AI to ROI (fka Metrics that Measure Up)

SpaceX filed for what could be the largest IPO in history, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and $75 billion raise on NASDAQ in June. Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan cut through the narrative and go straight to the numbers, business unit by business unit. Key Topics: The Launch Services Monopoly Falcon 9 launches cost roughly $67 million, compared to $110-160 million for competitors. With over 100 launches per year, $4 billion in NASA contracts, and a freshly awarded Space Force contract, SpaceX has no meaningful competitor at scale. The catch: the next-generation Starship rocket, critical to everything else in the bull case, is already five years behind its original commercial timeline. Starlink: The $10 Billion Business You Never Think About Starlink generates nearly $10 billion in annual revenue from 10 million global subscribers, representing 54% of SpaceX's total revenue. The real margin engine is not residential subscribers but aviation and maritime, where per-customer annual revenue runs $300K and $34K respectively. Amazon's Project Kuiper remains far behind with under 700 satellites versus Starlink's 10,000-plus. XAI and X: The Problem Child SpaceX acquired XAI in February 2026 in an all-stock deal valued at $250 billion. The financial reality is stark. XAI burned $9.5 billion in cash during the first nine months of 2025 on only $210 million in revenue, nearly $28 million per day. A combined 2025 P&L would have shown a $5 billion net loss on $18.5 billion in revenue, reversing SpaceX's standalone $8.5 billion profit in 2024. Grok, its large language model, is described in internal SpaceX memos as clearly behind Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini, and Elon Musk himself has said publicly it needs to be rebuilt. The IPO Mechanics: Structure, Retail Allocation, and a Controversial NASDAQ Rule Change Five banks are co-leading the offering with no single lead book-runner, and each was reportedly required to purchase Grok subscriptions as a condition of participation. Retail investors receive a 30% share allocation, three times the typical size. Most controversially, NASDAQ shortened its index inclusion waiting period from 90 days to 15, which could trigger mandatory passive fund buying from vehicles like Invesco's QQQ shortly after listing. Market veterans are calling it structural manipulation. The Bull and Bear Case The bull case requires Starship reaching commercial operations within 18 months, Grok building a real enterprise sales engine beyond Elon's existing relationships, and the vertical integration thesis playing out as planned. Starlink as a global AI distribution layer, Grok trained on real-time X data, and orbital data centers as a structural competitive moat. The bear case is simple: every element depends on Starship staying on schedule, and if it slips again, the entire investment thesis slips with it. Executive Takeaways for Technology Leaders The valuation is not priced on current fundamentals. It is priced on a version of this business that does not exist yet and may not until the early 2030s. For technology executives evaluating SpaceX or XAI as vendors or partners, multi-year contract stability is a real consideration. The NASDAQ rule change also has downstream implications for OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies in the IPO pipeline. This episode is designed for B2B SaaS and enterprise AI executives who need to understand where capital is flowing and why it matters in their own strategic context. If you are making decisions about AI vendor relationships, enterprise infrastructure partnerships, or simply need a clear-eyed read on how AI-era IPO valuations are being constructed, Ray and Peter give you the data behind the headlines, not just the hype. No investment advice. Just the numbers, the business model mechanics, and the questions every executive should be asking before the June listing. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan dig into McKinsey's 2026 State of Organizations Report, a landmark study drawing on more than 10,000 senior executives across 15 countries and 16 industries. The central finding is both simple and uncomfortable: the vast majority of organizations are actively experimenting with AI, and that same majority reports no meaningful impact on their bottom line. This episode is about closing that gap. Topics Covered Three Tectonic Forces Reshaping Every Organization. McKinsey identifies AI and agentic systems, economic and geopolitical fragmentation, and workforce transformation as structural shifts rather than temporary headwinds. Ray and Peter unpack why these forces are interdependent and why three in four leaders say their organizations are not ready to face what is coming, including leaders who describe themselves as optimistic.Why AI Initiatives Keep Falling Short. The diagnosis is clear: most organizations are running scattered pilots and point solutions that augment individuals but never transform the enterprise. McKinsey's data shows that organizations redesigning entire domains, marketing, finance, and operations, see dramatically greater financial impact than those pursuing isolated use cases. Ray calls this systems thinking and walks through five specific variables required to move from pilot to production at scale.Humans and AI Agents: A New Collaboration Model. Only one in four executives expect AI to take on truly agentic, autonomous roles in the next 12 to 24 months. Ray and Peter discuss why senior leaders are more conservative than younger high-potential talent, what the Hitachi and Allianz case studies reveal about workforce redesign versus workforce replacement, and why demand for AI fluency has increased 7x faster than any other skill tracked in job postings.Geopolitical Disruption and the Cost of Organizational Rigidity. Three in four leaders report a material impact from geopolitical uncertainty on their organizations. Ray and Peter discuss the Tonies case study, a German toy company that launched a production facility in Vietnam on the same day US tariffs were announced, as a model of what organizational preparedness looks like in practice. Two thirds of surveyed executives also said their organizations are overly complex and inefficient, and McKinsey's diagnosis of why traditional structural fixes are no longer working is worth hearing.People and Performance: The Four-Times Multiplier. McKinsey's data shows that organizations investing equally in people development and operational performance are four times more likely to sustain top-tier financial results, grow revenue twice as fast, and carry half the earnings volatility of peers. Ray and Peter connect this to why 80% of leaders leave non-financial motivation levers completely untouched, and to what GE's model of purpose, autonomy, recognition, and growth still gets right.Business as Change: The New Operating Condition. McKinsey's closing argument is that transformation is no longer a periodic program with a defined start and end. It is a permanent operating condition. Ray frames four implications for leaders, and Peter adds the critical point that the gap between AI activity and AI impact is an organizational problem, not a technology problem. The tools exist. The redesign is the work. Why Listen This episode is for senior executives who are experiencing growing discomfort between how much their organization is investing in AI and how little of it is showing up in the numbers. Ray and Peter move well beyond summarizing the McKinsey findings. They connect the research to hands-on operating experience, call out where most organizations get stuck, and give listeners a practical framework for thinking about workforce redesign, change management, and leadership accountability. If you are responsible for AI strategy, organizational performance, or the people agenda at a B2B software or enterprise company, this is one of the most data-rich and actionable conversations you will find on the topic. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's AI to ROI: Big Story episode, Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan unpack the OpenClaw phenomenon and what it reveals about the future of personal AI agents for both individuals and enterprises. From a solo developer's side project to 1.5 million active agents in two months, OpenClaw has ignited a new category and forced every major AI company to respond. Ray and Peter break down what is working, what is still broken, and which vendors have the best shot at winning the enterprise. Top Insights from This Episode OpenClaw Proved the Market, But Not the Product Peter Steinberger built OpenClaw in days and attracted 1.5 million users before OpenAI acquired him and opened the codebase. The product validated massive pent-up demand for always-on personal AI agents, but security researchers at Cisco and Northeastern University quickly surfaced serious vulnerabilities, including data exfiltration risks and prompt injection without user awareness. Even the Chinese government restricted its use in state agencies. The pioneer made the promise real; the product is not yet enterprise-safe. NVIDIA Jumped In Fast with NemoClaw, But Gaps Remain NVIDIA wrapped OpenClaw with a three-layer security architecture (OpenShell runtime, privacy router, and governance layer) and launched NemoClaw at GTC with nearly 20 partners, including Box and Cisco. Box demonstrated human-matching permission controls for enterprise file workflows, and Cisco showed a zero-day vulnerability response with a full audit trail. But governance experts noted NemoClaw still lacks basic IT safety features, particularly around rollback, audit trails, and policy enforcement. Fast to market; not yet enterprise-ready. Perplexity Made a Quiet Pivot to Enterprise AI Agent Infrastructure Six months ago Perplexity was an AI search company. Today they are building a three-product personal agent suite: Perplexity Computer for multi-model orchestration across 18-plus AI models, Personal Computer for local 24-7 file and compute access on Mac, and Comet Enterprise as an AI-native browser tying the stack together. Their Samsung Galaxy S26 integration via Bixby gives them significant distribution, and their CEO framed the shift simply: traditional operating systems take instructions; AI operating systems take objectives. The model-agnostic architecture may be their biggest differentiator. Anthropic Is Playing a Different and Potentially Smarter Game Rather than shipping a standalone personal agent, Anthropic is embedding agentic capability into existing products. Claude Code scaled to an estimated $2.5 billion in ARR in nine months. Claude Cowork gives Claude direct control of Mac-level tasks with a permission layer built in. And the Microsoft partnership puts Claude Cowork as the multi-step reasoning engine inside Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3, branded as Copilot Coworks. A recent survey showed 66 percent of enterprise technical buyers said they purchased Claude first, with ChatGPT in the thirties. Anthropic's enterprise trust advantage may matter more than feature parity. Enterprise Adoption Will Be IT-Led and Slow by Design Unlike SaaS, which grew through decentralized, shadow-IT purchasing that bypassed central IT, personal AI agents require direct access to local files, compute, and company systems. That puts CISOs and IT leaders in the approval seat from day one. Ray and Peter agree the enterprise version of personal AI agents is likely 12 to 24 months away from broad deployment, with adoption following a managed, permission-controlled model rather than the freewheeling consumer version that drove OpenClaw's early growth. If you are a company executive, evaluating allowing, enabling or even developing personal AI agents for your company, this episode is a great listen...it might even inspire you to create your own personal AI agent for your personal use! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eye tracking has moved far beyond the clinic and the sports performance lab. In this episode, Ray Rike sits down with Adam Gross, co-founder and CEO of HarmonEyes, to explore how AI-powered eye-tracking is being deployed in enterprise environments to measure cognitive load, predict performance degradation, and reduce costly employee burnout and attrition before problems occur. What You Will Learn: What eye tracking actually measures and why objective, passive, quantifiable eye movement data is more reliable than self-reported assessments for measuring cognitive and attention statesHow AI transforms raw eye data into actionable intelligence, including real-time model inference, individual adaptation across a population normative database of 15 million+ records, and predictive time-to-transition modelingWhy personalization at scale matters and how Harmonize uses advanced machine learning to adapt its models to individual differences in age, sex, and experience level, making population-level models actually work for every individualEnterprise use cases with measurable ROI, including pilot training in flight simulators (shorter time to proficiency), remote operator and call center environments (fatigue and overload intervention before safety incidents), and employee burnout detection over extended time horizonsThe device-agnostic deployment advantage, covering webcams, phone cameras, smart glasses, and vehicle cabin cameras as signal sources that eliminate the need to purchase dedicated hardwareHow team leaders use real-time cognitive state data to shift from reactive management to proactive intervention, reducing performance risk across shifts and high-stress operating environmentsPrivacy as a design principle, not an afterthought: Harmonize does not collect, store, or record eye tracking data or PII; the prior second of data is destroyed with each new output deliveryWhere to start as an enterprise buyer: the highest-value entry points are high-stress, high-stakes roles where burnout and performance degradation already show up as operational problems with measurable costsCareer advice for early professionals: the best defense against AI-driven job displacement is not avoidance but mastery; become the human in the loop who knows the technology best See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pricing is one of the most underleveraged strategic levers in B2B SaaS and AI Software. Most companies are getting it wrong. In this episode, Ray Rike sits down with Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility and a 20-year software industry veteran, to cut through the noise around consumption, usage, outcome, and hybrid pricing models. Dan brings a practitioner's perspective on when to review pricing, who should own it, and how the CFO fits into the equation. Signs Your Pricing Needs a Review Best-in-class companies review pricing at least quarterly -- but review does not always mean changeKey warning signals include declining net revenue retention and unexpected shifts in win/loss conversion ratesAI-native companies are iterating on pricing monthly due to rapid competitive dynamicsSales cycle length is a practical constraint: a 12-month enterprise cycle limits how frequently you can test and observe pricing changes The Role of Customers in Pricing Strategy Never anchor your pricing strategy entirely to your existing customer base -- they carry inherent biasA practical research mix: roughly one-third existing customers, two-thirds prospectsExisting customers know your real value; prospects only know what you show them -- both perspectives matterWhen introducing a second product, maintain structural similarity in pricing tiers even if the pricing metric differs Pricing Ownership and Governance Below $5M ARR, the founder/CEO owns pricing; above $20M it shifts to Product or Marketing -- the gap in between is where ownership gets dangerously vagueProduct Marketing is best positioned to own pricing because it sits at the intersection of positioning and value communicationSales owning pricing is a misalignment of incentives -- "like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank"Best practice is a pricing council with a designated decision-maker, not design by committee Discounting and the CFO's Role Discounting policy is often the easiest and fastest win -- and one of the first places Dan looks with any clientEnforcement matters as much as policy: without monitoring, no new pricing strategy will ever reach the market as intendedThe CFO plays a dual role -- operational (contracts, billing, deal desk guardrails) and strategic (modeling cash flow and KPI impact when shifting pricing models)Caution: A finance-led focus on consistent margin profiles across products can misread how different market segments actually behave Outcome-Based Pricing: Hype vs. Reality Outcome-based pricing is "the future and always will be" -- it is not new, and it is genuinely difficult to executeTrue outcome pricing only works when you are directly in the revenue or savings transaction, as Stripe isA more practical frame is output-based pricing -- Intercom's 99 cents per resolved support ticket is a strong example of measuring a clear, attributable unit of value If you are involved in how best to monetize and price your B2B AI or SaaS product - this is a very valuable listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

While the AI headlines obsess over foundation model fundraises and hyperscaler spending, a quieter revolution is generating real, measurable returns. In this episode of AI to ROI: The Big Story, Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break down why vertical AI companies may be building the most durable and valuable businesses in the history of enterprise software, and why most people aren't paying attention yet. What's covered in this episode: Defining Vertical AI: What separates vertical AI from horizontal tools like Microsoft Copilot or Google Workspace AI, and why the distinction matters for buyers and investors alikeA fundamentally different business model: Why vertical AI companies target labor budgets (10x the size of enterprise software budgets) rather than IT spend, and how outcome- and consumption-based pricing is replacing the traditional per-seat modelThe funding explosion: Vertical AI investment grew from $8B in 2023 to $22B in 2024 to $42B in 2025, with unicorn counts in the sector jumping nearly 6x in just two yearsHarvey (Legal AI): How this $8B+ valuation company grew ARR from $100M to $190M in just four months by orchestrating multiple AI models across legal workflows and embedding deeply into law firm operationsAbridge (Healthcare AI): How a cardiologist-founded company reached a $5.3B valuation by turning physician-patient conversations into structured clinical documentation in real time, with deep Epic EHR integration across 150+ health systemsSierra (Customer Experience AI): How Brett Taylor's enterprise AI platform hit $100M ARR in just 21 months and crossed the $10B decacorn threshold, raising the question of whether the agent era could produce the first trillion-dollar enterprise software companiesMaintainX (Industrial/Manufacturing AI):How this maintenance management platform is tackling $1.4 trillion in annual equipment failure costs across 11,000 customers and 11 million assets — with a 34% reduction in unplanned downtime for customersWhy vertical AI moats are so durable: Proprietary data that compounds with every transaction, embedded institutional knowledge that makes switching costs higher than any legacy ERP migration, and a model architecture that gets stronger as foundational models improveAdvice for enterprise buyers: Why 2026 is the year to evaluate vertical AI vendors, insist on outcome-based pricing, and start with one workflow before expanding Interested in reading the details on the Vertical AI industry and trends? Check out the AI to ROI Newsletter providing even more detail by clicking here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the AI to ROI Podcast, host Ray Rike sits down with Amanda Kahlow, founder and CEO of 1Mind. Prior to 1Mind, Amanda was the founder and former CEO of 6sense, an early pioneer in intent data. The Vision Behind 1Mind: Amanda founded 6sense to help companies find buyers; she founded 1Mind to close them. 1Mind builds what she calls "go-to-market superhumans", AI agents that take on multiple roles across the full customer lifecycle, from inbound qualification and live demo delivery to deal closing for SMB/commercial accounts, and even post-sale onboarding, upsell, and cross-sell motions. Why the Buyer Journey Has Fundamentally Changed: Amanda argues that traditional intent data and one-way marketing are becoming obsolete. Buyers no longer follow a linear path of Google searches and form fills; they expect real-time, two-way, solution-oriented conversations, much like they get from interacting with large language models today. The old model of blasting outbound emails or routing inbound leads through a sequential SDR → AE → SE handoff chain is increasingly misaligned with how modern buyers want to engage. Top Use Cases: How Customers Deploy 1Mind: The most common starting point is the inbound website use case, customers start by placing a superhuman on the website that can qualify a visitor, deliver a personalized live demo, answer deep technical questions, and in some cases take the deal all the way to close, all on first touch. From there, customers frequently expand to the "ride-along" use case, where the superhuman joins every sales call as an always-available AI sales engineer. Human sellers retain control but can call on the superhuman in real time to answer hard questions, surface the right case study or slide, run an integration demo, or ask the qualifying questions (MEDDIC and similar) that sellers often avoid. Measurable Business Impact: Amanda shares compelling early results from enterprise customers, including a ~40% reduction in sales cycle length (from ~90 days to ~60 days) and a doubling of ACV for deals that passed through the superhuman pipeline versus the traditional pipeline. She attributes the ACV lift to getting buyers to vendor-of-choice status earlier in the cycle, eliminating the need to compete on price. 1Mind also has use cases for existing customer bases — proactively engaging customers about new features to drive upsell and cross-sell, a task that human CS teams increasingly can't keep pace with, given the speed of product development. How Customers Measure ROI: Amanda is direct: the right measurement framework is revenue impact, not top-of-funnel pipeline metrics. She encourages customers to tie superhuman performance to shortened deal cycles, higher ACV, and bottom-of-funnel revenue influence. She acknowledges there is a maturity curve — some customers start by measuring meetings booked — but the companies seeing the most value are those willing to shift away from MQL-based thinking toward board-level outcomes: revenue growth, lower CAC, and expansion revenue. Onboarding & Time to Value: 1Mind has invested heavily in its self-serve platform to reduce deployment time from a four-month process to an average of about four weeks today, with some customers going live in as little as four days. All deployments are full enterprise contracts, as 1Mind does not run pilots. Advice for Leaders on AI ROI Amanda emphasizes that realizing meaningful AI ROI requires a top-down mandate from the CEO. Incremental point solutions can improve efficiency at the margins, but the big needle-movers require new playbooks and organizational willingness to change how work gets done, not just layer AI on top of existing processes. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this AI to ROI Big Story episode, our hosts Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan dig into Deloitte's 2026 State of AI Report, a 41-page annual study surveying over 3,300 business leaders on the state of enterprise AI adoption. Deloitte calls it "The Untapped Edge," and Ray and Peter unpack exactly why. They walk through the report's seven key inflection points from scaling pilots into production and reimagining business processes, to agentic AI, sovereign AI, and physical AI, with a focus on what the data actually means for companies trying to drive real ROI in 2026. Key topics covered in this episode include: Pilot to Production: Why 54% of respondents expect a major leap in production deployment in the next 3–6 months, and why 37% of companies are still making little or no change to existing processesProductivity & Revenue: How 66% of organizations report efficiency gains today, but only 20% are seeing actual revenue impact from AI - and what it will take to close that gapBusiness Transformation: Why 84% of companies have yet to redesign jobs around AI, and what that means for long-term competitivenessAgentic AI: What the jump from 26% to 74% expected adoption of agentic AI over two years signals, and the top enterprise use cases including customer support, supply chain, R&D, and cybersecurityGovernance: Why only 21% of companies have a mature governance model for autonomous agents, and what leading companies are doing to build responsible frameworks from the ground upSovereign AI: How 83% of multinational board members view sovereign AI as at least moderately important, and why the US, Europe, and the Middle East are approaching it very differently Ray and Peter close with a clear-eyed summary of what enterprises need to do now: close the gap between strategy and operational readiness, redesign work with an AI-first mindset, and shift focus from incremental efficiency to genuine strategic reinvention. 📰 This episode is based on the February 19th edition of the AI to ROI newsletter. Subscribe at ai2roi.substack.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is the trillion-dollar AI bet actually going to pay off? In this episode of AI to ROI, hosts Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan tackle the big question head-on: with hyperscalers pouring over $600 billion into AI infrastructure this year alone, enterprises struggling to move pilots into production, and white-collar job postings already falling 16% year-over-year, the anxiety is real and justified. But so is the optimism. Ray and Peter break down why the same supply constraints slowing AI buildout may actually give companies and workers more time to adapt, why foundation model costs have plummeted 97% since 2023, and how IBM's internally deployed AI has already generated $4.5 billion in productivity savings. From healthcare transcription to AI-native go-to-market tools, the ROI is emerging, but not evenly or quickly enough for most. What We Cover in This Episode: The staggering scale of AI infrastructure spending: The five largest hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle) are on track to spend over $600 billion in CapEx this year, with Oracle committing 57% of its annual revenue and Microsoft 45%, ratios more typical of heavy industrial companies than software firmsWhy the build-out is slower than everyone thinks: Grid upgrade timelines in the US run 8+ years, data center construction is broadly behind schedule, and critical shortages in chips, transformers, skilled labor, and construction materials aren't expected to ease until at least 2028The pilot-to-production gap is real: Only 6% of enterprise AI projects are delivering returns within a year, and most organizations lack the frameworks and experience to move from experimentation to operational deployment at scaleTrust, hallucinations, and governance are still major blockers: Regulated industries like financial services and healthcare face compounding uncertainty, caught between pre-AI regulations still on the books and a patchwork of conflicting state, federal, and international AI policyThe workforce impact is already being felt : Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support roles, Klarna reduced headcount by 40%, white-collar job postings are down 16% year-over-year, and college graduate placement rates have dropped from 83-88% to roughly 23%, hitting data science, software development, and graphic design hardestBut the technology itself is accelerating fast: Foundation model costs have dropped 97% since early 2023, the number of available models has grown from 60 to 650, and enterprises are getting smarter about orchestrating multiple models for different tasksReal ROI stories are emerging: IBM has generated $4.5 billion in productivity savings from internally deployed AI since January 2023, automating nearly 4 million hours of work annually at $3.50 returned for every dollar investedVertical AI is gaining serious traction: Healthcare AI is the fastest-growing vertical, with one transcription tool alone saving 50,000 clinician hours. Legal, cybersecurity, customer support, and IT operations are all seeing meaningful gainsThe competitive pressure is intensifying: 54% of business leaders in a Mercer study believe they won't remain competitive in five years without AI at scale, and 92% of firms plan to increase AI budgets over the next three years Why You Should Listen: If you're a business leader, investor, or professional trying to cut through AI hype and understand what's actually happening on the ground, this episode delivers the balanced, data-driven perspective that's hard to find. Ray and Peter don't just cheerlead or catastrophize; they give you the real picture: where the bottlenecks are, where the returns are genuinely showing up, and why the next two to three years of slower-than-expected adoption might actually be the window your organization needs to get AI right. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it actually mean for an ERP to be AI-native and why does it matter for your finance team? In this episode of the AI to ROI podcast, host Ray Rike sits down with Santiago Nestares (Santi), Founder and CEO of DualEntry, to unpack the real differences between legacy ERP systems and a ground-up AI-native platform. Santi shares the origin story behind DualEntry, born from a painful nine-month ERP implementation at his previous company that cost a team of 12 and hundreds of thousands of dollars—and explains why simply adding AI features on top of old database architecture misses the point entirely. AI, he argues, isn't a feature you plug in; it's a design philosophy that must be embedded at every layer of the product. Ray and Santi dig into one of the thorniest challenges in enterprise finance: the tension between probabilistic AI models and the zero-error standard that accounting demands. Their answer? Deterministic guardrails—approval workflows, permissioning layers, and audit trails—that let AI work freely in draft mode while keeping humans accountable for every posted transaction. You'll also hear about DualEntry's "Next Day Migration" approach, including how the company uses AI to map and migrate every transaction (not just trial balances) in hours rather than months, giving prospects a live sandbox with their own data before they ever sign a contract. What You'll Learn Why adding AI to a legacy ERP is like "running an on-prem system with a CD on the cloud", and what truly AI-native architecture looks like insteadThe difference between deterministic and probabilistic systems, and why accounting can't afford to get it right only 99.9% of the time without the right guardrailsHow DualEntry's Next Day Migration works: AI-assisted mapping, atomic transactions, and a live sandbox demo using the prospect's own dataThe real ROI of AI-native ERP from eliminating manual categorization drudgery to enabling multi-dimensional segmentation that surfaces hidden pockets of value and riskHow Dto build audit-ready explainability without being able to explain the AI itself - by tracing every decision back to a human approvalWhy early-career finance professionals are "living the luckiest time" in the professionand how to lean into AI rather than fear it Episode Topics at a Glance 00:00 — Welcome & guest introduction00:51 — Santi's origin story: a nine-month legacy ERP nightmare that sparked DualEntry02:52 — AI-native vs. legacy ERP: what's the real difference?04:48 — Deterministic vs. probabilistic systems explained06:49 — How to identify a truly AI-first platform vs. an AI add-on10:07 — Next Day Migration: using AI to accelerate ERP transitions14:11 — Implementation team design: finance practitioners + forward-deployed engineers17:18 — Measurable ROI: from real-time bank feeds to AI-driven business insights22:52 — AI explainability, audit trails, and the permissioning layer25:06 — Rapid fire: CFO ROI variables, who owns AI ROI, and advice for early-career finance professionals See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is your company leaving money on the table by not having a Chief AI Officer? In this episode, Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan dig into groundbreaking research from IBM's Institute of Business Value, spanning 600+ executives across 22 geographies and 21 industries to unpack why dedicated AI leadership is quickly becoming non-negotiable for enterprises competing in today's market. The numbers tell a compelling story: only 26% of companies currently have a CAIO, yet those that do are seeing 10% higher ROI on their AI investments and are 24% more likely to outperform their peers. And that gap? It's widening. With 66% of existing CAIOs predicting most organizations will have someone in this role within 24 months, the window to gain a first-mover advantage is open — but not for long. Ray and Peter go deep on some of the episode's most surprising findings, including: Who's actually getting hired: 73% of CAIOs come from data-focused backgrounds, but the most effective ones are hybrid leaders equally fluent in business strategy and data science. And 57% were promoted from within, because institutional knowledge often matters more than technical expertise.Where they sit in the org chart matters enormously: CAIOs who report directly to the CEO and control the AI budget (61% do) drive far greater results than those positioned as glorified advisors without real authority.The hub-and-spoke model delivers 36% higher ROI: companies that pair a centralized AI function with embedded business unit partners outperform those with fully decentralized AI decision-making, giving them both governance and agility.Three pillars that make or break a CAIO: measurement tied to real business outcomes, cross-functional teamwork across the entire C-suite, and genuine authority to make tough decisions. Strip away any one of these and ROI suffers.What to do if you're not ready to hire one yet : Ray and Peter offer practical alternatives, from AI steering committees to centers of excellence, and explain why accountability can't be an afterthought regardless of your company's size or structure. They also tackle the growing complexity of managing AI at scale, the average large enterprise is now running 11 generative AI models and why the rise of agentic AI makes centralized leadership even more critical before things become, as Ray puts it, "a hot mess." Whether you're a Fortune 500 executive or a mid-market leader trying to figure out your AI strategy, this episode is packed with data-backed insights to help you move from AI experimentation to measurable, scalable ROI. Prefer to read more detail - check out the AI to ROI Newsletter covering this topic at: ai2roi.substack.com/p/the-chief-ai-officer-from-nice-to?r=2ldi4p See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode of the AI to ROI podcast, hosted by Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan, explores how leading SaaS companies are surviving the "SaaSpocalypse" - a massive market cap devaluation triggered by the rise of AI. The hosts break down the transition from traditional SaaS to AI-first models, emphasizing that simple "feature bloating" isn't enough; companies must undergo a fundamental "organ replacement" of their architecture, pricing, and culture. The discussion deep-dives into three success stories: Notion: Transformed from a document suite into an agentic execution platform through strategic acquisitions, moving toward autonomous workflows.Canva: Democratized design by making AI features invisible and intuitive, resulting in a 700% increase in AI tool usage and massive revenue growth.ServiceNow: Leveraged its 20-year history in workflow automation to pivot from seat-based pricing to task-based pricing, using AI agents to orchestrate complex enterprise processes. If you are a SaaS company executive looking for great examples of how they transitioned to be AI-first - this episode is full of great examples, strategies, and tactics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, our host Ray Rike sits down with Jacco van der Kooij, founde and CEO, Winning by Design, to discuss the real-world deployment of "Jack" - an AI SDR that has spent the last 12 months redefining the front line of Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy. Jacco shares the "AHA" moments and hard truths discovered while moving beyond human constraints like slow response times and inconsistent qualification. Discover how treating an AI SDR (agent) as a "system" rather than a "product" initially led to 2,030 conversations, 100% CRM capture, and a $200,000 deal. Episode Summary Winning by Design set out to prove that if AI can handle the high-risk, high-empathy role of an SDR, it can work anywhere in GTM. Over the course of a year, their AI agent, Jack was built on a foundation of 1mind logic and Clay enrichment. The agent evolved from a simple chatbot into a trained GTM operator. Key Highlights: Breaking Human Constraints: The project addressed critical issues like burnout, limited global coverage, and poor CRM hygiene that even the best human reps struggle to maintain.The "AHA" Moments: Jacco details how the team realized Jack shouldn't just "chat" but perform industrial-scale qualification while supporting buyers in their buying journey.The Power of Iteration: Initial surprises, such as a low 8% email capture rate, were overcome by designing a better "value exchange" rather than just tweaking prompts.Tangible Results: After refinement, email capture jumped to 20%, MQL conversion rose by 36%, and the system successfully captured nearly 9,000 SPICED answers.The Ultimate Do’s and Don’ts: Success requires anchoring the agent in a GTM system and iterating weekly; failures stem from treating AI like an unstructured chatbot or deploying without clear ownership. The Do's Design the value exchange first: Ensure the AI provides something useful to the buyer before asking for informationEarn the next step: Focus on providing enough value to merit the next stage of the conversationAnchor the agent in your GTM system: AI should scale a pre-designed, structured system rather than an improvised process.Start narrow, then expand: Focus on one specific motion and one outcome before attempting to scale.Iterate weekly: Small, frequent changes to the system drive the most significant gains in performance.Focus on the buyer's journey: Design the experience to help the buyer buy, rather than just helping the seller sell. The Don'ts Treat AI like a chatbot: Avoid unstructured "chatting," as it kills conversion rates; focus on industrial-scale qualification instead.Chase volume over quality: Remember that activity is not the same as a healthy pipeline.Hide the AI behind humans: Be transparent about using an AI agent to build trust with the buyer.Deploy without ownership: AI implementation is a Go-to-Market responsibility, not just an IT project.Expect AI to fix a bad process: AI will not fix poor GTM design; it will only expose and amplify existing flaws.Point AI at unstructured data: Do not simply point the AI at a massive folder of research; start with specific, high-quality training materials. If you are considering deploying agentic AI into your Sales organization and process, this episode is full of great insights, experiences, and measurements for your AI investment in Sales. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Are we witnessing a productivity revolution or the greatest labor displacement in history? In this detailed episode of AI to ROI, Peter Buchanan and Ray Rike break down the "Great AI Jobs War," a period of massive upheaval where corporate gleefulness meets workforce anxiety. They move past the "AI washing" to find the real metrics that define success in the age of intelligence. Key Discussion Points: The Historical Context: Ray draws parallels between the AI revolution and past disruptions like the Industrial Revolution, the cotton gin, and the assembly line, noting that AI is moving with a magnitude and speed never seen before The "Mother May I" Productivity Gap: While 47% of S&P 500 companies now discuss AI in earnings calls, only 10% are seeing meaningful ROI, leaving a "staggering" 56% of companies getting "little to nothing" out of their implementations The Million-Dollar Employee: A deep dive into Klarna’s radical transformation—reducing headcount from 5,000 to 3,000 through attrition while doubling revenue to reach the "magic number" of $1.1 million in revenue per employee The War on Early Careers: Why entry-level IT hires have plummeted from 25% to 7% of all hires, and the "structural problem" of junior roles requiring 2–3 years of experience because AI is now doing the "digital grunt work" Blue-Collar as the "Gold-Collar" Future: Why the CEO of NVIDIA suggests young people skip computer programming for mechanical trades, and how salaries for AI-related construction and electrical roles have doubled Customer Service Autonomy: How Bank of America's "Erica" handled 2 billion interactions with a 98% resolution rate in under 44 seconds, signaling a massive shift in how businesses handle scale Actionable Insights for Leaders: Measure Revenue Per Employee: This is the ultimate metric for AI productivity.Bake AI Aptitude into Hiring: Every new white-collar job description should require "AI curiosity" and applicable tool skills.Strategic Augmentation: The goal isn't just headcount reduction, but using the "free cash flow" from AI efficiencies to build a war chest for growth and sales. To read more details and subscribe to the AI to ROI Newsletter for more data-driven strategies on turning AI hype into bottom-line results. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the second episode of AI to ROI: The Big Story, Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan analyze the critical transformation required for traditional SaaS companies to become AI-first organizations. With the SaaS industry generating $273 billion annually, the hosts warn that incumbents are under "two-front" attack: internal refactoring of legacy systems and external disruption from hyper-efficient AI-native startups. Key Highlights of the Episode: The "SaaS to AI" Pivot: Ray compares the current shift to the on-premise-to-SaaS transition of 20 years ago, noting that today’s change requires a fundamental rewrite of an operating culture rather than just adding "AI veils" like prompt engines The Rise of AI-Native Efficiency: Peter highlights companies like Lovable and Cursor, which have achieved hundreds of millions (or billions) in valuation in under a year with minimal staff, challenging the traditional SaaS model of linear employee growth The Shift in Financial Metrics: The hosts discuss the new economic reality: forgetting 80% gross margins in favor of a 50-65% range to account for high token and inference costs. Success will depend on the "COGS to CAC" model, offsetting higher infrastructure costs with dramatically lower customer acquisition costs via AI automation A Roadmap for Success: To fight back, SaaS incumbents must re-architect around outcomes rather than features. This includes leveraging their "crown jewel data" and status as systems of record to build decision intelligence layers that AI-native startups lack The HubSpot Success Story: Ray details how HubSpot successfully scrapped its 2023 roadmap within weeks of ChatGPT’s launch, shipping AI-native products in under 90 days and moving toward a "Results-as-a-Service" future Advice for Leaders and Employees: Ray suggests that CEOs must re-engineer every department to be AI-first, while employees should commit to learning new AI tools every month to remain employable in an increasingly automated landscape. Listen to the full episode for a deep dive into how to avoid becoming an "orphan" SaaS company in the age of Agentic AI. You can read the newsletter edition covering this topic by clicking here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the AI to ROI podcast, host Ray sits down with Drew Laxton, CFO at Outreach, to explore the profound transformation of sales technology and financial metrics in the age of AI. Drew shares the strategic reasoning behind his return to Outreach, driven by a conviction that the company is uniquely positioned to lead the next era of agentic AI and automated revenue workflows. The conversation goes beyond the hype, offering a masterclass in how finance leaders must adapt to a software landscape that is moving from seat-based subscriptions to consumption-driven models. Drew provides an inside look at how Outreach is re-engineering its own financial playbook to account for the high compute costs and non-linear revenue growth associated with AI. Key discussion points include: The "Personal Productivity" vs. "Financial ROI" Debate: Why the initial wave of AI efficiency must eventually translate into higher quotas and lower OpEx to satisfy the board.Maintaining Margins in an AI-Native World: A deep dive into the "triumvirate" of Product, Engineering, and Finance that manages gross margins as compute costs replace traditional SaaS overhead.The Metric Recalibration: Why traditional SaaS snowballs don't work for AI, and how Outreach is using "spend-as-truth" to normalize data for NRR and CAC calculations.Agentic AI in Action: How Outreach's "revenue agents" are replacing manual prospecting with autonomous, data-tuned interactions that learn from previous customer engagement. Some Key Insights and Quotes pulled from the conversation with Drew: On the "Boring" Wins of AI: While many look for revolutionary shifts, Drew emphasizes the value in automating the mundane: "A lot of the AI tools that I’ve seen so far... there's kind of boring outcomes that are very impactful... like our QA process within the coding side has very much streamlined." On the Changing Economics of SaaS: Drew acknowledges that AI-native products fundamentally alter the 80%+ gross margin expectations of the past decade: "We do need to bring gross margin into our understanding of SaaS tools because it's just not the same... You've got to be more efficient on the go-to-market side to make the economics work." On the Rise of Consumption Pricing: The shift to variable pricing means the "snowball" metric of the past is no longer sufficient: "What is your ARR has become a lot more challenging question than it used to be... consumption is not linear on these products. It’s kind of zero, very little, and then a lot." On the Importance of Usage Over Revenue: In a variable world, product utilization becomes the primary indicator of a healthy business: "Product utilization... becomes a core signal to retention. It's not just revenue anymore, it's utilization month by month... spend is truth." Advice for Aspiring CFOs: For those looking to reach the C-suite in the AI era, Drew suggests one primary trait: "Be curious. Just be curious about everything... Ask questions, get time with the CFO or the leaders of the various organizations... wanting to understand their business has only benefited me." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the first episode of the AI to ROI: Big Story podcast, our co-hosts Peter Buchanan and Ray Rike discuss the emerging importance of Context Graphs in AI Software. Why are context graphs suddenly being called a trillion-dollar opportunity in enterprise AI? In this inaugural episode of The Big Story, hosts Ray Rike (CEO of Benchmarkit) and Peter Buchanan (Managing Partner of New Plan) dive into the "glue technology" that fills the missing gap in the AI stack. While traditional knowledge graphs tell you what happened, context graphs reveal the why! Context Graphs capture the decision traces, policy constraints, and precedents that make AI agents truly auditable and trustworthy. From preventing "data breakage" in regulated workflows to revolutionizing supply chain quality control, discover why context is the key to moving AI from experimental pilots to reliable production. Key Takeaways The Why Behind the Action: Context graphs provide the connectivity that agentic AI lacks, recording who made a decision and under what specific constraints.A Trillion-Dollar Value Add: Industry leaders believe context is a massive economic value driver for companies in the era of AI.Beyond Knowledge Graphs: Moving from simple data points to decision lineages that explain the "why" behind an event.Real-World Use Cases: Deep dives into data governance at firms like Vanguard and Prudential, and quality control in the automotive supply chain.The Vendor Landscape: Discussion on current players like Atlan, Neo4j, and Writer, and why tech giants like Microsoft and Salesforce are the "lurkers" to watch.Timestamps 00:00 Introduction to the AI to ROI podcast series.02:40 Defining Context Graphs: The missing gap in the AI stack.04:15 The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: Economic value vs. market size.06:30 Knowledge Graphs vs. Context Graphs: Moving from "what" to "why".09:20 Who should care? Roles from the CEO to the Chief Risk Officer.12:45 Use Case 1: Data Governance and preventing "downstream breakage".15:10 Use Case 2: Unifying the Go-To-Market (GTM) stack.18:30 Use Case 3: Supply chain visibility and automotive quality control.21:40 The Market Map: Current leaders and "Lurker" strategies from Big Tech.25:50 Executive Summary: Things every leader must do right now. Context graphs are a key component to turn Agentic AI software vision into Agentic AI explainability! Read the AI to ROI Newsletter on Substack to dive deeper into this week's Big Story! Subscribe at: ai2roi.substack.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the first episode of AI to ROI, the newly re-imagined evolution of the highly successful Metrics That Measure Up podcast. In this launch episode, our host, Ray Rike sets the stage for a new era of conversations focused on turning artificial intelligence from hype into measurable business outcomes. The inaugural guest is Todd Olson, Founder and CEO of Pendo, who joins the show for an interactive, unscripted discussion on how companies should measure the real impact of AI agents inside modern SaaS and cloud organizations. Together, they explore how AI-driven “digital workers” are reshaping productivity, workflows, and operating models across the enterprise Key topics include how companies can measure the performance and business impact of AI agents, the emerging metrics that define agent adoption and activation, and why connecting usage data to tangible outcomes like time saved, cost reduction, and revenue impact is critical for ROI. Todd also shares his perspective on outcome-based pricing, why it remains rare in AI-native software today, and what must change for it to scale. The conversation wraps with a forward-looking discussion on SaaS and AI convergence, as agents increasingly appear on org charts and product roadmaps, followed by practical advice on developing AI competencies for the next generation of business leaders. If you care about moving beyond AI experimentation toward measurable economic value, AI to ROI is your new go-to podcast. Subscribe, rate, and follow AI to ROI on your favorite podcast platform. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The world of FP&A is having its day in the spotlight. New pricing models, a new focus on near real-time business planning, the increased focus on balancing revenue growth and profitability, coupled with the dynamic impact that AI is having on the SaaS market, are all making the role of FP&A a more strategic asset. Albert Gozzi, is the founder and CEO of Aleph, a modern FP&A platform and company that recently raised $29M in their Series B financing from Khosla Ventures. During today's episode, our host, Ray Rike is joined by Albert Gozzi, Founder and CEO Aleph, to discuss the strategic future of FP&A including: The vision behind founding AlephThe evolution of AI in FP&AFP&A’s role in developing corporate strategyGrowth strategies being used in a crowded category If you are a finance leader, FP&A professional or fellow B2B SaaS founder with a product purpose built for the Office of Finance, this conversation with Albert Gozzi is full of unique insights, ideas and opportunity to make your Financial Planning and Analysis organization a strategic asset! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Think about the unparalleled growth that OpenAI has experienced since the public introduction of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. Now, think about being in finance, or being the controller who had to scale their financial processes, including closing the books to keep up with a company that has scaled from less than $100M in revenue to $10B+ in less than 3 years!?!? That was the situation that Sowmya Ranganathan, Former Controller OpenAI and CEO, Lumera found herself facing in the early part of 2023. During today's conversation with Sowmya, our host Ray Rike discusses several important lessons and use cases of AI at OpenAI in the Finance department including: Why there was no existing playbook for scaling Finance in a company like OpenAIChallenges in one of the fastest growing software companies of all timeUnderstanding compute expenses is critical to understanding the financial performance today and tomorrow at an AI companyWhy excel could not work at the scale of OpenAI (1M+ rows)Using OpenAI to enable finance to write the python code to write the statistical model to analyze financial dataWhy historic analysis is not a good place to start for forecasting in a hypergrowth, compute intensive companyLeveraging AI in the Financial close process - leveraging data warehouse information to build a repeatable processTracking GPU costs in real-time throughout the month - not an excel scale requirementHallucinations are a real concern - but once your AI is encapsulated as standard code - the concerns are minimizedHuman review on any stochastic model is a best practice - such as contract data fields from signed contracts to establish billing A long description would not do the conversation justice - so jump in and be ready to pause the audio to capture the highlights. Sowmya has been in financial leaderships at Square and Rippling in addition to OpenAI, so she has a very unique perspective on not scaling finance to meet the unparalleled growth at OpenAI, and two other hyper growth companies. If you are interested in learning about real-life stories of using AI in Finance at the world's largest AI software company - this episode is a must listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Christina Ross is the founder and CEO of Cube. Prior to founding a SaaS platform purpose built for everyone of those companies still using Excel (majority of companies) for business modeling but want to enhance the collaboration of business budgeting, planning and performance across the company, Christina was a corporate audit executive at GE, financial transformation consultant at Deloitte and a multi-time CFO at companies including Rent the Runway, Criteo and Eyeview. During today's episode, Christina and our host, Ray Rike discuss multiple aspects of the Financial Planning and Analysis role, department and the strategic opportunity for FP&A to materially increase the impact on business strategy and performance. Topics we discussed include: How the experiences at larger companies including GE and Deloitte shaped her view on the strategic role of FP&AThe biggest challenges facing CFOs with the FP&A function todayThe role of FP&A in business strategyThe impact of FP&A on business performance If you are a CFO, FP&A leader or even the CEO this episode is full of great insights and ideas on how to increase the business impact of your FP&A function! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Exit Ready Analytics is a concept that any B2B SaaS company CFO and CEO should become familiar with before entering into any potential strategic company sell initiative, deal due diligence and/or data room preparation. During this episode, Will Sullivan, Managing Partner at Predictive Analytics Partners discusses his experiences from over $30 Billion in strategic acquisitions across 20 transactions. Topics discussed include: Exit Ready Analytics - the when, what, and howThe differences between a strategic Chief Revenue Officer and a Head of SalesWhen to hire a CRO and their responsibilitiesHow to bridge the CRO and CFO relationship If you are a CEO, CFO or CRO in a B2B SaaS company that is either considering a strategic sell process and/or want to increase the strength of the CFO and CFO relationship - this episode has something for you! