Payments 272

SaaS Payments Metrics SMB Payments 272

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. That metric in terms of efficiency or attainment?” The post How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 294

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 294

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2022

Yamini Rangan, CEO at HubSpot, has many insights on how to serve SMB customers at scale. The Challenge of Digital Expansion for SMB. When the shift began in 2020, everyone wrote off SMBs as unprepared for the necessary changes that lie ahead. As a result, SMBs have recognized HubSpot as a place for solutions.

Scale 258

Scale SMB Scaling Innovation 258

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

Start Planning for Enterprise Earlier Than You Think The biggest mistake SaaS companies make? Waiting too long to start their enterprise planning. Focus on Land-and-Expand Economics Don’t obsess over initial deal size.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2025

As a “prosumer” app there is overlap for SMB and freemium B2B apps. The metrics are very strong: $2B ARR (run rate — but not really software revenue) Generated from $121B in transactions on platform Growing 23% $251 ARPU 88% Gross Margins Average customer uses 3.3

Outsourcing Services 201

Outsourcing Services Scale Banking Customer Lifetime Value 201

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2025

Many SMB SaaS companies with $20M ARR and decent growth get acquired for $100M+. But with your metrics, you could still raise from founder-friendly growth-stage investors who value efficiency. You’re already in a good spot to compound growth steadily. That’s a great outcome if you’ve kept your cap table clean.

Venture Capital 170

Venture Capital SMB Acquisition Churn 170

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2025

The company is successfully evolving from its SMB roots into a serious enterprise software contender. Monday Has Incredible Free Cash Flow Margins Monday.com has managed the impressive feat of maintaining strong growth while significantly improving profitability metrics.

Scale 193

Scale SMB Acquisition Enterprise 193

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2024

What are the three most under-discussed metrics on social media, with VCs, and especially with founders? You may have to tweak the ratio based on how Enterprise or SMB you are, but roughly speaking, if your new customer growth is not growing half of your top line, you are shrinking in relevance and market share, and your future is at risk.

Metrics 294

Metrics SaaS Scale Social Media 294

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre has successfully scaled the Gorgias SMB customer base from 1,000 to 10,000 by relying on data. The post Acquiring 10,000 SMB Customers Solely from Data with Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre (Pod 527 + Video) appeared first on SaaStr. Build A Map. Impact: 25% improvement over one year.

SMB 246

SMB Scale Data Scaling 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Dorian Stone , Head of Organizations Revenue at Grammarly, is here to share lessons from his experience of scaling the company from consumer to SMB to Enterprise to help you steer your expansion efforts in the right direction. The admin, influential decision-makers, and consumer sales reps can be the same people in a Consumer or SMB setting.

Scale 246

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Let’s jump right into this set of community questions focused on SaaS metrics, growth, and efficiency. What metrics should we expect in this environment? These payback metrics are important for investing. Q: When it comes to GTM efficiency, what are the most important leading indicator metrics? Do zero-cost budgeting.

Metrics 267

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 267

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The Hidden Costs of UBP While UBP offers many advantages, it does come with tradeoffs: Complicates churn measurement : If a customer uses your product intermittently (every third month, for example), standard monthly churn calculations will show the account churning and reactivating, skewing your metrics. Sales teams lose leverage.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2022

Average NRR at IPO is 119% — but this excludes a bunch of SMB folks who did not disclose their NRR. Folks that are very SMB with mediocre retention often don’t disclose it. Pretty consistent with what we’ve seen on our 5 Interesting Learning series , but helpful to see it distilled to one average number.

SMB 360

SMB SaaS Retention Scale 360

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Metrics Should I Be Using to Measure My Outbound Team? This is a key metric for outbound success. Higher in SMB. Sales Cycle Length : Simpler SMB deals typically close in 30 days or less. We are targeting $30k deals. North of 10% is a sign to really lean in on outbound.

Metrics 130

Metrics SMB Benchmarks Sales 130

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Keybanc and Sapphire have some great overall metrics here : Overall, the media AE closes $750,000 a year, and that’s actually up from 2022 — mainly due to hiring freezes and contractions. Enterprise reps tend to close more ($1m+), and SMB reps less (maybe $500k), with $750k net new bookings per year the median.

Sales Hiring 331

Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise Metrics 331

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

In this week’s Workshop Wednesday , Salesforce Ventures Investor, Jessica Bartos, shares the 5 metrics every SaaS company should care about in any market environment, especially the one we’re currently in. Growth Is Still Number One Growth is still the number one metric, but it’s not the only one. You do that by showing momentum.

Metrics 257

Metrics Marketing SaaS SMB 257

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

5 Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Care About with Salesforce Ventures A hands-on, practical session on the top SaaS metrics #2. 10 Learnings on High Velocity Sales to SMB with Gorgias’ CEO and VPS Gorgias has 13,000 SMB customers. A very tactical guide to scaling SMB sales. #7. 3. Harness.io

Scale 278

Scale SMB Generative AI AI 278

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

So many teams are hiring SDR/BDR teams, and it’s really tough to make that work in SMB sales. Calculating the Right Metrics When you’re tracking everything, it can be hard to distinguish what’s really important. The post 10 Learnings on High-Velocity Sales to SMB with Gorgias CEO and VP of Sales appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Hiring 198

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 198

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2023

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday.com, and the founder of SaaStr. For a quick recap on SaaS metrics: What is ARR in SaaS? So now we must be smarter about the most important SaaS metrics because they matter again.

