SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2021

So SaaS companies now must think about ways to sell to prospects before the sales team even contacts them. . This means that your team’s work is far from over at the closing of the sale –– your customer service must be on point, your product useful and simple to use. . Key Highlights: Adopt a product-led growth mindset.

Software Review 221

Software Review SMB Enterprise Software 221

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Dear SaaStr: At What ACV Can We Afford a Sales Team? Even with a very efficient team, it’s tough to afford a sales team much below $299 a month / $3k a year. Then, to make say $100k a year as an SMB rep, you then have to close 4x that (or more), so say $400k a year, maybe more. At least in the U.S. and Western Europe.

SMB 182

SMB Sales Pricing Revenue 182

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

If a sales rep closed a deal, A customer success manager should take it over. Find a way to fund both, even with SMBs. I’d suggest a few basic thoughts and rules: If you have sales involved, then you need customer success, too. Just assign a certain amount of ARR per each SMB customer success manager.

Customer Success 304

Customer Success Scale SMB Sales 304

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 29, 2023

Previously, he served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team. Before Mixpanel, Meka spent four years at Stripe and scaled and matured its sales organization during the company’s rapid growth from 250 to 2000 people. by Slack), Snackpass and Stytch.

SMB 74

SMB Scale Compensation Finance 74

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

The path to Cheif Revenue Officer (CRO) is different for many people. Tracy Young , CEO and co-founder at TigerEye, sits down with three CROs to talk about how they navigated the journey to revenue leader. After switching to SaaS, she started as an SMB sales leader with no prior management or SMB sales experience.

Scale 220

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 220

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Well, fast forward to today and it’s truly an SMB powerhouse. How is SMB SaaS doing today? are realtively low, as a huge amount of their payments revenue goes out to the payment processors. 111% NRR from SMBs. . #5. 15% Customer Growth Leads to 48% Revenue Growth Always helpful to me to see this math broken out.

Payment Services 269

Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 269

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

One of the very first SaaStr presentations ever was How to Hire a Great VP Sales (And Not Screw It Up). One was how my First Real VP of Sales Doubled Our Net New Revenue in 90 days. Brendon Cassidy joined as our VP Sales at a tough time, as we’ve discussed before, as we were coming out of our Year of Hell.

Sales Hiring 341

Sales Hiring Sales SMB Pricing 341

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

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., Non-Recurring Revenue Doesn’t Count, At Least Not as Much. Pass-Through Revenue Simply Doesn’t Count. It depends.

SaaS Payments 189

SaaS Payments Metrics Payments SMB 189

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful: PLG and Sales Led? Given this, you must understand the role that each facet of the business plays in promoting that product, from marketing and sales to customer service.

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 241

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Are you compensating your teams to sell recurring revenue?

Scale 210

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 210

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

60% of Asana’s customers come from self-service, 40% from sales. This is trending to 50/50 now that Asana has crossed $400m in ARR, but still a reminder a self-serve motion combined with sales jumping on the bigger deals can scale very, very far. 80% of Datadog’s revenue at $1.2B 80% of Datadog’s revenue at $1.2B

Scale 329

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 329

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long (Updated) The 8 Signs of a Failing Sales Rep. SaaStr 639: Scaling a SaaS Sales Team While Building Culture with Figma VP of Sales Scott Pugh    4.

Scale 180

Scale SMB Sales Scaling 180

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Many Deals Can a Sales Rep Close Per Month? A successful but not top 5% sales rep in SaaS typically can close: 20–50 deals a month if $0.5k-$2k ACV , i.e., very transactional 1–2 call close. Think about an SMB rep doing small-but-not-tiny deals — say $2k ACV. Usually all inbound. deals image from here.

Sales 229

Sales SMB Enterprise SaaS 229

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

ARR, Zoom was an SMB powerhouse, with Enterprise growing. SMB is now saturated at $4B ARR and not growing, but Enterprise is picking up the slack and growing faster than ever. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1 This trend had started several years ago, but even in 2021, 63% of revenue was from 10 seat or smaller customers.