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine leading Finance for a company that has made 31 acquisitions over the last six years. Then, imagine the challenges of having near real-time visibility into a recently acquired company to ensure the forecast accuracy that a Private Equity firm expects from their portfolio companies, specifically from their CFO. That is exactly the environment that Josh Schauer, CFO at insightsoftware, operates in every day! During today's episode, we discuss three main topics that are part and parcel to achieving near real-time insight into the data, performance metrics, and trends required to drive financial decisions - quickly. Those topics include: The challenges with fragmented data for financial decision-makingMoving from historic to real-time data for Financial decision-makingDeveloping a process to quickly integrate acquired companies into your financial systemsModifying budgets based on actual performance insights If you are considering private equity as a potential exit strategy, or are part of a company that is growing through acquisition, this is a must-listen-to episode!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Casey Woo, Founder and CEO of the Operators Guild has a very interesting journey, from being a West Point cadet, a Harvard graduate, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a multiple-time CFO and now the founder and CEO of the Operators Guild, and General Partner at Fog Ventures. With this background Casey has been able to experience and identify the critical role of the "scaler" in companies. During the conversation with Casey we cover multiple topics including: The role of the scaler versus specialist in businessThe personality traits of a scalerHow process and performance interact from a scaler's perspectiveHow the Operators Guild became a community of scalers If you have ever felt that one department, one role and doing the same thing day over day was not fully leveraging your skill set and talents - this conversation is thought provoking and inspirational. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Melissa Howatson is the CFO of Vena Solutions, a $100M+ ARR cloud-based financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform that helps companies streamline budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and financial modeling, with a strong emphasis on Excel integration. During the episode, we covered multiple topics with Melissa including: Latest trends in B2B SaaS FP&AAI in Finance - the importance of change managementMetrics that Matter at > $100M ARRMeasuring the Impact of a podcast The 30-minute conversation hit upon multiple key trending topics including: 1) how FP&A is evolving as a strategic business partner to the other key functions; 2) why the CFO needs to lead a culture of experimentation with AI; 3) how EBITDA increases in importance as a company scales and; 4) how to measure the impact of a company sponsored podcast! If you are an aspiring CFO, or a CFO looking to scale your company beyond $100M ARR or are interested in how a world-class CFO came to be this conversation has something for you!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marcos Rivera is the founder and CEO, Pricing I/O. Marcos has a long career as a B2B Software operating executive and now leverages that experience to help B2B SaaS and AI-Native companies optimize monetization, pricing, and packaging. 9 ingredients for a winning pricing strategy9 psychology concepts for pricingDifferences between SaaS and AI pricingThe value of pricing frameworks Marco was the head of pricing and packaging at Vista Equity, one of the top Private Equity firms in the B2B SaaS industry - an incredible foundation to see how leading companies leverage pricing as a strategic growth lever. Marcos started by sharing the key ingredients to developing a winning strategy, explains all nine, and highlighted why he believes the top four are most critical: Knowing the compelling value that our software deliversEstablish a clear market positionPricing that builds trustCase studies and ROI proof Have a pricing point of viewConsistent pricing messagingData-Driven pricing insightsSocial proof and testimonialsOngoing price optimization Another key topic discussed was the 9 psychological concepts for pricing, including: Halo effectLoss aversion (FOMO)Social proofConfirmation biasScarcity effectMere exposure effectAnchoring effectAuthority biasGoal gradient effect If you are responsible for creating, testing, refining, or selling B2B SaaS or AI-Native products - this episode is a great way to understand the "why and how" of pricing - not just the what!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shane Murphy-Reuter, GTM President at Calendly, has been part of multiple B2B SaaS companies during their hypergrowth phase, including Webflow, ZoomInfo, and Intercom. He recently joined Calendly to integrate the Go-to-Market functions and continue to find new opportunities to increase growth and growth efficiency.  Shane is responsible for creating a more seamless customer experience across each stage of the Calendly customer journey. During today's episode, the discussion covers a wide variety of topics including: The Primary Role of the GTM Executive in a PLG CompanyThe key inflection points in scaling a PLG companyHow to evolve a brand - from the buyer’s perspective How to build an integrated GTM team in a PLG company One of the key aspects of this conversation is that we dive deep into how to leverage and apply B2C best practices in a B2B and PLG environment - at scale. Another key insight here is the importance of becoming a multi-product company and evolving the brand of a primarily self-service, single-product company. If you are evaluating or recently transitioned to an integrated GTM organizational structure that begins and ends with the customer experience in a Product-Led Growth environment - this conversation is for you!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Josh Aharonoff, better known as "Your CFO Guy" and the founder of Might Digits, a consultancy specializing in accounting, finance and fractional CFO services. Josh has amassed 450,000+ followers on LinkedIn, which is extremely rare for anyone, especially someone who caters to the corporate finance community! During Josh's appearance on the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast, he and our host, Ray Rike discuss a wide variety of topics including: The Role of the Fractional CFOWhen to consider an internal VP Finance or CFOWhy excel is a CFOs best friend…or NOTBuilding a LinkedIn following of 450K+ - the business case and the process If you are a small or medium size business CEO, and are interested in when it might be the right time to bring in a VP Finance or CFO, or a finance professional looking to scale-up your personal brand, want to enhance your excel skills or considering starting your own business this conversation with Josh is chalked full of great insights, ideas and best practices! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dan Miller, CFO at RightRev, has been at the center of Usage-Based Pricing, having served as CFO at Fastly and previously as VP of Finance and General Manager at NetSuite. During today's episode, Dan and Ray discuss how Usage-Based Pricing and AI Outcome-Based Pricing are impacting ARR Reporting and Revenue Recognition Management. During today's episode, Dan and Ray cover several emerging trends in SaaS and Native-AI companies including: How variable pricing models impact revenue recognitionHow does the evolution of Outcome-Based pricing impact revenue recognitionHow AI is and will impact the Office of FinanceA few key takeaways from the episode that are worthy of a deeper dive and listen include: Understanding how contract modifications impact revenue recognition policy, process, and reportingBlended offerings including a fixed fee + usage are great for customers - but hard to manage revenue recognitionHow token and credit-based pricing impacts revenue recognition and gross profit calculation and reportingThe strategic impact and tactical challenges of transitioning from pure subscription or hybrid Usage-Based Pricing If you are a CFO or SaaS executive looking to better understand how pricing trends are challenging existing revenue recognition processes, infrastructure, and automation - this episode is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There is a famous saying that goes something like this "Half of my advertising (marketing) investment is wasted, the trouble is I do not know which half". This quote is credited to John Wanamaker over 100 years ago, and many marketers feel the same in 2025! Pranav Piyush is the founder and CEO, Paramark and they are attempting to make this quote not quite as relevant or correct in the future. Paramark is a marketing measurement and optimization platform designed to help businesses understand the true impact of their marketing efforts across various channels. By leveraging advanced statistical methods and machine learning, marketing and finance teams are better enabled to make data-driven decisions with confidence. During today's conversation with Pranav, we cover a wide array of topics including: Aligning Marketing Investment to Outcomes - that matter to a CFOThe concept of incrementalityHow to anticipate and measure channel specific diminishing returnsBrand vs Performance measurementsThe top 3 metrics a CMO should be sharing with their CFO If you are B2B Marketing leader responsible for budget and delivering an ROI on that budget, or a CFO looking to better understand how to measure the ROI on marketing expenses, this episode is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B Marketing and AI Trends are evolving rapidly in 2025, and who better to discuss those trends with than Sydney Sloan, Chief Marketing Officer at G2 - the leader in B2B Software reviews! During today's episode we discuss a wide array of topics with Sydney including: Marketing Budget Allocation for B2B tech companies in 2025Peer reviews and their impact on B2B SaaS purchasesThe growth in AI - as measured by categories and vendors with G2 reviewsThe opportunity to exploit the power of AI for B2B Marketers If you are in the B2B SaaS industry, a B2B SaaS Marketing executive or a B2B SaaS customer this episode has something for you!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Data and Sales Intelligence category includes a list of well known players such as ZoomInfo, Seamless and Apollo, and are now joined by new entrants like Clay and Lusha. But where does a pure play Data (Sales) Intelligence provider like People Data Labs fit - their CEO, Brian Eisenberg who has grown through the ranks at People Data Labs from Data Engineer to CEO provides his insights in how the Sales (People) Intelligence category is evolving. During today's episode, our host Ray Rike discusses multiple topics with Ben including: The top challenges customers are facing with today’s Data Intelligence solutions?How does People Data Labs ensure they remain compliant with the evolving data privacy laws and vendor specific Terms of ServiceHow will next generation Data Intelligence solutions address the current challengesBen’s personal career journey - from Data Engineer to CEO in 7 years If your B2B SaaS or technology company uses Sales Intelligence Data to feed your outbound machine - this conversation is a must listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Koefoed is the CFO of OneStream which went public in 2024 after being acquired by KKR in 2021. The CFO journey from being a Private Equity owned company to preparing for an IPO and beyond, while also transitioning from a perpetual license model to a subscription business is a fascinating experience and story. During this episode, Bill and Ray discuss a wide variety of topics and experiences during this CFO journey including: How the role of CFO changes in a Private Equity majority owned B2B SaaS companyThe lessons learned in transitioning from a perpetual license to a B2B SaaS subscription modelThe preparation required to take a B2B SaaS company publicHow technology has changed the Office of Finance and the CFO roleThe journey to becoming a B2B SaaS CFO - the Bill Koefoed path Bill mentioned that he had previously been the CFO of a Private equity-owned company. Once you have the first experience under your belt, your reputation as a Private equity-experienced CFO will be the access ticket to the next CFO position. Bill highlighted the importance that pricing plays when first starting the transition from perpetual to subscription. The cross-over or break-even point was targeted at 5 years, which essentially says that beginning in Year 6 the benefit of operating in a subscription business model materially increase. Bill shared the metrics that he prioritizes, and he started with the 98% Gross Revenue Retention Rate which highlights their priority and focus on customer satisfaction. In addition, Net New ARR, Net Revenue Retention and how much of Net New ARR is coming from "new customers" versus customer expansion. In fact, new logo acquisition is a top focus for 2025, including going from 1,600 customer to 10,000 plus new customers.  New customer ARR contributes about 60% of the total new ARR. What customer acquisition efficiency metric does Bill use - he really likes LTV:CAC Ratio and the CAC Payback Period which they currently stand at 24 months - but that is with a $340K ACV! If you are a CFO in a B2B SaaS company, or are an executive leader looking to evolve into a private equity acquisition or initial public offering - this conversation with Bill Koefoed, Chief Financial Officer at OneStream is an enlightening conversation that covers a broad variety of insights, experiences and inspiration! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aviv Canaani is the Chief Revenue Officer at Datarails who recently transformed their Go-to-Market motion to be primarily inbound from the traditional outbound motion. During today's episode Aviv and our host, Ray Rike dive deep into multiple GTM strategies and measurements including: Top performance measurements for a B2B SaaS CROThe catalyst for transitioning to an "inbound GTM motion"The ROI for an Inbound vs Outbound GTM motionLeveraging Social Media to build awareness with the Office of FinanceMeasuring ROI in content and media investments Aviv was initially the head of Marketing and then took overall responsibility for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. Soon thereafter, he quickly realized that they needed to increase the efficiency of their Go-to-Market investments and associated processes. But before we dive into the transition from a 90% outbound strategy, we discussed the top metrics for CROs. First, Aviv highlighted that CAC efficiency, as measured by the CAC Payback Period (CPP) where they have decreased the CAC Payback Period by 50% is a TOP metric for CROs. One of the first topics we discussed was the primary "input signals" to decrease the payback period. One of the things Aviv highlighted is that increasing the quality of leads that are provided to AEs was a good first place to start. The ultimate goal was that AEs could spend the majority of their time on selling and closing opportunities, versus doing cold outbound prospecting. Another key tactic was to ensure he had a very predictable way to know for each dollar investment in Go-to-Market, what the expected outcomes as measured by new customer ARR could be generated. Using a "waterfall" methodology, Aviv knows that for every dollar of Marketing spend what are the predictable outcomes as measured by meetings, opportunities, new customers, and the associated new ARR. By having a predictable model, Aviv can go to the CFO and confidently show what the ROI is for every dollar invested in Marketing, they can begin to allocate more to brand building which will have more impact in a few quarters versus just measuring the short-term ROI on Demand investments. Next, we dove into the transition from a primarily outbound GTM motion to primarily an inbound GTM motion. First, in 2022, even though SDRs were hitting their "meeting goals" they were not converting to customers. As a result, they increased the focus on "high intent" leads which increased the efficiency of the GTM investments. One of the primary measurements they used to validate the inbound focus, they found a 3x-4x higher win rate, and a shorter sales cycle all leading to increased GTM efficiency. What is the primary source for 90% of new ARR coming from inbound? First, they brought on a team of B2C Marketing professionals who used paid search, paid media, and social media strategies to drive higher intent inbounds. This even included the use of Instagram and TikTok...to reach the Office of Finance! In addition, they focused on SEO and even a podcast to get their brand and message in front of finance executives. Now that the brand has been enhanced through the media investments will over time also increase the efficiency of the outbound activities. Another strategy was to divide outbound and inbound SDRs, and in fact, a majority of the outbound SDRs are now located in the Philippines which maintained effectiveness and increased efficiency as measured by outputs (New ARR) versus inputs (SDR investments). If you are a B2B SaaS CFO or GTM leader, this conversation with Aviv is full of ideas, insights, and successful experiences in evolving the GTM playbook!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode of the “Metrics that Measure Up” Podcast features James D. Wilton, Author of Capturing Value - The Definitive Guide to Transforming SaaS Pricing and Unshackling Growth and Managing Partner, Monevate During our conversation we covered four primary topics with James: Actual Value versus Perceived Value - which matters mostPrice Metric Evaluation CriteriaInnovative Monetization StrategiesMeasuring a Customer’s Willingness to Pay If you are considering changing your existing pricing model and/or introducing new pricing for either an existing or new product - like a new AI module, this conversation is loaded with great ideas and insights into the different pricing models being used in the B2B SaaS industry!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SaaS Pricing is evolving to better align the value received to the pricing model. The trend to using new pricing models including Usage-Base Pricing, Value-Based Pricing and Outcome-Based Pricing is evolving quickly and Bill provides his insights into the current trends and future of SaaS and AI pricing. During the episode Bill and Ray discuss several trends including: The top trends in SaaS pricingHow SaaS companies are adapting their pricing modelsThe risks and rewards of changing pricing modelsOverview of the FAST "Pricing Page" FrameworkBill’s crystal ball on where AI pricing is headed If you are evaluating evolving your SaaS pricing model - this is a highly informative and instructive conversation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has been the foundation for larger companies dating back to the introduction of SAP R-3 in the late nineties. Sandeep Chopra, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Everest Systems says that ERP vendors have lost their "customer focus" and believes their is a large opportunity to re-invent ERP in the cloud to help companies run their business more efficiently. Introducing Next Generation ERP to the SaaS industry is the first step. During today's episode our host Ray Rike and Sandeep discuss the next era of ERP including The need for a next generation ERP platformAdvantage of leading edge technology to re-engineer business processesWhat stage of company should evaluate ERPOffice of Finance use cases for leveraging AIBenefits of integrating accounting, billing and planning in one platform If you are currently a Quick Books user and/or are evaluating the benefits of an integrated accounting, billing, revenue management and planning platform this conversation is full of interesting ideas and business reasons to consider this strategy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Rule of X is a recently published SaaS metric that factors in the relevant importance of growth rate and operating profitability for B2B SaaS companies. Sam Bondy is the co-author of this metric and shares the catalyst for creating the metric, the latest trends and how the Rule of X impacts Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples. Sam joined me as a speaker at the recent SaaS Metrics Palooza to provide the details behind the metric and why it is an important metric that helps to evolve the traditional Rule of 40 metric. This episode is part of the "SaaS Metrics Palooza" re-load series on the Metric that Measure Up podcast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SaaS buyers complete ~70% of the buying process before they speak to a vendor's sales organization. As a result more and more SaaS companies are leveraging interactive product demonstrations on their website which is the topic of today's episode. Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth at Navattic discusses their recent "State of Interactive Product Demonstrations" with our host Ray Rike where they cover multiple topics including: The State of Interactive Product DemonstrationsTo Gate or Not to Gate - what is the best practiceMeasuring the Impact of “Self-Directed” Interactive Demonstrations In 2024, almost 12% of SaaS companies are providing interactive product demonstrations on their website which is an increase from 9.3% in 2023. Surprisingly, 73% of interactive demonstrations are not gated, and one primary reason is that non-gated interactive demonstrations have a 10% higher engagement rate. How do we measure engagement on interactive demonstrations? Natalie highlighted four: 1) Number of users who get past step one of the demo; 2) Number of users who complete the demo; 3) Users who click at least one CTA to an external resource and; 4) time spent on the interactive demonstration. Of course, at the end of the day measuring the outcomes from an investment in an interactive demo is critical, and the top two metrics that Natalie recommends include the number of qualified leads and win rate from those leads and users who engaged with the interactive demonstration. If you are looking for new ways to engage with your target buyers and ensure your product is initially understood and evaluated by potential buyers, this is a great conversation to understand how to introduce and leverage the power of self-guided, interactive demonstrations on your website! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The possibilities of combining AI with the collective intelligence from hundreds of B2B companies to increase their customer acquisition efficiency are limitless. Stephen Messer, Founder and CEO of Collective[I] shares his unique insights into how the potential is becoming a reality for many B2B companies. During today's episode, Stephen and our host, Ray Rike will cover the following topics: The vision behind founding Collective[I] and the Economic Foundation ModelWhy buyer’s historic behavior is more important than a selling processThe challenges and benefits of a “give to get” collective for go-to-market data sharing If you have ever used Waze to identify the shortest time from where you are to where you need to go, you understand the value of "collective intelligence". When you start to think about being able to understand which companies are most likely to buy your product and/or to understand why a specific customer buys, and who are the key decision makers you need to engage with, the possibilities that come to mind are limitless! Stephen shares how a Neural Network (AI) is being applied to Go-to-Market data to help B2B companies materially increase the ROI on their customer acquisition investments. Stephen shares how his experience founding LinkShare and the concept of affiliate networks is foundational to Collective[I]. Over 10 years ago, Stephen identified that salespeople create a new "roadmap" for every new opportunity. He envisioned building a network where everyone shares their sales process data anonymously so that the collective group can benefit from the collective wisdom generated by the group. The result was building one large neural network and creating an economic foundation model trained on how buyers buy from real-world processes. One of the fundamental premises is that companies cannot build their own neural network and thus not build their own foundational model - as they do not have the insights required into how new target companies actually buy. If you are responsible for leading a B2B Sales team, rely upon a sales team to achieve your financial plan, or are an individual sales professional who would like to know more about how a target customer or existing prospect buys, this conversation is one of the most thought-provoking discussions that we have had on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SaaS company acquisition velocity will increase in 2025 and the role of marketplaces purpose built for buyer and sellers will become a must visit for both. If you are considering selling or buying a SaaS company, this discussion with Andrew Gazdecki, Founder and CEO at Acquire.com is a must listen. During the episode Andrew and our host, Ray Rike cover the following topics: The catalyst for founding Acquire.comThe trends in B2B SaaS start-up and early stage company acquisitionsTop lessons learned from the insights of hundreds of B2B SaaS acquisitions Some of the key insights shared during the episode include: The value of preparing for the Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM)The importance of a discovery call with buyers prior to the Letter of Intent (LOI) The role of international buyers for U.S. companiesValuation expectations need to be realistic and reflect the current realityEBITDA is key for companies under $5M - know the current rangesDeal structures are widely varied - be open to different structuresGrowth Rate, Churn and Quality of Revenue are key metrics to highlight If you are considering selling your SaaS company or a buyer thinking about buying an existing SaaS company, this conversation with Andrew Gazdecki, Founder and CEO of Acqiure.com is a must listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

HubSpot was an early mover in building a media asset inside a B2B SaaS company with the purchase of The Hustle in 2021. Rob Litterst is the Head of Growth for the HubSpot Media Network which has expanded far beyond those early days in building out their media network! During today's episode, Rob and Ray discuss many aspects of building, growing and measuring the business impact of a media asset within a B2B SaaS company including: The vision for building a media asset within a B2B SaaS Company Measuring the business impact of an internal media assetLessons learned from growing the HubSpot media network If you are a Chief Marketing Officer considering how or if to build a media brand within your B2B SaaS company, or a CFO or CEO considering approving the investment in developing media assets in our SaaS company, this conversation with some who have been involved in doing it at both ProfitWell (acquired by Paddle) and HubSpot provides insights that only come with the experiences of doing it in two of the industry's best examples!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

AI Monetization Strategies - Balancing Revenue and Adoption with Gary Survis and Ethan DeSilva, Insight Partners was a top rated session at SaaS Metrics Palooza '24 that is a can't miss conversation for anyone in SaaS interested in how B2B SaaS companies are introducing, pricing and monetizing AI functionality. Key points covered during this conversation include: Is it the time to charge existing customers moreAI Scalability Gap from individual tasks to cross-functional workflows is a challengeAdoption before MonetizationAs value increase the monetization strategy will evolve If you are considering launching new AI functionality in your SaaS product or already have and are rethinking the pricing strategy this episode is a great listen See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Poya Osgouei has been responsible for securing sponsorships for some of the largest B2B events including SaaStr, Lenny's and Friends Summit, Elevate by Plato and shares his insights on the future of B2B tech events. During this episode, Poya and Ray discuss the following topics: The state of B2B tech eventsThe future of B2B tech eventsCommunity, Brand or Revenue - the "why" behind B2B tech eventsThe Power of NetworkingThe ROI of B2B tech events If you are considering hosting a b2b tech event, sponsoring a b2b tech event or attending a b2b tech event, this episode is chalked full of insights, perspectives and the return on investment thesis to consider. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As SaaS pricing evolves to be more variable in nature, such as in Usage-Based Pricing or Value-Based Pricing the requirements for a more flexible billing platform that also enhances the customer experience and also becomes a foundational component of financial reporting. Apurv Bansal, founder at Zenskar is converting that evolving need into a next generation billing platform. During this conversation with Apurv, our host Ray Rike covers the following topics with Apurv: The evolving nature of Usage-Based pricing and its Impact on Billing Software RequirementsThe role of customer experience in billing -Revenue Management - beyond manual processes and platformsRevenue Operations - The impact of Billing Platforms Recent benchmarking research indicates that over 50% of B2B SaaS companies are leveraging some level of variable pricing, such as Usage-Based Pricing and Value-Based Pricing. If a company's billing is not based upon a flat-rate subscription model, such as a "seat-based" model, the vendor knows the # users BEFORE the next months or years invoice is being calculated - because it is based upon the contact. In a Usage-Based Pricing model - the number of units required to create the bill/invoice needs to come from both the agreement and the "store of usage". This adds a significant level of nuance and complexity to the next generation of SaaS billing. When monthly invoicing is highly variable and dependent the latest usage - not only is calculating the monthly charges become more complex - the customer now needs a more detailed "customer usage report", which may also may need to be provided by user, by system or by whatever triggers a usage based trigger leading to a charge. If you are currently using or considering introducing a highly variable pricing model, and are considering both the infrastructure and the customer experience resulting from monthly invoices which vary materially based upon usage - this conversation is a highly informative and educational on the evolution of pricing models and the resultant billing technology required. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As B2B SaaS companies scale beyond $20M the complexity of their internal process, systems and SaaS metrics calculations become much more complex. As companies begin to consider a next round of financing and/or evaluate the strategic acquisition option, being able to quickly and reliably provide potential investors the metrics that matter to them is a key factor in how investors will determine not only the "if they will invest" but also "what the enterprise value" is. During this episode, Ray discusses the below topics with J.T. Cecchini, CEO of LevelUp Finance: SaaS Reporting RoadMap5x5 Reporting MatrixLevelUp Finance Valuation FrameworkA Reporting ScoreCard If you are a CEO, CFO or Revenue Operations leader who is responsible for ensuring the financial reporting and metrics infrastructure, data and processes are ready to scale and stand up to the scrutiny of potential investors, this episode is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Godard Abel, CEO of G2 and Chad Gold, CFO at G2 led a session at SaaS Metrics Palooza 24'. This is an audio only version of their fireside chat with Metrics that Measure Up host, Ray Rike. During this episode, Godard, Chad and Ray discuss the following topics: When does a company need to hire a CFOWhat is the partnership dynamics between a CEO and CFOWhat are the investor and board responsibilities for a CEO vs CFO at G2What metrics become more important as a company scales to $100M ARR and above If you are a B2B SaaS company, you already know G2 and this conversation is a great opportunity to learn how they use metrics to lead the company to the next level of success! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine a career journey starting as a software developer at NASA, then a B2C video service developer, moving on to the role of a general manager at game developer Zynga, and next heading to be the Head of Growth at Postmates - an early to food delivery service and now founding an FP&A platform company for the Office of Finance - that is the journey of Siqi Chen, Founder and CEO at Runway! During this conversation, we cover three topics with Siqi including: The catalyst for founding a B2B FP&A software companyThe evolution of the Office of FinanceThe importance of User Experience for B2B Software Siqi highlighted his lack of comfort with company financials as a primary catalyst for founding a Financial Planning and Analysis software company. During Covid, Siqi was required to quickly "re-plan" his company financials to present to his VC investor, Andreessen Horowitz and began to understand the pain of existing financial planning processes and the associated software. One of the primary beliefs that Siqi brings to FP&A is that finance has historically been about reporting, but going into the future will become a strategic function and requires a deeper level of business understanding and the ability to model multiple possible scenarios to develop clarity of the path forward. Siqi highlighted the importance of providing the board a solid forward-looking plan, but also the ability to leverage real-time data across multiple systems to aid the decision-making process.  As a company evolves, the number of business systems increases materially and creates a real challenge in using spreadsheets to model business scenarios that depend upon data from multiple systems. Viewing a model as a "business simulation", using strategies from game development is a unique perspective that Siqi's experience in gaming company Zynga. One of the barriers in moving beyond Excel is that as companies scale, it is not about eliminating the use of Excel, it is about highlighting the existing pains of using Excel for financial modeling including the increasing challenges of ingesting data from multiple systems, collaboration across multiple departments and being able to plan on a segment by segment basis. Another challenge in growing companies is that every department has its own "excel model" to plan its function, which is great for a smaller company, but makes it almost impossible to bring 4 - 5 different department models together into one master "company plan".  Hence the requirement for a company-wide FP&A solution that can facilitate collaboration between every department in building a company-wide plan. Finally, we discussed how the learnings from the B2C world help in running a B2B company. First, Siqi highlighted that "unlearning" is a key trait as some strategies that work for building a consumer product do not easily translate into a B2B business. One of the key insights is the importance of speaking to the target users versus using your intuition. Another key un-learning is that the "users" of B2B software are typically NOT the buyers of the software, so the approach to both user experience and messaging must reflect the needs of the economic buyer and the users. If you care about measurements, care about data and are looking for a better way to manage business modeling and having real-time data available to facilitate decision making - this conversation with Siqi is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill MaCaitis the former Chief Revenue Officer at Slack, and previously the CMO at Slack, CMO at Zendesk, and SVP of Marketing at Salesforce joins our host Ray Rike to share the Marketing Metrics Framework he developed during his experience as a multiple time Chief Marketing Officer. During today's episode Bill and Ray discuss various topics including: Top lessons learned from Marketing leadership roles at category leadersCatalyst for developing a Marketing metrics framework with six categoriesPrioritizing Marketing metrics that the CEO and CFO care about Starting his career in more traditional B2C media brands, Bill learned the importance of brand, advertising, and awareness building; He then leveraged that experience in his first B2B Marketing leadership role at Salesforce which was the foundation for his roles as the Chief Marketing Office at Zendesk, Slack, and ultimately the Chief Revenue Officer at Slack. What were the lessons Bill learned at three leading SaaS companies? He started with a lesson he learned at his first company out of college, and that was learning how to drive efficient growth from day one. One of the first things Bill noticed in his first role in a B2B technology company was that Marketing was viewed primarily as a lead generation function. Bill believed that a great B2B company also needed to think about how to build a unique brand and infuse that brand into the voice of the company and the product. He brought that belief and experience into creating amazing brands at Salesforce, Zendesk, and Slack. One of the questions Bill answered was how to measure ROI for Marketing investments into brand and awareness in a B2B company. Bill stated that CFOs want hard-hitting, ROI measurements that prove the return on Marketing investment. Brand may be harder to measure in the short term, but when you view a brand as impacting long term leads. Shorter term metrics to measure brand include unaided recall, aided recall, share of voice, and even brand sentiment. Bill then shared the six categories of metrics that best-in-class B2B Marketers should measure including: Funnel Metrics Brand Metrics Experience Metrics PLG Metrics (Product-Led Growth) Date-Driven Metrics Stakeholder Value Metrics  If you are a B2B Marketing professional and are being asked to provide more details about the Metrics that Matter to the CEO and CFO, this conversation is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brad van Leeuwen, Co-Founder and COO- Cledara has built a business helping 1,000 customers in over 30 countries manage their SaaS expenses. This provides Brad with a very unique insight into the state of the total spend in SaaS and the most recent SaaS purchasing trends. During today's episode, we cover four primary topics with Brad: State of SaaS Spend ManagementThe Impact of AI Native Software on SaaSThe Top AI Native CompaniesThe Impact on AI on Sales and Marketing The first point Brad shared is that buyers are focused on increasing the relationships with their current vendors and the number of new SaaS solutions purchased has decreased by 50% over the last two years. In addition, existing buyers are looking to renew for longer periods and are looking to extend the agreement term in consideration of lower pricing. Thirdly, buyers are being much more discerning in what products they keep, and which they do not renew which increases the churn rate many SaaS vendors are experiencing. One data point Cledara captures is the SaaS momentum index which measures if companies are spending more or less on SaaS in the current year versus the previous year. For the 1H-24 the Index has stayed level at around 100 which means most buyers are not increasing their spend on SaaS products. This is confirmed by the lower growth guidance that many public SaaS companies are providing to the market. Is SaaS consolidation of point solutions happening in companies? The data says yes, companies are looking to consolidate multiple SaaS solutions into larger platforms, except native AI products which are leaning heavily towards point solutions. Next, we asked Brad how "AI purchasing" trends are evolving. Brad says the headlines are that companies are buying lots of different AI products, but when looking at what teams are really buying it starts with Marketing which is allocating 5% of their software purchases to AI. Sales is allocating about 1.3% of their budget to AI tools, but this is increasing quickly having increased from .3% in January 2024. Who is the primary decision maker when buying AI products? Based upon a survey of over 300 company CFOs, AI software is viewed as experimentation, and no tangible ROI has been delivered yet. At the same time, Cledara data shows that user adoption is increasing dramatically being primarily driven by individual contributors which is not seen by the CFO. What are some of the most popular native AI solutions being purchased in 2024? Brad highlighted that Cledara customers are adopting 30-40 new vendors per month across their 1,000+ customers. Once the first customer adopts a particular AI native solution, Brad sees the virality happening very quickly across the customer base...but the issue is churn is happening almost as fast as new solution adoption. AI spend now comprises about 3.5% - 4% of total software spend to AI point solutions, which includes ChatGPT/OpenAI. What is the primary benefit of AI solutions? Brad highlighted that many of the tools bring everyone in a department up to the same level of capabilities. The challenge is when users are forced to increase their productivity/effectiveness beyond the baseline created by everyone using similar tools. Brad highlighted how he used ChatGPT to write an article on the top 100 AI solutions in less than 60 minutes, on a task that would have traditionally taken days. Finally, we asked Brad his perspective on how AI solutions can decrease the staff required to produce the same level of output. Brad believes that the increase in productivity delivered by using AI tools will not primarily lead to a decrease in the amount of employees - rather it will result in more output from the current staff leading to faster revenue growth or growth efficiency. If you are interested in how total SaaS spend is being impacted by the emergence of AI point solutions and/or how AI will impact productivity as measured by increased efficiency and effectiveness - this episode is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kris Rudeegraap, co-founder and co-CEO at Sendoso viewed the emergence of Sales Engagement Platform technology as the beginning of the end for email based outbound demand generation for B2B Sales professionals. This catalyzed him to take the leap to cfound Sendoso, a next-generation direct mail and corporate gifting platform. In today's conversation, we will discuss the history and business impact of Sendoso and corporate gifting including: The catalyst for founding SendosoThe current State of Pipeline GenerationThe impact of corporate gifting on Pipeline GenerationThe impact of corporate gifting on Customer Retention The first question we discussed was the most surprising learning Kris has had as a first-time founder and CEO. Kris highlighted that even after 8 years he is still as passionate about the business and vision as ever, and he found that his background in Sales has been extremely valuable in both recruiting employees and raising over $150M in Venture Capital funding. Kris highlighted that there were several similarities between conducting a fundraising effort and enterprise-class sales. One of the advantages Kris felt he had due to his background in sales and that his "founder-led sales" efforts became direct inputs to the product roadmap. Next we pivoted to the reality of today's pipeline generation. First, Kris highlighted that with so many email sequencing tools and now AI tools to send emails that buyers are becoming numb to demand generation emails, as their inboxes become saturated. A common recommendation that Kris provided to any B2B Sales professional is to make every outreach, be it email or a corporate gift to ensure it is personalized to the target buyer. One advantage of corporate gifting is due to it being more expensive than sending an email, the majority of organizations and sales professionals are much more targeted and personalized when sending a "physical gift" to a target prospect. Kris shared that they use the power of AI to determine what type of physical gift would most resonate with different buyer types based upon function and/or title. Next we move onto the performance metrics behind the use of corporate gifting as a key component of pipeline generation programs. Kris shared that corporate gifting programs increase pipeline generation programs as measured by the following benchmarks from research by HockeyStack: 3x increase in meeting rates6x increase in second-call rates1.84x increased win rates13% larger deals29% faster sales cycle length If you are responsible for generating pipeline in your company, or for managing the budget allocation to grow revenue profitably, this conversation with Kris provides a lot of great insight into the Return on Investment of integrating corporate gifting into your new customer acquisition and customer retention programs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How have product demonstrations evolved in today's buyer self-directed buying process? Andrea Wunderlich leads the product and customer marketing function at Maxio and recently introduced their virtual product tour. In today's self-directed buyer journey, it's good to break down how virtual product tours can be leveraged to serve the buyer, when and where they prefer. During this episode, several topics regarding launching a virtual product tour center include: The Genesis of the Maxio Virtual Tour CenterOvercoming concerns of competitors knowing about your product feature/functionThe opportunities and challenges of leveraging “open source” demonstration venues and channelsMeasuring the impact of buyer self-directed solution tours When should a product demonstration be used in a considered B2B selling environment? Andrea highlighted the commonly used process of first doing a discovery call and then moving into a demonstration call. Over the past two years, corporate buyers have wanted a more "B2C" buying experience and the sooner the better is the time to show the basics of the software and then move into a more tailored demonstration once the vendor better understands the unique requirements of a specific customer. If 65% - 70% of the buyer's journey is completed before they speak to a salesperson - why not ensure the potential buyers can understand the basic feature/function of your software? The genesis of the Maxio Virtual Tour Center was introduced by a new marketing hire who highlighted the trend for B2B SaaS companies to offer a virtual product tour to ensure potential buyers do not "self-qualify out" before they see the details of the product's capability. Using video is an expensive option, and in addition as products evolve quickly the entire video often needs to be recorded again and again. A virtual product tour platform primarily uses product screen shots and if a feature evolves, only one screenshot needs to be updated, and it is automatically inserted into the existing virtual product tour.  A KEY criteria to make the virtual product tour successful was having a champion who was passionate about making the virtual environment a reality. Gated or non-gated virtual product tours? Andrea strongly believes that removing all friction to get potential buyers to engage early in the buying process is critical to ensure that many companies can understand the product's features and function. Experiencing the Maxio solution without having to engage with sales was a key criterion to providing a low-friction, non gated approach to the virtual product experience. One of the interesting findings was the product tour center is used more in the middle of the funnel, versus a top of funnel first-time experience. Maxio has found that the tour center is used and then shared more by potential customers after a first sales call. With the target buyers of both the CFO and the product leader thinking about how to monetize (bill) their product, the virtual tour center was a better way to get the majority of the buying committee members to understand the capabilities of the product. How to measure the business impact and value of a virtual product tour center? One of the hard things about trying something new is the long tail aspect of the virtual product tour. Andrea highlighted that expectations were set that this would be at least a six-month timeframe before the ROI could be validated and that with the virtual product tour being a lower-cost initiative, the longer term ROI was acceptable. Initially, the engagement rate was the primary measurement, and then over time (6+ months), they could look into their attribution tool to see how the virtual product tour users were converting into qualified pipeline and new ARR. If you have a SaaS product and you are looking for new, innovative ways to get the potential target buyers to understand how your product aligns with their unique requirements - this is a great conversation to hear! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Greg Galant, Founder and CEO at Muck Rack created the industry's first Public Relations (PR) marketplace for journalists looking for great articles and for the companies producing those topics interesting to a target audience. The catalyst for creating Muck RackOvercoming Friction between Marketing, PR Agencies, and the PressWhat role does the Press play in a Content Marketing Strategy The future of PR in the “AI” era Greg's journey started in 2005 when he launched the Venture Voice podcast with amazing guests including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Yelp Founder, and many more including Ed Williams, Founder Odeo - a first-generation podcast directory. The catalyst for starting a podcast was Greg's experience at CNN.com as an associate producer where he was looking for ways to download news stories from CNN onto his iPod.  In fact, the term podcast emanated from Apple and the iPod using RSS feeds to link to an audio clip. The above experience at CNN.com was the catalyst for creating his own podcast to highlight the stories of successful entrepreneurs. Venture Voice continued 2005 -2010 and Greg discontinued producing new episodes until Covid hit in 2020, and the additional free time created by being locked into his apartment stimulated Greg to restart the podcast with the first new episode guest - Mark Cuban! This experience highlighted the need for a website that could amplify those social media influencers that people should be following and an associated event named "The Shorty Awards". In 2009, Greg and his co-founder launched Muck Rack to help journalists find interesting founders and topics that would be great for their publications. At the same time, businesses started to use Muck Rack to identify those journalists they could pitch for an article that supported their business and increased their brand awareness. Today, Fortune 500 companies, publications, and journalists alike use Muck Rack as a match-making platform for public relations-centric content. If you are a fellow entrepreneur and love learning about other founders' journey to creating a new company or media asset, this conversation with Greg is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How to create a "metrics-centric" business culture - a topic that Jay Topper, Chief Customer Officer at Fabric, and Ray our host cover in great detail on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. During this episode, Jay and Ray discuss the following topics in detail: How to build a metrics cultureValue of enterprise education and uplifting on metricsHow to maximize the business impact of metricsThree key metrics pillars including Accuracy, Relevancy and Presentation Jay started his career in the military and then became a Chief Information Officer in multiple retail businesses. He then launched the third stage of his career as the Chief Customer Officer at Fabric, a leading Omni Channel e-commerce optimization platform. The first thing Jay shared was the need to fully immerse himself in the corporate world after leaving the military. His experience in helping to deploy an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system forced him to learn the basics of business processes from the ground up. This experience created his passion for learning, and seeking out ways to learn something new about business every day. What are the top challenges when companies begin their metrics journey? First, you need to know what to measure and why you need to measure it. These might be the top 2 or 3 measurements that are most important to your company, and then begin to drill down into how those metrics are impacted by each level of the business. A common theme is to keep the metrics simple to avoid the complexity and noise of too many measurements, especially if they are not connected to each other. Another best practice is to socialize the priority across the company to gain cross-department buy-in which leads to every organization having a common understanding and commitment to the same performance measurements. How to create a "metrics-centric" culture? It starts with ensuring the entire company knows why a metric is important - not only internally but also for the customers you are serving! One step further can even be understanding what is important to your customers customers. In retail and eCommerce this is extremely important as the value you are adding to your "corporate customer" is to enhance and improve how they are treating/serving their retail customers. The more people in your company who can articulate and understand the top measurements (metrics) for the company and the company's customers will inherently lead to a better-performing company as measured by revenue, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Another key is to ensure that Finance and the Go-to-Market functions such as Marketing, Sales and Customer Success define, calculate, and discuss every metric using a commonly defined calculation foundation. How to communicate your understanding or even assumptions of your customer's business and measurements of success? The number one trait is the ability to "listen" to your customers, especially in understanding the business process and measurements they are trying to improve. Though you may have your own perspectives and templates on the business process your solution automates and enhances - the value proposition should include the customer's priorities, measurements, and goals for their business...and the buyer's personal objectives. If you are involved with how your company uses metrics or a senior leader trying to create a metrics-centric culture, this episode is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Niclas Lilja, Founder and CEO at Younium recently joined our host, Ray Rike on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast to discuss his decision to re-locate from Sweden to the United States to better understand the U.S. buyer's market for recurring revenue billing solutions. During this fast-moving 30-minute conversation, Nic and Ray discuss the following topics: The Evolution of SaaS Pricing (yesterday, today and tomorrow)Global Expansion - The Cultural ChallengesHow Usage-Based or Hybrid Pricing Impacts SaaS Metrics CalculationTop 3 learnings as a European Founder and CEO entering the U.S. Market Why is there an opportunity for another SaaS billing and revenue management solution? The story begins with the evolution of SaaS pricing and where it is heading? Niclas highlighted the evolution to more complex product-led growth and usage-based pricing models, especially in AI solutions is creating a more flexible billing solution that can handle the nuances of every pricing model. Moreover, the ability to "experiment" with new pricing models will be critical for companies to test and identify the best pricing model for this solution and their target market(s). Why do companies evaluate a new or different billing solution? Though the evolution of hybrid pricing is one good catalyst, having billing software that can manage the revenue recognition process to compress the time to close the financial books is also an important variable. Though it is hard to believe, many SaaS companies do not have a robust billing and revenue management infrastructure leading to time-consuming manual mistakes and the associated time required to close the books. Another catalyst is when companies evolve into different markets with different pricing, a more comprehensive and flexible billing and revenue management reporting capability is required. Younium has a very focused Go-to-Market strategy, including a decision to focus primarily on the recurring revenue technology industry.  This dedicated Ideal Customer Profile focus required entering the U.S. Market if they can achieve their dream of being a $100M ARR company. What are some of the differences between selling to U.S. companies and selling to European companies? The first thing Niclas highlighted is that U.S. companies are quicker to adopt new trends and technologies. At the same time, U.S. companies are more focused on "what are" the benefits of a new technology versus in Europe, it's more about "how do we achieve" those benefits including a road map on how to move from the current state to the future state the software enables. If you are a B2B SaaS company evaluating how to increase the pace of pricing experimentation, shorten the financial close process, enhance revenue management and reporting, or are an international SaaS company considering entering the U.S. market this conversation is full of great insights, experience, and ideas. