SaaStr

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What should a CEO look for in hiring a fractional or part-time Chief Marketing Officer? There are tons of folks, especially in the Bay Area, who want to consult with you in a senior marketing role. Own a marketing budget against a revenue commit. Someone that can own a number. Tons of them.

Marketing 234

Marketing Consulting Revenue 234

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2023

MarTech stack and budget (always be on the lookout for cutting-edge platforms) A growth mindset Scalable, Low CAC Growth Strategies “One example that works well for sales-led SaaS businesses is outbound,” says Cabane. The role of marketing teams is to succeed, ideally 100% of the time. How Can You Grow As Fast As ramp? Map it all out.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring AI Banking 237

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. We’ll explain Jason’s take on the recent market fluctuations, highlighting major deals that shaped investment patterns and their effects on valuation trends.

Venture Capital 248

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 248

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Budget an extra 6–12 months beyond the longest timeframe you have budgeted. Even when cash is tight, paying an extra $20k a year or more for a resource that is 2x-5x better is the best investment you will ever make. Winning the market is good enough. At least, sleep on it. I raised 18 months of seed money as a SaaS CEO.

SaaS 318

SaaS Startup Investment Business 318

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2022

A VP at $150k-$180k, especially one that wants a $50k a month budget, can sound insanely expensive. Why not just hire a manager for $80k, who can work with whatever budget you assign? The problem here is that instead of hiring an accretive resource, you hire a cost center than can’t deliver sales/leads/upsells. Test the market.

Scale 254

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 254

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple. They do a lot of predictive analysis to categorize TAM and prioritize their resources.

Scale 255

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 255

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2022

Way back in the early days of Adobe Sign / EchoSign, my co-founder was a digital marketing genius — but was opposed to events. If you don’t believe in them as a marketing strategy, best to pass on them, for the most part at least. Too distracting and resource consuming. They don’t work, he’d say.

Strategy 269

Strategy Branding Development Marketing 269

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2022

So in many ways we use SaaStr itself as sort of a lab to try sales and marketing experiments. The team often wants to do this, at least part of the team, because your smallest customers consume so many resources in support, success, etc. The bottom of the market just didn’t value the product offering enough. What happened?

Scale 269

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing Churn 269

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the new episode, Jason sits down with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan to talk about what’s new at Drata, the role of CMO at Drata vs. Salesloft, partner marketing, customer marketing, and more. Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic.

AWS 241

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 241

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2023

There’s the classic rule that only about 10% of prospects are truly in-market at any given time, and that’s about right in my experience. Now, some objections that seem hard to overcome … but can be: I don’t have budget. This often literally is true, but everyone has some extra discretionary budget. Just do them.

Sales 240

Sales compliance Enterprise Pricing 240

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

There was so much budget flowing into B2B that it seemed like there could be 1,000 unicorns, even if 800 of those turned out to be junk. On the marketing side, people got ‘lazy’ under the guise of, “Let’s increase our paid online ad spend and turn that dial up and spend more.” So, do you still give those hires a shot?

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2022

So in many ways I use SaaStr itself as sort of a lab to try sales and marketing experiments. The team often wants to do this, because your smallest customers consume so many resources in support, success, etc. In the end, for us, though the real issue was resources. But you need to keep it fresh. They churn at the highest rate.

Scale 227

Scale Pricing Revenue SaaS 227

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2021

Budget an extra 6–12 months beyond the longest timeframe you have budgeted. Even when cash is tight, paying an extra $20k a year or more for a resource that is 2x-5x better is the best investment you will ever make. Hire a real stretch VP to own marketing, sales, etc. Winning the market is good enough. Find a way.

Sales Hiring 325

Sales Hiring Investment SaaS Marketing 325

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2022

Customers have become very thoughtful about where they can spend their budget and how to do more with less in times of uncertainty. By 2021, the market witnessed a frenzied phase to add point solutions. So when it comes to portioning your budget to the long tail, you need to have a clear strategy for allocating your finite resources.

Scale 250

Scale SMB Scaling Innovation 250

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2021

BigCo folks just don't know how to succeed without a brand + tons of resources. How to do marketing without a team of 20. You can try marketing programs sequentially. You don’t have to be hyper-organized, or really how to manage budgets, or how to hire 10 reps at a time. But after that, it gets too late.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Scaling 304

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

They dive into the nuances of topics like: Evolving dynamics of remote work The most effective marketing channels of 2024 Owned assets vs. “walled gardens” The practical realities vs. the hype around AI As everyone here at SaaStr knows, Jason sold his first company, Echosign, for $400M. As a manager, you have to do things differently.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 265

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2023

But how do you find that opportunity when there’s a lot of pressure from venture and the market? They were building for a market that didn’t exist so they could sell to job titles that also didn’t exist. Those companies will have a headstart on the competition when the market arrives. Blaze was founded in 2011.

Scale 234

Scale Mobile Venture Capital Scaling 234

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

More subtly, have we teed up both failure and internal warfare by overcutting marketing relative to sales ? More simply, do we still have travel budget? Do people feel like they have the resources they need to succeed? Little or no travel budget. They’d be better off with 6 PMs and some travel budget.

VP of Engineering 106

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 106

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

Even once you hit just $2m-$3m ARR — fairly early — the trade-offs start to become clear for startups with customers both Smaller and Larger: Small customers consume just as many sales, success, and marketing resources. The long tail can be the highest ROI marketing initiative available to you. Probably more.