SMB 260

SMB Enterprise Engineering Scale 260

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

What are some of the foundational ways sales leaders can think about building their sales teams as their company continues to expand and grow? There’s no shortage of ways to tackle this challenge, but one thing is clear: build sales teams thoughtfully and intentionally. Principle #1: Ownership is Key.

Scale 200

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 200

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2022

Driving up sales rep efficiency is key to driving up margins. SMB sales (most of Toast) is very tough to do without a highly efficient and effective sales force. At least 20% of your customers from referrals and second-order revenue. #4. 20% of new customers / locations come from referrals.

SaaS Payments 269

SaaS Payments Scale SMB Payment Solutions 269

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

Their CEO will join us at SaaSr Scale 2021 on December 15 to talk about using data to get to 10,000 SMB customers! I asked Aasif Osmany to share his learnings as a top-performing SMB VP of Sales, below. My personal objective was simple, learn as much about SMB SaaS as I could and move on to another company to continue learning.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 245

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2022

You can see here even in June ’09, the peak of that recession arguably, we doubled sales over ’08: #2. Two things though did get hit harder — SMB Churn and Upsell s. Customers kept buying more SaaS than ever, which masked all-time high churn in SMB accounts. So churn was up in ’09, but so was sales.

SMB 292

SMB SaaS Churn Enterprise 292

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. And produce a lot less revenue per interaction. Small customers are great for training the sales team.

SMB 334

SMB Sales Hiring Marketing Enterprise 334

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2021

We can see that NRR for tiny customers is probably about 100%, as it is for other SMB leaders. Again, the latest crop of Cloud IPOs shows SMBs seem to have no limit in terms of TAM, with SMB growth at Shopify and Zendesk keeping up with enterprise, and even at Asana, SMB growth is still impressive at $250m ARR.

SMB 324

SMB Enterprise Cloud Churn 324

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2022

Calendly for example waited until about $50m ARR to build out an enteprise sales team. That journey here: Most of us don’t stay SMB forever. A few other examples: Slack started off almost 100% self-serve with no sales reps, but at $1B was 50% enterprise. PagerDuty was almost entirely SMB at IPO, at $125m in ARR.

SMB 330

SMB SaaS Enterprise Software 330

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2021

It’s in many ways the hardest way to do it (direct sales to SMEs), but like HubSpot, Avalara has made it work well. That’s the power of compounding revenue right there: 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. They earn commissions and are offered dedicated sales, marketing and training support. 180,000 revenue per employee.

Scale 321

Scale SMB compliance Churn 321

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2022

Salesforce: “We’re finally seeing slowdown now in our commerce, media, telecom, and SMB segments”. But, it’s gotten a bit harder, in some segments at least: “Sales cycles can get stretched, deals are inspected by higher levels of management and all of this we began to start to see in July,” Benioff said. Billion in revenue.

SMB 217

SMB Scale Cloud Trends 217

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

119% NRR from SMBs Profitable, and only burned $15m net to date 130,000 total customers There’s not much to not love here! But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking. 36% of Revenue Outside the U.S. Not suprising– over 50% of HubSpot’s revenue is outside the U.S.

Scale 207

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 207

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2021

Started 10 years ago as “Freshdesk” and a low-end / SMB helpdesk to rival Zendesk, Freshworks has since expanded its product footprint across IT management (Freshservice) and CRM (Freshsales) to a stunnning 49% growth rate at $350m in ARR. 49% revenue growth from 20% customer growth. Headquartered in the U.S., NRR of 118%.