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michelle Valentine, Founder and CEO of Anrok is taking on the Sales Tax compliance challenges for B2B SaaS companies. Global Sales Tax compliance is a critical obstacle to successfully deploying a global Product-Led Growth strategy. Michelle's conversation with our host, Ray Rike covers a wide array of topics including: Evolution of Sales Tax and Compliance in SaaSChallenges of Global Sales Tax ComplianceDynamic Nature of SaaS Sales TaxEvolution from Investment Banking to Venture Capital to B2B SaaS Founder/CEO What was the catalyst for Michelle to found Anrok? Michelle's experience as a SaaS investor was on a run with a founder along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and she was sharing their company's challenge with tax compliance which sparked the idea. Thinking back to the early days of Amazon, most states did not initially tax e-commerce sales - but that has changed dramatically over the last 10+ years and Michelle saw the same change to B2B SaaS in the future! Michelle provided the history of State sales tax in the 1920s, which was introduced on physical retail store sales as a revenue source for States. In 2018, a similar concept began to be deployed by States on cloud-delivered software (SaaS) - though it is to be noted that California never charged for software sold in the state. Stimulated by COVID-19, a new reality was introduced - if you had an employee, even a remote employee in a state, you had to charge Sales Tax in that state. Based upon a Supreme Court case in 2018 (South Dakota vs Wayfair), there is also a "revenue threshold" that requires companies to collect sales taxes in the state of the customer that bought software/SaaS from the company. Think about the challenge of staying on top of each state's Sales Tax laws, and then how much more difficult that becomes when expanding globally. Many countries worldwide will require sales tax on even the first sales in that country.  VAT ID validation is one approach to determine if a specific transaction requires sales tax collection - but each country does have different local thresholds. Why is now the time for next-generation sales tax compliance software? The majority of sales tax compliance software was built for consumer companies, and was not developed to understand global sales tax compliance, was not built with recurring revenue in mind and thus did not have the data model flexibility to expand and adapt to a rapidly changing regulatory environment. Even cities like Chicago are now requiring software purchased and/or used in their jurisdiction to be taxed. If you lead a B2B SaaS company that is selling your solution to companies in states outside of where your company is headquartered, and especially if you are considering selling to companies around the globe, this conversation with Michelle is full of amazing Sales Tax compliance insights that make for an insightful listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Henry Schuck, Founder and CEO has been leading ZoomInfo since he first founded the company in his law school dorm room through multiple funding rounds leading to an IPO in 2020. Henry shares his journey and his leadership evolution which continues today as he maneuvers the industry's choppy waters of 2023 and 2024! The journey from founding DiscoverOrg to the ZoomInfo IPO…and beyondData-driven processes and decisions - how they are used at ZoomInfoLessons learned from leading a public company during an industry correction Henry founded ZoomInfo 17 years ago in his law school dorm when he was 23 years old.  The goal was and continues to be to provide Sales and Marketing professionals with the most up-to-date data to inform them who their prospects are who their buyers are and if they are in the market for their category of solutions. The journey started as a boot-strapped business with two first-time founders including $50,000 of personal credit card funding! TA Associates was the first outside capital brought into the company when the company hit $30M Run Rate revenue, which allowed for investing into the business including acquisitions and scaling Go-to-Market. In 2017 they acquired RainKing and then acquired ZoomInfo in 2019 and that was when the original company - DiscoverOrg became ZoomInfo. The primary market had traditionally been the B2B Technology industry, and the ZoomInfo acquisition enabled a more horizontal focus across additional industries focused on B2B Selling. On June 4, 2020 ZoomInfo went public - how did that change Henry's role as the CEO? The first statement was you do not want being in a public company to change you as a leader much, but at the same time, there are new responsibilities including a new set of investors. Moreover, as a public company, you are constantly fundraising as you need to meet the institutional investors regularly and the public stakeholders are more transient, and building trust with them is critical. Staying focused on what is most important in running the business and executing is still an important role of the CEO, which does not change dramatically as a CEO. One of the things that does change materially as a company scales is to hire people who can take on the majority of day-to-day execution of the strategy. At the same time, the CEO focuses more on setting the strategy and hiring great executive leaders. The acquisition of RainKing required Henry to build the skills of integrating a competitive company and its employees into the company, and then the acquisition of ZoomInfo made the company much larger which requires an additional skill set of leading a larger workforce. Henry shared how does a CEO know if an executive can scale to the next level of the company's growth.  One, they need to learn quickly and simultaneously they need to build a great team underneath them to help scale their function. A great team allows the department head to take additional time to learn the skills required at that stage of the company's evolution. Without a great team, that learning process is compressed and may not afford the department executive the time to grow on the job without negatively impacting the business. One of the most important parts of the executive leadership team's role is to be very aligned with the CEO to intimately understand the vision and then to ensure you are executing the priorities that align with the vision. How does the role of the CEO of a public company change during a period of economic uncertainty (post ZIRP) and decreasing growth? The difference in leadership when growth decelerates is you can not spend as much, so the need to build the muscle to determine the best way to prioritize investments increases.  Another key change is the need for "transparency" increases as growth decelerates, including providing the narrative so it is not developed out of thin air.  Things like here is where we are succeeding, here is where we are struggling, and then monthly updates on how the company is performing as measured against the priorities, the strengths, and the threats. Henry says that in 2024 they have their best people ever, and the best level of engagement which he credits to having a higher level of transparency. Henry shared the importance data plays in their decision-making. Henry highlighted one area is if there is a data source that identifies prospects that will convert into customers at a higher rate and with an increased velocity. One example was to identify prospects that did not show up to a scheduled meeting and then take a systemic, data-driven approach to follow up with those no-shows and get them back into an active sales cycle. This "play" became a material source of new customer ARR every month! If you are a founder, a CEO, or a Go-to-Market executive this conversation with Henry is full of great insights and ideas on how to scale a company and increase GTM efficacy in today's changing purchasing environment. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matthew Blumberg, author of the Start-Up CEO Field Guide and founder of Bolster provides his insights and highlights from his series of books for start-up executives. Our host, Ray Rike, and Matthew discuss many of the main topics in the Start-Up CEO and directly from Matthew's experience as a multiple-time founder and CEO including: Lessons from being the founder & CEO at the same company for ~ 20 yearsImportance of Authentic Leadership in Changing TimesMoving beyond Storytelling to Execution to Selling your company Each book in the "Start-Up" series was written specifically to help founders and CEOs use each book as a guide along their journey as a founder and as a CEO. What are the unique experiences gained from founding and running the company for almost 20 years? Learning how to pace yourself for the long term is key. Moreover, if you want an organization that is engaged and vibrant it starts with YOU...keeping yourself engaged and vibrant is served well by viewing each day, month, and year as a new opportunity to learn grow, and evolve as a leader. This is especially important as each stage of growth requires a different skill set than what got you there. One of the challenges of leading a company for an extended period is keeping those employees who have also been around for a long time to keep them fresh and get good at rotating people into different departments. One of the advantages of this approach is that they already have tribal knowledge and share the company's values. The Start-Up CEO is broken into six sections, and one is "Managing yourself so you can manage others". Why was this an important topic to Matthew? One was his journey to learning how to receive feedback gracefully, which is hard for everyone, and took Matthew a while to become good at receiving feedback. One of the key lessons Matthew learned was the need to "act upon" the input to make sure the person sharing the feedback is assured it was heard and accepted. Another learning was that Matthew's orientation to "think by talking" and "manage by walking around" could be a double-edged sword. Sometimes employees will take a conversation that the CEO thinks is an idea vetting opportunity that can be viewed as a "decision" versus "discussion", especially with people lower in the organization. Another example of needing to be careful of your natural orientation is being a "pacesetter", who is more focused on getting stuff done versus building long-term relationship capital. Why did Matt write a second edition of the "Start-Up CEO"? It was because he had recently sold Return Path, and he wanted to finish the book including his company being sold, and he also wanted to capture many of the social learnings from leading a company during COVID and the resultant change in the workforce that evolved during the remote work era. One of the final topics Matthew and Ray discussed was the value of collecting data from both internal resources and external sources, especially customers. Matthew highlighted his use of "active eavesdropping" to hear how employees communicated the company messaging to prospects and customers, and also hear what customers were saying to the rank and file that may not be shared with the CEO. If you are a first-time CEO or preparing for the next phase of growth in leading your company, this episode and conversation is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Julio Martinez, Founder and CEO of Abacum has been involved in Finance for most of his career. He then transitioned into the technology industry and was responsible for launching products for 4 years before founding Abacum. During this episode, we will cover 4 primary topics with Julio: The vision behind founding AbacumThree common FP&A mistakesFP&A’s role in developing corporate strategyUnique challenges of a start-up in a crowded category What was the catalyst for founding Abacum? After 20 years working with Finance teams across hundreds of companies, Julio saw and felt his client's pain of managing the financial planning and modeling process which was an area that Julio had seen challenges repeating again and again for his clients. What are the most common challenges facing the FP&A leader in 2024? The most important one is that FP&A teams need near real-time access to financial and operational data to deliver near real-time insights based on the metrics that matter to the senior leadership team. Today, it is a very manual process for most FP&A teams. The above need suggested that FP&A is being asked to go beyond period-specific modeling, planning, and budgeting and be able to have insights on near real-time performance, at least every week, and highlight the metrics trends quickly to the executive decision-makers. Over the last 10 years, FP&A's role has been elevated to a more strategic function that is involved in analyzing performance trends and metrics "in-period" to accelerate how their insights are factored into the next period's operating decisions and priorities. One of the recent posts that Julio made on LinkedIn focused on the most common mistakes that FP&A organizations make. A classic first mistake under indexing the importance of partnering and building strong relationships with other departments and their leadership. This "relationship capital" will result in gaining additional insights into the issues impacting the financial performance trends. A second challenge is the FP&A professional is great at modeling and using analytical tools, but often does not understand the business well enough to gain a seat at the executive table to go beyond reporting on performance trends, but also on what to do about the challenges facing the business. Many finance teams are spending 60% - 80% of their time gathering and modeling financial performance trends, and if they could flip that time to 60% - 80% of their time being spent on the analysis and then solution ideation specific to what the financial operations reports are surfacing. Next, we discussed the unique challenges of introducing a new product into a function and process that has been using technology and mature vendors for many years and even decades in certain industries. Julio says it starts with diving deep into your target market's and prospects' business to answer how your product meets their highest priority pain points and the challenges that are specific to their environment. Secondly, Julio highlighted having a "strong opinion" and "innovation" into how technology can address business processes and challenges that still exist even after using alternative technologies or approaches. Another key factor is to ensure that some of the key customer-facing resources are "domain experts" who have served in the role of their buyers and users and can quickly develop shared experience and trust-based relationships with both the customers and the internal product team. If you are responsible for leading an FP&A team, or use the outputs of the FP&A team to plan, manage, and improve your operational function this conversation with Julio Martinez, Founder and CEO Abacum is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sean Brophy, the Head of Global Sales at Pigment joins our host, Ray Rike to discuss selling the Return on Investment of Financial Planning, Modeling, and Forecasting Software to both the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Revenue Officer. Topics discussed during the conversation include: The challenges of selling to the CFO & CRO as economic buyersHow the business perspective on the value of planning, modeling, and forecasting has evolvedProving value and ROI to the CFO as the economic buyerTop Sales Performance Metrics Sean has spent 20+ years on helping companies turn data into information that empowers more informed decisions. The first topic we covered was the unique challenge of selling to finance and revenue executive decision-makers. Pigment started solving problems for the office of Finance, and learned that integrated planning impacts not only finance but also the other functions, including Sales, Human Resources, and Supply chain to name a few. This requires the sales hires to be business-focused first and have the ability to effectively move across functions during the sales process. Top-down or bottom-up sales to the office of Finance? Sean prefers the initial entry point being with the CFO anchoring upon the unique value that aligns with their top objectives and biggest challenges. CFOs are typically looking for at least a 2x - 3x return on investment, which requires a hypothesis aligned to the metrics the CFO is targeting for improvement. Next, we discussed the rising importance of FP&A, and where we are in this department's maturity? Sean highlighted that more FP&A teams are acknowledging the fact that the current FP&A tool set is not meeting today's business requirements. FP&A today goes beyond reporting and is being asked to iterate financial plans in real-time using the latest data and then modeling different scenarios to be able to adjust the financial plan based on the latest data and trends. Then I asked Sean if FP&A has a seat and strategic role at the executive leadership table? Sean said FP&A is more strategic than ever, and a big part of that is their role of being able to leverage the most recent data and provide insights and recommendations on the latest financial trends - not those from multiple quarters ago. CFOs are prioritizing solutions that drive increased efficiency and more profitable revenue. This includes helping executive sales leaders build better revenue plans that increase productivity and increases revenue growth efficiency. This begs the question of selling value, which Sean says should be part of every Sales 101 model. Sean suggests that every sales process begins with asking what is the business value to the potential customer, and what metrics they will use to measure the return on investment of any new technology solution. Beyond selling, Value engineering will create a "value hypothesis" that is conservative and then shared to be validated by the buyer's champions who will typically start collaborating on the value hypothesis which is often increased from the initial "conservative" ROI presented. What the are primary metrics Sean uses to measure Sales Productivity and he presents to his CFO and CEO? Sean highlighted top line ARR growth as the top metric, but also Customer Acquisition Cost efficiency including the average Cost per Acquired Customer to ensure efficient growth trends. Sales Productivity as measured by the cost of the seller measured against quota delivered is the other TOP efficiency metrics Sean uses. If you are responsible for marketing and/or selling solutions to the CFO and/or CRO, this conversation with Sean Brophy, Head of Global Sales at Pigment is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sally Duby, Chief Sales Officer at The Bridge Group shares the latest SaaS Account Executive Benchmark Report based upon their research which they have been conducting since 2007. During the episode we cover a wide array of topics and benchmarks from the report including: Account Executive Compensation Trends (OTE, Base Salary and Commissions)AE Quota Trends - By Annual Contract ValueAE Quota Achievement TrendsWin Rate TrendsExpansion and Renewal Responsibilities The full report is available by clicking here. If you are responsible for hiring, managing. modeling AE comp plans or have Account Executives in your company, this conversation and report is full of new insights and trends on the state of B2B SaaS Account Executive metrics trends and benchmarks! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Godard Abel, Founder and CEO of G2 is a pioneer in the world of B2B Software and SaaS reviews joins our host, Ray Rike to discuss the benefits of being a multiple-time CEO as he guides G2 into the next stage of growth and success. During the conversation, Godard and Ray cover a wide array of topics including: The benefit of being a multiple-time B2B SaaS Founder and CEOHow the experience of a Salesforce acquisition impacts perspectiveThe vision behind G2 and B2B Software Reviews (yesterday and tomorrow)How AI will change the B2B SaaS industryBuild or Buy a Large Language Foundational Model (LLM) Godard started by founding Big Machines on January 1, 2000, to build a company for the new millennium. During the "dot-com" bust, Godard learned the importance of customer focus and winning and keeping one customer at a time. The most important lesson Godard shared is the importance of continuous learning. G2 was founded 12 years ago, with the initial vision of becoming "Yelp for Software" which did not exist for B2B software and SaaS. This coincided with Marc Andreessen's "Software will eat the world" and Godard saw the opportunity to become the Amazon for buying B2B SaaS and Software. The journey to building G2 took a slight detour as Godard saw that building the audience of B2B software buyers to both provide reviews and then use reviews to inform their purchasing decisions. He simultaneously founded SteelBrick which was ultimately acquired by Salesforce. Back to G2 - the initial focus was on Sales and Marketing software as the buyers of revenue technology were more likely to share their experience online, especially compared to buyers of finance, HR, and infrastructure software. Some buyers of software who wrote the reviews even saw the published review as a career enhancement opportunity. What is the point of "critical mass" for B2B Reviews? The key was to have at least 20 reviews on the top 10 products, the reviews become more meaningful for the buyers. Then being able to rank on Google via SEO, becomes the point where monetizing B2B reviews is first possible - though getting to that point is and was a LONG journey. One of the techniques to get reviews includes incenting reviewers with gift cards. Another key approach is to progress on a category-by-category basis to build the critical mass of buyer reviews - and today G2 has over 2,300 different categories covered on their platform. Godard shared a few learnings from being acquired by Salesforce and then running a business unit within Salesforce. Godard highlighted the value of the V2MOM process, which begins with the vision and then the values that guide execution. Then write down the "methods" and "measurements" to ensure that the "how" is well understood and the measurements of success are well understood by everyone in the company. Godard said almost every meeting with Mark Benioff started with the V2MOM review, which included the measures of ACV bookings, year-over-year growth, pipeline, and where you stand against plan! The ultimate goal for G2 is to become a "Software Marketplace" that goes beyond being the leading Software/SaaS Reviews platform. Ultimately, Godard envisions moving beyond being a lead source for B2B SaaS/Software vendors, but even going beyond by enabling testing of the software to ultimate purchase - similar to what Amazon has done for retail. What are the metrics that G2 uses to measure the health of the business? The first thing Godard highlighted was the hiring of Chad Gold as CFO. The top metric is "Net New ARR" growth and then splitting that into growth from new customers and existing customers. The next metric is customer churn, and ensuring that maintaining and expanding existing ARR continues to grow as measured by NRR and GRR. Godard shared the importance of ensuring you fix Gross Revenue Retention is the first step to having good Net Revenue Retention. What is Godard's favorite SaaS Metric? He highlighted Net New ARR / Sales and Marketing expenses and the importance of calculating this metric by customer segments. The final topic was asking Godard HOW AI will change the B2B SaaS industry? Having the advantage of a large customer base and the associated data will serve as competitive moats as SaaS companies evolve into providing AI enabled value. Godard sees a combination of both existing vendors who have established the competitive moats and also native start-up AI companies both be winners in the AI era. If you are in a company that buys or sells B2B SaaS and Software, this conversation with Godard Abel, Founder and CEO of G2 is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS company IPOs in 2023 and 2024 are like those mythical creatures from a time long ago - you hear a lot about them but seldom see them today! Klaviyo broke that drought for SaaS IPOs by going public on September 20, 2023!!! Ryan Meadows is the Klaviyo Senior Vice President of Global Sales and has been at Klaviyo since they were less than $50M ARR and started as a Director of Sales five years ago. Selling Measurable value to customersMetrics that Matter to an Executive Sales LeaderThe keys to effective sales leadership in 2024 and beyond How does the role of a sales leader change during the journey to IPO...and beyond? Ryan started with the comment that "titles do not matter" and that his 8 years at Hubspot were critical to helping Klaviyo scale. The first challenge when Ryan joined was how to build in the rigor of hiring great salespeople, have a repeatable and scalable sales process and ultimately build a long-term sustainable business. Over time that journey includes building a capability to scale to new markets, scale internationally, and develop a platform that goes beyond a single-point solution...and then build the sales capabilities to gain traction in those new markets while building the ability to sell a platform versus a single product. Moving up market to Enterprise-class customers begins with understanding the heightened expectations of the buyers. Aligning every GTM function and achieving success in the Enterprise Market as a top five company priority and goal was the starting point, and the core foundation required to find success in the upper end of the market. Next, we discussed the evolving expectations of the key stakeholders after a company goes public, AND as Ryan was appointed the SVP of Global Sales. Understanding how to manage an earnings call and increase forecast accuracy are core competencies required in a public company.  Moreover to continue achieving the growth expectations as a public company requires close, cross-functional collaboration that shares the focus and responsibilities of pipeline growth, win-rates, and customer retention and expansion. As Ryan grew into the SVP Global Sales role, beyond hiring great leaders who could run the day-to-day operations to hit the numbers, building close relationships with his peers in Marketing and Customer Success became a much higher priority as they ensured they were building a sustainable growth engine. A key to this collaboration was having "shared goals" that the head of sales, head of marketing, and head of partnerships all own and meet weekly to discuss how the pipeline for both new and expansion revenue is performing. Another interesting point is measuring success, Klaviyo's North Star metric is customer value, measured by "Klaviyo attributed value" which exceeds $50B for increased customer revenue created by the Klaviyo solution. If you aspire to scale a company to an initial public offering, and/or grow your B2B Sales organization from less than $50M ARR to IPO, this conversation with Ryan Meadows, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Klaviyo is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tim Riitters, CFO at Gong sits down with our host Ray Rike to discuss the keys to successfully selling to a CFO. Tim provides a unique perspective as both a multiple time CFO and being the CFO at Gong who is helping to make a CFOs live easier with their Revenue Intelligence and AI enables forecasting solution! During this episode we cover four primary topics with Tim including: How Tim uses SaaS metrics to inform decision making at GongHow Gong uses SaaS metrics in board reporting and QBRsThe key considerations to understand when selling technology to a CFO For anyone who is a SaaS CFO, aspires to be a SaaS CFO or has a desire to sell their solution to a CFO this episode includes insights and ideas that are valuable to each of you!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Patrick Smith, Chief Marketing Officer at Cvent joined our host Ray Rike to discuss the Future of B2B Events   including the latest trends and critical components required to engage attendees in 2024 and beyond. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tony Jamous, Founder and CEO Oyster HR share his insights on the global employee strategy imperative and his insights into why global employment is so important to the world's economy. During this episode, Tony and our host, Ray Rike discuss a wide array of global employment topics including: The Sustainable CEO - the what, why and howWhy global employment is important to the world economyThe reality of global employees - it may surprise youThe top three challenges in implementing a global employee strategy See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brandon Redlinger, Vice President of Marketing joins our host Ray Rike to discuss his journey to becoming the head of marketing for Chili Piper, a leading B2B SaaS company. The topics they cover include: The path to VP Marketing and beyondThe benefit of building a personal LinkedIn brand and followingThe evolution of the B2B SaaS CMO roleHow will B2B Marketing evolve in the AI era Brandon's first role was as a Sales Development Representative and then as an AE for a few years. Then he discovered his passion for technology and marketing, so he moved to the heart of B2B technology in the Bay Area and has held marketing roles at Demandbase working with Marketo founder, Jon Miller and then moving to Revenue.io and eventually to becoming the Head of Marketing at Chili Piper. Brandon first built his marketing experience in demand generation at both Engagio and Demandbase, and realized he needed to round out his marketing experience more and made the mode to Product Marketing at Revenue.io - that in retrospect was a good move to broaden his marketing experiences. Those roles were the foundation to becoming the VP of Marketing at Crosschq and now at Chili Piper. What surprised Brandon the most about his first role as the Head of Marketing? The first was learning how to manage internal politics and knowing how to "play the game" of getting things done and moving forward cross-functionally. Though Brandon initially bristled at the thought of "playing the game" he quickly realized it was about developing cross-functional relationships and communication skills to get peers on board and supportive of the marketing programs and priorities. Brandon just entered the VP Marketing role at Chili Piper and he shared some of the priority programs and initiatives he is working on first. With the introduction of new products and new ICPs, Brandon identified the need to tie use cases together and came up with the concept of "Demand Conversion" to sell a larger story and not a single-point solution - such as lead routing. Another key factor in Brandon's journey to becoming the head of Marketing was building his own LinkedIn brand. Brandon initially started his LinkedIn journey by seeing the number of profile visits to Jon Millers profile at Engagio, and he and a colleague started a shared journey to surpass Jon Miller's profile views - which is pretty impressive since Jon was the founder of Marketo and Engagio. The result was being invited to many podcasts as a guest and then being able to transfer that following to the company's brand. How important was Brandon's LinkedIn presence and following to getting his first and now second head of Marketing role? He says it did for sure and is especially important when the following are the same buyer personas that the hiring company sells their solution. How has the role of the CMO evolved? It all centers on the availability and usage of all the data to draw insights and then act upon finding the signal amongst all the noise. Brandon is convinced that the success of marketing leaders in the future is understanding and even being able to read and predict where the market is going - not just understanding where it is! If you are an early career Marketing professional or in your first head of Marketing role, this is a very informative and instructive conversation! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Henry Mizel, the Senior Vice President of Revenue Operations and Partnerships at Apollo.io has over 8 years of experience as a Revenue Operations professional. During today's episode Henry and our Host, Ray Rike discuss the evolution of Revenue Operations as a function and a profession including the below topics: The evolution of Revenue OperationsThe primary responsibilities and measurements of RevOpsRevOps - strategic function or a tactical departmentProduct function to GTM executives (Data Side)Examples of unique value delivery If you are a Revenue Operations professional or an executive leader interested in learning more about how RevOps is being leveraged at one of the highest growth B2B SaaS companies in the private market, this episode is a great listen!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Private Equity (PE) firms are becoming a larger part of the exit optionality for B2B SaaS Founders and CEOs. Over the past few years, PE firms have gone down the market to evaluate companies in the $5M - $20M ARR range which was traditionally the domain of Venture Capital. In today's episode, we cover several aspects of being an Operating Partner at a Private Equity firm with Paul Stansik, Partner at ParkerGale Capital including: The role of an Operating Partner at a PE firmThe evolution of an Operating Partner over the past five yearsHow to work with a PE Operating Partner as a GTM executiveThe most concerning “metrics trends” over the last 12 monthsWhat CEOs should expect from their VP of SalesPaul started with the four primary roles of an operating partner in PE including:  1) Keeper of the standards and having a strong view and sense of what "good" looks like. Documenting the processes and associated measurements that lead to the strongest performance across customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. 2) Being a strategic diplomat - nothing gets done unless there is an agreement in place as an operating partner does not "OWN" the process so they need to get the management team to a place of agreeing that something needs to be done and then agree to the "WHAT" of needs to be done. 3) Help to keep score - many founders may not have yet implemented a robust measurement system across the GTM motions. Establishing those measurements provides more insight and predictability of how success is being measured and reported. This includes metrics definitions, instrumentation, and reporting cadence. 4) Creating an environment and/or culture of the company that includes being supportive, yet demanding to ensure the investment is on track to provide the targeted return on investment. What are the current SaaS metrics trends that are most concerning? Paul highlighted that "quota attainment" in the 30% - 50% range is extremely concerning. What makes this level of quota achievement acceptable and what to do about it? If you are a CRO knowing that a low percentage of new reps will make quota and not doing something about it is a real problem. Paul posted an article on LinkedIn on "Why Sales Sucks" and this is the primary theme of the article. If you are working with or will be starting to work with an Operating Partner in a Private Equity firm this conversation is chalked full of great insights and ideas. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How does being a World Series of Poker champion influence the entrepreneurial journey? That was one of the surprising insights that David Daneshgar, Co-Founder and CEO of Whippy shared during his appearance on this weeks episode. During David's conversation with our host, Ray Rike he shared his experiences and vision for AI enabled customer communications which including the below topics: How being a World Series of Poker Champion helps David as an entrepreneurThe promise, potential and reality of AI empowered customer communicationsCustomer Use Cases for AI enabled customer communications If you are responsible for a company that has a large number of customers, and customer communications this episode provides thought provoking insights into how AI can not only enable but transform how companies interact and engage with their customers. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nicolas Kopp is the Founder and CEO of Rillet - with the vision to help recurring revenue companies leverage a Financial Management Platform purpose-built for their business model. During our conversation with Nic we covered the following topics: Unique Accounting Challenges in a Recurring Revenue ModelThe Importance of Revenue Recognition in a Recurring Revenue BusinessFinancial Performance Reporting beyond the Income Statement and Balance SheetEntering a Mature Market Category with a New ProductOne of the first challenges a recurring revenue business will face is translating an annual subscription and the associated "bookings" into GAAP revenue. During Nic's previous roles including working at a recurring revenue that scaled to over $100M AR, he saw the challenges firsthand that Finance had with converting subscription revenue into GAAP revenue. What are some of the most common challenges Nic sees in the market? #1 is what is my MRR/ARR and do I trust itWhat is my deferred revenueDo I trust my accounts receivables report Traditional accounting platforms, such as QuickBooks - though solid, functional software is that they do not typically have the concept of "recurring revenue" and the unique revenue management, reporting, and SaaS metrics that are specific to a recurring revenue business. One of the primary challenges that Nic and Rillet faced when first launching their product is that the Accounting Platform space is quite mature, and most companies are not proactively looking to swap out their technology until scaling revenue which introduces new challenges and financial management challenges that cannot be addressed with their current platform. This is also often associated with when a first-time VP Finance or senior finance executive enters the picture and quickly realizes they do not have the information or infrastructure required to manage "by the numbers". If you are a founder/CEO entering a mature category or a Finance leader who is struggling with Financial Reporting in a Recurring Revenue business - this conversation is full of unique insights and ideas. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dave Gerhardt, the founder and CEO of Exit Five, former Chief Marketing Officer at Privy, and Chief Brand Officer at Drift discusses the challenges, opportunities, and success strategies for building a Community for B2B Marketers. In 2021, Dave started Exit Five as a community for B2B Marketers as a side project while at Privy. it started by posting on LinkedIn and launching a podcast building a following and then creating a community at $10 per month. Within the first 60 days, over 1,000 members joined the community and now the community includes over 3,000 B2B Marketers. Dave defines Exit Five as a media company focused on B2B Marketing. With over 3,000 members Dave has a unique perspective on the role of Chief Marketing Officers and their organizations.   Over the past 2-3 years, the environment has changed resulting in much greater scrutiny on Marketing expenses and thus rigor has returned. Moreover, the market conditions have forced CMOs to ensure Marketing and Sales are more tightly aligned - especially as Dave Kellogg says if the CEO goes right and the CRO goes left - the best CMOs stay close to the CRO by going left. What does Dave think about measuring ROI on evolving trends such as community-led growth or media-led growth? Dave highlighted this is a common problem, and part of the reality is that good marketers just need to know that these are critical "long-term" strategies, that need to be blended with up to 70% of the investments being more short-focused, but having the courage to help the CFO and CEO understand the strategic, long-term value of the other 30% of Marketing investment. Bottom line, getting the CEO and CFO to understand the strategic value of Marketing is a key skill of those most successful CMOs who can see the return over multiple years, not just a few quarters. Another point Dave highlighted was that over time members of your community will self-identify how they heard about your solutions and why they decided to "raise their hand" to buy something. Community is even more important when the deals are bigger and the risks are heightened.  If you are thinking about or modeling the investment and returns of building a B2B community, this conversation with Dave Gerhardt is full of great ideas and critical insights into what turns an audience into a community. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Becky Lawlor is the founder, of Redpoint Content, which advises and assists technology companies by providing original research services and content marketing services Evolution of Content MarketingRole of Research in a Content Marketing StrategyOriginal Research Content Challenges Over the past 3-5 years, content marketing has evolved from a "nice to have" versus a "must have". The primary goals include increasing brand awareness, enhancing demand creation, and ultimately generating pipeline. Over the past 12 - 18 months in an environment of increased efficiency and reduced expenses, the quality of content is trumping content quantity. The benefit of AI is as much about quality as it is about producing more content with fewer resources. Becky started by sharing that a good content marketing strategy and even organizational structure begins with understanding what the target audience is looking for and reflects a high level of engagement. Becky's findings are that "original research" is consistently one of the highest-performing content marketing assets, in fact, many of Becky's clients report that original research-based content performs 2x - 3x higher, as measured by downloads" as other types of content, such as how to guides. Becky highlighted that while industry analysts provide a valuable service, most technology buyers understand there is a certain "pay to play" aspect to analyst-published research which increases the value of a brand's own "primary research". One key caveat is that when a whitepaper is a "funded project" for a brand - that an analyst report is not that much more valuable than a brand conducting its own "original research". If you are responsible or depend on pipeline creation, or have direct responsibility for identifying, creating, and publishing content that increases brand awareness and drives demand creation, this is a great listen!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jake Stein, Founder and CEO Common Paper is a multiple time founder of B2B SaaS companies including his third with the goal to help standardize Master Service Agreements across the Cloud industry. In today's episode we will be covering three main topics: Vision behind standardizing Cloud Service AgreementsCloud Service Agreement BenchmarksChallenges and Advantages of being a multiple time B2B SaaS founder What was the catalyst behind founding Common Paper? Jake highlighted that everything regarding contracts in his previous two start-ups was just too hard! Starting a partnership with the debate and sometimes misalignment that goes with contract negotiation is not consistent to a mutually beneficial partnership. Jake highlighted that when you buy a house - almost every state has a standard real estate purchase agreement. Even the B2B Tech industry has standardized some fund raising agreements, such as the SAFE agreement. The first participants are often early stage SaaS companies, who have a strong desire to remove the friction and resources required for new customer agreements. Currently 20,000 different companies have downloaded the standardized agreement, and 1,000+ companies have used the Common Paper platform to sign the standardized agreements with their customers. As a by product of having 1,000+ companies using the Common Paper standard Cloud Service Agreement - this provides unique access to the data and metrics associated with all the contracts being signed on their platform. Some of the interesting benchmarks include: 90% of Cloud Service Agreements have an auto renewal clause29% of Cloud Service Agreements have built in price increases (averaging 5% - 8% per year)70% of Cloud Service Agreements are annual subscriptions48% invoice monthly and 40% invoice once annually85% of Cloud Service Agreements cap "Limitation of Liability" at 1x fees paid in previous 12 monthsThe presence of Data Privacy and AI increased 10x over past 12 months (2.5% to 25%) To see the rest of the benchmarks from the Common Paper Cloud Service Agreement click here. If you are responsible for writing, negotiating or signing Master Service Agreements with SaaS and Cloud companies, this conversation with Jake is chalked full of hard to find insights and benchmarks for the terms and conditions being used today! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jamie Davidson is a two-time Chief Technology and after his stint as a first Chief Customer Officer decided that Customer Success technology needed a next-generation platform with over 500 customers and funding by A16Z. As a result, Vitally.io was born! Impact of Catalyst and Totango on the Customer Success Technology IndustryThe Future of Customer SuccessThe Evolution of Customer Success MetricsThe Challenges of a Founder in Customer Success Technology Recently, two leading players in the Customer Success Platform category, Totango and Catalyst announced their plans to merge. Jamie's perspective is that it could be problematic for category momentum in the short term, but was simply a business decision by two companies that were in no way indicative of the Customer Success platform category as a whole or the Customer Success procession. How is Customer Success going to evolve over the next few years? Jamie sees Customer Success becoming more strategic, especially with the help of additional data, insights, and AI. Ultimately, a balance of the existing role as the primary customer relationship manager, while becoming more strategic as the "voice of the customer" to better inform product roadmap, marketing messaging, and new customer sales. Customer Success, coupled with better tooling has the potential to materially increase the strategic impact that Customer Success delivers. The evolution of Customer Success technology will move beyond the goal of serving the Customer Success leader and will surface insights and data important to other executive leaders beyond the CS leader, including the other GTM leaders and product leaders. If you are leading a Customer Success team, making budget allocation decisions for Customer Success, or are just interested in understanding and helping to determine the future of Customer Success in your company, this conversation with Jamie is a very helpful listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig Walker, Founder and CEO of Dialpad has trained their artificial intelligence foundational model using over 6 Billion minutes of customer conversations. If you are interested in how AI is currently and will positively impact the value, efficiency, and effectiveness of customer communications for Sales, Customer Service, and beyond this is a must-listen episode of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast. During this episode, we cover a wide-ranging set of topics on how AI (Artificial Intelligence) and specifically generative AI will transform the productivity and business impact of customer communications including: The importance of large amounts of data in training AI modelsThe future of Customer Service in an AI-empowered environmentThe potential to materially increase the productivity of a sales process with AI What is the difference between "customer intelligence" and "conversational intelligence"? First, customer intelligence is built into the foundation of a company's communications infrastructure - think phone system platform. Because of this, in real time a customer intelligence platform can guide customer service and/or sales reps in real-time to increase the efficacy of every customer interaction. Moreover, any external communication can now be enhanced across every function and every conversation. Artificial Intelligence is not new, but generative AI is new with the catalyst of OpenAI and ChatGPT in November 2022. Dialpad has been capturing customer conversations to score performance measurements like customer satisfaction and analyze if the customer was satisfied - all before the emergence of generative AI. Once generative emerged, Dialpad unleased their 15 Data Science PhDs to build their own large language model to better understand every customer conversation and in real-time offer up the appropriate response or next step action! Now, think about the opportunities uncovered by taking every minute of your company's customer and prospect communications, and customize the large language model specific to your company, your company terms, product names and every other unique "variable" specific to your business?! If you are responsible for customer-facing functions and are interested in better understanding how AI can dramatically increase the efficacy of every customer and/or prospect communication, this conversation with Craig Walker, founder and CEO of Dialpad is full of unique insights, ideas, and recommendations that have been formed from over 6 Billion minutes of customer communications. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ecosystem-Led Growth is an evolution of Partner-Led Growth and is the vision of Bob Moore, Founder and CEO of Crossbeam and the author of Ecosystem-Led Growth. Bob started his tech career as an investor at Insight Partners, and then founded RJ Metrics which was acquired by Magento in 2016, now part of Adobe, and then Bob co-founded Stitch Data which was ultimately acquired by Talend and is now part of Click. Crossbeam was founded to unlock the modern platform's architecture and data layer enabling companies to collaborate by making it much easier to share data across multiple partner companies. The catalyst to Bob founding Crossbeam was a $2.6B mistake! That mistake was one Bob made at RJ Metrics where they found and then fell out of product-market fit as evidenced by lower growth. When they analyzed the factor leading to the reduced growth, they identified the emergence of the API economy and how buyers wanted to be able to buy point solutions that were easy to integrate with other point solutions - which was the inspiration to build a product that fully leverages the modern data stack and open API ecosystem. What is Ecosystem-Led Growth? It is the ability to leverage a network of partners who can easily share insights with partners who sell complimentary products to the same target buyers. Simple questions like do we have customers or prospects in common, or do you have an active sales cycle going on that we could partner on to build a joint solution for the customer? What is the difference between building an "app ecosystem" such as the Salesforce App Exchange and a "partner ecosystem"? It starts with a foundation built upon an open system architecture that enables the sharing of data to collaborate on common target customers, and those companies in the ecosystem are willing to share specific data with partners to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Why are most B2B SaaS companies still using a traditional direct sales model versus focusing more on partner ecosystems as a primary lead source? The answer starts with the negative reputation of how partnership models were implemented, managed, and operated historically. Partnerships were viewed as encroaching on sales rep opportunities and having a partner damage the reputation of their partners by not adequately communicating the value, feature, and function of their partner's solution. Modern Ecosystem-Led growth does not rely upon an army of partnership reps, it leverages the data that already exists in each partnership infrastructure, such as their CRM system. Now, based upon corporate policy, rules, and intercompany workflows, an existing partner can share the relevant data with their partner(s) which will enable that sales rep to have access to data that will make approaching a new potential customer armed with relevant data regarding the tech stack and preferences of a potential customer. If you are looking for new ways to increase revenue growth efficiency, decrease customer acquisition costs, and identify "best fit" potential customers by participating in an ecosystem with partners who share those goals and understand the concept of "give to get" this episode is chalked full of ideas, insights and applicable steps to leverage the emerging growth strategy of Ecosystem-Led Growth! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mark Petruzzi, best-selling author of Selling the Cloud has just released his newest book "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" in collaboration with co-authors Bob Scarperi, Paul Melchiorre, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast! In this episode, we discuss the primary concepts of the book, and the unique approach to including multiple titans in the B2B technology industry as contributors to the book The "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" book covers each stage of the Sales process and how following the process dramatically increases sales productivity and revenue growth efficiency. The process steps and associated chapters discussed include: Ideal Customer Profile - which accounts will buyBuyer Personas - which decision-makers can buyBusiness Diagnosis - uncovering the valueFunctional Diagnosis - understanding the winsSolution Design - validating the valueData-Driven Funnel Analytics - the end-to-end viewHow to Measure a Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling ProcessThe Predictive and Generative AI power move If you are a B2B sales professional, sales team leader, or a senior executive looking for ideas to generate more efficient revenue growth - this conversation and the "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" process and book provide great insights, success stories, and applicable steps to take. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hayden Stafford is the President and Chief Revenue Officer of Seismic, a leading Sales Enablement Platform. He recently dropped by the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast studio to discuss the state of B2B Sales. We covered a wide-ranging list of topics and insights including: The State of B2B SalesAccelerating Growth in an “efficient capital” environmentGrowth is more than metrics…but metrics matter tooSales Process vs Customer Journey - how do they co-exist First, Hayden shared how he has seen B2B Sales evolve over the past 12-18 months. Though the fundamentals of B2B Sales success have not changed, they have become more important. With reduced win rates, longer sales cycles, and more people in the buying process it requires B2B Sales organizations to become more effective and efficient. How to make B2B Sales professionals more effective - a recent McKinsey survey said better preparing sales professionals with better enablement and enhanced sales intelligence. Many buyers are looking to "consolidate" their SaaS investments, including RevTech into fewer vendors. A key to helping B2B SaaS salespeople be more efficient, one corporate strategy is to expand the product portfolio to become a "platform" versus a "point solution". Common measurements to justify Revenue Technology investments include: Go-to-Market EfficiencyBuyer ExperienceOperational OptimizationTime to Market / Agility to Market Changes If you are directly responsible for a B2B Sales team or have a B2B Sales team that is primarily responsible for your customer acquisition and/or expansion performance, this conversation is full of great ideas and insights! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaking to Jacco van der Kooij, Founder and CEO, Winning by Design is like drinking a shot of espresso first thing in the morning. During this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, our host Ray Rike covers a wide array of topics that essentially asks the question - "Has SaaS lost Go-to-Market Fit?" and if so "What to do about it". Topics covered include: Data that highlights the need to change Go-to-Market tactics in SaaSThe concept and reality of the need to "Cut to Grow"The importance of Unit EconomicsGo-to-Market Fit - What is it?ScaleUp Fit - when is the right timeGTM Efficiency Metrics that Matter more in 2024 and beyond If you are responsible for the Go-to-Market functions in a B2B SaaS company, or as the CEO and CFO depend on the GTM functions to delivery efficient revenue growth, this conversation is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Customer Subscription financing is an innovative way to increase cash reserves in a non equity dilutive manner and not incurring the high interest rates associated with revenue credit facilities. Alex Sandkuhl, Founder and CEO of Keystone Growth provides several examples of company use cases and the benefits of the customer subscription financing model. