Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 4, 2023

Most growth-stage CEOs I work with know how to tell if they’re efficiently allocating capital in every part of their budget with one glaring exception: research and development (R&D). Focus on performance management of your product and engineering teams as early indicators for what R&D investments are working, and which aren’t.

Underperforming Technical Team 124

Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 124

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

The success of an executive team often depends as much on their interpersonal harmony as their professional expertise. How does a team establish rapport with one another? Algolia’s Bernadette Nixon (Chief Executive Officer) and Michelle Adams (Chief Revenue Officer) have spent the past few years developing this relational toolbox.

Underperforming Technical Team 287

Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Outsourced Development Finance 287

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

A market gap can be caused by missing functionality or poor user experience. Canva identified a market need for a user-friendly graphic design tool for non-designers and DocuSign for a secure solution to sign and manage digital documents and contracts. Talk to the developers and engineers. What are examples of market gaps?

Underperforming Technical Team 94

Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Market Research Outsourced Development 94

Sales Hacker

MARCH 22, 2018

In this article, I will summarize what I’ve learned about B2B sales outsourcing. W hat is Sales Outsourcing? Sales outsourcing gives parts of your own sales process to others (individuals or agencies). Reasons to outsource include: Lack of expertise and experience in some sales functions (e.g. Lead Generation).

Outsourcing Services 78

Outsourcing Services Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development Scale 78

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

They are hiring leaders, building teams, and attracting advisors in the US while devouring the SV SaaS playbook. AI is likely the next platform, dev tools are strategic given the scarcity of developers, cybersecurity is front and center for enterprises, and the data stack is still going strong. Proximity to customers helps too.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring Cybersecurity Underperforming Technical Team 230

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

I hope this post allows people and teams to safely talk about Product Judgment. If you ever had to face a Manager, Director or Exec as they make bad product decisions and you’re struggling to persuade them otherwise, this post will help you. It takes years to build, and therefore ranges from very weak to very strong.

Underperforming Technical Team 291

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 25, 2020

But should you build your own in-house marketing team or hire an agency partner? Digital agencies are companies that help other businesses perform a specific function such as marketing, development, or design. They act as a substitute for an in-house team, serving the same labor function but outside of the organization.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 145

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 22, 2017

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? Sales teams rarely operate as a one-person army.

Underperforming Technical Team 102

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Social Media 102

Baremetrics

AUGUST 6, 2021

A common misconception about HR sees the department’s raison-d’etre as resolving problems and complaints, handling policy questions, renegotiating contracts and so forth. Plan your hiring process long before adding people to the team. Don’t assume and get help where you need it Employment contracts are a minefield.

Underperforming Technical Team 130

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Consulting Scale 130

Stax

JANUARY 29, 2024

Sub-merchants are having a poor payments experience Another tell-tale sign of having a sub-optimal payments partner is if your customers (i.e., The last thing you want is for them to churn due to a poor payments experience. Are you coming up on the end of that contract? Look at your vendors.

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 88

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

We recently hosted the Point Nine Founders Summit, featuring several panels and presentations from founders, CFOs, COOs, and sales execs on building early sales teams and hiring your first successful sales leaders. It helps keep the product team focused on customer feedback and providing value in exchange for revenue.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. To do the first, we had to hire, train, and write a playbook – the building blocks of any team. Relentlessly measure impact.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 5, 2017

The main problem I hear is finger-pointing, this is especially apparent on teams where there is a pod system and SDRs are paired to AEs , but it can happen on any team regardless of the setup. If the meeting doesn’t move to pipeline, too bad SDR, you don’t get paid. SDR vs AE: Vicious Cycle of Blame.

Scale 81

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Sales Hiring 81

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 2, 2020

But obsessing over efficiency can mask what’s most important, and most rewarding, to support teams – actually helping customers. Support teams exist to solve customers’ problems, not to deflect them or find the fastest way to hit the “close” button. The evolution of customer support. Customers] just want to use the solution.

Outsourcing Services 253

Outsourcing Services Investment Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 253

Audacix

AUGUST 11, 2018

Far too often we receive mayday calls from prospects who have invested a lot of money, but more importantly time, into selecting and working with a outsourced test automation services provider, only to be rewarded with a never-ending tug of war that inflicts much damage to their professional reputations. If you pay peanuts, you get.

Outsourcing Services 40

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Software Review Software 40

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

You can have the great product and a great team, but the market of small or very niche. The second one is the team, obviously depending on how earlier the team has a huge factor because you may be so early in your journey that there’s nothing else to point to, but the track record of the team. Jyoti Bansal: Yeah.

Sales Recruiting 254

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 254

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 24, 2023

  Agencies that were good at providing technical assistance or managing paid channels left clients, like my employers and other businesses we worked with, hanging when it came to content strategy and development.  After all, most leads consume three to four pieces of content from a vendor before engaging with their sales team. 

Outsourcing Services 111

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team 111

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

They understand that, while getting a contract signed is what gets them to their quarterly number, it could ultimately be a loss for the company if the product isn’t the right fit for that customer. It’s also one of the hardest to teach and develop. Tell me about a time you collaborated within the sales team and with other teams.

