FastSpring

DECEMBER 7, 2023

As the Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at WP Engine , Carl has worked on many acquisitions and partnerships, including brands like Flywheel, Perfect Dashboard, Block Lab, and recently, Delicious Brains. “This is everyday for me, so I love talking about it,” says Carl Hargreaves about mergers and acquisitions.

Software Review 136

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Branding 136

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

And so, Mark Rudden and his team had to figure it all out by themselves. Fortunately, Mark had quite a bit of experience working and scaling teams in demanding, hypergrowth environments. Building a great sales team: How Intercom fosters and maintains its sales culture. Onboarding, but make it remote.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 223

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? What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? Andy MacMillan: I started my career in tech actually as a developer.

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 200

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Bansal shares this and other key milestones and frameworks for company building in conversation with a16z general partner Peter Levine; enterprise deal team partner Satish Talluri (who was a director of product and growth operations there); and Sonal Chokshi. As for pricing, how do you know you’re not leaving value on the table?

Product Marketing 81

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 81

Baremetrics

JANUARY 24, 2021

A year earlier we’d launched the MVP of the model allowing SMB customers to input a credit card to get access to the platform, but we hadn’t had a chance to dedicate time or resources to optimizing a proper SaaS onboarding funnel. We educated them on key functionality and attempted to get them to book a call with a member of our team.

Churn 71

Churn SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions 71

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2020

Before Slack, Rachel spent 4 years at LinkedIn where she led the product marketing team for content experiences. 318: The first step in success with SMB clients is to recognize that it’s not a one size fits all scenario. Companies need a specialized approach for SMB accounts, different than the tactics used for Enterprise.

SMB 180

SMB Scale Startup Marketplace as a Service 180

Casey Accidental

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

Developer platform: a business where developers can build businesses on top of the business’s software and charge customers. The Weak Transition to Marketplace Arguments. There are three fairly weak arguments I don’t like, but I’ll present them anyway. #1 Take them from the marketplace team.

Marketplace as a Service 106

Marketplace as a Service Business Model Business Underperforming Technical Team 106

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2019

During his 5 years at PatientPop, Justin grew sales from $0 to $56m alongside the full build-out of the sales team. As a manager observing their team, what are signs that an individual is burning out? What actions and communications must they adopt to ensure that this feeling of culture over performance is accepted by the team?

Scale 140

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Interviewing 140

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2019

Here’s what Eyal and Megan talk about: How to develop software faster. But I think what it boils down to is also how newer technology is being developed and the ability for it to inter-operate with other platforms. It’s not an SMB where you’re getting volumes of 100 a day. Missed the session? So it’s that.

SaaS Payments 132

SaaS Payments Cloud Technical Review Scale 132

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

If something bad happens, you’re going to have to cut your burn, probably. There is one thing, I love this quote and it’s a little bit of a crude quote, not that it’s bad language-. What do you do with that lightly toxic person on your team? I’ve spent three years deploying Gainsight. Aaron : No.

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 205

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Selling to Fortune 500 companies is a different game than SMB. At Ghostery, our tiny enterprise sales team has closed almost half of the top 25 eCommerce retailers. He gave each person on the sales team a $5,000 budget to act like a marketer. My approach was different than the rest of the team. Let me explain.

Underperforming Technical Team 67

Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise readiness SMB Enterprise 67

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

But as the business becomes more successful – and there are resources to build a support team – additional layers begin to separate executives from their customers. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. Short on time?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 23, 2018

You might optimize your prices and meet compliance regulations or you might have the best sales tools at your disposal. There’s a general tendency among most frontline sales teams to sell to enterprises and become the next Salesforce. But only if you have the capacity or if your product is specially developed to solve their problems.

B2B 55

B2B Development Team Review Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review 55

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. Your team will start to get pushed on the money side of things.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Benchmarks Scale Underperforming Technical Team 97

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Before I joined the venture capital industry many years ago, I was a software developer, and I worked for a startup around the 2000 time period. Contrast that with companies that might also sell into the SMB segment of the market where the ASPs, the average deal sizes are lower. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

You have to create a repeatable process if you’re going to scale up the sales team. The Number One Job of a VP Sales is Recruiting a Great Team. But let’s step back a minute, you’ve got three reps on your team already, doing whatever revenue, four, and you want to triple your revenue. Whatever you do, hire two.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 261

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2019

the stuff that Customer Success teams are really meant to do). One customer success trend I’m seeing is the need to develop more repeatable customer education programs. The biggest trend I see emerging in Europe, which started at the end of 2018 is Customer Success Plans becoming a staple asset of Customer Success teams.

Customer Success 73

Customer Success SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 73

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

One of the biggest decisions you can make when setting up your sales team is whether to focus primarily on inside or outside sales. We’ll look at the strengths of each type of sales, why you need both of them in your team, and how to determine the best balance for your organization. What is inside sales? What is outside sales.

Sales Hiring 81

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 81

Upscope

JANUARY 4, 2021

Companies add a list of frequently asked questions on help pages or even under their pricing and linked directly to their home page. Intercom developed one of those typical guidance systems you see when you sign up to a new website. You could ask them to book a demo with your sales team and some people prefer that.