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kelly Hopping recently assumed the role of Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase discusses a wide variety of topics that are critical to the modern B2B SaaS CMO in this wide-ranging, fast-moving discussion: Marketing Focus on Pipeline GenerationAccount Based + Intent data = Efficient GrowthTop CMO Metrics in 2024Thriving in a corporate career while staying true to yourself Every single dollar matters in the new reality for B2B SaaS companies, how does this impact B2B Marketing? Focus is the number one strategy in 2024 and beyond, which means ensuring you have a very targeted Ideal Customer Profile, which demands focus on the highest intent potential customers. Using intent data is one tactic to be deployed to increase the ROI on marketing investments. Specifically, less than 5% of the total ICP is in market for your product at any given point in time, so being able to read and act upon the most predictive intent data signals is a core competency for the modern B2B marketing organization. Next, we discussed how to best prioritize even inbound, hand raisers who come to a company's website. Understanding how the inbound lead has interacted with other digital assets, and confirming they are a good fit into the target ICP based upon firmographic and even technographic data. Another key capability for the most efficient revenue growth is ensuring that the right leads get into the right hands as quickly as possible. Kelly highlighted that having the "right people" in place is a precursor to having the right processes and technology in place. Another key requirement is to ensure Marketing and Sales are aligned and eliminate finger-pointing by having the same, shared KPIs focused on revenue and pipeline growth. What are the Metrics that Matter to the Chief Marketing Officer cares about in 2024 and beyond? Kelly highlighted that revenue is the top shared goal for executive team members. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and the CAC Ratio + CAC Payback Period is an important metric to measure the efficiency of acquiring new customers. Beyond acquiring customers, Kelly highlighted that retaining customers is also important to ensure the investment in acquiring customers is best measured over the customer's lifetime and the associated Customer Lifetime Value. In today's more cautious capital reality, customers are focusing on not adding more vendors, thus the role of customer satisfaction is a role that Marketing is more focused on today and tomorrow to acquire, retain, and then EXPAND existing customer relationships. Kelly even highlighted that Net Revenue Retention is another important metric to both drive efficient revenue growth, but also to help identify and confirm the best ICP. How to measure the ROI on brand investment? One, is to see how organic "brand searches" are trending on Google + is inbound, click-through rates increasing. Then looking at down stream metrics like conversion rates, win rates and sales cycle time should be trending positively with an increased investment in brand - however it is important to note that some brand investments will be maximized over a longer term, but can be evaluated near term on some of the aforementioned leading indicator metrics. If you are interested in learning best practices on how a Chief Marketing Officer uses metrics to optimize the return on marketing investment in customer acquisition and customer expansion, this conversation with Kelly Hopping, Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Philip Watson, the CFO at Paddle and formerly the head of FP&A at ZoomInfo discusses how the role of FP&A evolved at ZoomInfo from the early days up to and after their IPO. In addition, we cover a wide array of topics with Philip including: The evolution of FP&A at ZoomInfoHow the role of FP&A changes at different stages of growthFP&A as a foundation to the path of CFO If you are interested in a financial executives view of a B2B technology company's evolution to IPO, and the role that a world class FP&A function plays in each stage of growth, this conversation with Philip Watson is chalked full of interesting insights and ideas!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Manny Medina, the founder and CEO of Outreach discusses the state of B2B Sales, the future of sales execution software and how AI will impact both. Manny shares the Outreach vision is to unlock the full potential of B2B Sales professionals and to unlock the selling potential of every seller. During this episode, we discuss the following topics: State of B2B Sales and productivity heading into 2024The increased need for adding value in each buyer interactionThe metrics to measure sales productivity increaseThe potential impact of AI on B2B Sales Manny highlighted that it is very tough out there for sales reps, and the need to be laser focused on the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) which will lead to increased sales efficiency. Investing a sales professional's time on the target customer segments with the highest potential to become a customer is key to efficient revenue growth. Marketing is having a much harder time on cutting through the noise, and as such Sales needs to be much more focused in which leads and opportunities they pursue. Cold calling or emailing will fail if not of high value to the target prospect. For any considered purchase, the number of people in the buying process has increased, as such the number of people a sales rep must reach out to has materially increased, and the sales rep with a strong and high value point of value will stand out! As an example, Outreach focuses on the sales outreach process during customer on-boarding to increase the chances for increased sales outreach productivity for their customers. What are the Return on Investment metrics to use when investing in a piece of sales technology? Manny answered by looking at the entire sales process and the need to identify the specific steps in the sales process that is not working. Often, when companies assessment the problem in the sales process, it is critical to be very specific in the "problem" and start by focusing there, and determining the metric(s) that best measure the current state of that specific step. Manny expanded this topic by highlighting that we are asking sales managers to do even more work due to the increased number of sales technologies used, highlight the need to listen to "recorded calls" due to the pervasive use of conversational intelligence. This is an example of an area that needs to be evaluated so sales managers can spend more time coaching. Where is AI going to have the largest impact on sales productivity? Manny predicts there is no future without every sales professional having a AI assistant. The "AI assistant" will help the sales professional optimize how and where they invest their time, essentially reducing the amount of wasted effort spent on low value activities and opportunities. Another key area to benefit from AI will be predicting customer churn and then providing insights into how best to mitigate churn on an account by account basis. This led to the use of AI to increase forecast accuracy - which Manny started by highlighting that predictive forecasting is very hard due to the fast moving dynamics in the market. Using historical information to forecast can provided false positives due to changing market dynamics today. A better approach to use AI to analyze each opportunity today, and by using opportunity variables coupled with AI using large language models will increase forecasting accuracy. If you have a B2B sales organization and you are looking for opportunities to increase their sales productivity, this conversation with Manny Medina, Founder and CEO of Outreach is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You Mon Tsang is the founder and CEO of ChurnZero. During this episode, You Mon and our host, Ray Rike discuss the following topics: How the role of Customer Success has evolved over the past 12 - 24 monthsHow the measurements used to determine CS ROI have evolvedThe top three metrics that You Mon recommends for Customer Success teams The catalyst for founding ChurnZero began when he was a Marketing leader and had a large selection of technologies to automate, manage, and measure marketing performance. When You Mon assumed responsibility for Customer Success, he quickly realized that there was not a large number of options to automate, manage, and measure Customer Success. One of the major changes in Customer Success is the evolution of focusing primarily on Net Revenue Retention (NRR), which is a top two company-level metric. During the SaaS recession of 2022-2023, You Mon was an increased focus on Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) which measures a company's ability to retain a customer on an ARR basis, independent of including expansion ARR. Retaining customers today is the key to a strong foundation for growth in the future. What leading indicators are most predictive of GRR? You Mon highlighted NPS, Customer Health Score, and product utilization as good leading indicators...however, the "health" of the customer is an important external variable that is harder to know but is still highly impactful to Gross Revenue Retention.   How does a CS organization's ability to determine "customer-verified outcomes" impact customer retention? You mentioned that verifying customer outcomes is very hard to measure. It is an admirable goal, and when your product natively impacts direct outcomes it is much easier. Is Customer Success a cost center or a profit center? Often this is associated with where Customer Success expenses are recorded...Cost of Goods Sold or Operating Expense? You Mon highlighted that the majority of his customers place CS expenses in Operating Expenses and thus should be measured by expense vs revenue retained and expanded. If you are a CEO, CFO, or CRO responsible for maximizing the return on investment for Customer Success, this is a great episode. If you are a Customer Success professional, You Mon shares some unique ideas and a vision for the future of Customer Success which will be a great addition to how you currently view Customer Success. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Helen Lin is the founder and CEO of Discern. As a business end-user of business performance data, she discovered that the data required for analysis was locked in the system of records, such as the CRM, ERP, or HCM. This required a dedicated team of analysts to identify the source of the required data, a process to extract the data from the system of records before they could even begin the process of analyzing the data.   During this episode, we cover three main areas with Helen: The challenges with managing the customer acquisition funnel in 2023How full-funnel analytics impacts GTM efficiencyWhat is the future of full-funnel analytics 2023 was the year of efficiency, especially in the Go-to-Market functions. One of the key GTM efficiency metrics is the CAC Payback Period which measures how many months are required to payback the cost of acquiring a customer, after factoring in the Gross Margin. Marketing departments focused on the cost per lead, coupled with the associated conversion rates while Sales departments were laser-focused on productivity per sales rep, including an enhanced focus on average sales price per deal. Helen dove into the challenges of measuring "cost per x" due to the difficulty in assessing the cost data which is often locked in the human capital management and/or core financial platforms. A key point that Helen highlighted is that "growth" has re-emerged as the number one factor in enterprise value to revenue multiples, which suggests a heightened focus on Sales and Marketing investments and the associated returns. Full funnel analytics goes beyond new customer opportunity inspection or pipeline inspection, and provides a full picture of how the end-to-end funnel is performing from initial lead creation to Closed-Won ARR through customer retention and expansion. The role of management and Revenue Operations is to identify the areas, often the bottlenecks that negatively impact funnel conversion performance. Helen provided a customer example that assessed the profitability of each customer segment. The analysis went beyond measuring just customer acquisition performance and extended the analysis to include both churn rates and expansion ARR by segment. That analysis resulted in identifying a customer that was not profitable and thus ended all future investments in acquiring customers in that segment.   Marketing and Sales currently have a difficult time assessing the data that highlights how each unique stage of the customer acquisition process performs as measured by conversion rates to the next stage and simultaneously how much time a lead or opportunity remains in the same stage. One primary example is that many companies experience 80% of deals forecasted to close in the current quarter being pushed to a subsequent quarter. Another key metric is "Win-Rate" which is not a point-in-time measurement, rather it is a range that evolves over the period that opportunities remain in the pipeline. IF you are a Go-to-Market leader or the CEO or CFO of a B2B SaaS company, this discussion with Helen on the need and approaches to better understand the entire customer's journey from acquisition to retention to expansion + customer segment profitability, this conversation with Helen Lin, Founder and CEO of Discern.io is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Randy Wootton, the CEO of Maxio is a multiple-time B2B SaaS CEO. However, his current role is unique in that within six months of taking on the role, the existing company which was the combination of two well-known companies (SaaS Optics and Chargify) decided to rebrand as Maxio and doing this during the great SaaS market correction started in the 2H-22. During this episode shared his experienced-based insights as a multiple-time B2B SaaS CEO including: Re-branding two combined B2B SaaS companies into a new single brandInsights into Achieving Efficient Growth During Uncertain TimesBalancing Growth and ProfitabilityMetrics Operators and Investors Can Agree Upon Maxio is a combination of SaaS Optics and Chargify. Each company was very similar as measured by size, and number of customers and was viewed as a "Merger of Equals". As such, when combining these two companies neither was viewed as the acquiring company, so Randy needed to chart the course to combine two very equal companies, to gain both operating efficiency and market scale. Randy's first introduction was being a Maxio customer and appreciated how it made him more prepared to manage the business in near real-time, close the books, and then prepare the financial reports for the board without the stress of last-minute, manual processes. In Randy's words, Maxio provided him with a business radar, calling upon his experience as a naval aviator...and was the perfect foundation to become the Maxio CEO. On the topic of launching a new brand, Randy shared the jury is still out on whether this was the best strategy versus doubling down on one of the existing brands. One of the biggest challenges is building back and upon the SaaS Optics and Chargify brand awareness. The next topic Randy and I covered was the simultaneous challenge of balancing profitability and growth amid the great B2B SaaS recession over the last 18 months. Randy started by discussing their core target market is other B2B SaaS companies, primarily in the SMB market segment, which has been the segment most impacted by the current trends in growth and capital availability for SMB companies. Initially, Randy had to pivot to get the company profitable, and then be focused on determining which ICP(s) to target and what is the optimal Customer Acquisition Cost investment, while balancing growth and profitability. Randy highlighted that while growth is still a priority over profitability, it is critical to reach profitability to control your destiny versus being beholden to external capital sources. This is especially important during a lower growth external environment, which allows the strongest and most well-prepared companies to begin accelerating growth investments in alignment with external market conditions. Lastly, Randy highlighted the two SaaS Metrics that Maxio and Battery Ventures use to collaborate on analyzing efficient growth metrics and their trends. One is the Blended CAC Ratio which measures the expenses in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success divided by New ARR from both new name customers and existing customers expansion. Trying to get to a Blended CAC Ratio of 1 - which means $1 of Sales and Marketing Expenses to acquir See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Peter Berg, Managing Partner at M12 - the Microsoft corporate venture capital arm joins our host, Ray Rike to discuss the trends and measurements of success in venture capital inside Microsoft. Topics that Peter provide deep insights into included: The role of Corporate Venture Capital - insight from Visa and MicrosoftThe evolution of venture investing in 2024 and beyondMega-trends that will shape the future of technology investing Top 3 Cloud/SaaS Industry forecasts for 2024 If you are interested in how large technology companies use a captive internal VC organization to drive strategy, ecosystem reach and financial returns simultaneously this conversation with Peter Berg, Managing Partner at M12 - the VC arm of Microsoft is highly educational and entertaining! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kevan Savage, Principal of the Marketing practice at the Alexander Group shares the results of the research and associated report from the Alexander Group - Unveiling Pipeline to Profits with our host, Ray Rike. The report highlights the trends in demand generation and the associated return on investment of those changes. Key topics discussed during this episode include: Marketing expense trends as a % of RevenueAllocation of Marketing investments for Demand GenerationPipeline contribution by sourceFull conversion benchmarks from Marketing Qualified Leads to Revenue As companies model and plan for next year - this episode is chalked full of the latest trends, budgets and Return on Investment by company size and is a great listen for CMOs, CEOs and CFOs as they focus on efficiency growth strategies, and tactics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Phil Pergola, CEO at CloudZero shares his unique insights into how to better understand, manage, and reduce the Cost of Goods Sold associated with using Cloud Computing infrastructure for B2B SaaS applications. During this episode Phil and our host, Ray Rike discuss the following topics: Cloud Cost Trends as a percentage of the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)Reducing Cloud costs techniques beyond vendor negotiationHow to identify Cloud cost-saving opportunities Gross Margins in the B2B SaaS industry have remained fairly stable over the past 10 years - so why focus on Cloud costs? The second largest expense for most B2B SaaS companies are human resource costs (#1) and then cloud delivery costs which are continuing to increase as the number of cloud infrastructure vendors is expanding to new tools like observability, data analytics, and security tools. There are three things that primarily drive cloud costs: 1) SW Architecture; 2) Pricing model(s) offered by vendors and used by customers; and 3) Actual Cloud usage which is directly driven by engineering decisions and customer utilization patterns. Taking a closer look at #1 and #3 is a missed opportunity in the majority of digital product providers. Why is it that COGS is often a secondary expense item that CEOs and CFOs focus on? First, it is typically seen as the domain of the CTO and engineering teams, and it is very hard to allocate discrete costs in the product infrastructure which contribute to non-optimized cloud consumption patterns. If you are looking for new and innovative ways to increase efficiency in those areas which can result in increased Gross Profit - then this is a great listen to understand the most recent trends and techniques for controlling your ever-growing Cloud costs! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode, we are joined by Udi Ledergor, the Chief Marketing Officer at GONG responsible for first creating the Conversational Intelligence category and then again in creating the Revenue Intelligence category resulting in one of the fastest growing B2B SaaS companies in history. In this episode, Udi highlights the evolving strategy and measurements for the Marketing organization at Gong along the growth journey to greater than $100M ARR and a $6B+ in company value! Creating a category builds the overall Target Addressable Market (TAM) - creating a brand increases the percentage of the TAM the category leader captures. Gong's journey and Udi's role in building their success is a valuable lesson chalked full of great ideas, insights and experiences! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dave Kellogg is the author of Kellblog, Executive in Residence at Balderton Capital, multiple time SaaS CEO, investor and an OG for all things SaaS Metrics. During this episode, which is from his presentation at SaaS Metrics Palooza 23', Dave shares his insights and best practices on presenting SaaS metrics like a pro - especially to board members and investors. Ten mistakes that many make in presenting SaaS Metrics include: Amateur presentationCherry-picking Mis-benchmarkingOmitting contextPiecemealingDumping Smooth operatorForgetting questionMissing investor point of viewRetinal burn This episode is chalked full of details, nuances and insight. If you would like to see the slides that Dave uses to guide this session at SaaS Metrics Palooza 23' you can download them at: benchmarkit.ai/saas-metrics-palooza-23-1/how-to-present-and-analyze-saas-metrics-like-a-pro See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Science of Scaling, was a session delivered by Mark Roberge at SaaS Metrics Palooza 23'. In this episode, Mark discusses a math centric approach to determine if Product-Market Fit has been achieved, when to scale GTM investment and how much to invest in growth. Key concepts introduced include: How to use a mathematical formula to determine if Product-Market Fit is achieved (PET Metric)The leading indicators (unit economics) that inform increasing investment in customer acquisitionNorth Star metrics used by leading B2B SaaS companies to measure Product-Market FitThe power and competitive advantage of capturing daily leading indicators to scale economics If you prefer to watch the entire session and see the associated slides - the video can be seen at: https://bit.ly/SaaSMetricsPaloozaMarkRoberge If you are asking questions such as: 1) Have we reached product-market fit; 2) Should we invest more to scale customer acquisition; 3) How much and how quickly should we invest more capital to accelerate growth then this episode is a must listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chad Gold, the CFO at B2B SaaS Sales Engagement Platform leader Salesloft, shares how the role of a SaaS CFO has evolved over the last few years. Chad and the Metrics that Measure Up podcast host, Ray Rike discuss the following topics during this episode: How the B2B SaaS CFO role has evolvedHow performance metrics are used to manage and report on the businessHow performance metrics are used for budgeting and planningHow the B2B SaaS CFO Role will evolve over the next few years Chad started his career as a corporate finance analyst at Ernst and Young (EY) and then migrated to the Home Depot in a variety of financial roles that built his foundation into the strategic side of finance. Chad's first B2B technology job was at Ariba, a division of SAP where he was able to apply his FP&A experience in a technology company. Chad has been the Salesloft CFO for 5 years and has seen the company grow by 10x including a majority investment by Vista Equity. Chad shared his "lines not dots" which means the ability to meet people and then foster relationships with them over time is a key to being exposed to different opportunities which is how Chad transitioned into the B2B Technology industry. Chad highlighted that his role as a CFO has not evolved that much over the last couple of years, beyond being asked to help identify those aspects of the business that are best positioned to drive efficient growth especially now that capital is more difficult to secure, and thus difficult capital allocation decisions are more important in 2023 than they were in 2020 - 2022. What are "Chad's" go-to metrics? He started at a high level with momentum and velocity metrics like the ARR funnel, new booking, churn, expansions, and the leading indicators of pipeline and customer health. Chad highlighted the importance of the number of integrations to other systems which is a great indicator of retention! He also highlighted his engagement with the key GTM functions, such as the Customer Success function to understand product engagement and utilization as an early indicator of churn and/or expansion - thus providing early visibility into making better forecasts. Chad used the term "you can read the news or make the news" which is how he approaches partnering with the other members of the executive team to ensure how the leading indicators metrics are performing, and even how to enhance their performance which will lead to better financial metrics outcomes. If you work with a CFO in your business, would like to become a CFO or even just want to better understand CFO best practices to drive better financial results through cross-functional collaboration and of course...metrics this conversation with Chad Gold is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael DiFilippo, Chief Financial Officer at Invoca shares his journey to becoming a B2B SaaS CFO and how the role has evolved over the last ten years, During this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, Michael and I discussed the following items: How the B2B SaaS CFO role has evolved over the last few yearsHow Michael uses Performance Metrics to manage the businessHow the B2B SaaS CFO role will evolve over the next few years Michael started his journey to becoming a SaaS CFO in accounting, treasury, internal audit, and ultimately FP&A roles in the industry goods and then consumer food industry. In 2008, Michael secured his first CFO role in a B2B SaaS company with MuleSoft - ultimately acquired by Salesforce. This cross-functional foundation was so valuable to Michael that he continues to try and provide members in his organization the same opportunities. Michael credits DuPont with his broad orientation to finance through their rotational program, and ultimately he landed in a division producing LED screens. Then, when his former boss went to Symbol Technologies, he was recruited to join him and that was the start of his finance experience in a technology company. We pivoted to how the B2B SaaS role has evolved since Michael first became a SaaS CFO in 2008. First, he has seen the role evolve to a more strategic, growth partner in an advisory role to the executive team, and sees the same "strategic" focus of CFOs from executive recruiters. Michael says part of the evolution to a strategic CFO role is partially based upon his base of experience, and being invited into those discussions. In parallel, Michael has seen the scope of the CFO role expand into including other functions like Legal, Human Resources, IT, and even operations in some companies. Bottom line - the modern SaaS CFO is no longer primarily focused on the accounting side of the equation. Another key focus is how Finance ensures they have access to all of the operational data required to have better insights into how the business, especially the leading indicators is performing. At Invoca, The FP&A team is the primary liaison to the Sales operations team to ensure the data from the CRM system is flowing efficiently into the financial reporting process. Michael next focused on the primary measurements and metrics he uses to help manage the operational side of the business, its primary forward-looking metrics like pipeline performance trends, Sales Development meetings, and top opportunities trending. As Michael said, ARR growth is the #1 metric using a metaphor of book more and churn less! At the board level, the operational metrics include top-level metrics including Rule of 40, Gross Retention, Net Revenue Retention, Total Sales and Marketing Efficiency, CAC Payback Period, Actual versus Plan, New ARR booked, and New Customers which will then expand into the leading indicator trends that will impact those outcome metrics in the future quarter(s). Michael shared his vision for the future evolution of the B2B SaaS CFO which he agreed with our host will become one of the more common paths for Chief Executive Officers in the future! If you are in Finance and/or have a goal to become a B2B SaaS CFO - this conversation with Michael DiFilippo is a must listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aidan Shaw, founded Myst Marketing to help B2C and B2B companies take advantage of the global pool of SEO resources around the world, while also experiencing the life of a digital nomad while building a great virtual company. During this episode, Aidan dives deep into the below SEO topics relevant today and in the future as Search Engines evolve in age of generative AI. The ROI of SEO: "Many businesses are divided over the tangible benefits of investing in SEO. Can you shed some light on the potential return on investment (ROI) for businesses that prioritize SEO, and provide some success stories or case studies that highlight its impact?" SEO vs. Paid Advertising: "There's always been a debate between the organic reach through SEO and the instant visibility offered by paid advertising. Can you discuss the pros and cons of each and why a business might choose to focus on one over the other, or perhaps a blend of both?" The Role of Content in SEO: "Content is often said to be king when it comes to SEO. How has the role of content in SEO strategies evolved over time, and what are the best practices businesses should consider when developing content with SEO in mind?" Future of SEO: "With advancements in technology, changing algorithms, and the rise of voice search and AI, where do you see the future of SEO heading? What should businesses be preparing for in the next 5-10 years to ensure they remain at the top of search result Content Creation and AI: "There's a buzz about AI-generated content in the digital marketing space. How effective is AI-generated content for SEO, and what are the ethical considerations around using such content?" Challenges with AI in SEO: "While AI presents numerous opportunities in the SEO realm, what are some potential challenges or pitfalls businesses should be aware of?" See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

CJ Gustafson, CFO at PartsTech and the creator of the Mostly Metrics Newsletter and Run the Numbers podcast joins our host Ray Rike on this episode to discuss Vanity Metrics and why they are so dangerousSaaS Metrics that might not be that valuableCautions when using a Usage-Based Pricing modelThe motivation of being a social media creator for B2B SaaSThe challenges of being a social media creator CJ and Ray share several interesting insights and sole disclosing perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of creating content on all things SaaS Metrics See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Mersch is the author of "Hacking SaaS" and a partner at FLG Partners. Eric joined our host, Ray Rike to discuss the details behind the thought process of writing the book and why he segmented it into discrete sections and chapters based upon the following: SMB to Mid-Market B2BEnterprise B2BB2CVertical Industry SolutionsHorizontal Solutions During this episode, Eric and Ray will dive into several of the B2B SaaS Metrics that Eric wrote about including: Customer Lifetime Value to CAC (CLTV:CAC Ratio)Net Revenue Retention (aka Dollar Based Net Retention in the book)Gross Churn (aka Gross Revenue Retention - GRR)Contribution Margin - why it's important to understand the value of adding more ARR...at a cost Hacking SaaS is one of the first books written to share the details behind the majority of metrics that make the recurring revenue business model of SaaS and Cloud companies so attractive that Enterprise Values are measured as a multiple of revenues VS profits. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Caleb Avery, Founder and CEO at Tilled shares how B2B SaaS companies can turn credit card payment processing fees from an operating expense into revenue as a Payment Facilitator (PayFac). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Kantor, the founder, and CEO of Funnelcast is applying the lessons he learned about statistical process controls in the hardware industry to the art and science of measuring and managing the opportunity funnel and then optimizing forecasting for B2B technology companies. The end-to-end Customer Acquisition process is still quite manual today, due to B2B Sales being such a human-centric endeavor. However, with a sufficient amount of opportunity data, the science behind statistical process controls in the manufacturing and consumer-facing industries is now available to B2B revenue leaders. But why are we will still using manual tasks to manage the B2B opportunity funnel? It starts with companies and their leaders not investing the time required to take a more data-centric, holistic view of even the most basic metrics - such as win rate. Yes, the win rate which is NOT a point-in-time measurement, rather it is a curve that includes different win rates along the time continuum being measured. As an example, the win rate on Day 75 is NOT the same as the win rate on Day 120. Moreover, if you simply use total deals won / total deals closed to calculate the win rate it excludes all of those opportunities that are still open and in process. What are the TOP metrics that are most predictive of a B2B company's sales success? Bill suggests there are only 3 sales metrics that matter, which include: Win RateOpportunity Creation RateAverage Contract Value But what about the more detailed, nuanced measurements such as "stage by stage" conversion rates which provides additional signals as to whether a deal is at risk of becoming "stale" and thus the probability to win reduces materially? They are critical to increasing the accuracy of forecasting - as those deals that are stalled are highly correlated to sales rep storytelling and the "exception status" of a single deal becoming the "outlier" reason for multiple deals - effectively eliminating the category of outlier to the norm. If you are responsible for managing the new customer acquisition forecast, and/or are responsible for financial performance metrics that are a direct result of win rates, opportunity creation and thus hitting the forecast and the plan - this is a highly instructive episode. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alok Goel, Founder and CEO of Drivetrain.ai shares how his roles as a product manager at Google and then a Venture Capitalist informed his journey as a B2B SaaS entrepreneur. As a VC, Alok would meet 15 - 20 companies per week, which provides a unique opportunity to identify specific trends across a large number of companies using pattern recognition. One trend Alok identified, was what differentiated those companies that would consistently, quarter over quarter meet and exceed their stated financial goals from those that missed their financial goals? It was the pursuit to answer this question that lead to Alok's founding of Drivetrain.ai The first question Alok answered was what were his experiences as a product manager at Google that informed his entrepreneurial journey. Google encouraged product managers to determine the best solution for a user without any constraints - which leads to the best solution for the audience. Then, think about how to deliver the solution with the constraints that do exist, both inside the company and in the market. Next, Alok shared the importance for a company to identify the data they have internally to gain insights into future growth efficiency, they should first identify what insights they wished they had about their business and then identify what instrumentation is required to achieve those insights. Alok shared the importance of never being too committed to one "way of thinking" that is not in alignment with the insights they are being provided from the market, from the internal metrics and data that is highlighting change is needed. In today's world, the external reality is changing so quickly, a company must change before the competitive market takes advantage of its resistance to change and evolution. Understanding that the insights you gain today are not going to change your business today - it will take some time. This is why having a continuous process that surfaces insights that can be quickly converted into actions that can be measured on their impact over time - this is why it is so important to understand the leading indicators (signals) and lagging indicators that are inter-dependant and predictive of future outcomes! If you are interested in how to develop a more predictive, holistic process that can capture the most important signals (leading indicators) that can be improved to ensure the ultimate lagging indicators such as Net Revenue Retention, CAC Payback Period and Revenue Growth rates are highly predictive and achieved consistently - this conversation with Alok Goel is a great listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta the industry-leading Equity Management Platform shares equity valuation insights and data from the 36,000+ customers and $2.5T in equity value running on their platform. Peter's goal is to make the data Carta has in their platform useful for CEOs and CFOs to inform decision-making. Start-up valuations trends increased dramatically in the 2020 - early 2022 timeframe - creating a valuation bubble. A few highlights from Peter included: Seed Stage: Q1-23: $13M pre-money (median) Q2-23: $12.7M pre-money (median) Series A:  Q1-23: $40M pre-money (median) Q2-23: $39M pre-money (median) Series C:  Q1-23:$300M pre-money (median) Q2-23 $250M pre-money (median) The ~ 20% decrease in pre-money valuations for Series C companies highlights the lack of a short-term IPO exit option and begins to normalize back to more historic valuations. Overall VC investment trends also highlight a material decrease in the amount of Venture Capital investments being made: Q4-21: $66B investment recorded on Carta (all-time high) Q1-23: $10B investment recorded on Carta Q2-23: $10B investment recorded on Carta - estimate only Peter highlighted the "SAFE" market held up better than most other price equity markets. Specifically, SAFE's over $500,000 were priced fairly equivalent to price equity seed rounds. Because of the ease of use of a SAFE, it has become the most common fundraising vehicle for pre-seed and seed rounds. Peter also highlighted that AI is a "hot space" for investors. The median cash raised for an AI company was $13M versus $8M for non AI companies in Q2-23. Next during the conversation, we discussed the trends on staffing and operating expense trends. Carta tracks terminations and the trends are quite insightful: January was the highest month for lay-offs ever for companies on Carta, numbering 17,000 lay-offs representing about 2% for the month (24% annualized) versus the norm of .5% - 1% per month. This number was reduced to 10,000 lay-offs in May. The other insight is that people are not leaving for voluntary termination reasons - highlighting the desire to not switch jobs in this market. One other topic we discussed was the compensation trends in early-stage companies. The rapid increases in salaries experienced in 2020 through the first half of 2022 have changed dramatically. Even software engineering roles saw a -.3% decrease over the past 6+ months, which is not material, but much different than the 10%+ increases experienced in 2020 - 2021. Sales were the most impacted function as measured by compensation decreases, followed closely by recruiter compensation. We also discussed the emerging trend of "down-rounds" which represented 20% of equity rounds in Q2-23. Moreover, the velocity of "angel investments" is down dramatically in 2023. After the explosion in angel investments in January 2020 - March 2023. Since then the # of angel investments is down by ~ one-third over the last six months - however, that is still above the historic levels of angel investments previous to 2021. One last data point is that Silicon Valley and the Bay area is still the #1 geographic region for VC investment when compared to New York (79% in Northern California and 21% in New York). However, when looking at NYC versus San Francisco the mix is much more equal with an ~ 50% to 50% mix in equity rounds raised. If you share my passion for all things metrics and data for B2B SaaS companies, this conversation with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta is illuminating!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is viewed as a new Go-to-Market motion by many - but to Carilu Dietrich it was her reality as the Chief Marketing Officer for a pioneer in PLG - Atlassian, developer of JIRA. Carilu was the driving force behind making developer products cool while helping to scale Atlassian from $50M ARR to over $400M leading to an IPO! Before Atlassian, Carilu started as an enterprise sales professional, and then started cross-training, including being responsible for the initial digital advertising for the launch of the iPad. Today's discussion centered on the journey of scaling a PLG company from $50M ARR to $500M ARR. What's the role of Marketing in a PLG company? It's much more of a B2C model, which included Atlassian's strategy to invest one-half less on Sales and Marketing and invest that saving in building the world's best product that sells itself! By hanging out in communities where the target buyer personas discuss the benefits of using the product, the primary source of new customers is inbound, versus requiring the expense of outbound sales investments. Atlassian was boot-strapped, which enabled the executive team to continue their "PLG" Go-to-Market motion even when others were strongly encouraging them to add in an enterprise Sales led motion. The real challenge is how to add in sales while maintaining the core focus of Product-Led Growth. The two models will inherently compete for constrained resources, especially financial and human capital. In a focused "PLG" environment, the primary goal is to ensure new users can experience the core value of the product, and translate their initial experience in a trial environment to a paying user. At Atlassian, Marketing was primarily responsible for awareness and top-of-funnel development while the "Growth" team was responsible for points of user engagement following hitting the "trial button" and nurturing new customers and converting them into paid users and ultimately paid enterprise customers. Initially, Atlassian focused on the "individual users", and progressing them from free users to paid users through up-sells and cross-sells which was primarily driven by Marketing. Sales was primarily responsible for paid user renewals, and over time sales then expanded their focus on converting a group of individual users to a company-wide, enterprise agreement. Next, we discussed hyper-growth at scale from the $50M to $500M level. As a small, early-stage company it is hard and even not advisable to hire people who have "seen" the movie at a higher level of scale. In the early stages, companies are looking for Product Market Fit and then in the next stage after they have repeatable sales they increase investment in Marketing to generate more top-of-funnel demand. Ultimately, the goal is to look for "step-ups" such as new product introduction, expanding into new global markets or even changing financial models to prepare for a larger financial return. At each step of the journey, executive leadership needs to continuously review and evolve the corporate strategy that provides the north star for the next phase of the journey. One of the techniques that Atlassian used was continuous experimentation. Beyond A/B testing for tactical enhancements, the need for additional market research to understand how the market is evolving, including competitive presence and user expectations. If you are preparing for the next stage of growth, and on the path to maintaining hyper-growth at scale, this conversation with Carilus is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthony Kennada, is the founder and CEO of AudiencePlus and formerly the Chief Marketing Officer at Hopin and Gainsight...quite the pedigree! Anthony joined our host, Ray Rike to discuss the evolving nature of community and content led-growth, which is a strategy and topic trending across every B2B SaaS CMO. Anthony takes the topic a step further and highlights why "Owned Media" is a critical component in every B2B SaaS CMOs Go-to-Market strategy. Anthony's experience in using content and community at Gainsight serves as the foundation for Anthony's vision for AudiencePlus and its customers. Over the past few years, community development has traditionally been focused on the customer, but over the last few years expanding the reach of the content and the inclusion of all stakeholders interested in the topics the brand is creating and evangelizing has become a key part of the Marketing strategy to create a "halo" effect around the brand. Anthony was involved in building the Gainsight "Pulse" community from the ground up. During the early days, Gainsight took the role of building the stage for the leading thinkers in Customer Success, but not being at the center of the stage which developed an authenticity of helping to build a profession, not just a company. Second, Gainsight did not focus much on its product - but rather on the information on how to build, manage and scale a Customer Success team. Over time, as the market evolved and matured - then the opportunity to gradually introduce more about the Gainsight Customer Success Platform as the community grew. Lastly, when Gainsight first started hosting events - they did not measure the ROI by the revenue generated from the annual Pulse event - but by the pipeline and ultimate revenue generated as a by product of the event. Over the past few years - the event landscape has changed and building community is facing new headwinds. First, there is so much noise in the market that it is much harder to break through the noise. The second challenge is the distribution of content, as budgets have decreased and the cost of "paid media" continues to increase. The third challenge is that the rules of social media continue to evolve and change...as an example the recent decision by Twitter to not allow links to content on Substack. AudiencePlus is positioned as the first "owned-media platform for marketers". Anthony defines owned media as using a more rich editorial format of content beyond blog posts to break through the noise. One example is taking a podcast and breaking it into multiple clips, both audio and video to create more audience engagement. The "owned" media component is creating rich, educational, and engaging content that motivates the audience to view a company's content and community as a destination for people who are like-minded and they feel like they belong to something bigger - a community of their peers. If you are a CEO, CRO, or CMO exploring how to leverage content, media, and community to engage your target audience, and establish a thought leadership role for the community of buyers you seek to serve, this conversation with Anthony Kennada, Founder and CEO of AudiencePlus is a must listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What a Unicorn Knows is a best selling book by Pablo Dominguez, Operating Partner at Insight Partners on how leading entrepreneurs use lean principles to drive sustainable growth See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matthew Dixon is the author of The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and now he adds The JOLT Effect to his list of best-selling books for B2B Sales professionals. During this episode, Matt shares his insights on how B2B Sales professionals can help buyers to avoid the risk of the dreaded "no decision" which represents how 40% - 60% of qualified B2B opportunities end. Matt considers himself a "sales anthropologist" which highlights his deep research-based approach to understanding why buyers buy, and how the best B2B Sales professionals help their buyers become customers. The basis of The JOLT Effect was listening to 2.5 Million sales conversations using conversational intelligence to identify common themes in the buying process. Those predictive signals were segmented into which were most predictive of a "Win" versus a "Closed-Lost No Decision". This was made possible as COVID required the majority of B2B Sales conversations to be virtual, and that made it much easier to capture sales calls in a digital format to apply Machine Learning to those 2.5M sales conversations. The research identified three major reasons that buyers end up in "indecision" which represents 56% of deals that end in "No Decision". Those primary reasons include: Valuation ProblemsLack of InformationOutcome Uncertainty Valuation Problems are highlighted by having too many choices and it being hard to determine which solution is best positioned to address the challenges of the current state and have the highest probability of achieving the outcomes that were used as the basis for the purchase decision and investment Lack of Information is the buyer continues to think they need more information before they can make a decision that is most likely to end in success versus failure, where failure is the #1 concern of most buyers. This invokes the fear of "omission bias" which is a powerful human need not to experience blame because of a decision they make. "FOMU" which stands for Fear of Messing Up is a much more powerful emotion that Fear of Missing Out which is often the tactic that B2B Sales professionals use to incent a positive purchase decision. Outcome Uncertainty is when the buyer is concerned that the actual return on investment will be hard to achieve, and they are better served to maintain the "status quo" versus not achieving the ROI they projected to justify the purchase. FOMU One interesting aspect of "outcome uncertainty", is that sales professionals that effectively "set expectations" that are not overwhelming or hard to believe by the buyer. Using the simple concept of under promise and over deliver, and being able to balance expectations leads to an increased win rate from 20% to 51% when B2B Sales professionals can effectively set expectations that the buyer believes are achievable. Another learning was how to determine the reason for "buyer indecision". JOLT stands for: 1) Judge the reason for indecision; 2) Offer a recommendation on how to move forward; 3) Limit the exploration and Take Risks off the table. 87% of sales calls have buyers who exhibit some level of moderate to severe indecision. How to judge the reason for indecision first requires "active listening". Then the technique of "ping and echos" by offering potential reasons for indecision (the fear) to the buyer to uncover potential reasons for a sales cycle resulting in no decision. When it comes to "Offering" a recommendation, the research shows an increase in win rates from 14% to 36% when a B2B Sales professional diagnoses the needs, problems, and/or concerns and then offers a recommendation versus not providing solutions to address the uncovered reasons for purchasing or not purchasing. If you are a B2B Sales professional or lead a company or function that is responsible for converting prospects into customers, this conversation with Matt Dixon, the author of The JOLT effect is a high-value listen!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a hot topic in almost every early-stage B2B SaaS company. It begins with some assumptions and then is refined over time based on the acquired customer profile that represents those early customers who purchase a company's solution. This evolves to which customer profile cohort has the best customer acquisition metrics such as average annual contract value, win rate, and sales cycle length. Dan Sperring, the founder and CEO Align has a different perspective...the best ideal customer profile cohort is determined by the segment(s) that have the best Net Revenue Retention (NRR) rate. Since NRR measures both customer retention rates in dollars (Gross Dollar Retention) + Expansion ARR in dollars, it is the ultimate compound metric to determine if a customer will buy, stick around, and expand their relationship over time. If you are considering how best to define and/or refine your ideal customer profile cohort(s) - this conversation with Dan is thought-provoking and insightful as to why NRR can best guide which prospects to pursue See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are at the forefront of the majority of strategic discussions across the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Paul Roetzer started as a journalist and then leveraged that writing expertise into founding a marketing agency. Due to the launch of Watson by IBM, Paul's curiosity about how AI could impact Marketing started his journey to becoming an industry expert in how B2B companies are and could leverage AI to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Marketing. In 2016 Paul founded and launched the Marketing AI Institute within his agency, and then spun it off as a separate company in 2019. How has the use of AI by B2B marketers changed over the past couple of years? Paul believes the inflection point started in the spring of 2021. First, Sam Altman - CEO of OpenAI/ChatGPT published the seminal article - Moore's Law for Everything. Then, Genius Makers, a book by Cade Metz, a writer for the New York Times was published. Paul was confused why AI did not take off earlier in 2011 when AI teams at Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were first formed. He concludes that he overestimated how quickly AI would go mainstream and underestimated the impact it was going to have on the industry, the economy, and the world. The public release of ChatGPT was the catalytic moment for AI awareness to become mainstream. Why has AI taken so long to be adopted by industry? Paul discusses hundreds of use cases that have been in place for 5+ years, around strategy and personalization. The challenge was the majority of marketing leaders did not know how to best leverage the power of AI, nor the accessibility which was still difficult to access, leverage, and exploit previous to the public release of ChatGPT. In the Bessemer Venture Partners "State of the Cloud 2023" one of their 5 predictions is that the initial value of AI will accrue to the individual users not to the entire company. In the spring, of 2023 Paul wrote an article entitled " The law of uneven AI distribution". The perspective shared in the article is that until C-Level executives begin to understand the full value of AI they will not lead the adoption across their department. A second point is that access will need to be granted to employees as in many industries and regions of the world access is still limited. Paul's third point is that executives will need to understand the risk, reward, and investment trade-offs required before they will fully support a broad-based roll-out of AI across their companies - especially in regulated industries. The "HOT TAKE" moment in the episode was at minute 12:40 when Paul shared that he believes many B2B SaaS companies will become obsolete quickly, It's hard to know what the "moats" are for many B2B SaaS providers beyond data and distribution. B2B SaaS organizations that have proprietary data to help tune generative, LLM-based models will have an unfair advantage, and a large customer base is best positioned to ride the AI wave and further differentiate and protect themselves from traditional B2B SaaS competitors. A highly defensible moat is that the companies that have the most data to train and tune AI models, such as the 4 Billion+ miles of training data that Tesla has amassed over the last 10 years. Salesforce is a great example of a company with large datasets that could form the foundation for the highly defensible application of AI. Paul believes that a B2B technology company that does not have a roadmap for AI, and resources to build or integrated into their core product will not be VC fundable in the future - if not already. The ability to quickly develop, deploy and refine AI-centric functionality will be table stakes for legacy Saas vendors or early-stage companies will be able to quickly eclipse incumbent vendors UNLESS they have applied AI to their data and distribution assets. How do Marketers being to embrace and utilize AI for their department? First, in a problem-based model, Marketers need to identify those problems/challenges that are most prominent in their department, the benefits of solving those issues, and then assess if there is smarter "AI" technology to address the top challenges in a prioritized, rank order. The second approach is to use a "task-based" approach and identify those activities their marketing team is executing daily, and how can AI increase their efficiency. Paul shared the 21-step process he uses to publish their podcast, how they use AI tools for half of the steps, and reduced time spent per episode from 15 - 20 hours to 3 -5 hours. Paul's closing advice to early career professionals - raise your hand in your organization and take the lead on building or being a leader in an "AI Council" in your company. Simultaneously become a student of AI and specifically how it can be used to increase personal efficiency, and company effectiveness and create your position as a future leader for the company. If you are a B2B Go-to-Market executive, work for a B2B GTM executive, or have B2B GTM executives work for you - listen to the conversation with Paul Roetzer, Founder and CEO at the Marketing AI Institute. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine being a senior product leader at Microsoft for one of the leading "cloud products" in the industry, Azure Data Factory, and deciding to leave the stability, security, and prestige behind to launch your own B2B SaaS company. This is exactly the decision and journey that Anand Subbaraj began five years ago. Anand spent 13 years at Microsoft but was fortunate to be involved with five different product launches (V1) over 13 years, with a primary focus on understanding the market and customer requirements. By being part of the founding team at Azure Data Factory, Anand learned what it took to take on established industry leaders, with a product that had not previously been introduced to the market. Anand's experience with new product introductions at Microsoft, Anand had a personal experience in servicing his refrigerator at home, which served as the catalyst that customer service was ripe for transformation. After having three different service technicians have to make six visits to fix the issue, Anand was sure there had to be a better way to leverage automation to transform field service. As a result, Zuper was launched. What learnings has Anand had starting, growing, and leading his own company? First, Anand gained an understanding that Marketing is about investing to build a brand and market awareness, and is more science than art. Anand also learned a lot about cold calling, and what is required to make the first sales in a newly formed B2B SaaS company. By taking the lead on all initial outreach for Zuper, Anand was able to directly hear from the market on what they wanted and/or needed to consider transforming how they were managing the field service process. Anand also learned that without the "Microsoft" brand, that persistence in cold calling was critical to gaining early traction. Anand executive the "founder-led sales" model from $0 to $1M ARR. By taking this responsibility himself, not only did he have direct access to product requirement input from the market, but he could also hand over a "sales process" that worked to acquire the first $1M ARR. Anand leaned on "Marketing" first to create awareness and demand before hiring his first professional Sale resource. Identifying a gap in the marketplace is a key ingredient to the idea to launch a new company. At Zuper, Anand identified that many companies were viewing field service management automation as an extension of CRM. Second, consumers now expect a seamless experience like Uber, while companies require the ability to configure their processes within an automation platform, not to force their process to adapt to take advantage of the B2B SaaS platform. Understanding and being able to measure the business value delivered to the customer is critical for early-stage B2B SaaS companies. First, the ability to improve efficiency in the business process being automated, second is improving the productivity of the field service workforce, such as spending less time on driving to the next appointment and more time on fixing the customer's issue. In the Zuper example, measuring the "first-time fix rate" of new service tickets is a key benefit, and the Zuper customers see a 30% increase in the first-time fix rate by having the right technician, the right parts, and the right tools. When asked what "SaaS metrics" Anand uses, here is what he shared: Top Lagging Indicators Used: ARR and ARR GrowthCustomer ChurnBurn RateCash runway Top Leading Indicators Used: Product UsageCustomer Acquisition CostCustomer Lifetime ValueCAC Payback Period (new) If you are a product leader or in a large stable company today, but considering launching your own B2B Saas company, this conversation with Anand Subbaraj is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Over the past two months, we have hosted the founders and CEOs of the leading SaaS Spend Management vendors. Sid Sridharan, the founder of Spendflo was formerly an executive in an "electric vehicle" charging infrastructure company and experienced the challenges of controlling SaaS spend in an early-stage, fast growing company. Sid's interaction (not all positive) with his own CFO regarding their SaaS spend inspired Sid to found a company that was purpose-built to address the very challenge his CFO presented Sid. How does Sid define SaaS Spend Management? Sid responded that Payroll is the number one spend in a company, and it has already been automated. Over the last few years, SaaS has become a top 3 spend, and is an area that is still not automated in the majority of companies - and most early-stage companies do not have the resources or time to manage it internally. Another topic we discussed was "How does SaaS Spend Management support and embrace the decentralized nature of SaaS purchases?" Sid first offered a CFOs perspective, which is when SaaS purchasing is decentralized and the associated expense is growing 25% per year, centralized control is required. Moreover, since the average SaaS tool has 9 competitors, the amount of time it takes to truly evaluate all the alternatives is greater than any one company can resource - thus they may be missing some great options for their requirements. Sid shared that they take a holistic approach to SaaS Spend Management starting with the discovery of existing SaaS Tools used, facilitating the purchasing of new SaaS tools, renewing existing SaaS tools, and managing overall SaaS Spend and utilization. One of the primary differences that Spendflo provides is the first-party data across their ecosystem, using a single platform to understand SaaS tool utilization and user sentiment. When we double-clicked on "user sentiment", Sid highlighted that once a customer invests time selecting a SaaS tool, it is hard to measure ROI, which is a key area that Spendflo focuses on, which is especially important in preparing for renewal decisions. By running usage and sentiment data continuously over the term of the agreement, it empowers the leaders to understand how users feel about the tool, including user satisfaction and user sentiment across two variables; 1) How important is the tool to business value and; 2) Would you be upset if this tool was taken away When is the best stage of evolution to introduce a SaaS Spend Management Solution? Sid highlighted 50 - 60 people with the expectation to grow to 100 - 200 people, as the growth in SaaS spend will increase materially during this stage of growth. Sid also highlighted that $250K in SaaS spend is another inflection point to deploy a centralized SaaS Spend Management process. If you are responsible for any SaaS tool purchasing, management, and/or the budget, this conversation with Sid is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