Scale 338

Scale SMB Scaling Subscription 338

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2023

And so many different strategies, from more enterprise to more SMB, from more tech focused (Asana) to less tech focused (Monday). 135% NRR from larger customers and 120% for $5k+ customers remains top-tier, especially for a vendor with plenty of small SMB customers. 39% of Revenue Outside U.S., 39% of Revenue Outside U.S.,

SMB 219

SMB Outsourced Development Enterprise Scale 219

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

How can Sales and Marketing work together? The simplest way is to get sales and marketing to work together is to (x) align marketing’s #1 goal to a revenue-related “commit” that (y) sales agrees to. Your VP Sales Has a Sales Quota. But a lead / opportunity / revenue commitment as Goal #1 for marketing.

Marketing 181

Marketing Sales Social Media SMB 181

Kellblog

APRIL 19, 2024

A lot of today’s SMB companies will be mid-market tomorrow, so we want to catch them on the way up. CEO: Well, you know, you can’t really control who clicks on a Google ad, so we can get inbound from SMB, MM, and ENT. Define the idea of strategic vs. opportunistic revenue. CEO: Mid-market (MM). CEO: Yes, for sure.

Startup 61

Startup SMB Airlines Banking 61

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2016

Channel distribution represents one of the biggest and most important changes in customers acquisition for SMB SaaS startups in quite a while. IBM, Intel, Cisco and their kin generate more than 80% of their revenues through a universe of resellers and distributors. It’s the most successful SMB SaaS acquisition channel ever built.

Outsourcing Services 108

Outsourcing Services SMB Acquisition Scale 108

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

When an SMB SaaS startup is young with quickly growing revenues, more of the same works. For some SMB SaaS companies, generating this kind of lead volume even at scale isn’t a challenge. There is no universal answer to which direction to pursue: remain in the SMB segment and cross-sell or move up-market, or both.

SMB 100

SMB Scale Startup Marketing 100

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2021

I recently put together a list on Quora of 6 things sales reps recently said to me as a buyer of SaaS products myself that killed the deal: “You are wasting my time”. Sales is there to serve. If sales was routed the wrong lead, that’s the company’s fault, not the prospect’s. I’m basically an SMB these days.

Scale 271

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 271

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. But it makes up for it by only spending 17% of its revenue on sales and marketing, less than half of many SaaS leaders. 52% of revenue from Apple App Store, and 20% from Google Play.

Scale 285

Scale B2C SMB B2B 285

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2022

It’s moved beyond its tiniest customers, of an ACV of < $1k, but other than that, it’s going upmarket without giving up its SMB roots. In fact, Q’22 was Zendesk’s highest first-quarter revenue increase in history. Even though Zendesk still has thousands and thousands of SMB customers. #2.

SMB 248

SMB Scale B2B Metrics 248

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2021

Technical selling of SaaS, on-premise software, and hardware solutions has relied on sales proofs of concept (POCs) that require pre-sales professionals to lead, manage, and drive to a ‘technical win” outcome so that account executives can close the deal. Sales Profile: SMB to Commercial. Duration: 15 to 30 Days.

Revenue 74

Revenue Sales SMB Engineering 74

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Why The Greatest Sales Teams Just Kill It On Dec 31. SaaStr 617: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents: Rippling VP of Sales Matt Plank on How to Ramp Up Sales in the Early Days. When Everyone Else Has Gone Home.

Scale 181

Scale Venture Capital SMB Scaling 181

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2021

7:00 AM (50 MINS) – Acquiring SMB 10,000 Customers Solely from Data with Gorgias’ CEO Romain Lapeyre. 7:00 AM (40 MINS) – Product-led Growth: How to Execute Across the Full Funnel (and Mistakes We Made) with Reprise’s VP of Marketing and VP of Sales. All times are in Pacific Time. 7:00-8:00 AM PT.

Scale 207

Scale VP of Engineering Scaling SMB 207

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2023

But HubSpot is a platform today, from Marketing to Sales to Service to CMS — a true Customer Platform: Its first product is the most mature — its Marketing Hub is growing 20%, vs CRM at 30% and Service at 40%. of the $2B total ARR for HubSpot. So far, both strategies seem to have performed incredibly well. And are quite different.

Marketing 199

Marketing SMB Scale Revenue 199