Metrics 245

Metrics SaaS Sales Hiring Finance 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2022

How to check on a competitor's growth plan: 1/ Search on LinkedIn how many sales reps they have 2/ Multiply by $500,000 ($250,000 if SMB). You can tweak it “up” a bit for SMB, and down a bit for enterprise, but $500k is close enough in most cases, especially as most of us sell at a variety of deal sizes.

SMB 304

SMB Scale Startup Enterprise 304

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2019

What lessons can we learn from this huge Kiwi SMB success, for other founders? ” So even in SMB sales in smaller markets, if you take dominant market share — you can get to $500m+ in ARR! ” So even in SMB sales in smaller markets, if you take dominant market share — you can get to $500m+ in ARR!

SMB 270

SMB Customer Lifetime Value AWS Churn 270

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

But keep in mind that employee count isn’t always indicative of company size, ARR or funding, and so typically revenue is the more important metric. . Differentiating between Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) and Enterprise, or larger companies, is vital. When moving from SMB to Enterprise, shifts in strategy can be stressful.

Scale 286

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Enterprise readiness 286

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2022

But this will be one of the last chances we get to see its financials and metrics as a public company. Once it goes private again later in 2022, Zendesk won’t publish many metrics anymore. Even though Zendesk still has thousands and thousands of SMB customers. #2. Zendesk IPO’d as an SMB support solution.

SMB 286

SMB Scale B2B Revenue 286

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2023

A tough metric. Having said that, many SMB players were hit hard in 2022. Zoom’s SMB customers shrunk for the first time ever, for example. Diversifying into the restaurant space makes sense — it’s one of the largest segments for SMB commerce. A reminder to go global! #4. New customers only grew 3%.

Scale 285

Scale SMB Churn Pricing 285

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2022

The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long. SaaStr 578: The Metrics that Matter, Whether You Are Raising $1 Million or $100 Million with Index Ventures Partner Molly Alter. Top Videos This Week: The Metrics that Matter, Whether You Are Raising $1m or $100m | Index Ventures Partner Molly Alter.

SMB 268

SMB Startup Scaling Churn 268

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2021

Most of the companies in this 5 Interesting Learnings Series have had net negative churn from SMBs (e.g., Xero’s SMB churn isn’t zero. Customer Lifetime Value is 81 months, from SMBs. This is a critical metric. It takes them over a year to go profitable on an SMB customer. Zoom, PagerDuty, etc.).

Customer Lifetime Value 277

Customer Lifetime Value SMB Churn Scale 277

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2021

OK, so if an SMB rep needs to make say $80-$100k in OTE (base + bonus) … and you need to clear say $300k in revenue from that rep to make the math work on your side … at say 100 closed deals a year, to bring in $300k to the company, each deal has to have a $3,000 ACV on average. In fact, you can go a lot lower.

SMB 334

SMB Pricing Sales Metrics 334

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2024

Klaviyo has SMB roots but is pushing hard at $50k+ deals as it approaches $1B in ARR. The Most Important SaaS Metric of All: Net New Customer Growth The post Going Upmarket and “More Enterprise” is Great. But they’re using bigger deals to hide the fact they aren’t growing new customers enough. The sales team?

Enterprise 320

Enterprise Scale SMB Investment 320

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2023

Others may seek to corner the SMB market. Zendesk knew that they could risk selling to startups like any other SMB, so that was the problem they set out to solve. Durham says, “We are judging ourselves in how we treat startups differently from an average SMB. However, what many businesses may overlook is the startup segment.

Startup 266

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 266

SaaS Metrics

AUGUST 12, 2020

You might not have heard of the SMB protocol but still use it daily. The Server Message Block (SMB) is a network protocol. All Windows operating systems which are used for networking can run the SMB protocol. Its function is to enable users to communicate with remote servers and computers. A main feature of this protocol.

SMB 98

SMB Technology Communication 98

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2021

We’ve seen a lot of leaders with tons of SMB customers and a smaller number of $100k+ deals, but Cloudflare is perhaps the most extreme here. We’ve seen this metric vary wildly at public SaaS and Cloud companies. Others like PagerDuty and Surveymonkey have traditionally started with SMBs, but gone more enterprise post-IPO.

Scale 306

Scale SMB Cloud Enterprise 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2020

So this is our last chance to learn from a lot of their metrics as a stand-alone company. But Slack’s SMBs seem to have accelerated, too, since then. Slack’s remained 50/50 enterprise / SMB for 3 quarters, and close to it for 5. ” as it now joins Salesforce in a 27B+ mega-acquisition. What can we take away?

SMB 299

SMB Enterprise Cloud Retention 299

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2021

The average SMB SaaS company has $295k in revenue per employee, and $450k in the enterprise. An important metric we don’t look at often enough. We’ve seen everyone from MongoDB to Hubspot and more accelerate as they approach and pass $1M ARR, for example. #3. Some guideposts to guide to at scale. #4.

Investment 312

Investment SMB Acquisition Cloud 312

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

The core product is very B2C, but the upgrade to paid has very SMB B2B metrics, and 80% of the revenue is subscription based. We wrote a classic SaaStr post long ago saying you needed about 50,000,000 Freemium users to make the model work, more or less, and Duolingo’s metrics tie to this. But is Duolingo SaaS?

Scale 312

Scale B2C SMB B2B 312

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

While these aren’t great metrics if Weave was enterprise, they are still solid for SMBs. Many SMB SaaS companies struggle to hit 100% NRR and 80% GRR. A fairly standard SMB price point. Weave has a base to build on, and has done a good job steadily increasing NRR, up from 97% in 2019. #2.

SaaS Payments 278

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods SMB 278