State of the Cloud 2023: Top Five Predictions: #1: Efficient Growth Adopt new solutions to gain control of their Cloud and SaaS spend, including the infrastructure cost to deliver SaaS Solutions. Tools include Cloud FinOps tools, SaaS Spend Solutions, and engineering productivity tools to improve R&D processes. One of the areas of focus is on Cloud Spend as a way to manage the Cost of Goods Sold and thus increase Gross Margin which sets the ceiling for Saas profitability. Public SaaS companies with Gross Margins under 50% have a hard time driving Free Cash Flow of 20% or greater which is critical to enterprise value multiples. Some examples of tools to gain control of Cloud Spend are included in the Bessemer Ventures technical playbook of 40 tactics to drive profitable growth - this playbook can be found on Atlas on the BVP.com website - the report is called the "CEOs tactical guide to drive profitable growth". #2: Climate Software will drive the Green Energy Transition With the increase in consumer activism and government regulation, the green energy revolution is here. To support this green economy, cloud software that is tailored made to power the transition to green energy will explode. Examples are software dedicated to solar, infrastructure, sustainable design, and fossil fuel infrastructure transition. #3: Initial value of AI will be to the user The AI and Large Language Model business ecosystems are evolving quickly. Bessemer believes the ultimate winner is the user to increase individual productivity at work and in their personal lives. AI research is now democratized so end users can have access to and build upon the latest AI capabilities. One example is ChatGPT being released to the general public and acquiring over 100 million users in the first three months - the faster-growing internet site ever!!! Bessemer calls the current AI revolution a B2C2B motion. This highlights the consumer excitement about the benefits of AI, which will in return bring these tools and techniques to the corporate workplace. #4: The application layer is where the most impact from AI will happen first Due to the democratization of access to AI, the power of AI will be available to any company, that can embed AI without their own AI team. This will make horizontal B2B SaaS companies to provide AI driven workflows and processes without the need for a large internal AI development team. With the number of transactions in many SaaS platforms, the opportunity to accelerate the insights to enhance business process efficiency. #5: AI companies will grow twice as fast as traditional B2B Cloud companies Bessemer predicts the time the best AI companies will require to grow from $100M to $1B will be 50% faster than the historic fastest growers like Canva, Zoom, and Twilio. That is truly impressive as these companies scaled from $100M to $1B in four years or less! If you are a student of the Cloud industry or just SaaS-curious about where the industry is heading - the Bessemer Venture Partners "State of the Cloud 2023" is a great read and this podcast discussing the top five predictions is a must-listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Episode #1 of this 2-episode conversation, Ray discusses the key findings from the Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) annual "State of the Cloud" report for 2023 with Janelle Teng, Vice President and co-author of this year's report. Janelle is involved in many different research programs at BVP, including the "State of the Cloud" and the "Scaling to $100M ARR" reports. In this first episode of the "State of the Cloud 2023" report, we focus on the change in B2B Cloud company valuations in 2022 and the current state of the industry. Public cloud companies experienced the "SaaSacre" of 2022. Interest rates shocked the cloud industry in 2022 resulting in a greater than 40% reduction in public cloud company value. The forward trading multiple of public cloud companies is now below the long-term average and were halved in 2022. There are glimmers of hope from the Q123 timeframe. One example is Microsoft reported better than expected earnings in Q1, fueled by the interest in AI. These large tech companies are a great index for the smaller, private Cloud companies. The Cloud index is up about 5% in Q123, which provides hope for the re-emergence of Cloud valuations. Even with the aggressive pullback in public cloud company valuations, the average BVP Index cloud company has grown 50% faster than a traditional company - over a 10-year horizon. When will "Venture Capital" funding return to a more normalized state? Janelle asked the 60 investment professionals at BVP when will be the best time for a founder to raise VC money? The top timeframe forecasted was 2H24' with 1H24' being the second forecasted period for raising a round from Venture Capital. However, 1H23' was still in the running - highlighting the excitement around the current AI boom. The number of VC deals and the amount of VC funding in Q123 was down from the previous year and the previous quarter, so the turnaround in VC deal velocity is still in front of us. In the second half of my conversation, Episode 2 with Janelle, she shares the TOP 5 predictions for the Cloud in 2023! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Former VP of Marketing at Hopin and event industry thought leader Julius Solaris joined me on the latest episode of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast. Julius has been involved in the event industry for over two decades, and has been involved in the creation and successful exits of two different event technology platforms - so provides a very unique perspective on where the event industry has been and where it is headed... First, we discussed the evolution of events in B2B Marketing. Events are often the first variable marketing program to be reduced during uncertain economic times. Covid introduced a new dynamic, with the growth of virtual events as the only way for people to gather. This created a tidal wave of virtual event platforms, events, and associated content. In 2023, the pendulum is aggressively swinging back to in-person events, including over $6.2B of acquisitions of event companies in the first quarter of 2023 alone. The definition of "events" has never been more fluid, with virtual, hybrid, physical, asynchronous, and recorded events. Then we introduced the concept of "Event-Led Growth", which Julius defines as a Go-to-Market strategy that sees the full spectrum of events at the core of your GTM and customer engagement strategy. This concept is gaining speed because the future of social media is in flux around the world, AI is a new and unknown factor, and events are the most personal, human mode of interacting with a brand and engagement at the individual level. Event-Led growth also provides an opportunity for "content creation" to take the forefront of target market engagement. Where does "community" play in the event-led growth model? Professional associations are a great example of an industry community, and they often come together once a year at an event. Today, virtual communities can form quickly, as exhibited by the grassroots "AI Community" of 1,000+ people that came together in San Francisco - all stimulated by one tweet from an AI thought leader. In fact, in strong communities, event marketing is not a large requirement, as those community members will attend based on the strength of the community bonds that form from previous in-person and virtual events. Julius mentioned the importance of ongoing virtual gatherings, like the SaaStr weekly webinar to build upon and nurture the relationships developed at the annual in-person event - a case study of the importance of continuous community engagement through a combinate of virtual and in-person events. Over time, Julius believes that the event industry will evolve to "company-owned events" versus the larger, mega-industry events that defined the previous generation of events. Due to the saturation of "content" available on digital media, people are craving an opportunity for connection that is only achieved at events with a shared asset - communities with a common interest. One topic we discussed was what happens when events become "too big" to foster intimate, personal interactions. Mass customization becomes harder over time, which is why satellite events and vendor-sponsored satellite events become the "smaller, intimate" venue for personal relationships to be formed and nurtured. One strategy for vendors is to secure a small booth at the event itself and create a satellite experience outside of the main venue. Julius provided advice on how to be a company's event-led growth strategy. Virtual events provide a low-cost way to being building a community through events. This is especially attractive due to the availability of technology platforms for virtual events. This creates the foundation for building a community and then provides a platform for creating multiple "individual digital assets" that can be re-purposed across multiple channels to maximize reach and engagement from a single virtual event. I had to ask Julius about how to engage virtual event attendees in tactics, like virtual booths and lounges. This has not worked very well in the early days of virtual events, primarily because event sponsors did not invest enough time on this topic. Activation of virtual event attendees needs to be "content-led", supported by a strategic communications strategy, pre, and post-event by the event host and the sponsors. If you are considering leveraging an "event-led" strategy to create awareness, build engagement, and develop a community of your own, this conversation with Julius Solaris is chalked full of great insights and ideas. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Excel is the #1 tool B2B SaaS companies use for many financial tasks, including calculating SaaS metrics to surface insights for operating decisions and investor updates. Ali started his career in tech as an auditor at Ernst and Young, with a priority focus on revenue recognition and reporting. While auditing a top tier B2B SaaS company, he was provided multiple spreadsheets with thousands of rows of data, and it even required almost 10 minutes to just open the Excel file, and almost 6 months to complete the audit. The primary challenge, finding all of the data required for the audit in an extremely large and poorly structured Excel model. What are the top signs that a founder/CEO will see to know it might be time to move beyond Excel? Ali suggests at $1M and above that Quickbooks is a fine General Ledger, but the initial issues are associated with revenue recognition and the associated reporting. Often, this is due to not having the right human resources who truly understand revenue recognition policy, and then the manual required to create a model and the appropriate formulas for revenue recognition. One sign that Excel might not be doing the job, is if revenue is being recognized on a cash basis. Another sign might be when an investor asks what your "MRR or ARR" is, and you realize it includes professional services or one-time fees. Why is getting revenue recognition important to an early-stage company? It becomes important when external stakeholders, like existing or potential investors, ask for things like GAAP revenue growth rates, and ARR growth rates and you cannot provide the answers because the financial foundation and reporting infrastructure have not been established. Inevitably if you are quickly heading to $1M ARR or already above that level, founders and CEOs are expected to know their numbers. One common tactic is to hire an external accountant, and ask them to set up revenue recognition and other financial reporting in Excel - the challenge with this is that it is not scalable, and if the "rent an accountant" goes away, it is hard for the next resource to understand the excel model. Next, we discussed the reality of ASC 606 (GAAP accounting policy), and how it impacts the need for more advanced financial reporting capabilities. ASC 606 includes very complex and nuanced accounting rules that Excel is just not well positioned to be the primary solution for modeling and reporting GAAP revenue and the associated financial metrics such as Gross Profit, EBITDA, and Net Income. The most important initial SaaS metric is Contracted ARR, and ARR including growth rates. Quickly following is the ability to understand Sales and Marketing expenses and the associated customer acquisition cost efficiency metrics including Customer Acquisition Cost, and CAC Payback Period. Cash burn and cash runway are other critical insights that a founder/CEO needs to ensure are available and accurate early on. When I asked Ali about other SaaS Metrics, he highlighted a recent example where a company wanted to start reporting their CARR and ARR, and they close a majority of deals mid-month. They were confused about how they report ARR for the month the contract was signed, and how those decisions impact the associated recognized revenue (GAAP revenue). If you are an early-stage SaaS company and are having challenges with Excel to capture, calculate and report basis SaaS financials including GAAP revenue, CARR, ARR and the associated SaaS performance metrics the conversation with Ali Rizvi is highly informative. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Alexander Group works with many of the leading companies in the B2B SaaS industry, and I was recently joined by Ted Grossman, their co-lead of the technology industry practice, and Davis Giedt, Director of Research and Analytics. Based upon Ted and Davis' unique insights and understanding of B2B SaaS due to the discussions and data from over one hundred customers, coupled with their historic Sales Compensation research and benchmarks with has become an industry standard. My first question was how has the use of SaaS metrics evolved. Ted's perspective is the core metrics have not changed that much over the past few years - rather it is the weight that is placed on specific metrics, especially growth vs profitability. As an example in 2021 and the first half of 2022, the weight was much higher on growth rate versus profitability metrics. One example is the Rule of 40 has increased in importance as measured by R-Squared by 3x over the last 6 months. As such "Margin + Growth" is much more balanced in 2023. Ted highlighted "expense to revenue" as a top priority at the macro level. This is also a very easy metric to benchmark against the industry. Then you can dive down into more granular revenue growth efficiency metrics such as "Profitability by Sales rep. Other things like the CAC Payback Period which measures the amount of time to pay back the acquisition of a new customer. Net and Gross Retention Rates are also high-priority metrics to understand the efficacy of retaining and expanding revenue with existing customers. What about the importance of changing the mix of revenue growth from new customers versus existing customers? The story varies in every company and depends on company-specific attributes such as do they have multiple products, or do they have a product that can expand usage to additional users, departments, or business units within an existing customer. When I asked Davis the "top" metrics he prefers, they included: Sales and Marketing expense to revenue which tests for every dollar invested in revenue growth, how much is returned on both a new and top-line revenue basis. Davis shared a 35% - 40% S&M expense to revenue as a good benchmark for growth companies Cost of Growth, sometimes known as the SaaS Magic number measures the top-line revenue growth versus Sales and Marketing investment, which has a range of .5 (poor), .75 - 1 (good), and > 1 (best) CLTV:CAC measures the amount of Gross Profit (or Revenue minus Cost of Goods Sold) generated against the revenue a new customer generates over the life of a customer. A CLTV:CAC ratio of 3x is good, though has been increasing over the past 2-3 years. CLTV:CAC ratio is a long-term ROI measurement Next, we discussed the topic of "consistency of metric calculation" when using industry benchmarks. Davis highlighted that for their clients they use one standard metric calculation formula to ensure when they are benchmarking it is an apples-to-apples comparison. One specific example was if you are trying to measure the efficiency of growing new customer ARR versus existing customer growth ARR, things like a "time study" may need to be conducted to properly allocate expenses to the pursuit of each growth ARR type. If you are a B2B SaaS company leader, the discussion with Ted and Davis provides some unique insights and perspectives that only come with the unique visibility they have across hundreds of leading B2B companies. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt Wolach is the founder of Xsellus and host of the Scale your SaaS podcast. Matt is one of those guests that have taken over a year to be on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. Matt has hosted over 250 episodes of "Scale your SaaS" and was one of the inspirations for this podcast. The first question I asked Matt was about the common attributes that successful SaaS founders exhibited. By being a podcast host, Matt found he often learned more than he shares. However, one of the common themes of the most successful founders was the amount of time they invest in getting to know and understand their potential customers. Those discussions to dive into the mind of their potential customers was a key to success, and Matt recommends the goal should be to have about 50 of those discussions, versus the 3-5 that far too many founders conduct. What are the top three challenges that Matt sees early-stage companies face: 1) Lead generation/Pipeline which often early-stage companies over-index on one or two channels. Matt recommends finding 4 - 5 channels that work, and then continuously optimize each channel. Matt says there are 18 ways to generate leads in a B2B Saa company, including commonly missed lead sources such as a defined lead referral process with current customers. Other missed lead sources such as influencers and affiliate programs are undervalued. 2) Ability to close qualified leads is another inconsistent competency of many early-stage companies, which is especially dangerous if significant money is being invested in Marketing and lead generation activities. Matt suggests fixing the qualified lead to Closed-Won process before investing more in additional lead generation. 3) Lead form/demo form to demo completed is surprisingly a big leak for many early-stage companies. Matt shared the story that one of his new customers did not even measure the number of people requesting to be contacted or have a demo.  The inbound demo request-to-demo completed ratio is a critical conversion rate that far too many companies do not measure. Matt said that an average of 42% of people who request a meeting or demo actually end up having a meeting with the vendor - meaning 58% of high-intent leads are not actually being followed up with timely. What metric does Matt like for B2B Saas companies in the $1M - $5M ARR range? Matt said the Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (CLTV:CAC Ratio) is one of his favorite metrics. Essentially with the industry standards that Matt shared a 3:1 CLTV:CAC ratio is a good goal, it means that for every dollar you invest in Sales and Marketing, $3 of gross profit is generated. The latest RevOps Squared benchmarks show that a 4:1 CLTV:CAC Ratio is the new benchmark. If you are an early-stage B2B SaaS company, this conversation with Matt Wolach, the founder of Xsellus is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Christopher, the founder, and CEO of Zylo is sitting on top of one of the industry's largest SaaS spend data repositories and thus benchmarks, a key reason I knew I needed to have Eric as a guest on the podcast. What was the catalyst for founding Zylo? It started with Eric's experience as a revenue leader in two social media platform companies. Eric realized that by introducing new solutions directly to the Marketing department, it was becoming difficult for companies to manage and govern SaaS spend. "A business idea with complexity is worth pursuing" - the words an advisor shared with Eric which was part of the motivation to founding Zylo!  Since anyone in a company can be a buyer of a SaaS solution, coupled with the existence of thousands of vendors with very different features and pricing, buying a SaaS product is complex. Moreover, measuring the value is very difficult and often, ill-defined. How does Eric define SaaS Spend Management? "Helping companies manage, measure and maximize value from every SaaS application purchased".  The lifecycle of a SaaS solution starts with understanding how to receive the best price, and then how to optimize the value received. Questions to ask include, are employees using the product, are they receiving value, and how does the value compare to other solutions with similar functionality?  Zylo uses a "value framework" that starts with understanding every application being used through a discovery process. Next, is being able to manage adoption and usage, which may be as much about maximizing value versus reducing costs. Next, identify opportunities for cost avoidance, while considering the renewal process to know the best terms based on the current utilization rates. Finally, gaining visibility into the existence and usage of every SaaS product in a company materially increases the ability to have the governance and controls in place to purchase, utilize, renew, and purchase the right products in the future. One surprising aspect of SaaS sprawl is that many organizations do not know what SaaS solutions are being used by their employees and the associated expenses! The best SaaS Spend management programs start with the ability to conduct "discovery" to identify all the SaaS tools being used in a company....but when is it the right time to consider implementing a SaaS Spend Management solution? Eric highlighted that when you are hitting $1M - $2M in annual SaaS spend is one milestone. Another milestone is that at 500 employees if you do not have a SaaS Spend Management program in place - alarms should be sounding. ...however, Eric shared that it is never too early to introduce a more structured SaaS purchasing, management, and governance process. Zylo is sitting on a treasure trove of "SaaS Spend Management" data from over $30B in annual SaaS spending across industries including a few of the below : SaaS spend by employee has increased by 50% over the last 2 yearsSaaS spend has been increasing by over 20% per year for several yearsTotal SaaS spend is underreported by 50% due to decentralized purchasing The average company has over 300 "paid" SaaS subscriptionsThis increases to > 1,000 in Enterprise companiesInterestingly, the cost of the SaaS spend may not be the primary opportunity for many companies, it may be minimizing the risk of not managing and governing the flow of data outside of the company! Several new trends in SaaS spend will be disclosed in the Zylo Benchmark report being published on April 4th, 2023! If you are interested in the evolution of purchasing and managing SaaS spend in your company, this product with Eric is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2023 many SaaS companies are searching for what market(s) are going to drive their next phase of growth - and international markets, especially English-speaking countries are often considered by U.S. B2B SaaS companies. Rick Pizzoli, moved to Europe over 25 years ago to launch the European presence for U.S. based software companies. Based upon that experience, Rick and Sales Force Europe has helped over 500 companies enter and/or expand their presence beyond the United States or a single country in Europe. Rick shared that the majority of U.S. companies first start to consider entering the European market in the $5M - $10M ARR range. European companies begin to expand beyond their home country a little earlier, often in the $2M - $3M ARR range due to the more limited breadth of each country in Europe. Understanding your positioning, messaging, value proposition, and efficiency of your "home market" customer acquisition motion as measured by metrics are critical foundational elements to planning for an entry into a new country. If a company has not captured and documented the keys to success in its home country, it will be impossible to be successful in a new country. Another key factor to consider when entering into the European market is do you have a "lighthouse" account in a country you can build upon, and/or do you have a product that is localized for countries beyond English speaking? Rick's perspective is conducting market research to determine the "best" initial country is a better strategy than just saying let's just go to the United Kingdom, as it is the most like the US market and they speak English. At the same time, the UK market, especially in London is probably the most competitive market to enter, as so many U.S. based companies use the same "we similar" mentality. Bringing on local talent that understands the local market, has relationships in the local market, and can translate the "messaging and positioning" that works well in the U.S. to the local European country. There are nuances of the "talent profile" that works in one country versus another, which suggests having a local team with local leadership will yield a faster return on investment than parachuting in one or two resources from the home country. One key to success is seeding the market awareness and engagement with top-of-funnel activities beginning with a digital marketing strategy 3-6 months before having a local, on-the-ground presence. Having local Sales Development resources in place for at least 3 months before having a local Account Executive will also increase the productivity of those first 1-2 AEs. Having a local presence shows a true "commitment" to the local market and will make the majority of in-country buyers more comfortable with purchasing from a recent entrant to the local market. Should a company start with a single or at least two resources when first entering into a new country? Two resources are always better, and could also allow for additional language skills for the second target country that is being considered in a pan-European presence. It also eliminates the "resource" vs "market" specific challenges. If you are considering or just beginning the evaluation process to expand your U.S. or single European country B2B SaaS company into or across Europe, this conversation with Rick Pizzoli and Sales Force Europe is highly informative. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SaaS Spend Management is an emerging and rapidly evolving category - yet Ryan Neu, Co-Founder, and CEO of Vendr has a unique vision for how the category needs to evolve. Ryan has a background in public accounting, and then transitioned to software sales, including a role in the early days at Hubspot. During his career selling, he realized that selling great products is hard, takes too much time and the distribution is quite inefficient - thus the catalyst to founding Vendr in 2018. Vendr was created as a new way to buy and sell software....and it is the "SELL" comment that is unique amongst SaaS Spend Management  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you have ever been frustrated with the forecasting process and accuracy at your company - this episode is for you! Guy Rubin is the founder and CEO of ebsta, a leading provider of Revenue Intelligence - the next generation of forecast management. Guy founded ebsta to automate the logging of sales rep activity directly into their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) like Salesforce and Hubspot. Over 50,000 companies have used ebsta in this environment which is when the breakthrough happened to begin scoring target buyer relationships - essentially a "relationship score". The strength of relationships is a key factor in an opportunity's probability to convert into a new customer....and thus making the revenue forecast more accurate. More on that later in the episode. Back to the core problem, ebsta has been solving for years - having timely and accurate account, contact, and opportunity data in their CRM. Since most of this data is captured in their email, and/or calendar. By using technology to capture every email, event, and meeting with an account or opportunity, it can be automatically imported into the CRM. Then, a company can use AI to determine the frequency of communications with an opportunity and begin to create an "opportunity score" based on the recency, frequency, and level of activities with specific opportunities. What about including insights from "conversational intelligence" platforms? This is another signal that ebsta uses to evolve the "engagement score", but Guy highlighted that CI is only one signal that informs their platform. Intent data is another signal that ebsta uses to inform and evolve their engagement and thus opportunity score. In a recent research report that ebsta published, one of the challenges is to determine what is the actual impact of intent data on the opportunity "win rate". In this report, ebsta was able to identify the level of influence that intent data has on win rates. Forecast accuracy is a challenge for every company. Initially, Guy felt the "ebsta" internal forecasts were superior to those of a "bottoms-up" process that begins with the AE or front-line sales manager. Those customers still require the ability to include the sales "bottoms-up" forecast, the ebsta automated forecast is typically within a +/- 5% error of margin - which is superior to the 69% of companies that miss the forecast by +/- 10% or greater. If you are involved in your company's "forecasting process" this conversation with Guy provides great insights and ideas to enhance your forecast accuracy!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Friday, March 10th, 2023 - a moment in B2B Technology and Start-Up ecosystem history that many will never forget and hopefully provides a foundation for learning the risks and rewards of venture-backed, early-stage entrepreneurship. Todd Gardner founded SaaS Capital in 2007, the industry's first "recurring revenue credit facility". Before names like Salesforce, Workday, and Snowflake were well-known names, Todd experienced the financial crisis of 2008 and experienced firsthand the impact of a systemic banking issue including the meltdown of his financial partners. Our goal for this episode of the podcast is to provide practical insights and advice that SaaS founders, CEOs, and CFOs can apply to decrease the risks associated with their financial related decisions and banking decisions. We started with the basic, summary facts surrounding the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB): December 31, 2022, SVB financial disclosure:  - $209 B in total assets - $175.4B in total deposits March 8th: SVB disclosed a $1.8B loss on the fire sale of $21B in long-term assets March 8th - 10th: ~ $42B in deposit withdraws were made by SVB customers Friday, March 10th: SVB was declared insolvent and closed by U.S regulators Sunday, March 12th: U.S. government including the FDIC, US Treasury, and Federal Reserve announced that all deposits (100%) would be backstopped - made good because SVB had more than enough assets to cover the outstanding liabilities, primarily customer deposits. Essentially the US government is managing the risk which is primarily a "time-based" issue versus a balance sheet issue. Todd next provided an industry backdrop that lead to the run on SVB. Due to the accelerated ramp of venture capital investing in 2020 - 2021, the deposits on hand at SVB doubles. As standard bank operating practice, SVB invested a significant portion of those deposits in long-term bonds and treasuries, which had a low return due to the low-interest rates of the moment. During the second half of 2022, interest rates began to increase dramatically, and the result was that the value of the long-term bonds decreased in value. Simultaneously many customers were moving their deposits at SVB into higher interest-rate instruments outside of SVB - forcing SVB to sell some long-term assets to support the decrease in deposits. Due to the above macroeconomic interest rate dynamics, coupled with the short-term issues created by a handful of Venture Capital firms quietly recommending their portfolio companies move their deposits out of SVB. We next discussed the "financial ecosystem" that has been the foundation that fueled the amazing growth of the technology industry which includes:  - Over half of the technology start-ups banked with SVB  - Over half of Venture Capital firms in technology banked with SVB for Capital Call - Line of Credit Having the primary source of assets and liabilities from the same industry ultimately becomes a material issue for SVB. The above is a backdrop to the insights and advice that Todd shared for how this experience can inform future financial and banking decisions by SaaS founders, CEOs, and CFOs which include: #1: Diversify banking relationships including checking, savings, and credit facilities           - have at least 2 banks and/or treasury based money-market account #2: Understand the banking relationships that your payables and payroll firms use #3. Maintain fiscal discipline throughout the start-up journey to change the narrative from "cash runway" to ongoing operating profit as early as possible If you are interested in learning more about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and what it means to the financial strategy of SaaS CEOs and CFOs going forward, this conversation with Todd is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Over February and March 2023, we spoke with several founders, CEOs, and executives at SaaS Spend Management vendors.In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, we discussed the evolution, best practices, and ideas on how to introduce a SaaS Spend Management program with Brad Van Leeuwen, Co-Founder and COO at Cledara.Brad stated that his own experience as an entrepreneur with the challenges associated with SaaS spend was the catalyst to founding Cledara. When a company is small, a manual process such as using the founders' credit card for all expenses is fine, but when you scale to 100+ employees that process does not provide the level of control and capital efficiency required to build a sustainable, durable growth company.Spend management solutions have been around for 20+ years - why is SaaS Spend Management so popular in 2023? First, the technology solutions have evolved significantly, and are much easier to use. Secondly, almost every company requires technology (software) to operate efficiently so the demand for SaaS solutions has exploded. Third, no longer is IT guarding the "data center or servers" so the procurement of software has become a decentralized process.SaaS Spend Management goes far beyond issuing a "corporate credit card" for all purchases, and includes a more proactive identification and then usage monitoring of the most relevant and used SaaS solutions in a company - thus providing centralized visibility and control.When should a company evaluate introducing a SaaS Spend Management solution - early on the focus needs to be 100% focused on developing and selling your product to establish Product Market Fit. Then, as a company evolves to 30 -50 companies, a general spend management tool centered on corporate credit cards is a good place to start. Once a company hits 50 - 100 employees, the SaaS Spend sprawl becomes harder to control and is a good time to consider introducing a corporate SaaS Spend Management solution.One of the key benefits of a SaaS Spend Management solution is that decentralized buyers can now have access to a pre-approved list of solutions. This empowers the employee to engage with the solution category of their choice, and the approved vendors without having to deal with a difficult procurement process. One of the trends in SaaS pricing and billing is the increased use of "Usage-Based Billing". One of the benefits of using a SaaS spend management solution is to have real-time insights into billing trends measured against budget and provide an early warning signal or even stop the use of a specific solution when the costs exceed the budgeted or contracted amount.One other benefit of SaaS Spend Management is to provide a pre-vetted list of vendors and the associated "realized pricing" that should guide a new solution purchase and/or renewal.If you are interested in learning more about how your company could gain increased visibility, control and reduced costs of your SaaS Spend while improving your employee experience in buying new SaaS software - this discussion with Brad Van Leeuwen is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Planning in 2020 continues to be chalked full of uncertainty based on the current macroeconomic reality. Assuch, being a finance leader in 2023 is even more challenging, and unpredictable -  but developing an operating plan and budget is an important and critical component of the CFO's job.First, is being "hyper-realistic" is the theme of the year, especially on top-line revenue. Understanding revenue drivers like pipeline generation and conversion is critical to informing the 23' budget and operating plan. Factoring in longer sales cycles closed lost - no decision and buyer hesitancy is part of the art in building the 23' plan.Second is being "hyper-responsible" in managing costs. Third is "running multiple scenarios" highlighting the goal of profitable growth, which should always be in style, but even more imperative in 2023. Though Net Income is always interesting, in the B2B SaaS industry revenue growth is still a key driver, while EBITDA and Free Cash Flow are key indicators of profitable growth.Fourth is "obsessing on the leading indicators" impacting revenue trends.How have the relationships between CFOs and CROs changed heading into 2023? Dan highlighted he is lucky as both his head of revenue and head of customer success are metrics focused, and they collaborate closely on planning and forecasting - using over 80 metrics to continuously monitor their progress toward their operating plan.Next, we discussed the challenges of forecasting - especially in today's uncertain environment. Dan shared that hitting a +/- 5% accuracy is probably best in class, while Planful targets 3% - 5% forecast accuracy. Then we discussed the "triangulation methodology" which evolved into using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. However, Dan started by ensuring front-line sales professionals need to see forecast accuracy as a priority. Dan shared a few tips to improve forecast accuracy. First, sales managers should provide a weekly forecast update as they are the closest to the pipeline, Second, Finance should be monitoring pipeline generation and conversion rates to continuously update the forecast. Third, using AI to capture the signals that impact opportunity conversion rates to provide an automated forecast to be combined with the first and second manual forecast management processes.What are the top 3-5 performance metrics that Dan is focusing on in 2023? Dan highlighted ARR growth is still a top metric. However, Dan focused on "leading indicators" including outbound pipeline development trends - including the pipeline from SDRs. Other leading indicators Dan tracks include outbound connect rates, conversation rates, opportunity conversion rates, and sales team acceptance rates. Start by looking for "trends" which can serve as very important pipeline trend insights. Next, looking at the opportunity funnel conversion rates in concert with analyzing conversational intelligence insights is very helpful to understanding "early signals" impacting revenue growth.A strong financial operations capability starts with instrumenting the infrastructure that can quickly surface leading and lagging indicators to inform decision-making. Dan highlighted the importance of technology to compress time from activity to insights to a decision. Being buttoned up on the CRM infrastructure and data are table stakes to fully leverage automated planning, forecasting and reporting.At what stage of company evolution should a SaaS company start the "instrumentation and automation" journey for planning, forecasting, and metrics reporting. "Complexity" of business operations is a critical factor to determine when to begin the automation journey.  If you are considering how to increase your planning and forecasting accuracy, the conversation with Dan is very insightful and full of great ideas See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How does writing a 400-page novel lead to founding a SaaS Spend Management company? It was the start of David Campbell's journey which including breaking into B2B technology sales where he saw the challenges companies of all sizes have with buying technology.What is the definition of "SaaS Spend Management" according to David? David defines it as "spend management for the most important asset category in business today and tomorrow". Most companies are becoming software companies, and thus why SaaS spend management will become the top spend in most companies.Where investors focused primarily on revenue growth over the last few years, today the focus is now on efficiency and profitability, and as such "procurement and efficiency is the new Sales". A hot take, but a comment that is intentionally provocative to move the pendulum closing to an equal balance of revenue growth and profitability.Over the past 12 months, Tropic has grown over 3x, due to the outsized demand for "efficiency levels" beginning in 2022 and continuing into 2023. One of the trends David has seen, is that company CEOs and CFOs were so focused on revenue growth, that they were comfortable with outsourcing SaaS procurement management to a third party.There are three components to a successful SaaS Spend Management deployment:1. Identify SaaS products in use today and optimize current spend2. Deploy an infrastructure and process to increase visibility and control 3. Ensure the process uses automation to make the SaaS procurement process easier not more difficult for employeesMaking the process of buying a SaaS tool needs to continue to be decentralized and easy, but powered by a process and infrastructure that also centralizes control and visibility into the SaaS purchase and usage analytics.When should a company implement a SaaS Spend Management program? David suggests 100 employees is a good place to start. By implementing a solution early, the culture of a structured SaaS procurement process is much easier to scale as companies hit 500 and 1000 employees. Attempting to introduce a formal SaaS Spend Management below 50 employees is most likely to meet significant resistance..In today's evolving world, software is often either the number two or number three expense category after compensation and benefits. For companies in this category, introducing a SaaS spend program prior to a full fledge "procurement function" can provide early financial wins without needed to invest in a larger purchasing infrastructure and organization.SaaS spend management does often include a "managed buying service" and technology to automate SaaS purchasing while simulatenousy increasing ease of purchasing and control the on-going expense and risk of SaaS sprawl.Procurement Paradise is the primary goal of Tropic.ai and is a unique approach to gaining company wide adoption of a process targetted at providing greater control of the SaaS spend, while empowering every employee to purchase sofware that increased their job productivity within the approved framework and process of a well defined SaaS Spend Management program.If you are responsible or interested in controlling SaaS spend in your company, or a B2B SaaS sales professionals looking to sell into companies with a formal SaaS Spending Management program in place - this conversation with David Campbell provdies a good lens into procurement paradise. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oded Zehavi has global payment experience from his time as an executive at leaders including PayPal and Payoneer.With Spend Management, especially SaaS Spend Management, becoming such a hot topic in 2023 - we wanted to start our conversation with Oded to understand his definition of "Spend Management"?Oded defines spend management as enabling finance teams to automate, control, and increase visibility into non-payroll spending. Spend Management has been around for 20+ years - why is it trendy again? Before Covid - spend management was primarily about travel and entertainment, including how to collect manual receipts and reimburse employees for those expenses incurred. During Covid, travel and entertainment expenses were reduced materially and provided finance a chance to pivot to new strategic financial control opportunities. Covid also increased the decentralization of the majority of employees and added another level of complexity to traditional expense receive collection, review, and payment processes.Finally, the maturation of SaaS adoption across all sizes of companies introduced new challenges for finance teams to gain visibility into the distributed procurement, usage, and individual expensing of cloud-based software.Oded also highlighted that traditionally the expense submission, reporting, and payment processes were not integrated. Specifically, first-generation expense management solutions were not integrated with the financial payment infrastructure. With today's more sophisticated spend management technology, companies can identify in real-time expenses and even expense payment attempts and ensure they are adhering to internal expense policies and controls.Next, we pivoted to "when should a company consider implementing a spend management program"? In a company's early days, there are general-purpose tools that can handle the majority of financial transactions, including non-payroll expenses. Beginning at 50 employees is when finance processes being to have more complexity and is a good time to begin considering a spend management program. At 150 employees implementing a spend management program becomes more important and at 1,000 employees a more sophisticated spend management program that integrates expense management and financial payment infrastructure becomes imperative.98% of US-based companies are not using advanced technology and process to manage and control expenses. A growing trend is the evolution of dedicated, vertical spend management solutions such as "SaaS Spend Management". One of Oded's "aha" moments was when he was speaking with a CFO when a corporate credit card linked to 40+ SaaS vendors expired, and one by one SaaS vendors started to terminate their access to their platform. As such, SaaS Spend Management was an area of top focus for Mesh Payment early in their evolution.If you are evaluating spend management in your company, or just want to better understand how next-generation spend management solutions can increase visibility and control of all your non-payroll expenses, including your SaaS expenses, this episode with Oded Zehavi is a highly informative listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you ever met someone in their "early career" that you just knew was going to be successful? That was my feeling when I first met Guy Yalif, Founder and CEO of Intellimize almost 20 years ago!Guy has been both a Marketing and Product leader, which led to his creation of a company focused on optimizing full funnel conversion. Guy's vision is to personalize each website visit at the moment to create high-converting websites to optimize conversion and revenue. 1:1 web personalization has been discussed and evangelized as the holy grail of web experiences for over 20 years - so why is it just happening now? First, the technology is finally available to make this vision a reality, second marketers have been conditioned to create "segments" and then create custom lead routing rules for each segment due to the limitations of the technology.The reality is that humans max at 10-20 different business rules, and we cannot scale to the ultimate goal of 1:1 marketing which can combine thousands of different signals to show a user, in real-time content that is highlighted relevant to a market of one.The common trends of the day include defining Ideal Customer Profile segments and then combining that with different content and paths for each buyer persona(s). Third-party information such as "intent data" has been a recent development to further "segment" content to visitors based upon their intent, but still does not get us down to a unique website experience for each and every visitor - resulting in increased conversion rates.When asked if the technology is now available to convert this vision into reality, Guy said that before Intellimize the technology did not yet exist. Couple that with the need for scale and volume of traffic to train the machine learning, the infrastructure, and capabilities were not yet available for the masses.Large scale B2C companies, such as Amazon and Netflix have the resources and scale to build their own highly personalized 1:1 engagement methods. Unfortunately, smaller scale companies did not have access to a similar capability with similar capabilities but bundled as an easy-to-use, out-of-the-box solution for B2B Marketers.The conversation pivoted to the signals being used to enhance full-funnel, continuous conversion optimization? Signals can include data from any source including internal sources such as the marketing automation system, CRM system, and external signals such as time of day, day of week, location, previous activity/behavior on the website, and what content has previously led to conversion and revenue.Next, we discussed the measurements (metrics) that B2B Marketers should be measuring - limited to the top three. First, pipeline ($) generated, second was "cost per Lead (actually cost per MQL) and third was "share of voice".  