SMB 360

SMB Sales Hiring Marketing Enterprise 360

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2022

Firestone defines community as a group of individuals connected through a network of platforms, programs, resources, and a shared set of values. Without this people-first ideology, your community just becomes another marketing channel, and it won’t deliver value. Commit to providing adequate resources and budget.

Enterprise 243

Enterprise Leadership Customer Success Startup 243

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2023

Marketers must listen in on sales calls, too, because it can reveal whether the brand message really resonates with the customer or if it addresses their interests and pain points. #2 While marketing might focus on both the end and the means as a part of a strategy, a seller needs to emphasize how to solve a customer pain point.

Sales 282

Sales B2B Consulting Investment 282

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

SentinelOne clearly did call out that budgets are getting tighter and sales cycles are getting longer in some cases. But the gross margins aren’t quite the 75%-80% of a classic low-resource SaaS company. Getting More Efficient, But Still Spending 73% of Revenues on Sales & Marketing. And a few other learnings: #6.

Cybersecurity 265

Cybersecurity Scale Cloud Scaling 265

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

Mercury also offers vibrant community programs that provide founders with the connections, advice, and resources to help them build the next great companies. At Rattle , we are redefining the way revenue teams and leaders interact with their go-to-market systems! Launched in 2019, Mercury is trusted by more than 100,000 startups.

Scale 229

Scale Banking compliance Forecasting 229

Payrix

APRIL 17, 2024

Your business objectives Before you begin your marketing campaign, it’s important to identify your business and marketing objectives. Your target audience Your marketing campaign should address potential new customers, but what other audiences should you consider?

Payments 130

Payments Embedded Payments Merchant Services SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

Take a read if you are still running finance yourself, or just have an part-time outsourced resource. With early revenue, you start thinking about churn and scalability of every aspect of the business, including product, infrastructure, customer support, sales and marketing. Mistake #7: Not creating a detailed and complete budget.

Finance 318

Finance Outsourcing Services Systems Review Technical Review 318

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2021

86% of marketers consider demand generation a core part of marketing. Not qualifying or segmenting leads is a common marketing mistake. Not qualifying or segmenting leads is a common marketing mistake. Don’t ask your sales team to call all the leads and don’t put them all in a marketing campaign. LEAD ROUTING.

Software Review 210

Software Review Market Segmentation Engagement Sales 210

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

Jennifer emphasized the importance of having the right motives and values as a leader, such as growing people, expanding markets, and building value for others, to sustain long-term success. Start with your motives and why you want to be a CEO. GenAI is absolutely accelerating the appetite for automation,” Jennifer says.

Generative AI 266

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 266

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires. Our Sponsor Today’s episode is sponsored by DemandBase , Demandbase helps B2B companies hit their revenue goals using fewer resources.

Sales Hiring 103

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing SMB 103

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Key responsibilities include setting out a clear product vision , building a product roadmap, organizing releases , and conducting continuous market research and analysis. The project manager oversees the project resources to make sure work gets done on time and on budget. using a Gantt chart, etc.), using a Gantt chart, etc.),

Management 97

Management Market Research Metrics Trends 97

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

It has now secured over $67M in funding and offers a robust platform for mid-market and SMB segments. Blosser comments, “The big thing I want to share with everyone is just stick with it if you feel like you have product-market fit. WorkRamp shifted its focus to a different segment –– the mid-market and SMB side.

Scale 236

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 236

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. Rico Mallozzi: So marketplaces are fundamentally changing, go to market motions for a lot of enterprise technology companies.

Scale 236

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 236

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

You need to identify a niche in the current market, make yourself known, understand your main differentiators, and offer your users a ton of value for their money. Market understanding. Instead, focus on understanding your target market. . SMBs have cash flow constraints and work with fewer resources and smaller teams.

Scale 234

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 234

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). If R&D is so critical to a company’s success, why then do R&D budgets lack the same discipline of other spend categories?

Underperforming Technical Team 118

Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 118

Buffer Resources

JUNE 5, 2023

When I started my digital marketing company, BDY Consult , seven years ago, I kept running into a problem that’s all too common for mission-driven founders. And, while it didn’t start as a marketing scheme, these free resources have ultimately created a funnel that drives new paying customers our way.

Outsourcing Services 106

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Business 106

yoursales

JUNE 2, 2023

It empowers businesses to make informed decisions, allocate resources effectively, and achieve sustainable growth. By leveraging a blend of data analysis, market intelligence, and sales expertise, sales forecasting provides valuable insights into the future trajectory of a company’s sales efforts.

Forecasting 86

Forecasting Sales Sales Funnel B2B 86

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

They need to be able to balance efficiency with a great customer experience , meet rising customer expectations , and keep team morale high , all while ensuring that they don’t blow through their budget or burn out their team. If you’re not using your resources efficiently, you’re going to get stalled. Map out your existing workflows.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

FastSpring

AUGUST 3, 2022

There are several things you can do to prepare your go-to-market teams for changes in your prospects’ and customers’ buying behaviors and priorities. You’re likely already looking at external data for signs of whether your total addressable market (TAM) is shrinking. Note: FastSpring helps companies scale with fewer company resources.

Scale 133

Scale Revenue Sales Compensation 133