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 76

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 21, 2019

Imagine how motivated your team would be if you could get this tool for them.”. Contract – Using “contract” in sales dialogue lowers close rates by as much as 7%. The post Persuasive Words and Phrases: the Good, the Bad, and the Silent appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Underperforming Technical Team 89

Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence Outsourced Development Communication 89

OPEXEngine

MARCH 9, 2022

How can Finance and Engineering management work together to diagnose weak areas, and shift R&D resources to produce better outcomes for the company? We are working with our Bain colleagues, as well as the SaaS benchmarking community to develop a better understanding of R&D ROI and the levers that impact it.

Software Review 59

Software Review Development Team Review Technical Review Outsourced Development 59

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2021

Our guess is that poor Polly from purchasing is gathering dust on a noticeboard in the canteen or buried somewhere deep in your internal network of folders. Speak empathetically to their prospects and develop stronger connections as a result. Imagine you sell HR software designed to help HR managers run their teams efficiently.

Scale 112

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services Sales Enablement 112

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

sales team. I did all sorts of things there from sales, to project management, to running the engineering team, hiring. This is where I got my chops in growing and scaling enterprise sales teams. We have team selling here that extends beyond the sales team. Want to see more content like this? FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 227

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. Maybe you’ve just extended support hours and it’s becoming harder to plan shifts for different time zones; maybe you’re spending hours figuring out schedules for the week ahead; maybe the inflow prediction was a bit off and now your team is under or overstaffed.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 13, 2019

Getting a new customer on board is a happy time for every sales team, but it’s not quite the end of the road. Poor handoff practices also have a much broader impact than just making a few customers unhappy — they dramatically affect retention and your company’s bottom line. Set expectations from the start.

Underperforming Technical Team 80

Underperforming Technical Team Customer Success Outsourced Development Sales 80

Audacix

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Developers and security professionals employ various techniques to simulate real-world cyber threats, including penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and code review. These reviews should be done with static code analysis tools (SAST) as well as manual reviews within your team. This is popularly known as shift left model.

Software Review 40

Software Review DevOps as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services 40

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 13, 2018

You can’t just lock yourself in a room or outsource it to some agency. A bad version of this opportunity is spending half of your annual marketing budget on sponsoring a conference closing party. When you’ve started to see some success in your early events, it can be tempting to outsource your events to ramp things up.

Branding 205

Branding Outsourced Development Scale Travel 205

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 1, 2022

I’ve been an SDR , an SDR director, and now run a sales team at a startup. This ultimately leads to increased achievement of common KPIs that sales development teams are measured by such as new opportunities created, account touchpoints and calls. Missing or bad data: Contact info or company details are incorrect or missing.

Technical Review 77

Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Education 77

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

If you get the setup wrong, you end up with bad data, incorrect reports and forecasts, which has a material impact on the business. The Cost of Bad Setup: You Can’t Trust the Data In the early days of Forecast+ , I recall meeting with a founder of a multi-million dollar SaaS company. When a payment comes in, it should decrease.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments Software Review 52

SaaSHolic

JULY 31, 2023

.” Bookkeeping, planning, and modeling are skills and activities that someone in the founding team should perform at a good-enough level. Accounting and payroll should definitely be outsourced. It just so happens that these CEOs typically prioritize pressing operational needs (a sales rep, a developer, etc.),

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Payment Services Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 52

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2022

There’s sales pipeline , a 7-stage journey describing what your sales team must do to convert a lead to a customer. For your team, the goal is to share more information about your products without appearing overly promotional. For your team, this step is about making your prospects realize they need your products or service.

Sales Funnel 118

Sales Funnel Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 118

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

The context is then used to train and develop machine learning algorithms. According to ReviewTrackers , 94 percent of consumers say a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business. With an algorithm developed to crawl and scrape data from competitors, you can save time while also increasing your potential for profit.

Scale 125

Scale Outsourcing Services Artificial Intelligence Scaling 125

OPEXEngine

JUNE 8, 2021

In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Blake, a successful salesperson, visits the real estate sales team and gives them a blistering motivational speech that has gone down in history as one of the best of all time. This is the first challenge facing enterprise SaaS sales teams. A-B-C,” he says as he points to each letter.

Enterprise 52

Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Sales 52

SaaSOptics

FEBRUARY 13, 2022

When transitioning to a SaaS model or developing a SaaS business, many companies utilize spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and other manual processes to manage their recurring revenue business. This is further complicated by the inherent customer contract volatility in SaaS businesses. The Difference in Revenue Recognition.

Payment Features 105

Payment Features Outsourced Development SaaS Software Review 105

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 18, 2020

In good times and in bad times every business wants more leads. 2 SEO Strategy Development. Again, before enrolling in a long-term contract, you need to make sure you’re at the right place. That doesn’t mean they are bad at it but it surely means that they’ll not be able to adapt to your business scaling ideas in the future.

Consulting 131

Consulting Scale Outsourced Development Outsourcing Services 131

Chaotic Flow

AUGUST 18, 2015

SaaS businesses develop intimate, long term relationships with their SaaS customers. There is very little uncertainty about the value of any new contract: it is the margin reaped between license revenue and acquisition costs. Or, you might create teams that link specific sales reps to specific account managers and success reps.

Customer Success 138

Customer Success Underperforming Technical Team Scale SaaS 138

Neil Patel

APRIL 20, 2021

Turns out one of the agencies you outsource to overseas increased their rates, and it’s cutting into your bottom line. You can now handle the situation by either increasing your rates, renegotiating your contract with your vendor, or shopping around for someone more affordable. The same goes for service businesses.

Outsourcing Services 119

Outsourcing Services Business Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 119

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams.

Sales Hiring 95

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 95