MQL to opportunity and MQL to Closed-Won conversion rates should also be a high priority. When I pushed on "cost per $ revenue", Guy highlighted that this was a great "quality" measurement to determine the quality of Marketing Qualified Leads and their conversion rates to revenue generated.I had to go to my favorite topic - and that is the time spent on "attribution". Guy said Marketers must be able to highlight the value that Marketing delivers, and though the ultimate focus needs to be placed on the ultimate outcomes of pipeline ($) and revenue ($), it is important to understand the touch points and engagement levels that lead to new customers. If you are interested in how to optimize the conversion rate starting at the first point of engagement on your website, this conversation with Guy Yalif is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How many times have you visited a B2B website and cringed at being asked to provide your contact information, including your email just to download a white paper or watch a video?Why is this a reality in 2023 on most B2B SaaS websites? Because "leads" are still a primary measurement of Marketing success and marketers have not yet invested in the processes and instrumentation to focus on both the "pre-opportunity process" and then the ultimate outcomes of pipeline and revenue.One of the first topics we discussed was the "buying journey" which in the 6sense land is focused on the "pre-buying" or pre-opportunity journey which is often the area that is understood the least. A majority of the pre-opportunity journey is anonymous, most B2B companies will have multiple resources touching the early phase of the journey and there is real friction and resistance for buyers to reveal their identity early in the process.However, by understanding the pre-opportunity journey, a company is better positioned to engage with potential buyers in a more personalized and impactful way. Latane' defines the pre-opportunity buying journey into 5 phases including:- Target- Awareness- Consideration- Decision- Purchase (meaning they are ready to enter the active opportunity phase)Once a company moves into the "decision" of which company a buyer wants to engage in a sales process is the best time for B2B marketers to proactively reach out to a potential future customer. The concept of "IICP" takes the Ideal Customer Profile to another level by introducing the "in-market" Ideal Customer Profile. By understanding that an account is actively researching and evaluating a specific market category that your company plays in. Taking this concept to something that "Sales" cares about includes being able to provide the Sales organization with real-time leads that are actively "in-market" and thus have a much higher conversion rate to qualified opportunities.Next, we double-clicked into why a minority of B2B companies are not actively using "intent data" to determine when an "ICP" account is actively in-market. Latane highlights that a major obstacle is that a well-defined "workflow" is not often in place to ensure that the Sales Development team comes in each morning with a complete, prioritized list available for them to start the day off productively...versus spending their time researching and building a prioritized list for outreach.If you are responsible for engaging a target market and buyer to generate high-quality leads, and/or are interested in how to take advantage of intent data, account-based programs, and the dark web to increase pipeline quality - Latane is a great listen and her book NO FORMS, NO SPAM, NO COLD CALLS is a great read! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Media-Led Growth (MLG) is a term first introduced here on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast and the central theme of this episode.Who better to discuss this topic than Patrick Campbell, Founder, and CEO of ProfitWell, recently purchased by Paddle for an unofficial $180M+Patrick was a pioneer in building brand media assets inside a B2B SaaS company at ProfitWell - what led to the decision to invest in media properties?ProfitWell was facing a common challenge that most B2B SaaS companies face, how to sustain growth and generate "outsized" gains in a very competitive landscape. Eight (8) years ago the macro-level environment was different. Early on, email open rates were much higher, Google ads were much lower, and social media channels were just beginning to gain relevance. Over the last 3 - 5 years, those digital channels become noisy and much less effective.Resultantly, Patrick was looking for a more innovative, and more efficient marketing channels. ProfitWell was bootstrapped, which made efficient growth an even higher imperative. Early on, Patrick started posting information on churn rates, retention rates, and pricing which was a less saturated topic.Quickly, Patrick found the content was resonating, and based upon research discovered that traditional inbound marketing strategy (blogs/ebooks/whitepapers) averaged 1.6 touches per week from a qualified lead and traditional media companies average 5+ touches per week. With Customer Acquisition Cost increasing, Patrick had a hypothesis that media might be a "marketing secret weapon" within ProfitWell.On an economic basis, Patrick discovered they could produce a media asset like a podcast or video series with 13 episodes for the same or even less money than a traditional content marketing asset. As such - ProfitWell created multiple media assets - a media company inside a B2B SaaS company. Moreover, this "pool" of media properties provided an opportunity to engage potential buyers and influencers weekly. Additionally, Patrick didn't stop at a single media asset, at one point in time ProfitWell had 9 different media properties that engaged different buyers with different subjects.Patrick framed the value like this "imagine having 500 people attend a webinar you sponsor every week!" Having "shows based on the "problem and/or role" that ProfitWell was trying to reach as potential buyers of their SaaS product was the primary focus. This resulted in a "grid" of content and buyer personas that informed the decision to create multiple media properties. Patrick also highlighted the importance to measure performance early and continuously to end any properties that are not producing positive returns as measured listeners, downloads, and engagement.I asked Patrick "is audio or video the best place to start?" Patrick highlighted that audio is an easier and cheaper way to start, but introducing a video asset is a natural evolution.Finally, we pivoted to ProfitWell's use of "benchmarks" as another asset. Patrick started with his belief that benchmarks are not used properly. Benchmarks provide a "focus" on which metrics to review and where to prioritize focus. Those areas where your internal metrics are far off the benchmarks are a great place to start. If you are a B2B SaaS founder/CEO, Chief Marketing Officer, or other Go-to-Market executive looking for innovative and differentiated ways to reach your target audience and increase the frequency of engagement, this podcast is a GREAT listen that is chalked full of thought-provoking ideas from an expert!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product-Led Growth is one of the hottest topics and trends in the B2B SaaS industry. Heading into 2023, most company will be evaluating their usage of every SaaS tool, and as a vendor understanding how customers are using your product is foundational to understanding and forecast customer retention metrics.Todd Olso founded Pendo, the leading Product Analytics solution provider, over 9 years ago. His vision was to combine product analytics and product utilization to enhance the user experience.Todd highlighted that as "software eats the world" the Pendo customer base has expanded far beyond software companies to mainstream industries such as retail.The first macro industry term we discussed was "Product-Led Growth". Todd re-framed the question to be a "product-centric" company and that product-led growth is just one aspect of a company's culture. Todd explained that when selling to highly regulated industries like governmental entities, that product-centric may be more about enhancing the user's experience in a digital-led model, even though the sale of the product was executed by and with humans.Todd highlighted the phrase "is this a feature or a bug". The context of the phrase is that when the user experience requires a human being to train users, this is a bug that needs to be fixed by being a product-led company.Pendo has recently launched a "product-led certification course", to teach professionals, including product managers and any other leader looking to learn more about how to introduce product-led concepts into their company.We pivoted to the concept of the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and their role in a product-centric organization. The CPO should own the strategic goals of how the product directly drives the company strategy and goals including how to connect the product to market/customer needs.Todd's personal belief is that a product-led company requires having both a Chief Technical Officer and a Chief Product Officer. The primary difference is the CTO is more conservative and focuses on the "-bilities" of technical products while the CPO is looking for strategic growth advantages that have a higher risk profile. This differentiation provides a healthy friction between the two different primary goals.If you are currently using a product-centric, customer facing process, or considering a product-led growth strategy, this conversation with Todd Olson, Founder, and CEO of Pendo is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mark Roberge is the founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital and previously was the Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot from 2007 to 2016.  Mark is also the author of the best-selling book "The Sales Acceleration Formula".The lessons learned over his nine years leading revenue at HubSpot have led to several new endeavors including creating a Sales curriculum being taught at Harvard Business School and founding Stage 2 Capital. We started the podcast by discussing "The Sales Acceleration Formula" which was first published in 2015. The bool was stimulated by a breakfast between Mark and enterprise sales influencer and author, Jill Konrath. It evolved from a concept called "The Art and Science of Sales" to become the basis for the book. The Sales Acceleration Formula is essentially an autobiography of how Mark built and scaled the revenue organization at HubSpot.The presence of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems enabled Sales to become more data-driven, and changed how Mark leveraged that data to inform how he built and managed the sales organization. One of the most interesting perspectives Mark shared was how he and his management team used the data being generated from the CRM. Using the insights from the CRM data changed how HubSpot Sales Managers were able to better coach sales reps based on the "signals" being generated. Foundational to capturing those insights was the need to develop a very well-defined and structured sales process that generated performance metrics at each stage of the sales process.We quickly pivoted to a leading sales technology of the day, Conversational Intelligence. I asked Mark why with the ability to capture and listen to every Sales conversation has not made full sales funnel performance a more data-driven, sale management and coaching process.Mark highlighted one reason is that Sales organizations are often so focused on "chasing the number", that they do not carve out the time to step back, take a strategic planning approach to the future based on historical performance metrics and incorporate that into the planning process. This "reactive mode" cascades and impacts the organizational culture to one of high urgency - low value reactions versus one of high value - low urgency strategic activities leading to increased performance.Another topic we discussed was the 360 lead review process at HubSpot, which lead to the concept of the SMarketing SLA (Service Level Agreement). Marketing and Sales co-owned the pipeline generation and lead development process, and as a result consistently led to analysis of  pipeline generation performance. Far too often, there is significant friction between Sales and Marketing, which can be addressed by leading into the data. This starts with defining what a "lead" really is and starting to measure lead performance and conversion across the entire lead-to-customer process.Finally, we discussed the catalyst for founding Stage 2 Capital. Stage 2 Capital is unique in that the Limited Partners (investors) are primarily successful B2B SaaS Go-to-Market executives who can provide both capital and applied operating experience across each stage of a B2B SaaS company's growth. One of the important findings was the failure rate to scale across different stages of growth is much too high. The Science of Scaling was based on research that Mark conducted across several early-stage companies, and then he applied the "challenges of scale" to the formation of Stage 2 Capital.If you are considering raising funding for your SaaS company, or are just looking at how to more efficiently scale your revenue generation engine at the next phase of growth, the conversation with Mark Roberge is extremely instructive based upon the experience and success of Mark and hundreds of other GTM executives involved in Stage 2 Capital. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine having your founder and CEO working weekends to develop leads and a calling list for the VP Sales in an early-stage B2B SaaS company. That was Mark Kosoglow's experience when he first joined Manny Medina, the founder, and CEO at Outreach - the leading Sales Engagement Platform company in the industry.I asked Mark about the reality of leading Sales at an early-stage B2B SaaS company, and if he could share a couple of lessons he would share. The importance of building pipeline was priority #1 and is something he is living with in his new role as the CRO at Catalyst Software. In fact, Mark said pipeline cures most ills of an early-stage B2B SaaS company.When we double-clicked on pipeline, I asked Mark about the importance of identifying the Ideal Customer Profile early in the journey. Mark said this was critical to focus the outbound demand generation efforts early on, and to also build a buyer persona map to identify the different key members of the buying team, and create messaging that resonates with each buyer. Mark requires Sales Development Representatives to conduct at least 50 activities per day, and add 15 new contacts into a cadence every day while ensuring there are no outstanding to-do activities at the end of every day.What is the role of Account Executives in creating pipeline? Mark has a standard operating model which depends on the profile of the actual average contract value. But, as a rule, he uses the goal of 25 opportunities in the pipeline. Once that opportunity goal is hit the goal of outbound pipeline generation activities is reduced from 50 activities and 10 people sequenced per day to 50 activities and 10 people sequenced per week. Once the number of active deals in the pipeline reduces back to 15, then the activity goals increase back to 50 activities per day.Cold calling is a lower value for Account Executives in the early stage but is a reality of the role until the active pipeline is to a point where 100% of an AEs time can be allocated to the highest value activity of turning opportunities into revenue.Next, conversion becomes a top priority. One is a well-defined, stage-based deal management sales process, and second a strong deal review and management process to help the AE successfully move from opportunity to revenue. How a rep can "guide" the buyer through the buying process is a top priority in how sales management should be coaching an AE in the early days.Mark does not believe stage-by-stage conversion is a priority early on, as there is not enough data to provide statistically valid feedback. However, at each stage of the Sales process there should be a primary "question" that should be answered such as:- Do they have problems we can solve?- Are the problems big enough to solve?- Will the buyer agree "how to buy"?- Will their investment be worth it? - Will they buy?A key to his success is encapsulated in the quote: "process makes you great, but documentation makes you legendary". This was discussed in the context of when to introduce a Sales Enablement function. Are there any signals that suggest when to invest in a Sales Enablement function? Mark highlighted that Sales Enablement is responsible for onboarding and not ongoing coaching or figuring out Sales Process, that is the Sales leader's role.If you are considering a Sales leadership role at an early-stage B2B SaaS company, or are a founder/CEO looking to scale beyond founder-led sales, this conversation with Mark is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Heading into 2023 companies are preparing for larger buying teams, and increased scrutiny on every purchase. I could not think of a better backdrop to speak with Brent Adamson, the author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. The Challenger Customer is based on research focusing on the different "profiles" of the buying team in a considered "SaaS" purchase. This is one of my all-time favorite books focusing on how to understand the buying process and charting the sales process accordingly. We started the conversation with a comment Brent recently made on another podcast, and that was "the SaaS industry has broken sales". As we double-clicked on this comment, what Brent was highlighting was that due to the large influx of capital and thus the number of companies increased so quickly, sales became more of a volume-centered process versus the more traditional, value-based, solution selling that traditional software companies used before the "growth at any cost" phase of the SaaS industry evolution. Another variable that impacted the volume-centric approach was the rapid evolution of "Sales Technology" which automated many of those processes that were traditionally executed manually by a sales professional. As a result, many sales professionals over-indexed activity and volume and lost some level of attention to what makes each target account and the individual members of the buying team unique. When Brent conducted the initial research to write The Challenger Sale, one consistent truth uncovered was that no single buyer, not even the executive decision maker wants to make a decision isolated from the broader team. Their driving need is to gain team agreement or consensus on strategic purchases - such as SaaS solutions. In the initial book, it was discovered that there were 5.4 individuals in every strategic purchase decision, and that number has consistently increased over the last few years - hitting 11 or even more in 2022. Though even though this number is significant, the more important aspect of this reality is the "diversity" of the profiles, functions, roles, and decision criteria for a strategic purchase.  The above was the basis for Brent's second book, The Challenger Customer. The first topic we discussed was the different profiles of members of the buying team who are "mobilizers". What is a mobilizer? Based upon a survey of 2,000+ B2B Sales Professionals, the top performers identified that the most important attribute of a buyer persona was their ability to build consensus and willingness to drive change in their organization. This is much different than the standard, find a coach, champion, or executive decision-maker in the sales process. What are the different types of "mobilizers": - Skeptic - Go-Getter - Teacher Skeptics typically are the most difficult to accept the value proposition of your solution and how it will work in their environment. However, once the skeptic is won over, they will be the best advocate for your solution being purchased and implemented.  On the other hand, the "friends and the guides" may want to talk with you more than anyone else at the potential customer, but are not good at mobilizing change in their company. Next, we discussed the importance of tapping into the "emotions" of the buyer. It  comes down to the concept of "Identity Value" and goes beyond company value or professional value. Identity Value is the value that sponsoring a  purchase will impact how a person feels they are viewed and how they view themselves. Once a person feels your solution impacts their "identity value" it will dramatically increase their desire advocate purchasing your solution. As we enter 2023 and encounter a "cautious capital" approach to purchasing new solutions, I cannot think of a better use of time than listening to Brent AND reading The Challenger Sale! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Heading into 2023, B2B SaaS CFOs are doubling down on using performance metrics to guide the 2023 operating budget. A key question is what metrics they use to help evaluate the Marketing budget, and what metrics they wish they had from Marketing to help inform budget allocation and investment decisions. Chris Golec, the founder, and CEO of intent data and account-based program platform leader Demandbase has recently launched his new company, Channel99 which is purpose-built to help bridge the gap between Marketing performance metrics that Marketing is currently capturing and those performance metrics that Finance leaders would like to see that help inform their budget allocation and investment analysis. We started the conversation with Chris on the evolution of B2B Marketing over the last ten years. In the early 2010s, Marketing Automation platforms enabled broader and more frequent outreach to their target buyers, and then Account-Based programs started to evolve in the 2015 - 2020 timeframe to increase the "quality of Marketing outreach. Chris predicts that moving into 2023 and beyond, B2B Marketing organizations will be held to more "performance-centric" measurements that focus on the ultimate outcomes of pipeline and revenue ($) that the CFO uses to evaluate return on investment for all Marketing program investments. We dove into the megatrends that Chris mentioned early in the podcast, and the impact of Marketing Automation, Intent Data, and Account-Based Marketing programs. Chris highlighted, though self-admittedly from a biased perspective that these investments did increase the Return on Marketing investment, but most companies do not have the infrastructure to measure the impact of Marketing investments down to the last mile of pipeline and revenue ($). When asked if Marketing is using metrics to inform decisions, Chris highlighted that the majority of Marketing performance measurements (metrics) are primarily department focused, and not linked to the ultimate outcomes that CFO and CEO are most interested in - Pipeline and Revenue generated. One quick action to change this reality is for the CEO and CFO to require Marketing leaders to measure the ultimate outcomes in dollars...not activity, engagement, and leads. Chris shared his premise that one reason that Marketing does not provide more granular "finance performance metrics" to the CFO is the lack of easy-to-use infrastructure that can measure dollars invested in high-priority target accounts that fit the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) through to revenue generated. Another key requirement to capturing and generating good Marketing ROI performance metrics is to start with understanding discretionary program spending on things like paid and organic search and understanding not only the engagement levels, but the engagement levels with accounts in their target market (ICP) and then pulling the thread all the way through to revenue. If you are a "performance" centric B2B Marketer or a Finance leader trying to better understand the return on Marketing investment, the conversation with Chris Golec is highly informative and thought-provoking!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mergers and Acquisition analyst to FP&A professional to SaaS CFO. This is the path that CJ Gustafson took on his journey to becoming the CFO at Parts Tech. The common thread across each step of his journey was metrics, a perfect subject for CJ's appearance on the show. CJ developed his excel and financial chops during his first role as an M&A analyst, which served as the foundation for his success in modeling financial plans and budgets. What are the critical experiences and learnings CJ learned in his FP&A role that prepared him for being a SaaS CFO. A unique opportunity in FP&A is being in the room with senior executives, and learning how successful leaders organize their resources for success. Building upon that, being able to ask questions of the senior leadership team provided him access and insights that most roles do not afford. Having cross-functional insight across Marketing, Sales, Products, and Operations provided a holistic view of how businesses plan, make decisions and manage. When asked what the most surprising part of being a CFO, was the sheer number of vendor agreements that required review and approval, and the associated skills required to negotiate strategic agreements that directly impact the operational and financial performance of the company. Mostly Metrics is the newsletter CJ launched about 2 years ago. What was the motivation to create a newsletter focused on metrics? First, being able to document and reference his learnings in previous roles. Secondly, the newsletter provided CJ the opportunity to ask thought leaders and successful executives, and investors about topics directly related to his newsletter. Third, CJ finds writing things down is key to him remembering and thus being able to recall previous learnings when required in the current working environment. Heading into 2023, many CFOs are scrutinizing revenue and expense budgets at another level of granularity. So I asked CJ for his advice to other first-time CFOs as they prepare their first annual budget. First, CJ recommended the value of experiments before committing the annual budget to new ideas and investment areas. Secondly, make sure the headcount plan is very detailed by month, and use a "max" headcount model versus incremental headcount centric, as attrition is hard to forecast. Finally, CJ recommended no more than one new software platform be implemented per quarter. Limiting new software implementations is as much about the organization's ability to implement, train users and ensure effective utilization of the new software to gain the benefits, as it is to control the expenses. What are the "metrics" that CJ is focusing on heading into 2023? CJ highlighted the need for a CFO to understand the metrics that departmental leaders use to inform their decisions. An example is going beyond CAC Payback Period to learn something like the importance of "activation rate" in a PLG motion and how that ultimately impacts the company-level financial metrics. Understanding the departmental top priority metrics also informs CJ's understanding of the budget requests the department executives are making, and how they will measure the ROI.  We also went into those "metrics" that are specific to a company, maybe even a North Star metric. CJ highlighted the shopping cart abandonment rate as key to understanding the PartsTech user, and how that one metric provides both product priority, and also a key performance metric to improve that has a direct impact on revenue growth. A North Star metric that CJ now uses is Gross Merchandise Value which is critical to understand, as it's at the center of forecasting. If you are interested in the path to becoming a CFO, this episode with CJ is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

STOP if you do not think that the concept of "Kind Folks Finish First" is applicable in corporate America! Sam Jacobs, the founder, and CEO of Pavilion realized that getting fired for the third time was the catalyst for finally understanding that pursuing his real passion "to help others" was the key to finding both success and fulfillment. Sam credits a shift in "mindset" as foundational to creating a company and a passion that enable him to find happiness and success.  The Power of Failure are the first four words in Chapter 1 of Sam's best-selling book - Kind Folks Finish First. As Sam's CEO shared that his services were no longer needed, he realized that believing you are a failure, you are a failure. Rather, if you think about failure as learning, experience, and wisdom your path to success will become much easier.  Why is it so hard to stop being a "victim of your situation" versus the master of your destiny? The common emotion is "fear" because they are afraid. Often this mindset provides the motivation to identify why what you experience is unfair and not due to your own decisions and actions. Admitting to yourself that you are responsible for your experiences and outcomes can be liberating and the foundation for real growth. What do you stand for was the opening to Chapter 3. Sam highlighted that this was not a question he asked himself, it was a question that his coach forced Sam to answer for himself. Being in New York City, Sam felt that "making money" was his primary goal and motivation. Sam's coach said is that where you find energy, and after a few week's Sam realized he stood for "helping people to cared about to meet their professional goals". This clarifying moment was the catalyst for the "what and how" of building Pavilion. Getting by Giving, was a central theme throughout the book and is also a key Pavilion value. Sam said being very selective in investors and employees who share that mindset and value is key to ensuring the culture of a company lives by those values. Being able to focus on the long-term goals and building the culture, means you might sacrifice growth rates to build a long-term, durable growth company that uses its values to guide its journey. Every crisis is an opportunity, another key phrase Sam shared in the book. Sam's primary advice is that you must look outside of yourself. The instinct in a difficult environment is to focus on yourself - but in times of challenges focus first on your "customer's" challenges and situation and allow that to be your guide for decision-making. With that mindset and focus, the investment you make in your customers now will provide returns over time that cannot be measured with a short-term orientation focused on "your needs" versus "your customer's needs". Sam's transformation which started once he realized "his true calling to help others" is an inspirational story and message for anyone looking for happiness and success in their professional life. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nick Franklin is the Founder and CEO of ChartMogul, a leading SaaS Metrics Reporting, and Subscription Analytics Platform. Nick worked for five years at ZenDesk, where he led both Europe and then Asia-Pacific before founding ChartMogul eight years ago. With 2,500 B2B SaaS companies as customers, Nick's insights around how companies use metrics to inform decision-making are unmatched. Nick's perspective is that during the earliest days of a B2B SaaS company's evolution, the importance of being able to track metrics begins. An example early on is how pricing and packaging impact customer acquisition and growth. Another example Nick highlighted is if a founder is considering raising external funds, having a grasp on the key financial performance metrics is critical to gaining investor confidence. Nick highlighted the importance of providing access to company performance metrics to all employees is critical to creating a metrics-centric culture. When I asked Nick "why companies do not provide performance metrics transparency to their employees?", Nick shared that many of their customers simply say they prefer to keep company financial information "on a need-to-know basis". Nick could not explain why that is beyond history and an old-fashioned mentality. Nick responded that they wanted to ensure that even the earliest-stage companies could develop a metrics culture, and use ChartMogul as that infrastructure. That is why ChartMogul provides a free version of its platform to companies with less than $10,000 MRR. Over fifty percent of their customers are paying customers up to $100M ARR.  Some companies decide to use a metrics and subscription analytics platform in preparation for an impending financing event, which begged the question of what are the top metrics investors want to see a founder truly understand. Nick highlighted early customer retention, revenue and product engagement growth, and eventually dollar-based customer retention and expansion. Double clicking on the "engagement" measurement, what are the common metrics to measure? How many users, how many times do they log into/use the platform on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, and then almost always there is a product-specific "North Star Metric" such as messages, API calls, documents sent, etc... During our discussion on "engagement", I asked Nick what the aha moment, often referred to as the "activation point" is for ChartMogul. He shared that integrating into a subscription management platform is the first activation point, but more importantly the "high-value activation point" is when the user gains insight or perspective on a metric that was not previously available, understood, or even considered as a critical business metric. If you are evaluating how best to capture, calculate, publish and use metrics to inform your B2B SaaS journey and decisions, this conversation with Nick is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Revenue Operations - the buzz has continued in 2022 but how to introduce and then maximize the return on investment is still a work in process. Cliff Simon, the Chief Revenue Officer at Carabiner Group, an early leader in Revenue Operations stopped by to share his insights into how to maximize the return on RevOps. First, we discussed if Revenue Operations is viewed and delivering as a Strategic function or being relegated to tactical activities such as data management, revenue technology administration, integration, and report development. Cliff shared that Revenue Operations MUST be a strategic, data-driven organization that surfaces and highlights opportunities for increased revenue growth in partnership with the C-Suite. One large risk, despite the best intentions, RevOps often gets so overwhelmed with daily, reactive activities that they forget to take the time to step back and take a more holistic, strategic approach to the insights they are gaining from the data, metrics and process improvement opportunities they see every day. One reality is that RevOps as a profession has grown so quickly, as highlighted by the increase from 5,600 to 17,000 RevOps titles on LinkedIn today, and the 30K+ open positions being promoted online today. This increase in demand for RevOps professionals has led to the current lack of experienced Revenue Operations leaders who understand the strategic impact of Revenue Operations. How is a strategic Revenue Operations function be measured to show the return on investment? Though it is hard to benchmark the impact RevOps has on financial performance metrics, RevOps should be responsible to surface the insights, metrics, and benchmarks for internal revenue performance metrics to the executive team, including highlighting the opportunities for increasing revenue growth and revenue efficiency. One recent research program highlighted that companies with a centralized Revenue Operations function grow 30% faster than those without the function. Today's reality is that the majority of Revenue Operations departments are still primarily focused on tactical activities, and only at $50M ARR and above do companies have the resources and capacity to have a Revenue Operations leader is truly strategic. However, companies should invest early in a RevOps function, and that includes having Sales Ops and Marketing Ops as roles that report into a broader Revenue Operations organization. Another topic Cliff highlighted is that RevOps owns the process to "document" the processes that underly and support the entire Revenue lifecycle. This supports the growth of the company, and as new leaders and resources enter the organization, they can quickly under the "current state" of revenue-generating processes and the associated performance (in the form of metrics) to better inform their decisions on how to evolve the organization and accelerate revenue performance. What metrics should RevOps be measuring: 1) Revenue Growth; 2) Sales Cycle Time; 3) Win Rate; 4) Pipeline Generation Metrics; 5) Net Dollar Retention (including churn) If you are a SaaS CEO, CFO, CRO, or Revenue Operations leader, this conversation with Cliff Simon provides some great knowledge nuggets on increasing the impact that Revenue Operations can make in your company. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As a Chief Revenue Officer, Toni has had a front-row view on scaling revenue engines, and one major challenge he faced was that too much time was spent on financial planning and budgets, versus how to best make money. The first question we discussed was the difference between FP&A and Revenue Operations. Toni's perspective is that Revenue Operations is much closer to the revenue generating process, and thus has a deeper insight into how revenue is generated, and as such should be a key part of the revenue planning process. Next, we discussed how being involved in the revenue planning process makes RevOps a more strategic partner to the executive team. RevOps top three responsibilities are data, process, and tools but only the start. The trick is to take the insights from the aforementioned three responsibilities and becoming the primary purveyor of insights into how the revenue engine is performing on an end-to-end basis. Potential strategic activities starts with revenue planning, which starts with how to generate revenue efficiently. Next, RevOps should be the "mission control" through regular meetings with the commercial (revenue) leaders, and discuss the insights from the dashboards and reports they are providing. Key to the value of these discussions is how to overcome the issues that the data is surfacing. One of the opportunities in today's business culture is becoming data-driven without becoming data overwhelmed. Revenue Operations should take the lead on determining how the data, reports, and dashboards they are creating inform the decisions on how to increase the probability of making the number and even forecasting how the current "data" predicts the revenue future. How can a company ensure that Revenue Operations does not become so reactive to the daily requests, that they cannot carve out the time to be strategic partners to the CRO? First, RevOps leaders should ensure there are good "outcome goals" for how the data and reports will be used, and prioritize time to analyze the data in the context of "how does this data and metrics inform our future revenue outcomes". What are the top "5" metrics that a RevOps leader should own? First, the mindset needs to be that they own the revenue number along with the CRO. Second, CAC Payback Period by cohort including regional, customer segments, and even product level in larger companies. Third, Customer Lifetime Value is a great metric, but since it is so multi-variate in nature, it must be broken down into the input metrics (variables) to isolate which leading indicators are impacting CLTV - a classic outcome metric. If you are a Revenue Operations professional or a senior executive evaluating how to increase the business impact of RevOps, this conversation with Toni is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig Rosenberg has worked with hundreds, if not thousands of B2B SaaS companies as the co-founder of TOPO, Distinguished analyst at Gartner, and now as Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners. Across Craig's roles, he was able to take an expensive view across each stage of a SaaS company's growth including strategy, people, process, technology, tactics, and over time METRICS! Craig highlighted that the best companies in the world were/are "metrics" driven, and as Craig started to work with larger, enterprise-class companies beyond SaaS being "metrics and data" driven was even more critical to decision-making. "End to End" Customer Journey is an often discussed subject, but what is it really? Craig's perspective is most customer journey mapping is too generic and needs to be very focused on how the customer buys starting with using third-party internet activity to marketing interactions to Sales Development to Sales and then ending at "Closed-Won". Going beyond Closed-Won to include customer engagement, retention, and expansion, Going beyond mapping and understanding the entire customer journey including acquisition, retention, and expansion, companies need to "SEGMENT" the metrics by customer cohort, such as SMB vs Mid-Market vs Enterprise. Another view should be based upon "HOW" the prospect/customer came into the customer lifecycle process, such as lead source and/or lead channel. When I asked "who" in a company should map the customer lifecycle, Craig's response was quite pragmatic: "whoever is best at mapping the customer lifecycle in your company". Craig added that Revenue Operations is a perfect organization to take the lead on customer journey mapping, and building a "coalition" across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. An important caveat is that without the support and involvement of the CEO it becomes less significant and strategic. Another topic we discussed, was if a company should involve customers in the "journey mapping" process. Craig said of course, but you only need to include a few customers in the process as talking with more than 10 customers will provide diminishing returns. Next, I asked Craig about what metrics are priorities to measure the efficiency of the customer lifecycle across acquisition, retention, and expansion. Craig started with the Four Vital Signs Framework to track in a SaaS company: - Growth - Efficiency - Churn - Burn Next, we discussed if any of the Vital Signs are more important at each stage of a company's evolution. Craig's first recommendation was to instrument and begin capturing metrics for all four vital signs early in the journey. Certain metrics like churn/Customer Retention will become more important as a company grows beyond the first and second renewal cycles, but identifying and instrumenting for metrics should begin earlier than most companies believe are required. No matter what stage of growth your SaaS company is currently in, this discussion with Craig Rosenberg provides many interesting, insightful perspectives on the importance and priority of metrics across the customer lifecycle. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you ever looked at all of the reports, dashboards, and data presented across your company and felt overwhelmed and under-informed? Today's data-driven world far too often results in a lot of data but not better decision-making or company performance. Scott Stouffer founded his first company in 1993 and has lived the reality of how Go-to-Market Strategy is not a one-time thing, but a series of iterations over time. Scott compares today's need to continuously evolve your GTM strategy much as Agile did for software development. Basically an "Agile Go-to-Market" model. The above reduces the amount of investment wasted on strategies and tactics that never provide the required return. By definition, the majority of companies will not nail the Go-to-Market motion on the first try. Examples include identifying the top Ideal Customer Profile, creating the perfect messaging and positioning strategy, or even the best sales motion to engage, interest and acquire new customers. One key to successfully using an "agile" GTM model is to limit the number of new variables you introduce at any given time. One example Scott provided was an experiment that uses "new messaging" as the only new variable and measures how that performs as measured by activity to conversation to meeting to opportunities. A key to identifying which GTM motion is working is to ensure you instrument and measure the performance metrics that provide real market feedback on the efficacy of your GTM tactic(s). This applies not only when you first enter a market with a new product, but when you enter a new market with an existing product that was successful in a different market.  The next topic we covered was the "DEFINING" moment in the podcast (11:40 in the podcast). Scott started with an analogy on how a cholesterol measurement of 50 is meaningless without context, but if you know the measurement was 45 six months ago AND the appropriate benchmark for the patient is 20-35 there is CONTEXT to the measurement (metric) and requires attention. Scott's point on "Go-To-Market Metrics Require Context" was defined by using one if not all of the following variables:  1. Time - how is the metric trending over time  2. Plan - how is the metric performing against the plan  3. Causality - what variable(s) impacts the metric  4. Significance - How does this impact our business  5. External Industry Benchmarks - how do I compare to the external market Another topic we discussed was WHEN and HOW to instrument your Go-To-Market systems to capture and then use the GTM metrics to inform decisions. Scott suggested that when a company moves beyond "Founder Led Growth" into Sales Led Growth is the time to instrument GTM metrics. One caveat was metrics become more instructive once Product Market Fit is established, and it is appropriate to scale Marketing and Sales investment. Growth efficiency, a trending topic in 2022 becomes more important once Product Market Fit is achieved and the investment in Marketing and Sales continues to increase..even in $1M - $5M ARR companies. If you are looking for ways to increase Go-to-Market efficiency and increase the value of metrics in decision-making, this conversation with Scott is amazingly informative for first-time founders and the most experienced GTM leaders. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Binch has led revenue teams at highly successful B2B SaaS category creators, including Marketo and Pendo. Having real-life, applied experience and success at scaling high-growth companies, while also having broad insights into several Battery Ventures portfolio companies provides Bill with a unique perspective on how Chief Revenue Officers use metrics to inform their journey. Bill's journey over 29 years has informed how his use of metrics to lead a revenue team has evolved, alongside the advancement of revenue technology options. Though Sales has always been the ultimate function to be measured by metrics (quota achievement), today's CRO can have much better insight into the "signals" or "leading indicators" that directly impact quota achievement. Today's Sales leaders are reviewing and asking deep conversations about pipeline trends, which sources are delivering the most, and highest quality leads that result in Closed-Won revenue. But what metrics does Bill think are most important for each stage of a B2B SaaS company's growth: $𝟬 - $𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗔𝗥𝗥: - Customer logo count which provides Sales team confidence and future customer confidence - Average Contract Value - Average Sales Cycle > $ 𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗔𝗥𝗥 - Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures how much ARR a current customer delivers year over year. Example if $50K ARR this year and $60K ARR next year = 120% NRR - Predictive metrics that forecast future revenue performance including Pipeline Performance and Quota Capacity How does Bill define the CRO's responsibility? Bill's perspective is the word "REVENUE" defines the CRO's responsiblity to including: 1) New Revenue; 2) Expansion Revenue; 3) Retention Revenue. Bill does not believe that the CRO should include the Marketing function. Bill firmly believes that Sales and Marketing should co-own the qualified pipeline goal, not just leads, Marketing Qualified Leads, or other Marketing centric objectives that do not directly impact the pipeline. The "intersection" of Marketing and Sales is PIPELINE. Far too often in board meetings, Bill sees Marketing and Sales present data, metrics, and reports that have little to no direct correlation and definitely no causation. What are the "pipeline metrics" Bill thinks are most important? Bill likes "Pipeline Coverage Ratio" which calculates how much qualified pipeline is required to achieve $X in revenue. Bill also introduced his pipeline "MOJO" dashboard which includes a dashboard that tracks daily pipeline trends including: 1. Deals created 2. Deals lost 3. Deals expanded 4. Deals decreased 5. Deals pulled forward 6. Deals pushed back Bill shared that since the CRO should own all revenue inputs, including acquisition, retention and expansion they should also be responsible for the Customer Success function. However, once a company scales to greater than $50M - $100M the role of the Chief Customer Officer should report directly to the CEO and not the CRO. I also asked Bill if the CRO should own revenue efficiency metrics, such as CAC Payback Period or Customer Lifetime Value? Bill's perspective is that the CRO should be aware of how their performance metrics impact company level metrics that the CFO should own, including CAC Payback Period, Customer Lifetime Value and Rule o 40 (as examples). Lastly, I asked Bill what are the core metrics that the CRO should report to the board. They include: 1) ARR Growth - trend over 5 quarters; 2) ACV - 5 Qtr trend; 3) Average Sales Cycle - 5 Qtr trend; 4) New vs expansion split - 5 Qtr trend; 5) Average Revenue Per Account - 5 Qtr trends; 6) Logo adds - 5 Qtr trend; 7) Segmented based metrics as a company scales Bill's experience as the CRO that led growth at two incredibly successful and market creating SaaS companies and now as an Operating Partner at Battery Ventures makes this a must listen con See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's hard to imagine being a key part of three industry-defining product categories, which is exactly what Bruce Cleveland has experienced in his Silicon Valley software career.    First, Bruce was an early executive leader at Oracle (first 100+ employees) as they re-defined relational databases, then on to Apple where he led the object-oriented engineering division, next he led the business development and alliances team at Siebel Systems before he took over products as they defined Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and then again at C3.ai in defining Enterprise AI. Three of those experiences resulted in IPOs.    Bruce then became a VC, first at InterWest Partners where he invested in early-stage B2B SaaS startups such as Marketo (acquired by Adobe), and then he started Wildcat Venture Partners with two other people, again focused on early-stage startups such as Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce).    Based uponthe above experiences, Bruce wanted to create an easy-to-understand and prescriptive framework to help entrepreneurs move through each stage of a start-up's journey. The result was the Traction Gap Framework.    The different stages of the Traction Gap Framework include:    Minimum Viable Category (MVC): Does the market segment already exist or is there an opportunity to create and lead a new product category - creating your own category (e.g., Gainsight) presents more risk but the returns are much higher.    Initial Product Release (IPR): The first version of the product beyond prototypes and wireframes that serves as the feedback mechanism to refine and evolve the product to present to multiple new customers.    Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The product state that is required to acquire several new customers and provide tangible value while using early customers feedback to prioritize feature/function refinement and enhancement    Minimum Viable Repeatability (MVR): This is the point where external investors (VCs) are most interested in investing in an early-stage SaaS/Cloud company and become seriously interested as the initial referenceable customers are in place, and the ability to leverage the learnings from early customers can now be used to rinse and repeat the customer acquisition process    Minimum Viable Traction(MVT): This is after a company has “crossed the chasm” and is ready to materially scale a business to $20M - $50M while establishing market leadership.    I asked Bruce about the secrets to creating a new product category.  Bruce highlighted that not everyone wants to be the spokesperson leading the creation of a new category. He used the example of Marketo, where the founders decided that Jon Miller, a co-founder, would be positioned as "the father of marketing automation" while the other co-founder and CEO, Phil Fernandez chose to primarily focus on leading strategy and operations.    Bruce coined the term "Market Engineering" to help frame the content in his book. The basic concept is developing the positioning and messaging of the company to a few innovative and provocative concepts that everyone can easily understand and clearly differentiates the company from others. Steve Jobs at Apple is a great example of a category creator.   Bruce shared the four pillars the Traction Gap Framework including: 1) Team; 2) Product; 3) Revenue; 4) Systems.  Each pillar takes a point of prominence at various stages when traversing the Traction Gap - though TEAM is the common foundation at each stage across the journey    If you are a student of Silicon Valley and the SaaS start-up world, starting or already on your own entrepreneurial journey, this discussion with Bruce Cleveland, who has been there and done that is a must listen.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You may have heard the acronym FP&A many times, but always wondered what it stood for?  Financial Planning and Analysis is the function, typically present in more mature companies responsible that is responsible for financial planning, modeling and analysis. Paul has a summarized view of what FP&A professionals are responsible for which is: "FP&A  is responsible to maximize shareholder return by helping businesses to best deploy and allocate future dollars". Where does FP&A start and end, versus the Revenue Operations function?  Well, the answer was clear as mud. Paul shared that each company defines FP&A and RevOps differently,  Some companies have "operations" report to the CFO and some to the Chief Revenue Officer.  The primary answer was "planning and modeling" goes into FP&A, and the rest of operations depends on the culture and competency within a company. Forecasting was another topic that is sometimes responsible for forecasting and others FP&A simply validates the Sales provided forecast, but not to create and share the forecast.  Basically, can FP&A use historical financial data toreview and validate the forecast. I drilled down into how FP&A departments become involved with "SaaS Metrics" in the SaaS industry.  Paul likes to see CFOs as the primary owner of the data that drives SaaS Metrics to ensure that the input data and the enterprise value creating metrics are standardized. Basically, not having the Go-to-Market functions own the SaaS Metrics formula definition, but can collaborate with FP&A in the calculation of the metrics using the "Finance" approved definition and calculation formula. If you are involved in the financial planning, modeling and reporting process in your SaaS company, and already have or are evaluating introducing a FP&A function that will work closely with the GTM operations teams (Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, CS Ops and/or RevOps) this conversation is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How has Customer Success evolved over the past ten years?  What better place to start than discussing the latest Customer Success Benchmarking Index with Kellie Capote, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. Kellie has invested the last five years developing her perspectives on Customer Success at Gainsight in a broad array of Customer Success leadership roles, including becoming the Chief Customer Officer in 2021. What were some of the top findings from the 2022 CS Benchmarking Index? Kellie first highlighted that 41% of companies recently invested in forming a Customer Success Operations function and is currently present in 61% of companies. This highlights the operational rigor and excellence being developed in Customer Success. 63% of Customer Success organizations are tracking Net Revenue Retention (NRR), proving that CS is being viewed as a revenue growth engine, not just a churn reduction department. 45% of CS organizations have subscription renewal responsibilities and will continue to grow as CS departments mature. One interesting topic discussed was that only 20% of CS organizations have primary responsibilities for up-sells and cross-sells. Thus how does a CS organization assume responsibility for NRR? Kellie highlighted that even though CS may not own the opportunity management process, 49% of the time, they are responsible for identifying potential up-sell and cross-sell opportunities while also ensuring customer satisfaction and product engagement which will organically impact existing customer expansion ARR.  