Software Review 52

Software Review Systems Review Technical Review Scale 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2019

the stuff that Customer Success teams are really meant to do). One customer success trend I’m seeing is the need to develop more repeatable customer education programs. The biggest trend I see emerging in Europe, which started at the end of 2018 is Customer Success Plans becoming a staple asset of Customer Success teams.

Customer Success 49

Customer Success SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 49

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Turns out a founding team of six MBAs creating a full suite of products sold solely to SMBs can become a multi-million dollar public company in nine years – and continue growing rapidly ($77.6 Dharmesh : …said, “This is a very bad idea. million in 2013 to $115.9 million in 2014.). I said, “Holy crap.

Part-Time VPE 224

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 224

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

We trust leaders to make decisions on what tools they need to get the most out of their teams. Guide to SaaS Revenue Recognition and Deferred Revenue in SaaS by Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO SaaS revenue recognition is an ongoing priority for SaaS accounting teams. This post describes my recommendations for SaaS board meetings.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2022

And also on the side, doing a strategy of pure, just changing our ICP and fully picking it and making it super narrow and super focused, and having 25% of the team doing that. And 75% of the team continuing business as usual. No one has an engineering team with the time to build anything. Jason Lemkin: Yep. So, thanks.

Scale 215

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling VP of Engineering 215

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

But it sounds like the bad news is you’ve got a limited runway. It’s not the investor’s problem if you have an expensive team. They know everyone, and if they don’t, someone on their vast team does. Like if you have a three people in a team, what do you think that is recession proof right now?

Scale 198

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 198

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2022

And we had a variety of software offerings, everything from WordPress themes and plugins, a local development tool called Local and then had very SaaS like elements to our offering there. And then, for seven years, the role I had right before FastSpring, I worked for a company called WP Engine. I think that was surprising for me.

Payment Methods 78

Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Software Review 78

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2019

What can founders do to their pricing model to extract as much value from each customer? How do the very best businesses structure their pricing for value extraction? * How do you need this change to be reflected in your pricing? When does SMB pricing turn into enterprise and mid level pricing and so much more.

Outsourcing Services 115

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring SMB 115

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Developing a sales strategy is one of the core activities every business will have to undertake. When done correctly, your sales strategy will help your sales team execute with focus – SMB or enterprise, inbound or outbound, hunting or farming. 8 steps to develop a winning sales strategy. But that threshold exists.

Scale 177

Scale Strategy Sales Underperforming Technical Team 177

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

What are the core metrics founders should measure to determine the effectiveness of their reps and sales teams? How does this differ between SMB and enterprise? So if you think about those earliest steps, so A, identifying the pain point in the market, B, validating it, those are kind of like customer development, customer research.

Part-Time VPE 201

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 201

FastSpring

JANUARY 27, 2022

And in cases where our customers get stuck, our support team responds in a timely manner with personalized video. How SoStocked increases retention through grandfathering existing customers into lower prices. When you raise your prices, don’t raise them on your existing customers,” co-founder Chelsea Cohen explains.

Merchant Services 118

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 118

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

Develop a Full Marketing Strategy 2. The ideal buyer for lower-priced businesses might be a solopreneur looking for a hands-off stream of income. SMB SaaS companies tend to have higher churn rates due to their lower demand and less sophisticated needs. Transferability 2. Sustainability 3. Protect Your Intellectual Property 3.

SaaS Payments 105

SaaS Payments Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review 105

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Never believe that doubting yourself is a bad thing. That company only lasted another year before they were out of business, so it was a poor use of my energy, time, and being away from my family – a lesson I work to pass on to others new in roles today. Invest in your development internally and externally. Joyce Johnson.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

Point Nine Land

JUNE 18, 2023

You can also see right away that, for instance, month 5 was an unusually bad month for the April 2020 cohort. a churn or retention rate you’d be happy with), red for “bad” values, yellow for “OK”, and gradients for values in between. How can different teams use cohort analysis to make better decisions?

SaaS Payments 128

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments SaaS 128

OpenView Labs

MAY 5, 2021

Many companies are strategic consumers of open-source software as a means to reduce the burden on their software engineering team to build everything from the ground up. The answer likely depends on your market segmentation, as freemium may ease adoption friction for SMB/mid-market companies.

Business 52

Business SMB Scale DevOps as a Service 52

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Management teams should prepare themselves for activist investors and adapt their financial profile to keep valuations high. While staggered boards and poison pills can stave off hostile takeovers, the best protection against an undesired acquisition is a high stock price. Consumption pricing. Retain is the new add. Bankruptcy.

Software Review 120

Software Review Development Team Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 120

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. Without a sales development team, you can find yourself struggling when it comes to pipeline generation. The Four Costs of In-House Sales Development. Salary and benefits costs.

Outsourcing Services 75

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 75

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Nick Mehta: Power of the developer, or the API economy, both of you play very much in both those trends. How do you help your team make that link to value? We’ve got a lot of training to do with our sales teams to get them to start to speak in these types of terms versus feature function. Nick Mehta: Yeah.

Payment Methods 201

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 201

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

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. And we’re about to add basically a team collaboration tier on top of the product. And you have to allow that, in fact, you have to support that in your sales team.

Scale 220

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 220