Kellie also highlighted the Customer Success Qualified Lead (SQL) as a sign that CS is actively focused and engaged on existing customer revenue expansion. What tools are the leading CS organizations using to drive customer success? Customer Success plans are used by 63% of companies to facilitate the definition and attainment of customer-specific success. One area of opportunity is to use "customer value measurements," which are a key part of CS plans. The best companies use a "business value framework" during the sales process and then continue to inform how the CS organization engages with customers to continue measuring and reporting the customer value promised and delivered! Whether you are a customer success professional or a SaaS executive investing in Customer Success to drive customer satisfaction, customer value, and increase Net Revenue Retention Rates, this conversion with Kellie is highly informative and instructive. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How vibrant is the SaaS industry in Canada? Who better to ask that question and discuss how the SaaS industry is trending in Canada other than Lauren Thibodeau, founder and CEO SaaSCan. Saadian is the leading market research and benchmarking company for the SaaS industry across Canada. There are 38 Million people in Canada. Leading SaaS companies like Shopify, OpenText, and Constellation Software are all headquartered in Canada. There is also a growing ecosystem in Canada with 3,170 VC-backed SaaS companies in Canada, and that does not include boot-strapped or angel-funded companies. One of the common challenges for Canadian SaaS companies is expanding distribution beyond Canada to scale the company. The first need is to find avenues to expand its network outside Canada. Secondly, one of the more interesting challenges is that moving into the U.S. can crush a Canadian company that has not prepared its infrastructure for the 10x increase in addressable market that the U.S. represents. I asked Lauren what a U.S. based SaaS company needs to know if they want to enter the Canadian marketplace. Understanding the Canadian business culture is critical to success for U.S. companies selling in Canada. Listen first and talk second, and displaying a sense of humility are crucial aspects of the Canadian business environment. Having a North Star metric specific to your product and your customer's value is a great metric. Lauren suggested the following metrics to help measure and validate Product-Market Fit. The first is customer on-boarding and activating early customers; the second is understanding product usage metrics such as Daily Active Users (DAU)and Monthly Active Users (MAU). Lauren shared a new metric I had not heard before; the Sean Ellis test is a survey-based metric asking, "how disappointed would you be if this product went away ."If 40% or more of companies say they would be disappointed, that is a good proxy for Product-Market Fit. Unit economics, such as CAC Payback Period, Gross and Net Dollar Retention, and CLTV:CAC are good metrics to understand. However, they do not provide much insight or value until a company prepares to scale its investment in Sales and Marketing once a repeatable and scalable customer acquisition motion is established. Lauren recommends prioritizing focus on churn and retention on a dollar basis are a priority. The growth rate is always a key metric, especially if a company is entertaining external investment. Lauren also mentioned the "Burn Multiple" which measures how much cash is burned compared to Contracted ARR (CARR). Lauren Thibodeau is a great listen if you are interested in learning more about the Canadian SaaS ecosystem, or just learning more about SaaS metrics for early-stage companies. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Venture Capital - a hallmark of the B2B SaaS start-up industry has evolved over the past twenty years - but how have the primary value and responsibilities evolved? Marcelino Pantoja has had a front-row seat in many positions, starting as an analyst at the investment office at Stanford University. Then Marcelino worked with Greg Sands to help stand-up Costanoa Ventures. These views provided insights over six years from over 500 start-ups founded by Stanford alumni. The most surprising component of our conversation was that Marcelino believes that attaining Product Market Fit is a VC firm's first and primary role. What is Product Market Fit - Marcelino defines it using Andy Rachleff's (Co-Founder Benchmark Ventures) definition, as when you build a product that people desperately want and organic word of mouth is the primary source of new customers. VCs need the skill and experience to help a company during the Customer Development Phase of the journey to find Product Market Fit. Finding Product Market Fit is the most challenging and risky phase of the entrepreneurial journey. I pushed Marcelino on why "VCs" primary role is to help founders find Product Market Fit. He responded that capital has become a commodity and that the best VCs deliver company-building experience and expertise to complement the founder's efforts. Other than that, VCs are like any other capital source and should be viewed as such - HOT TAKE! One fundamental change today versus 10-15 years ago is the amount of accessible information on company building from successful founders. Another fundamental change in the technology start-up ecosystem is the number of start-ups that have scaled to become large enterprises. A by-product of this success is the number of people with the experience to help today's founders build and scale their idea and business...experiential advice is much easier to leverage than conference room theory. Another fundamental difference to starting a B2B SaaS start-up today is the low cost of building and delivering the product. Thus "experience" from proven founders and operators who have been there, done that, and possess their own capital from previous successes are a great source of CAPITAL and KNOWLEDGE at the early stages of a founder's journey. Marcelino's experience and perspectives motivated him to create a Venture Capital Index Fund, which simply stated is applying the concepts of traditional asset management to allow institutional investors access to a portfolio of VC funds. A VC Index fund is especially applicable to "early stage funds" which are harder to access for a traditional Limited Partner (LP), such as a University endowment or family office. The value of a VC Index Fund to the entrepreneur? The primary benefit is to reduce the amount of time a founder needs to invest in fundraising by working with a fund comprised primarily of previous founders, who have the capital and operational experience that many traditional VCs cannot provide. If you are a student of, or founder in the B2B SaaS industry, Marcelino provides a unique perspective on gaining access to two of the primary assets every first-time founder requires - capital and experience...in a single source. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cash Management is not one of the top subjects B2B SaaS founders want to discuss, but critical to start-up survival and success. Brandon Metcalf learned the in's and out's of Cash Management as a multiple-time founder and CEO. As a result, he recently founded Place Technology to help early-stage CEOs and CFOs use automation and technology to better manage cash across every stage of growth and every function in a company. "Cautious Capital" is a reality of any capital market that has experienced the momentum and euphoria of the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry over the last five years. Brandon learned the importance of Cash Management and Cash forecasting at Talent Rover, where they had independent P&Ls in eight countries. Cash is always a consideration for strategic decisions in any company. In 2022, growth at any cost is a relic of the past, and today the question is how to optimize every dollar investment to build a sustainable, growth company. An investor's relationship with a founder is built upon confidence and trust, as such, Brandon errors in telling his investors everything and even oversharing what is going on in the company - especially around cash usage, cash burn, and cash forecasts. Brandon prefers to raise capital in smaller tranches to ensure he and the investors feel comfortable with the previous capital invested and used to grow the business. Brandon uses an investment analysis firm to gain independent, externally validated company valuation outside the current investors. Then Brandon prefers to raise money at "lower valuations," which provides more comfort to investors and reduces the risks associated with down-round valuations. Cash Burn is a metric that every CEO, CFO, and investor understands. Cash Burn equals the money brought into a company versus the money spent to run the company. In venture-backed companies, the Cash Burn is almost always negative as a company invests in acquiring and growing customers at a rate much higher than possible in a self-funded, bootstrapped model. One of Brandon's favorite metrics is the "Burn Multiple" The Burn Multiple measures net cash burned divided by net new ARR. David Sacks, Craft Ventures first popularized this metric. A burn multiple less than 1x is amazing, greater than 3x is bad, and targeting 1x - 2x is good to great. I asked Brandon, what are the best metrics to track to manage cash management and cash efficiency. Beyond Burn Multiple, # months to cash flow break-even, operating cash burn to forecast/plan, cash to qualified lead - by source, variance analysis on customer payments (contract to actual), cash impact via discounting, cash impact via hiring. If you are a B2B SaaS founder, CEO, or CFO or considering launching a start-up in the future, understanding the importance and techniques to optimize cash management is a concept that Brandon provides excellent ideas and insights throughout our conversation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Incentive Compensation and Sales Performance Management - two key ingredients to scaling a successful B2B SaaS company.  Is Intelligent Revenue the next key ingredient to growth? Chris Cabrera, founder, and CEO of Xactly, built a very successful company by helping companies to automate and optimize those two disciplines. The result was an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2015 and a $564M acquisition by Vista Equity in 2017...but Chris's and Xactly's story did not stop there and continues to evolve. Currently Xactly is evolving to provide an Intelligent Revenue Platform that enables companies to scale revenue predictably more effectively. Chris defines Intelligent Revenue as the combination of Revenue Planning, Incentive Compensation Management, Pipeline Management, and Revenue Forecasting Revenue Operations and Intelligence is an evolving category still yet to be defined. Why the world is waking up that "siloed" apps are not an efficient or effective way to optimize revenue performance. Moreover, to leverage real intelligence across the entire customer journey requires consistent data across every phase of the journey, and a fragmented revenue technology stack does not provide the core foundation required for Intelligent Revenue. Chris's experience suggests that designing an intelligent revenue plan and incentive compensation model will lead to more predictable and profitable revenue growth. Revenue Intelligence does not start with better forecasting; it begins with using the insights and signals from the past to design the right Go-To-Market structures and plans - ultimately leading to better and more intelligent forecasts. Ninety-seven percent of Xactly's customers opt-in to share their data in an anonymous and aggregated fashion to develop benchmarks enabling the entire Xactly customer community to leverage the shared intelligence to build better revenue plans and incentive compensation programs. Who most benefits from Intelligent Revenue? Revenue Operations, often the combination of Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, and Customer Success Ops, directly benefit by being able to develop better territory plans, design incentive compensation plans that drive the right behavior and now provide more intelligent insights into how current pipeline trends will result in more accurate revenue forecasts. An example that Chris shared was how Revenue Operations can use Intelligent Revenue to design a program to reduce the use of discounting in price negotiations. As an example, incentive compensation plans that pay different rates based upon the "discount" that a sales professional negotiates. One of the traditional barriers to paying this way is the challenge of paying different commission rates based upon discount rates which is a complex, multi-variate calculation challenge - but one that can significantly impact profitable revenue growth. If you are responsible for one of the most common challenges that every company leader faces - delivering profitable revenue growth and consistent revenue forecasts, this conversation with Chris is entertaining, enlightening, and makes for a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How should we price our new SaaS product?  How does our pricing model compare to our competitors?  Are there other pricing models that would increase revenue and margin for our SaaS product? These are all some of questions that can be answered by analyzing B2B SaaS industry pricing benchmarks.   This is the world that Bryan Belanger lives in everyday, so who better to ask. Bryan has been conducting pricing research for over 10 years at the Technology Business Research company.  One of the challenges Bryan identified, was there is no single spot for all size SaaS companies to view the different pricing model options currently being used in the industry. Pricing models in the SaaS industry have started to evolve dramatically over the last few years, and have been further impacted by the growing populating of Product-Led Growth and Usage-Based Pricing.   Pricing benchmarks need to cover several core areas of a pricing model including: - Subscription type - Product /Pricing Packaging - Price Levels - Discounting - Pricing Structure - Pricing Pages - Trial vs Freemium usage - Usage Metrics - Usage Metering The typical B2B SaaS company only invest 1-2 days per year in analyzing, enhancing and/or testing new pricing models.  Far too often, pricing is still more ad-hoc and not informed by statistically valid research and benchmarks. Subscription pricing - the secret sauce to the B2B SaaS industry is still the primary pricing model for over 80% of B2B SaaS companies. The structures of SaaS subscriptions is evolving, but subscription pricing is still the cornerstone of SaaS pricing models. Usage-Based Pricing is a trendy pricing model in the industry today, due to it's direct impact on Growth Rates and Net Dollar Retention. Based upon the latest XaaS Pricing research, it was identified that just under 50% of a top 125 high-growth PLG company cohort were using a more basic subscription model (seat based).  Usage is introduced as a "limiting function by pricing package tier" but not invoicing on usage specific variables. The pricing goal in this model was to convert accounts exceeding the "limit" into the next level pricing tier. If you are evaluating introducing or modifying your B2B SaaS pricing model, Bryan and XaaS Pricing are a great listen and follow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Does being data-driven result in better decision-making and performance results?  That was a question we asked Allan Wille, co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio which is enabling thousands of companies to do just that through the dashboards they enable. What are the primary challenges with data-driven decision-making? It starts with the data quality going into the metrics used for decisions. Once the quality, integrity, and even amount of data can drive statistically significant insights, it's important not to go crazy and become the victim of "data overload". Next, we discussed who uses the source data from tools and processes to help analyze the data and then make decisions. At Klipfolio, that is the role of business operations. Other functional operational functions, such as Marketing Operations, manage the data that flows into/out of the marketing automation system and the logic utilized within the platform.  Every functional operations team needs to become data quality stewards, but may not be the function that analyzes what the data is saying. Often, business operations or financial operations may be the penultimate operations function that uses the data to help form data-driven decisions and strategies. What metrics are most important for an early-stage SaaS company to capture? Product Market Fit is the first and ONLY goal early on. How to measure product market fit? One is to measure how often a user comes back to use your product; another is to have a proactive outreach strategy to speak directly with the customers. The second category is to introduce growth metrics such as CARR growth, Revenue Growth, and Gross/Net Dollar Retention. Then in the third category come the efficiency metrics that guide profitable growth, such as CAC Payback Period and Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio. Curiosity is a central theme in fostering a data-driven culture. Almost every point solution has basic analytics and reporting capability, and when coupled with excel, most early-stage companies can become data-driven. This approach will limit visualization and the ability to scale but is a great start to a data-driven, metrics-informed decision-making journey. How to ensure the data and metrics being captured are being used to make decisions? Allan highlighted it is very common to introduce metrics that may not stick. Identify those that provide the most insights and have predictive capabilities, and think about getting rid of the less. To scale, having a strategic area of focus for a specific time period that the entire company rallies around is a great way to create a data-driven culture. As an example, maybe for a quarter or two the whole company focuses on a specific category, like Customer Acquisition and identify the top opportunities for improvement as highlighted by the associated metrics, and implement the enhancements (process and/or organizational) before moving to the next strategic area of data-driven, metrics-informed" opportunity. If you are in a business with less $50M ARR, the discussion with Allan provides many thought-provoking ideas and insights into creating a data-driven culture that translates into accelerated company success. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marketing as an AMPLIFIER to Sales productivity!!! The quote above was the primary focus of my discussion with Mark Stouse - the CEO of Proof Analytics. Mark self-identifies as a communicator turned marketer turned SaaS CEO. Over this journey, Mark has developed a strong perspective on how to prove ROI, especially for marketing investment. What are the metrics that matter to a Chief Marketing Officer? Mark says this is very straightforward: "Marketing's mission is to help Sales sell more product to more customers faster and more profitably than Sales could do by themselves". Simply stated, it is measured by more deals, bigger deals and faster deals - Deal Velocity! Calculating how marketing measures these should be the primary point of any metric that Marketing captures and reports. When pushed on the top three metrics, Mark responded that KPIs (data) by themselves are not enough. Data is the measurement of what happened in a particular time for a specific place - ALL in the past. Analytics, specifically regression analysis, enables a marketer to predict and forecast how future marketing investments will impact Sales productivity as measured by pipeline and revenue. The B2B SaaS industry is still young when measured against other industries such as manufacturing, retail, or consumer packaged goods. As such, the maturity of using sophisticated analytics to predict the future in the industry is still in its infancy - especially compared to larger, more data-intensive B2B online companies. An example of using data on a more granular level was Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Pipeline Coverage Ratio. By understanding how specific cohorts perform in top of funnel conversion, the marketing ROI can be increased materially through enhanced targeting. Next, we pivoted to Mark's concept of Marketing exponentially impacting Sales productivity. Mark has an interesting take on the concept: Marketing should invest more time helping Sales improve conversion rates in the middle and bottom of the opportunity funnel versus primarily being focused on top of funnel market engagement. Mark used a military analogy where the Air Force provides air cover to the ground troops.  Why does Mark believe the above? Marketing has conditioned business leaders to think that Marketing is primarily a brand awareness and engagement function versus a selling process amplifier. Mark highlighted TRUST as a key ingredient to enhancing conversion rates and accelerating deal velocity. What drives a buyer's confidence - trust is a crucial ingredient to building buyer trust. The more confidence a buyer has that a company and their product will impact their buying process, measured by win rate and sales cycle time. As a marketer, a pivotal question is what are we doing to increase the buyer's confidence and trust, resulting in helping Sales close more deals faster! If you are interested in hearing thought-provoking ideas on how Marketing can use data and analytics to enable Marketing to become an exponential multiplier to Sales productivity - this conversation with Mark is fascinating. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Baker, Principal at Scale Venture Partners, has been a venture capitalist for six years. Before that, he gained operational experience at Box in both an Inside Sales role and in a Strategy and Planning role. Scale's culture has a very quantitative-oriented DNA, including having its own benchmarking organization known as Scale Studio. Benchmarking delivers reality to every Scale portfolio company and aligns the founder and the investor on a metrics-oriented approach to decision making. The first topic we approached was what metrics are most important to a Series A and Series B investor? Sam's initial response was not to rattle off a list of metrics but to discuss the importance of "context" in today's investment environment. As an example, Sam shared that the "maturity" of the company is a primary driver of how best to use metrics. Scale has identified and uses four (4) Vital Signs of SaaS that include: 1) Growth; 2)Efficiency; 3) Churn, and; 4)Burn. A small description of the four vital signs below: Growth - How quickly is revenue growing Efficiency - Quantity of revenue compared to Sales and Marketing spend Churn - Do customers stick around and buy more, OR do they leave Burn - What is the rate of cash consumption to grow a SaaS company When asked about a benchmarking framework that Scale uses - he first highlighted it depends on who is consuming the benchmarks (which role) and what is the stage and maturity of the company. Scale's benchmarking framework is very extensible to enable an increased aperture on the metrics being utilized. For example, when a company dramatically increases investment in Sales and Marketing, Customer Acquisition Cost efficiency metrics become more important. Next, Sam recommended avoiding benchmarking and metrics overload, which requires a company to identify the most important and most informative metrics to how the company is currently trending and will be trending in the near term. Moreover, be prepared to add or change metrics that are most relevant to the growth stage. Scale has a couple of unique metrics, including Instantaneous Compound Annual Growth Rate (iCAGR). The benefit of iCAGR is it provides a real-time and is most sensitive to growth or shrinkage today, versus being biased by the average effect of quarterly or annually metrics. As an example, if growth is down in the most recent quarter, but the previous three quarters had higher than normal growth it can identify potential risk or new trend in company performance. Another metric that Scale uses is "Growth Persistence" which investors use to measure the rate of growth over time. For example, if a company grows 100% one year, and then 85% in year two and 72% in year three, it would reflect an 85% median growth persistence. How to avoid "metrics overload"? This is especially important in board meetings when the "metrics creep" can often happen. First, make sure everyone knows the company's "North Star" and how each metric directly impacts the North Star. Second, gain agreement up-front with the investors and board members on those metrics that are most important, that they are presented in a manner that is easy to understand and ensure the metrics tie back to the source systems being used. Sam provides a very insightful and instructive perspective on using metrics and benchmarks to inform a SaaS company's growth journey - especially from an investor's perspective, which is so critical in the 2022 investment environment. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everyone talks about the "Customer Journey" but often operates in stage-by-stage silos of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. What is the Customer Journey - first, it often depends on if you come from a "Buyer perspective" versus the "Seller perspective." Ultimately, the seller is trying to figure out how to turn the buyer's meandering journey into a more liner, faster buying journey...sounds like an adversarial relationship using this model. One interesting aspect of today's buying journey is how to optimize how Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success collaborate across the customer journey. The early phase can feel disjointed to the customer as they engage with a vendor using multiple "marketing-led" experiences that are not well understood by the Sales Development and/or Sales resource, who often do not know the knowledge and experience the prospect already has from self-directed research. Does having shared goals and metrics across Marketing, Sales and Customer Success impact the customer experience? Having an "Account Energy Score" may assist in aligning the functions across the customer journey. It can also inform the probability of a prospect becoming a customer. The Account Energy score factors in signals at each stage of the journey and weight specific actions such as content engagement or activities based upon the stage of the journey, such as Customer Acquisition vs Customer Retention vs Customer Expansion. Though there is never a "magic bullet" that can guarantee a prospect becoming a customer, being able to dynamically score each point of engagement depending on the latest understanding of how each signal correlates to customer journey progress is a material increase in insights versus today's standard models. In the "tough question category," is it the seller's responsibility to follow the buyer's journey OR to try and help guide and lead the prospect to make the best purchase decision? Carson's perspective is it is better to lead the buyer through the process by understanding the buyer's actual needs and being willing to stop the process IF their solution is not in the best for the buyer. Another key point is there is NO single customer journey or buying process, so it's critical to always be listening to the prospect and align plus help guide the buyer through the process. In today's "land, retain and expand" customer lifecycle process in the SaaS industry, having a 360 degree view that is informed by every signal that impacts the customer journey is a best practice. It is also a best practice that requires tight integration of your Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success team aligned to the customer journey. If you are interested in learning more about today's customer journey, and how to use their engagement as input to your forecast, and to better inform your internal resources on the best next action, this conversation with Carson is highly informative. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Taft Love's journey to becoming a Revenue Operations leader started in law enforcement, with a pivot to starting his tech career by becoming a Sales Development Representative, on to direct sales, sales leadership and ultimately to Revenue Operations. This journey is exactly the cross-functional experience that builds a strong foundation to being a strategic revenue operations leader.  Interestingly, Taft's experience as a sales lead at early stage B2B SaaS company, PandaDoc by identifying and then having to solve operational challenges that impacted his productivity. When should a company consider a RevOps function?  Taft's perspective is that RevOps starts with ensuring the revenue technology platforms and processes are aligned and optimized to the need of the front line sales personnel.  Simply stated, start the RevOps journey with a RevTech resource and as you grow to $5M - $15M (Series B) start considering a RevOps team that has broader responsibility beyond managing revenue technology platforms. As we discussed the RevOps framework of data, platform, process and analytics Taft doubled down on the "rev tech stack" administration is the initial catalyst to creating a RevOps team.  When pressed on the traditional approach to bringing in a Salesforce administrator and then the marketing automation administrator - often positioned as a Sales Ops and Marketing Ops resource, Taft continued to support his belief that RevOps should not be the first ops resource brought into a company. Next we discussed the pro's and con's of starting the RevOps journey with an internal hire versus leveraging the expertise of a RevOps agency.  Taft's insights are that no one single RevOps resource can be good at every component of a RevOps function.  Examples include trying to have the same single resource be a platform administrator, data guru, business analyst and technical integration expert. Taft's recommendation is to bring in a RevOps leader, who is the RevOps architect and also work with an agency that can bring the right experience and expertise on an "as needed" basis. Next we discussed why Sales Development can benefit the most from a close partnership with Revenue Operations.  Sales Development productivity is directly impacted by having the right "target prospect" data, the ability to conduct high quality outreach at scale and ultimately being able to fuel the engine of company growth - pipeline development! Recent research has shown that only 49% of an SDR's time is spent on outbound prospecting because they spend the majority of their time on administrative and operational activities, such as data management, list development and contact enrichment, that are the primary domains of a Revenue Operations function. If you are considering an investment in your first Revenue Operations function or how to leverage your Revenue Operations team to increase revenue activity productivity, Taft is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SaaS Capital - I have always loved that name and followed their B2B SaaS Research for many years. Todd Gardner was a founder at SaaS Capital, which helped lead the early days of "Debt Lending" for SaaS companies. Most recently, Todd is now the principal at SaaS Advisors assisting both SaaS companies and SaaS investors during the financing process. During Todd's career, he has reviewed thousands of SaaS income statements and balance sheets which positions Todd very well for the business and financial impact of Usage-Based Pricing (UBP) for B2B SaaS companies. The first topic we discussed was "What is Usage-Based Pricing"? The concept is pretty basic, aligning pricing to the value received by the customer. This concept has been used in other consumption-based industries, such as gas, water, and cellular phone bills. How does UBP impact the traditional use of subscriptions? Approximately 50% of SaaS companies using a Usage-Based pricing model also include an annual subscription as part of the pricing structure....a hybrid model. One interesting aspect when using a UBP + Subscription model is what is included in the subscription versus being purely usage-based charges? One of the challenges of a Usage-Based Pricing model is the increased challenge of revenue forecasting - which was one of the benefits of the traditional SaaS subscription model. Todd highlighted there is a trade-off in pricing between simplicity and value alignment. By having a hybrid Usage-Based Pricing model, there can still be the predictability of the subscription model while still having the opportunity to increase revenue as value increases for the customer. Is there a history of Usage-Based Pricing in a software subscription model? In the spirit of all things being circular, the original use of UBP was in time-sharing, which was a popular software application usage model in the 1980s. One of the challenges in that phase of subscription software was once usage increased to make the monthly cost-prohibitive or after a couple of unexpected large invoices from higher than normal/expected charges. Todd highlighted that with the introduction of the Customer Success organization, coupled with the use of product analytics, a SaaS vendor can stay in front of sustained "larger than expected" invoices and even use increased usage to re-structure the agreement to either "cap" overage usage and/or decrease the per-unit cost in consideration of a larger commitment. Todd recently conducted research that identified 6 product attributes or leverage points that suggest considering a Usage-Based Pricing model: 1. Lower in the technology stack products (infrastructure, databases, tools, platforms, etc.) 2. Application products that have a high Cost of Goods Sold basis  3. Use of the product is directly linked to business value (payments, eCommerce) 4. Self-provisioning products (think Product-Led Growth) 5. Growth and intensity of usage (high growth, heavy usage-based products) 6. Value is driven by automation - such as integration/API based products Todd has a unique perspective on the SaaS industry, informed by reviewing and lending to 1,000's of SaaS companies, and his recent research on Usage-Based Pricing across the SaaS industry is the basis for an information-packed conversation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kyle Porter, the founder and CEO of Salesloft, started the company over ten years ago. The goal was to have sellers "loved by the customers" they serve. An initial observation was that it was difficult to deliver a personalized customer engagement experience at scale, thus the catalyst for Saleloft and the Sales Engagement category. The future of Sales Engagement? All professionals who are responsible for driving revenue will be able to log into a single system, have a pre-defined queue of activities that is populated and prioritized automatically by the platform, automation to assist in executing those activities and measure the success of those activities...all while using the activity success to learn over time. The ultimate result, eliminate the subjective approach to prioritizing activities while increasing operational efficiency by automating a majority of those activities. Why has Sales Engagement traditionally been a tool for Sales Development, and will its use be expanded to other Go-To-Market roles? Originally it was easier to "codify" the SDR role because is was such a new role. Going forward, using machine learning and AI, Sales Engagement utilization will quickly evolve in the Account Management and Customer Success functions. One of the most significant challenges that Sales Engagement Platforms have addressed is the amount of time an outbound sales resource actually invests in outbound prospecting. Recent research says that Sales Development Representatives are currently only spending 49% of their time on outbound prospecting. Increased utilization + enhanced functionality in Sales Engagement Platforms will reduce the time invested in manual, internally facing tasks. Can a Sales Engagement Platform impact the middle of an opportunity funnel? Kyle's vision highlighted a "post-loss" cadence as one example of how a Sales Engagement Platform is used at the bottom of the funnel to inform future opportunity management. Another example was a post won communication cadence from the CEO to new clients. Customer Success is a critical, high-value function in the B2B SaaS industry - how can a Customer Success Manager use a Sales Engagement Platform? One example was using product analytics, such as an account engagement or usage, and using specific signals to launch an email to assist users in an automated sequence. How to measure the return on investment on Sales Development? Kyle's perspective is that moving the goal beyond scheduling a single meeting as the primary objective, such as scheduling 10 meetings in a large strategic account to gather information that can be used by the strategic account AE to schedule a meeting with an executive based upon the discovery information the SDR gathered across multiple meetings. One of the key benefits of a Sales Engagement Platform goes beyond a single user but to a team-based outreach program across two or more resources, such as the SDR + AE. We closed the conversation with Kyle on the key challenges and obstacles that Salesloft faced in becoming a leader in the Sales Engagement Platform category. The one that Kyle focused on was the need to develop his leadership skills.  "Learn faster than the rate of my own experience" was a phrase Kyle used to become a continuous learner and not be limited by negative labels - such as "he's a $1M - $10M ARR CEO". Kyle uses 360-degree reviews as one strategy to learn from his company where he needs to grow. Other tactics Kyle uses to fuel his continuous learning are forums with other CEOs, having a CEO coach, and reading. If you are using a Sales Engagement platform or want to learn from someone who has scaled to $100M ARR+, Kyle Porter is a great follow and listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Great Resignation has been a trending topic for six months - how does a B2B SaaS company prepare for  the impact?  Sales Enablement is one strategic function that will be a key component to combat attrition and ramp new sales hires to productivity...quickly Dave Lichtman has been a sales trainer, a sales professional at Salesforce and a sales leader at Sales Enablement platform vendor, SalesHood. We first discussed how Sales Enablement evolved during the pandemic.  First, most sales playbooks had to be thrown out the door, and companies had to re-train and enable a new "virtual sales process" and Sales Enablement was front and center to that new reality. Dave has seen compensation packages rise dramatically due to the increased need, and many Sales Enablement professionals are seeing total comp packages in the range of a Senior Director or VP Sales. When to first deploy a Sales Enablement function?  First, ensuring Product Market Fit and having an initial repeatable sales process need to be established.  Once that happens, it is good to invest in Sales Enablement to scale sales....revenue level is secondary to ensuring these two factors are solid. How has the delivery model changed for Sales Enablement?  The common foundation was ensuring you could train new sales hires virtually,  thus requiring a more robust technology, including a sales enablement platform.  Another key trend due to the current levels of sales personnel attrition is ingesting larger groups of new hires simultaneously, which requires a more compressed time to productivity. Sales Enablement today is aggressively using a hybrid of virtual, instructor led + digital self-directed learning.  So what is the "profile" most in demand for Sales Enablement resources today?  Dave shared the top "attributes and experiences" including:  1) Direct sale experience is a plus but not a must...what is a must is being a student of sales. 2) Typically, the first hire is a "team of one" and having previous Sales Enablement experience in standing up the first Sales Enablement team is a critical, must have skill set.  Being a Sales Enablement employee is a larger organization is not applicable to standing up a Sales Enablement function. 3) Curiosity is probably the most important personal attribute, while being a "pleaser" who thrives on helping people WHILE also having the ability to gently push back on leadership when a requested direction may be sub optimal.  This can lead to taking on too many responsibilities ultimately leading to failure. Sales Enablement is a team sport, and as such being able to build strong relationships across functions is critical to sustained success.  Has Sales Enablement evolved beyond sales, and expanding to functions such as Sales Development, Customer Success and Account Management?  A minority of companies have started to expand Sales Enablement to include post sales resources, though the C-Suite has started to view Sales Enablement as a strategic function, and broadening the purview of Sales Enablement. Dave sees Sales Enablement primarily living under and reporting directly to the Chief Revenue Officer.  This will enhance alignment of Sales Enablement to the strategic priorities of the CRO - in Dave's team closer to the sun is an important key to Sales Enablement success. How to measure the ROI of Sales Enablement?  Measure both leading and lagging indicators.  Start with the purpose of each program and align to leading indicators such as close rate, competitive win rate, discount rates, ACV, etc, If you are a Sales Enablement professional, thinking about investing in Sales Enablement for the first time or simply looking on best practices to increase Sales Enablement impact on revenue,  the discussion with Dave Lichtman is highly instructive. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anna Baird is the Chief Revenue Officer at Outreach, the leading Sales Engagement Platform.  Anna started her career as a partner at KPMG, and continued her career journey across multiple “C-Level” roles including CFO, COO, President and now CRO. The first portion of our conversation centered on the maturity of the Sales Engagement Platform category.  Anna shared that across all B2B Sales, that the category has only achieved a 2% market penetration, as measured by the number of B2B sales professionals. What started as a point solution for Sales Development, top of funnel prospecting tool, Sales Engagement has now evolved from the B2B Tech industry as an entry point to how do you impact the entire Go-To-Market team across the entire customer journey. Research shows that 51% of B2B SaaS companies have invested in a Sales Engagement platform.  Anna sees the expansion opportunity for Sales Engagement to be both across every Go-To-Market function and across multiple new industries beyond the technology industry.  By automating the workflow associated with every point of customer engagement across the customer journey, data capture into the core Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system of record.  Expansion revenue is becoming a larger component of ARR growth in the B2B SaaS industry. As a result, the Customer Success function is becoming a more prominent user of Sales Engagement, to manage expansion and renewals at scale.  Anna’s vision is that Outreach becomes the primary dashboard that any GTM professional enters and lives their day, including highlighting the highest priority activities and tasks for the day - using predictive, revenue intelligence within the platform.  IIn fact, the vision is much larger, because the pain that exists goes far beyond tactical activities, it’s how to view every customer engagement point is available in a single, integrated platform.  In fact, Outreach is expanding their category name to the “Sales Execution Platform” - going beyond engagement to execution across the entire customer lifecycle. Anna’s vision evolves Outreach into a “System of Execution” which is more about customer process execution versus a datastore of customer information. Next, we pivoted to how revenue leaders can leverage “metrics and revenue intelligence” to make better decisions. By aggregating all customer conversations into a single environment, it becomes easier to apply revenue intelligence to all of the signals from customer engagement points to prioritize which signals are of highest priority. Anna also shared her perspective on the importance and priority of Revenue Operations. Anna, calls the role “Revenue Excellence and Operations”. This role is responsible for both the strategy and then the execution of revenue processes. Having Revenue Operations being responsible for the operations and administration of processes + the platforms drive revenue performance.  In fact, the head of REO at Outreach is intimately involved in almost every strategic, revenue centric company level discussion. Anna provides a highly strategic and insightful perspective on how technology is critical to enhancing Revenue Execution across every B2B Go-To-Market organization. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Customer Success has been growing in importance across the B2B SaaS landscape for over 10 years. Guy Nirpaz recognized this trend early on and founded Totango in 2010 to deliver a SaaS platform to empower Customer Success (CS) professionals to focus the company around the customer. Guy stated our conversation with his belief that Customer Success is a company strategy - not just a department.  If you want a customer to renew and expand their relationship, every interaction with the customer needs to deliver value and deliver upon the promise the relationship began upon. Business outcomes should be the #1 focus of the CS organization.  But how to ensure the executive/economic buyer(s) understand the value you are delivering?   First,  track all of the users in your account by role and engage as required to ensure all stakeholders are using your product and receiving value. How does Net Promoter Score (NPS) help to understand customer satisfaction?  NPS  is only one tactic to measure customer satisfaction.  But with only 10% - 20% of target participants completing the NPS survey, ensure you are using other tactics, such as user activity and other metrics that impact customer satisfaction. A key variable that leads to customer retention or churn, is to ensure you are tracking the satisfaction of executive buyers and also track customer executive movement from and to your customers which can directly lead to customer retention challenges. Next we discussed how Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) should be used to manage customer satisfaction and increase customer retention.  First, establish a regular cadence. Second,  include executives for the appropriate portions of the QBR.  Thirdly, ensure an agenda is  approved by the customer prior to the QBR to ensure you cover topics critical to the customer. The pre-approved agenda is an example of having clear communications to increase the quality of every in-person interaction. Value delivery was discussed in context of QBRs to confirm the business value being delivered is part of the QBR.  The first requirement is to KNOW why the customer invested in your product.  This requires the vendor to capture the business value the customer had used to justify the investment.  This requires a well defined process that identifies, captures and then uses that business objective in every QBR. Value Engineering is one organizational approach to capture and highlight business outcomes. By having this function ( capability) in place, a company materially increases the ability to engage executive in the sales process, and the QBR process.   If an executive buyer was involved in confirming and owning the business outcomes of an investment, they are more vested in attending a QBR that includes the progress being made against the "outcomes" that justified the investment. QBRs are one approach to highlighting value. Executive Business Reviews (EBR) is another approach to engage economic buyers in a QBR.  One approach is to automate and share the "usage"  data prior to the QBR and focus the majority of the customer briefing on the value and outcomes. A common mistake in QBRs is not using the session to review each page in the QBR report/presentation. Provide the report in advance, and focus the QBR on discussing  business value and focus on how incremental value can be delivered. To increase the value of QBRs,  delivery should be viewed as a high value event that is measured by the value the customer receives as measured by retention and expansion.  One approach is to run a Customer Satisfaction survey to receive customer feedback on the value of the QBR. This conversation is a great listen for anyone involved in Customer Success and using QBRs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We apologize for the sound quality on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up. Bill was not able to participate on our traditional digital channel medium and instead we relied upon the traditional "analog phone line". This traditional approach created a little "reverberation and noise".   Bill shares so many great insights developed over his 37 years of being a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and his multiple best selling books in this conversation, we decided to go ahead and publish the episode - including the harsh reality of analogy technology! Bill recently published his latest book - The Autonomous Revolution which provides a very unique insight into how technology is fundamentally changing many of the social and economic constructs of the U.S. and global economy. What is different now is that technology today is changing multiple structures our society has not seen changed since the industrial revolution.  One simple example of this is that companies like Amazon and Google generating >$1M of revenue per employee which had remained essentially flat throughout the 20th century. Another topic we touched upon is the contribution of social media's presence to the increasing polarization of society, and the impact of geo-political reality across the globe. The internet and social media has reduced the cost of "one to many" communications by a factor by a massive amount.  Traditionally, the free market economy controlled free speech, but today the cost of communicating to millions of people is basically zero and fundamentally changes how one individual can reach, influence and inspire people across the globe. If you enjoy taking a few minutes outside of your day to day reality, and reflect upon how technology has and will affect our society, our economy and our future reality - this conversation with Bill is a true thought provoking conversation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of the great aspects of the Cloud software delivery model is the generation of insightful data generated by users and the purported ease of using the data to better inform  decision-making. At the same time, the amount of data being generated in the Cloud makes the job of normalizing, analyzing, and determining what data is truly informative and predictive versus just adding noise and complexity to the system. Adam Wilson, CEO at Trifacta was purchased by Alteryx after this podcast was recorded.   Adam shares his insights in building awareness and a company that takes on the growing challenges of managing and using data generated in the cloud. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Usage-Based Pricing is trending across the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.  This pricing model is not new and is also known as Consumption pricing as the cost of the service or product increases as the "consumption" of the product increases. Saas has traditionally become known for the use of subscription pricing, which often associates an annual subscription cost for each user of the product.  In this scenario, the cost would only increase as additional users were assigned a "seat" and were then able to use the product in an unlimited fashion for that one annual "subscription" price. One of the challenges that come with the use of Usage-Based pricing in the SaaS industry is how to compensate salespeople for both the acquisition of a new customer, but also for the actual usage and relating revenue over time. Rachel Parrinello leads the Sales Compensation practice at The Alexander Group and works with many leading B2B SaaS companies that use a Usage-Based pricing model.  Based upon her unique insights into and experience with multiple different compensation models and plans, we dove right into the evolution of sales compensation plans within Usage-Based pricing environments. Rachel uses an acronym called ILAER model which stands for Identify, Land, Adopt, Expand and Renew model.  In this environment, there are multiple variables to consider in the design of compensation plans such as how to compensate retention, renewals, and expansions - then in the context of a much smaller value to the initial contract value. Four basic types of pricing models in Usage-Based Pricing environments: 1. No contact and no minimum contract - Pay as your Go 2. Uncommitted contract - There is a contract but no minimum commitment to usage or revenue 3. Committed contract - Prepaid pool of funds that will be used against usage over the agreement term, often a year.  The agreement includes the minimum usage, price per unit of usage, and the associated minimum revenue over the agreement 4. Hybrid (committed + non-committed) contract:  A minimum usage is agreed to, however the projected usage is typically forecasted to be much larger than the contractual minimum and reduced unit pricing  is predetermined within the agreement We then moved to the "sales compensation" plan for the above models.  Rachel started with the importance of identifying the "persuasion" event and ensuring the sales compensation plan is aligned and rewards for achieving the persuasion event.  The persuasion event may be the original customer acquisition event and paying for a part of the "projected revenue" be paid at the time of the persuasion event and additional compensation as the actual usage and associated revenue happens. The conversation quickly moved to the different roles involved in the acquisition and growth of the customer.  One traditional model is the hunter/farmer model where the hunter is responsible for acquiring the customer and the farmer is responsible for growing the customer after the initial acquisition.  A new role, called the "rancher" has evolved in the Usage-Based Pricing world, and they have the responsibility for both acquiring the customer and growing the customer. In the "rancher" model, one defining variable to determine if this is right for a company, it starts with the amount and level of information that needs to be transferred after the initial close.  If the knowledge and level of customer information are large, consider using the rancher model, at least for the first 12-24 months after the initial close. If you are a participant or leader responsible for sales compensation models in a Usage-Based environment,  Rachel is a must listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS founders envision their entrepreneurial journey including a liquidity event such as an IPO, a financial acquisition, or a strategic acquisition from an industry leader. Lowell Ricklefs has deep operating experience leading tech companies and has experienced acquisitions on both the buyer and the seller side multiple times. During these processes, Lowell often wondered why banks were required to sell a SaaS company. Lowell identified an opportunity for enhanced sell-side assistance for SaaS companies in the $3M - $20M ARR range. The first topic we cover is the personal decision of deciding to sell your company and the signs that suggest maybe this is the time to consider selling. One sign is the journey has been very long and arduous and the founder is tired, does not have any new breakout ideas, and is ready to exit.  Another sign is when a market segment becomes very hot, the competition is fierce and larger companies have started to enter as competitors.  One threshold that Lowell suggests is critical to optimizing company value is reaching at least $5M - $10M ARR will materially increase both the interest and value that your SaaS company will receive.  A consideration that a founder needs to be fully explored is if they are truly ready to step away from being the day-to-day leader of the business.  Often, especially in strategic acquisitions, the founder who has been the CEO for years will most likely be asked to take a reduced role within a larger organization.  Some founders can find this very comfortable, but often it can become a struggle when the ultimate decisions will not be their own. Strategic acquirers typically will be looking for a company with at least $10M ARR.  At a macro level, Growth and Retention metrics are the most important metrics that a strategic acquirer will evaluate.   Net Revenue Retention, logo churn, revenue concentration, total addressable market, and EBITDA are important to strategic acquirers.  Another metric that strategic acquirers consider is the amount of capital raised or consumed, as strategic acquirers do appreciate and value the company's ability to grow efficiently. Our host, Ray asked Lowell the question for a $10M ARR company which is more important to an acquirer - Growth Rate or Net Dollar Retention?  Lowell said both are important, but one that can grow organically as measured by Net Dollar Retention is his choice for the most important company value impacting metric...at $10M  ARR and above. An early-stage company will not be valued based upon the level of profitability by a strategic buyer, but Lowell still recommends having a plan to become EBITDA positive, and growing that profitability is a critical metric. One consideration for strategic acquirers, especially Private Equity (PE) is if your company will become a "PLATFORM" for industry consolidation.   There are several PE firms that have a thesis of consolidating the industry, growing through acquisition, and eliminating duplicate SG&A costs leading to increased profitability.  In this scenario, having great organic and profitable growth is foundational to the company becoming the platform for consolidation and growth. "PLATFORM" - what does this mean in strategic acquisition?  For Private Equity - it is the company that becomes the centerpiece of a consolidation strategy. $10M ARR is really the threshold to be considered as the platform for a strategic consolidation strategy.  Many PE companies also use the available market size as a criterion for using a consolidation strategy - but many also will focus primarily on Internal Rate of Return (IRR) as the primary criteria. If you see an acquisition for your SaaS company as a potential outcome, the conversation with Lowell is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andy Byrne is the founder and CEO of Clari, an enterprise artificial intelligence B2B SaaS platform that enables companies to build more pipeline, accelerate revenue growth and increase revenue predictability. Andy has a long-term relationship with machine learning from his previous company  Clearwell Systems (acquired by Symantec), and that experience was the foundation of his vision for Clari.  Andy identified that machine learning had not previously been used to help sales teams close deals faster, assist managers to accelerate revenue velocity, and enable executives to gain enhanced visibility into revenue forecasts. The first topic we covered was the definition of Revenue Operations? Andy defined it as the people, the process, and the technology that drives a company's revenue engine and orchestrates sales, marketing, and post-sales activity. Do we need another piece of technology to automate the revenue process?  Andy highlighted that his customers are demanding a better way to align, integrate and orchestrate every step and point of engagement with the customer journey.  Andy highlighted that with the rise of the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), there is a real movement to re-engineer go-to-market processes and even organizational structures. When asked about the CRO having both marketing and sales, Andy highlighted that the CMO is traditionally responsible for pipeline, brand, and product marketing.  If you think about those three areas, the #1 priority is pipeline which creates an intimate connection between a CRO and CMO.  Moreover, since the CMO also owns brand,  it makes more sense for the CRO and CMO to be co-equal peers, and not worry about who reports to who. Clari actually integrated demand generation and Sales Development into one integrated organization.  Andy highlighted that took that integration one step further, but also creating a Value Engineering group into the same organization with the specific responsibility to measure and share the return on investment for their customers. Value engineering is a combination of art and science, to prove the mathematical results of using your technology or platform using empirical evidence versus ad-hoc, anectodal stories.  This approach to highlight the value received has led to the expansion of the Clari platform beyond sales, to both Marketing and Customer Success.  In fact,  the post-sales motion focused on up-sells and cross-sells directly increases Net Dollar Retention Rate is has been key to the increased acceleration of the Clari growth story. Revenue Intelligence is a "buzz phrase" that is being tossed around the B2B SaaS industry.  Revenue Intelligence is the ability to gain insights into communications and transactions with the target buyers and customers. A key term Andy highlighted was "signals" are coming from multiple sources - typically transactional systems like conversational intelligence, sales engagement, and even CRM platforms.  By aggregating all of these signals into one "system", the ability to surface key insight nuggets materially increases the visibility for executives to make better decisions and increase revenue forecast accuracy. If you are involved in a B2B company that is growing quickly, and needs to drive revenue across customer acquisition, retention, and expansion motions, listening to Andy's insights and experiences gained from hundreds of Clari customers, this is a great conversation that provides several "information nuggets" that can quickly be leveraged to accelerate predictable revenue growth. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Benchmarks go far beyond the “numbers” and “metrics” Benchmarking is a discipline that enables organizations to identify processes and best practices that companies inside and outside of your industry to become best in class in a specific discipline. Scott Sutton is the VP, Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo and shares his experiences in building the Revenue Operations function. Scott’s initial career experience was in the automotive industry and provided a solid foundation for his transition into B2B SaaS.   Operations have traditionally been a second order of priority in the B2B SaaS industry.  When Scott joined ZoomInfo, he highlighted that they were already a very “data-driven” company, but he was able to bring his deep and broad operational process skills developed at Daimler. Scott quickly learned that process analysis methods, like queue theory, were highly transferable to the customer acquisition processes at ZoomInfo.   The revenue process is at the core of everything that Revenue Operations has responsibility.  Using a project + process thinking framework, every challenge can be isolated, analyzed, and resolved across the company.  Individual contributors, such as sales development or Customer Success Managers are key sources of process feedback and input.  By “walking the floor”, the RevOps team remains aligned to understand their experience in executing the processes they design and refine.  Two years ago, ZoomInfo deployed product managers for each function within sales.  They are the primary resource responsible for shadowing resources in that function and identifying process improvement opportunities for the function and processes. The Performance Management Framework builds upon the concepts of the AOR framework.  Activity metrics are readily available to the front line every day.  ZoomInfo conducts weekly forecasting, customer experience, pipeline growth including daily pacing which directly feeds into the monthly operating review.  How important are activity metrics to the framework?  Activity matters, even though individuals can be an exception to the activity supply chain, having activity goals are critical to forecasting the level of inputs required to deliver outcomes as measured by pipeline and revenue.  “Activity Score” is a unique measurement that ZoomInfo uses. The algorithm weights every type of communication measured by engagement level, and then is cross-referenced by the target market. The input signals are continuously evolving, so the Activity Score is dynamic and will reset based upon a longer than normal lack of signals.  The activity score normalizes for each target market segment and automatically scales up or down based upon market segment. Benchmarking goes far beyond the numbers, but best-in-class companies can learn from other industries that have best practices in a process that you have targeted for improvement.  One example was how best-in-class companies improve internal system administration. With 20+ sales tech developers, he wanted to benchmark how world-class companies managed software development and administration, and how they could improve based upon classic software development benchmarks. ZoomInfo measures RevOps impacts company metrics, by focusing on metrics such as ACV per rep or how much investment is allocated to new versus expansion revenue. Another example is CLTV to CAC Ratio, as it helps inform how to balance the “land and expand” model by evaluating initial contract value versus Customer Lifetime Value after multiple years of up-sells and cross-sells. If you are responsible for Revenue Operations or have a responsibility on how to use data generated from multiple market-facing technologies, Scott’s experience and insights make for a highly informative discussion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Jacobs first created the foundation for Pavilion - formerly the Revenue Collective in 2016. The vision was to address these two trends: 1) the average tenure of executives at B2B start-ups was shrinking - about 17 months for revenue leaders; 2) The job of being a B2B executive continues to grow in complexity and difficulty. Sam was experiencing this phenomenon in his career and wanted to create a platform and community to share best practices and assist members in realizing the potential that lies within themselves! Before Covid - Pavilion primarily used the format of in-person events. During Covid, the pressures on sales professionals did not decrease, while the ability to speak with fellow professionals became more difficult. Pavilion saw an increase from 800 members to over 3,700 members in 2020. In 2021, the number of members has increased to over 6,500 members by November 2021. The vision for Pavilion has evolved since 2016. When first launched, the Revenue Collective was more of an "us versus them" orientation and the community was only for B2B Sales professionals. That vision has evolved to help professionals reach their full potential across multiple functions. Today, the community supports Sales, Revenue Operations, Customer Success, Finance, and most recently, a CEO community was launched. The Pavilion vision does not end in the B2B tech industry but will continue to evolve across multiple industries.  Pavilion is a "paid" membership community. Thus the customer is the member, and that creates a different set of expectations of the community and thus, the focus of Pavilion is to serve the member - not other stakeholders. As an example, Pavilion personally calls every new member to welcome them to highlight their focus on the members.  Though there are many other B2B communities, Pavilion's reason to exist is not concepts such as "elevate the profession of sales" - the community is to achieve the goal to enable members to unlock their potential and have the career success they desire. A core value of Pavilion is "Get by Giving." This goal is to create a community ethos that is more about helping other people, which pays itself back many times over. Another value of Pavilion is to "Listen Closely and Act Quickly". Listening closely means understanding what the member really needs and not glossing over their words - but digging into the underlying meaning and goal of the words spoken.  Another core Pavilion value is "We choose to come from Kindness" - which is a message to the world. This ethos is highly personal to Sam and begins with acting with compassion, human empathy, kindness, and even affection for those in your community - while still building a great business. What metrics does a community capture to measure its health? Retention rates are a critical measurement, and best-in-class consumer companies are experiencing 2% member churn per month. But that is not the whole story, the corporate client (Pavilion for teams) is a key to Pavilion's growth, and they have a Net Promoter Score of 56 - which translates to 71% of corporate customers love what they are receiving.  Pavilion University is a key component to drive member value and thus retention. This offering is receiving positive member feedback with an NPS of 91! A top goal of Pavilion for CEOs is to reduce the loneliness of being a CEO. The three areas of focus include: Tactical skill knowledge - like finance, sales, HR, technology, etc.Personal leadership development.FUN - because everyone needs more fun in their lives - especially in such high pressure and stressful jobs.Sam's heartfelt goal to build a human first community provides a thought-provoking and highly informative discussion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Are you involved, responsible for, or dependant on Sales Development and pipeline growth for a B2B SaaS or Cloud company? If you answer yes to any of the above, this is an excellent conversation to gain new insights and hear innovative approaches to maximize pipeline development. Kyle Coleman is the Vice President, Revenue Growth and Enablement at Clari. This role includes sales development, sales enablement, and demand generation at Clari. This integrated approach to pipeline development is unique in the B2B SaaS industry. Kyle highlighted that having enablement as part of the same function ensures the messaging and campaigns that demand generation invests in developing make it to the target audience across every channel. Integrating sales development and demand generation as part of the same organization with common goals and measurements is unique. When asked, Kyle believes this is more due to transition and logic, and one of those legacy thoughts is that "quantity" of leads versus "quality" of outcomes such as pipeline dollar growth and new ARR. Though Kyle mentioned that it is still important to measure more traditional metrics like website visitor conversion rates, leads, paid media performance, etc. - the ultimate measurements for Sales Development and Demand Generation are PIPELINE and REVENUE. Where does the combined function of Sales Development and Demand Generation report? Kyle reports directly to the Chief Revenue Officer, while also having a dotted line reporting relationship to the Chief Marketing Officer. Kyle highlighted that his function is the core functional "connective tissue" to align marketing and sales. The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) does not have responsibility for all marketing. However, in Clari, since demand generation is part of their responsibility, it frees marketing up to increase their focus on brand, content marketing, product marketing, and corporate communications. Account Management and Customer Success reports into the CRO, which provides a well-integrated approach to the entire customer lifecycle, including acquisition, retention, and expansion. Kyle is also blazing the trail by having dedicated Sales Development Reps focused on existing customer expansion in partnership with Account Managers. This is a new approach within Clari, and the process continues to evolve. Today, the Account Management team focuses more on existing customer renewals. The existing customer Sales Development Rep is responsible for sourcing, educating, and qualifying up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. The existing customer sales development resource is called an Account Development Manager. The Account Development Manager is compensated against qualified opportunity pipeline and has a management by objectives focused on expanding business within key target, strategic accounts. Kyle continued to refer to quality as a major topic, so we asked "how do you define quality" for sales development at Clari? Clari does NOT incent on booking meetings, it is more focused on outcomes, specifically qualified pipeline. SDRs create a Stage "0" opportunity, and then the Account Executive determines if the opportunity is qualified, and that is the first incentive component for SDRs.  Clari does not use "BANT" but uses more nuanced criteria, including seniority, readiness, and next steps defined versus budget and timing. This approach is primarily due to the "Revenue Operations" Technology space still evolving and often not a budgeted line technology. If you are evaluating new and better ways to accelerate pipeline growth, Kyle is a great follow and listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you read Crossing the Chasm - the Go-to-Market bible for high tech leaders for over 30 years? Crossing the Chasm, written by Geoffrey Moore, was first published in 1991 introduced the Technology Lifecycle Adoption Framework. The basic concept of Crossing the Chasm is that there are five stages in the Technology Lifecycle Adoption curve, and each stage has a specific "buyer profile" at each stage of adoption: Stages of the Product Lifecycle Adoption Curve: Innovators - Get excited about the technology itselfEarly Adopters - Will bet early on the technology to gain competitive advantageTHE CHASM - The critical cross-over point from a niche market to a large addressable marketEarly Majority - Not genuine believers in technology - much more focused on a high priority problem Late Majority - Must be convinced the herd has already adopted and the ease of implementation and adoption outweighs the riskLaggards - The last phase of tech adoption - the goal is to neutralize, not convince them to changeBuyer type for each stage of the Technology Lifecycle Adoption Curve: Technology Enthusiasts - The first people to adopt any new technologyVisionaries - Have the insights to match up emerging tech to strategic opportunityPragmatists - Looking for incremental improvement versus innovation with higher riskConservatives - Believe more in tradition/status quo versus discontinuous innovationSkeptics - Believe new technology is synonymous with unintended consequencesBowling Alley - the strategy to increase the probability of success when crossing the Chasm to penetrate the early majority  Knock over the first "use case" and then move to adjacenciesSame use case in a different industryDifferent use cases in the same industryThe first focal point of the bowling alley requires Whole productWord of mouth community which requires 4-5 customers in the same industry as advocatesInside the Tornado - Result of increasing awareness of a technology segment + budget exists for this category. A great example - Conversational Intelligence The breadth of the vendors' ecosystem is critical to becoming the leader inside the Tornado. MainStreet - the stage where the majority of potential buyers knows they need to invest in this category  The stage of Cloud and SaaS adoption todayConservatives have a lot of power in this stage - and ensuring customer success and business value received is critical to continued growth.  How to manage a business at each stage of a company or products adoption curve? Zone Management - governs the management model at each stage of product adoption: Performance Zone - Main Street market with predictable growth measured by revenue growth, margins, and market shareProductivity Zone - process focused on improving the efficiency of every function to optimize profitability.Incubation Zone  - Represents the start-up mindset and is about establishing Product Market Fit and "Power" in the marketplace by winning real customers and beating the competition.Transformation Zone - Basically conducting open-heart surgery on your existing business because the world has changed and your product is viewed as yesterday's news.Geoffrey Moore and his book Crossing the Chasm are legends in the technology industry marketing landscape. The principles from Crossing the Chasm are as effective in the Cloud in 2021 and beyond as they were when the book and framework were first published! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Conversational Intelligence (CI) is a technology that materially enhances the effectiveness of every B2B Sales professional. CI has quickly become a "must-have" component in the B2B sales tech stack and has become a feature in most Sales Engagement Platforms...WHAT is the future of Conversational Intelligence? Our host, Ray Rike, recently spoke with Amit Bendov, Founder and CEO of Gong.io, to discuss the vision and future of Gong and the Revenue Reality. Amit's premise was "is there a better way to get market feedback" from every communication channel into the CRM without requiring manual data input. What was the initial catalyst for Gong and CI? Amit's previous company hit a wall and had revenue growth challenges for two consecutive quarters. After scouring every record he could in the CRM platform and speaking with the leaders across sales and marketing, he quickly realized there was no single version of the truth! Recently, Gong introduced the vision of "Revenue Reality" which is the mission to help companies understand the reality of their market and their market interactions. Unlocking the power of this insight is behind the next phase of Gong's evolution. Conversational Intelligence goes far beyond "recording conversations". The higher order of value is to gain additional insights into what the conversations are foreshadowing and then surfacing those insights without human intervention. Seventy percent of Gong customers have expanded the use beyond sales and into the post-sales organizations, including Customer Success and Product Management. These insights allow the product team to be "served up" the most relevant comments and insights from customer interactions with any other function. Leveraging conversational intelligence dramatically increases the product team's ability to benefit from direct feedback from the customer, without listening to a 30-60 minute conversation, and to identify common themes and trends across multiple customers and even buyers in the prospecting phase of the buyer's journey. One of the most intriguing parts of the Gong ecosystem is Gong Labs which surfaces insights from millions of interactions across thousands of companies. One example of a finding was that multi-threading the sales process across multiple individuals, including having a C-Level executive from your company in the process, DOUBLES the win rate.  Additional information that Gong serves up that comes from their proprietary data is the number of questions that a salesperson asks during an introductory or discovery that predicts the highest probability to become a customer. Another interesting insight is that the more time spent on speaking while presenting a "PowerPoint" has an inverse correlation to win rates. One final insight is that during a discovery call, the close rate dramatically increases when NO slides were used, and the prospect engagement level rises. When using slides/presentations, the salesperson spends 25% more time speaking and asks 21% fewer questions! "Accept the Losses" is a comment Amit made in a recent LinkedIn post. The story behind this comment is that you can invest far too much time in understanding the primary reason you lose a deal and even identify false positives in the analysis.  The primary goal behind this comment is to "simplify" the value proposition and reduce the number of variables that can lead to a loss. For example, Gong focuses on why their solution is BETTER, but it is not the low-cost solution - thus, knowing they will lose a few deals due to price is an acceptable revenue reality. Amit Bendov is a true leader in the B2B SaaS industry, and our conversation surfaces many great insights and ideas to accelerate revenue growth and gain revenue reality! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B Cloud revenue is projected to grow from $300B+ in 2020 to over $800B by 2025. Some estimates highlight the industry will require 300,000 additional B2B Sales professionals to achieve this level of growth. If the above is even directionally correct, being able to train sales professionals is key to continued industry growth. Paul Fifield is the founder and CEO of the Sales Impact Academy. His vision to create the Sales Impact Academy is built upon his frustration in growing and leading revenue teams. Paul says that most B2B SaaS leaders are forced to "make it up" as they go because there is no great source of advice, education, and training for B2B Sales professionals. The first class Paul developed was a  basic "how to build a predictable and scalable revenue function". This was the catalyst for Paul to identify the lack of repeatable models would negatively affect the industry's continued growth. Sales Impact Academy is a "universal best practice" approach to sales training.  By identifying, packaging and training upon proven best practices, the industry will leverage the collective experience and knowledge of those who have gone before. Paul and the Sales Impact Academy approaches sales training with a fundamental belief that the basic process of selling, even in the Cloud, has not materially changed. Sales Management, Sales Leadership, Sales, Prospecting, Marketing, and Customer Success are the six primary curriculum categories across 15 core personas. Revenue Operations will be the next function to be added to the course curriculum. The courses are built primarily for people already "in the job" versus trying to prepare themselves to enter a new job/professional. The goal is to have an immediate impact on job performance Thus, the curriculum is primarily focused on helping people already in the job improve immediately. This requires an educational approach that is "easy for the individual" to take the class, which includes smaller, micro-learning segments that never exceed over 2 hours per week. Every class that Sales Impact Academy delivers is live with a subject matter expert versus self-directed videos. Being able to create a learning program at the scale requires reaching millions of people. This will require a significant improvement in existing digital learning approaches and supporting materials to empower leaders to embed the learning in their local organizations. When asked about "certification," Paul said this is a critical component of their vision to allow every company to be comfortable with the quality and impact of the Sales Impact Academy courses. When asked about ROI, Paul highlighted that the primary ingredient to ensuring a positive return on training is an integrated "feedback loop" embedded in every student's experience.  One exciting aspect of the Sales Impact Academy is that there is no ONE WAY to achieve success. By having multiple subject matter experts deliver their approach from experiences leading to success, no ONE single approach will be trained. Each student will have an opportunity to choose the curriculum and approach that works best for them. Paul highlighted that he is now very focused on the "pedagogy" of their curriculum or their teaching approach. Learning design is key to delivering the optimal training program framework, coupled with subject matter experts to deliver the courses. If you are responsible for scaling your B2B SaaS Go-To-Market, revenue-producing teams and increasing productivity is key to achieving your goals next year and beyond, learning more from Paul and the Sales Impact Academy is a great place to learn a new, innovative approach that your employees will appreciate and your investors will love once they see the results!   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sangram Vajre, Founder and Chief Evangelist at Terminus and host of the Flip my Funnel Forecast, joined our host Ray Rike to discuss his MOVE Go-To-Market framework. Sangram ran marketing at Pardot, an early marketing automation vendor for salespeople, which Salesforce ultimately acquired and co-founded Terminus seven years ago.  Terminus is a true pioneer in providing a platform for Account-Based Marketing programs, which in today's B2B SaaS world represents about 44% of total marketing investment in customer acquisition programs. The first thing Sangram shared was that marketing and sales need to SHARE the same "REVENUE" number. Marketing's ultimate value must be measured by "Sales". If the two executives do not share the same number, Go-To-Market challenges are soon to follow. What exactly is a "Chief Evangelist"? Guy Kawasaki, Apple's early Chief Evangelist, said, "evangelism in a tech company is the purest form of sales"! A chief evangelist is the representative of the market on behalf of the practitioners. Sangram has been doing this for over seven years in the world of Account-Based Marketing. Next, we move to Sangram's Go-To-Market framework, which also happens to be the name of his latest book - "MOVE". MOVE focuses on four primary questions every company must ask as they "move" through each growth phase. Those four questions are: 1 - Who should we market to? 2 - What do we need to do to operate more effectively 3 - When can we scale our business 4 - Where can we grow the most  These four questions relate directly to the MOVE acronym: M - Market O - Operations V - Velocity E - Expansion McKinsey says the primary reason companies fail as they begin to scale above $10M is the lack of evolving the Go-To-Market strategy and tactics. The four primary "Go-To-Market" strategy questions do not change at each growth stage, but the answers and resultant approach must change to maneuver through each stage of the growth journey successfully. Another framework MOVE includes the 3P framework: P - Problem Market Fit P - Product Market Fit P - Platform Market Fit Each stage of the 3Ps does not directly correlate with company size (revenue). Sangram shared that some companies can hit $10M and even $20M before they move from Problem-Market Fit to Product-Market Fit.  Similar to the concepts in "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore, the issue is when a company attempts to move the one phase of the #ps to the next phase - a classic chasm crossing challenge. Sangram is a wealth of information. More importantly, he has invested most of his career in learning, understanding, and now sharing his experiences and insights in an easy-to-understand yet robust Go-To-Market framework called MOVE. This conversation is a great listen for every B2B tech founder, CEO, and Go-To-Market executive regardless of which stage of growth your company is in to help cross the chasm to the next phase of the growth journey. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt Heinz is the founder and CEO of Heinz Marketing and the host of the Sales Pipeline Podcast. Matt's primary goal is to help modern marketers to implement predictable and scalable, revenue-centric marketing programs. Matt has seen the alignment between marketing and sales for top-of-the-funnel pipeline development significantly improve over the last few years.  In addition, he is seeing marketing leaders are more data-driven, especially regarding buyer intent has improved materially.  Lastly, he sees marketing being much more focused on the "account" versus the "lead" which reflects the increased use of buying committees. When we discussed the increased complexity of aligning marketing, sales, and customer success, Matt shared that alignment to the buyer journey, and across these three functions is not yet optimal.  Culture is a key part of the issue and goes far beyond sharing common objectives. "Hitting the number" needs to be a shared passion that makes each team member in marketing and sales share a common language and feel they each own the revenue goals. What percentage of Chief Marketing Officers believe they own the new ARR and pipeline dollar goals - less than 20% from Matt's experience. Though he sees more marketing leaders discuss the need to focus on revenue and pipeline, the actions and departmental measurements do not reflect this is yet their "North Star". Leading marketers are removing the use of "gated forms" to drive leads and have moved to the open web to identify potential customers in the market (3-4% of companies are in market at any given time) and engage at the point of interest.  Unfortunately, vanity metrics such as white paper downloads, web visitors, and even leads still dominate the dashboards and reports a CMO highlights at executive team meetings and marketing department meetings. Forms are often used to ensure companies can "track" activity. However, not gating content can accelerate and increase velocity in the middle of the funnel by removing friction at the top of the funnel.  Educating, mobilizing, and creating a sense of urgency are core tenets of modern B2B marketing. Matt highlighted, just because you cannot measure it, does not mean it is not important.  Modern marketing channels and techniques such as social media posts, podcasts, and YouTube video presence cannot always be attributed to a lead or deal closed, but are still critical channels for the modern B2B marketer. Matt is a journalist by education and fell into marketing.  Matt started his marketing agency by writing blogs, newsletters, and articles.  His goal to "tell stories" was a core component of his journalism training.  Podcasts were another channel to tell stories, and showcase authors, influencers, analysts, and marketing executives.  Matt has found that the "Sales Pipeline Podcast" provides both an opportunity to educate, while developing relationships with the podcast guests who often became customers. When asked where marketers should focus their understanding of the impact they are delivering, Matt said the CRM is an ideal place to measure impact versus in the Marketing Automation system.  What this really says is focus more on the "outcome metrics" in the sales system versus the input metrics in the marketing automation system. Matt also said moving towards focusing on the marketing cost per "output unit" like pipeline dollars created or new ARR closed is a good step towards more effective and efficient marketing programs.   Any modern B2B marketer or revenue leader will greatly benefit from listening to this conversation with Matt Heinz! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jamie Shanks helped to shape Social Selling through his company, Sales for Life.  After certifying 250,000+  sales professionals on the strategies and techniques that led to Digital Selling competencies across hundreds of companies, Jamie has identified some common trends in what led to the most successful pipeline development. In 2020, B2B Sales quickly transformed into Digital Selling. Social Selling has evolved to "selling" and become a part of the digital selling motion. Social Selling efficacy can be measured by pipeline growth, close rates, and sales cycle time for sales, self-directed pipeline.  The skills and competencies to be an effective B2B Sales professional have become muddled over the last 10 years, as a new generation has invested more time into learning how to use the tools to become "digital sellers" and have not received the traditional sales training to prospect, discover and qualify high probability prospects who will become paying customers. Even with all of the data and signals being provided to modern B2B Sellers, often they do not understand when and how to "use the information" to increase their prospecting efficiency.   An example is the level of investment in "intent data", without providing sellers the ability to interpret and understand the context of what the information is telling the seller.   What pipeline signals should be added into the "account intelligence" to better understand "how" and "why" the target company will buy?  Human capital (people) migration is a  leading indicator as to where a company will allocate investment dollars.  Being able to have insights into the members of a buying team, their relationships with competitors, and especially the members' previous relationships with people in your company are critical factors in increasing "prospect intelligence". Seller utilization of pipeline signals information, such as "intent data" is the key to the success of the business impact of digital signals.   Sellers who figure out how to use "pipeline signal information" is limited to a small percentage of the seller population.  The organizations that do the best job of educating, training, and facilitating the effective adoption of digital pipeline signals will be the winners in 2022 and beyond. Jamie Shanks is not only a pioneer in using digital techniques to increase B2B sales efficacy, he is a true visionary who identifies trends and opportunities to increase the return on investment of B2B Sales professionals before the crowd! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Compensation is one of the more personal aspects of evaluating any new job.  Trying to understand a company's culture and specifically, the organization within the company you are evaluating is almost impossible. Ryan Walsh, the founder, and CEO of RepVue may have figured out exactly how to provide transparency in both compensation and culture in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Ryan possesses a very rare trait, a B2B SaaS sales leader who progressed his career from sales rep to Chief Revenue Officer over 16 years in the same company!  Next up, enable every B2B Sales rep the ability to gain the insights of an "insider" into the reality of the variable compensation and culture of a potential future employer. Amongst many data points Ryan shared, 67% of sales professionals (N = 3,000+) said if the role within the company was working for them, they would not want to change companies, still the reality is most companies do not meet the expectations of the modern B2B Sales professional. RepVue has over 20,000 participants resulting in 26,500+ ratings on B2B Sales organizations.  When asked what the most important attributes to a sales professional were, the number one answer was 1)  Product-Market Fit.  Compensation was a highly ranked variable behind Product-Market Fit, and very close to "culture".  How do you define culture?  In most sales organizations culture is closely correlated to "winning" as measured by achieving quota.  Having uncapped earnings is another critical factor,  and base salary is much less important IF and WHEN existing employees are meeting and exceeding quota.  Knowing if these elements exist is a large part of the RepVue vision. Culture for salespeople is the ability to succeed, be recognized, and make money.  RepVue calculates a company score that is based upon two separate and distinct sets of data.  The first set is comprised of seven categories using a 1-5 score to determine sentiment.  Those seven categories are: -  Base Salary - Incentive structure - Culture and Leadership - Product Market Fit - Professional development and training - Inbound lead flow - Diversity and Inclusion RepVue then overlays the weight that salespeople rank as most important in each category.  Simply stated, if a company is doing better in a category that salespeople rate highly, the best your score.  The inverse is also true, meaning that if you score low on a category that is less important, it will not necessarily help your overall score. Scoring low on a highly weighted attribute will hurt your company score.  The second section that RepVue uses is based upon the compensation elements of each company's sales organization.  Examples include base salary, on-target earnings, average % quota achievement, deal size and most someone can earn in a specific role. In today's B2B SaaS industry, hiring has become a significant challenge and bottleneck to growth.  As this industry trend evolves, sales professionals have started to encourage companies to understand how their sales organizations stack up against competitors.   One of the interesting data points that RepVue provides is the average contract value, correlated to quota, compensation, and company score. The basis "message" is the ability to message your unique value and competitive advantage in the language that resonates with sales professionals. If you are a B2B Cloud sales professional, sales leader, human capital leader, or talent acquisition professional, Ryan Walsh and RepVue is a name, site, and company you will want to know. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine having access to the metrics and benchmarks over an entire decade for 200+ B2B Cloud and SaaS private companies as they scaled from $0 to $100M ARR. That is precisely the data Mary D'Onofrio, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has access to as the Growth Stage investing partner since 2018.  Mary published her findings in the Scaling to $100M ARR report and joined us to share the insights from her research. Mary also maintains the BVP Emerging  Cloud 100 Index,  is the author of the "10 Laws of Cloud".   Mary was often approached by BVP portfolio companies and by other partners within BVP, asking for stage-appropriate benchmarks for metrics such as growth rate, retention rates, and gross margins, to name just a few. So,  Mary thought, why not analyze the data over the last decade across the entire BVP B2B Cloud portfolio. The first finding was that Committed Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) growth is the main metric to determine the enterprise value of a private B2B Cloud/SaaS company at every stage of growth.  ARR growth captures variables that GAAP revenue alone does not capture. CARR growth is a multivariate metric, as it includes not only ARR growth from new customers but also ARR growth from existing customers. Simply stated,  CARR includes New Customer Acquisition ARR + Existing Customer Retention ARR + Existing Customer Expansion ARR. Net Dollar Retention, the amount of ARR from customers that is available to renew versus the same cohort of customers 12 months prior to the current accounting period. This metric was included as part of the "CARR Growth" benchmark. When looking at the decade long data,  Mary shared the following average enterprise value to revenue multiples (EV:REV)at each stage of growth under the "Know Your Worth" lesson #3 $50M ARR = 13-14X EV:REV multiple The B2B Cloud market and the associated enterprise valuations continue to increase, with the latest data in 2021 showing the following multiples:  2021* = 34x enterprise value to revenue multiple (up from 9x in 2016) *2021 Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report (Top 100 Private Cloud Companies) Across the BVP portfolio, the EV:REV multiple is closer to 20x Growth Endurance is a metric that BVP has recently introduced. Growth Endurance is defined as the sustained growth year over year and is fairly consistent across all B2B Cloud companies.  Growth rate decay is typically 30% annually for private Cloud companies and 20% for public companies.  Public company's growth endurance is stronger primarily due to the leverage they gain, including pricing power, new products to drive revenue, and enhanced access to talent. Growth Endurace is a heuristic and not a deterministic metric.  The second lesson Mary shared in the Scaling to $100M ARR report was "Win by wide Margins".  The effective point is to optimize gross margin to the average of 65% - 70% regardless of ARR. The middle 50% distribution increases in range to  60% - 80%. Next we pivoted to where Customer Success costs should be allocated - COGS or Operating Expenses.  The simple answer is that whatever the percentage of CS time is invested in revenue-centric activities should go to OPEX and the percentage of CS time on support goes to COGS. Another area of "Win by Wide Margins" includes CAC Payback Period.  CAC Payback Period is the measure of time it takes to repay the costs of acquiring a new customer after factoring in Gross Margin. BVP.com/scale is a great resource to learn more about Scaling to $100M ARR and download templates to see how your Cloud company measures up to the benchmarks. ' See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Benchmarks - a concept for only the most mature and advanced company or a foundational metrics component for any company seeking to make data-driven, metrics-informed decisions? Lauren Kelley is the founder and CEO of OPEX Engine,  a leader in capturing and publishing B2B Technology company benchmarks.  Lauren's background includes being the revenue leader for an early B2B platform leader, and prior to that as an economist for the US Department of Commerce. Immediately prior to recording this podcast, Bain and Company announced their acquisition of OPEX Engine, which goes a long way towards establishing the VALUE of B2B Cloud benchmarks. Lauren's vision has evolved over the 15-year history of OPEXEngine.  Initially, Lauren believed that the real value was in the "operating benchmarks" as they are so much harder to capture and see how your internal KPIs measure up.  Traditionally, operating executives would reach out to "known" contacts in the industry who had experience in similar companies. How are companies using benchmarks to inform their decision-making process?  The primary use of benchmarks tends to be on an annual basis, or as Lauren calls an informational "benchmark user" to help with the budget and planning process.  On the other end of the spectrum, the strategic "benchmark user" understands benchmarking is a management process and will use the benchmarks on a much more regular basis - similar to how they would use internal metrics and data to assist in the decision-making process. Strategic users of benchmarks will work closely with their business partners (operators) to dive into the next level to see why certain "top-level" metrics are out of line with industry benchmarks.  Benchmarking is not just to identify problems - it is to find efficiencies that may otherwise not be as easy to identify.  An example is that if your CAC Payback Period is significantly better than your cohort - it may suggest it's time to accelerate investment in customer acquisition. What are some of the key "operating benchmarks" that can be used, and how to be confident in the appropriateness of how the benchmarks align with your company's specific attributes? Lauren highlighted that first it takes time working with consistent metrics with consistent definitions across companies.  Having a third party who has a specialty in collecting, normalizing, and standardizing the data (benchmarks) collected and ensures a common definition, thus calculation of each metric is a critical component to the ultimate value of benchmarks. The CFO and finance organization is typically the primary "version of the truth" for internal metrics and thus the primary user of external benchmarks.  One of the values of using benchmarks is to counter "legacy knowledge" of certain metrics which has evolved.  An example here was the decrease in General and Administrative (G&A) expenses as a percentage of revenue over the last few years. One great best practice on using benchmarks was when a company CFO sends the annual budget to the board of directors.  Along with the budget, he would include the benchmarks for how similar companies benchmark on expense allocation between each department. This provides "context" for the budget and leads to much easier board approval on the budget, and leaves more time for more strategic discussions during the board meeting. Lauren is a true pioneer in benchmarking for the B2B Cloud industry and is a great listen for any finance or operating leader who is looking to enhance how they make better metrics informed, benchmark validated decisions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The B2B Cloud industry is projected to grow from $350B in 2021 to $800B+ in 2025.  This will mean a lot of new companies and the need for many more VP Sales to lead the revenue team. Brendon Cassidy has been part of early-stage B2B enterprise sales organizations as the VP Sales for companies including LinkedIn, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), Talkdesk, and then as a founding advisor to Gong.  Now Brendon is the co-founder and co-CEO at CoSell.io. Based upon Brendon's tenure and success at leading B2B SaaS companies, who better to discuss the journey and keys to success for an early-stage B2B SaaS VP Sales. First, we discussed any common themes or trends that Brendon has identified over his start-up journey experiences.  A very common theme, at up to 80% of companies Brendon has worked with is that companies have a hard time defining the "problem they are solving".  This is critical before you can start to build the messaging the sales team will use to explain who they are, what problem they address, and the benefits of solving the problem. Establishing Product Market Fit requires every company to understand and market validate the problem they are solving and why a company will invest time and money to solve it. Next, we move from what is required to acquire the first few customers to the next one-hundred and beyond.  Brendon recommends that the founder lead the first 5-15 deals as the "sales lead" and then hire 2 salespeople BEFORE they hire the VP Sales.   Hiring the right "FIRST" VP Sales is a common challenge that the majority of start-up CEO's face. In fact, Brendon believes that over 90% of companies do not hire the right VP Sales the first time.  Hiring a "hybrid" VP Sales who manages a small team, but also is responsible for direct sales with their own quota is a mistake that many first-time founders make.  Why is the average tenure of a B2B Tech VP Sales only 14-18 months? One factor is the belief that hiring someone from an established, successful company like Salesforce is the best approach.  Unfortunately, 95% of the job of an early stage VP Sales is not an experience gains at an established, larger company.  Secondly, finding a VP Sales that actually has experience and success in growing a company from the very early days to some level of scale is quite rare.   Four potential early-stage B2B Cloud VP Sales profiles that a founder will need to interview: -Been there done that with success - Been there, done that but not successful - Been there done some of that - Big company experience, not done that  Defining how much pipeline is required to close "x" deals is one of the first metrics that an early stage VP Sales should measure, understand and act upon.  Input metrics to this will include average contact value, sales cycle time and win rate are critical to determining the required pipeline. Other metrics, such as CAC Payback Period, CAC Ratio, Customer Lifetime Value, etc. are not valuable metrics for early-stage VP Sales, as there is not enough operating history to make these metrics valuable or insightful for decision making. If you are responsible for driving sales in an early stage B2B Cloud company,  are considering hiring your first VP Sales, or have a goal to become a first-time VP Sales in an early-stage start-up, this conversation with Brendon Cassidy is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeremey Donovan is the epitome of the phrase "Always Be Learning". Jeremey started his career as a semiconductor engineer, transitioned to be an analyst covering the industry, then transitioned to product development, then to product management, product marketing, and finally to sales.  To say he is a continuous learner is an understatement! Most recently, Jeremey started his pursuit as a Masters of Data Science while serving in the role of Senior Vice President of Revenue Strategy at SaleLoft. What is Revenue Strategy?  First, it's about the people, programs, processes and technology in pursuit of meeting company goals.  As the SVP Sales has evolved to the Chief Revenue Officer, and integrated the responsibility for pre-sales, sales and post-sales, the need for an operations function and strategy that reflects the entire customer lifecycle has evolved. One strategy that impacted revenue growth was moving the inbound Sales Development organization into marketing.  By moving the team to Marketing, it created more incentive for marketing to generate leads and create a better feedback loop into marketing on what the market was saying.  Jeremey thinks that having a CMO and a CRO that are peers is a better model for larger organizations. Jeremey's perspective on Revenue Operations is different He sees value in having marketing operations, sales operations, and customer success operations report into the COO or CFO versus sales or marketing. What is the segmentation of Revenue Operations versus Revenue Strategy?  Jeremey's role is unique, and more of a general corporate strategy resource (think Chief of Staff). In fact, the Chief of Staff is a trending new role in the B2B SaaS industry, and one of the four roles that Jeremey serves for the SalesLoft CEO. Jeremey sees the operations team primarily working "IN" the business and Revenue Strategy works "ON" the business.   Revenue Strategy is responsible for coming up with strategic initiatives, Go-To-Market strategies, etc., and then initially collaborating with the Revenue Operations team to deploy the strategy and then over time Revenue Operations takes primary responsibility to measure, manage and refine the program as feedback requires. When asked about the top lagging and leading indicators (metrics) that he uses to measure the return on a particular revenue strategy,  his answer included an "Issue Tree" which is a process to deconstruct higher-level metrics into their component parts.  The example was "Net Dollar Retention" metrics break down into Gross Dollar Retention + Expansion, and then the next level breaks down into metrics such as Customer Success team productivity. We next discussed leading indicators and their correlation to the top-level, outcome metrics like Net Dollar Retention.   Jeremey highlights adoption, configuration, and customer sentiment (CSAT and NPS) as part of a composite health score that directly impacts Net Dollar Retention.   Analyzing the correlation, using logistic regression is used to predict retention, using the composite inputs of the sentiment score, per the above.  They also use similar models to predict the probability of winning an opportunity. Using Bayesian logic, they analyze predict the likelihood of an opportunity closing using inputs such as activity, time, events, and historical trends that predicted opportunity closure.  In fact, this customer engagement score (opportunity score) is even available as part of the SalesLoft platform. Every metric may matter, but  they may not always matter at the same time or have the same predictive value.  Figure out which are "out of kilter" and which enable "decisions and prescriptive actions". Jeremey is a great listen for any B2B SaaS revenue and/or revenue operations professional! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chris Walker, Founder and CEO of Refine Labs, Host of Demand Gen Live, and a Top LinkedIn Influencer is a B2B Marketing contrarian - that is a primary reason I have been a fan of Chris's for a long time. Chris was a B2B marketing practitioner for 8 years, and his experience told him B2B marketing organizations were executing marketing programs the wrong way!  The market had changed, the buyers had changed and the buying process had changed...yet marketing programs were the same, using the same vanity metrics and fake measurements systems. Chris decided he had been provided a gift, and it allowed him to build a marketing agency that was built for demand generation in 2020 and aligned with his vision for the modern B2B marketer.  His foundational belief is that B2B buyers are looking to buy things in places that cannot be tracked by current marketing attribution.  Those locations included LinkedIn, YouTube,  Instagram, Twitter, communities,  groups on social networks, podcasts, direct word of mouth, and referrals by peers.  These are the locations that people in 2021 and beyond are sharing ideas, looking for experiences, and starting the buying journey. Traditional media such as SEO, SEM,  display ads, and content syndication are great to show "vanity metrics" and "attribution" but are not delivering the ultimate outcomes - pipeline and revenue.  In fact, often the tracking stops at "attribution by channel" but do not track the ultimate ROI down to revenue, CAC Ratio and CAC Payback Period. Brand Awareness - this is not the major issue for many companies, but "RELEVANCE" to the target buyer is an issue for many - such as Salesforce is toomarketing.  Logo awareness does not directly impact the way a target buyer feels about a company's value to them as a potential buyer. Chris's goal is to be in the places where buyers "establish" consideration for a product category or content, and not wait until first-party intent at the bottom of the funnel when 70% of the buying process has already been completed. Content that is value-based, customer-focused, and made available as non-gated assets are key to help to shape the buying discussion at the start of the buyer journey versus reacting to the buyer demands. Chris's first key metric is to measure the close rate of inbound leads, that may not be attributed to a specific marketing program, versus the close rate of outbound generated leads.  Chris's perspective is that less than 10% of companies measure the close rate and sales cycle time of inbound leads versus outbound generated leads. Chris optimizes for "peak intent conversions" which reflects the serious intent of buyers who put up their hand to speak with a salesperson (1st party intent data) versus buying 3rd party intent signals from external websites, content syndication vendors, and review sites. Next,  I asked Chris what specific metrics that a modern B2B marketer should measure and manage.   His response: "Blended Marketing CAC and/or Blended Advertising CAC".  This metric measures the total marketing expenses divided by the total amount of revenue closed from inbound marketing leads or inbound leads from paid advertising.   Chris sees the cost per dollar of revenue closed from "outbound leads" vs the cost per dollar of revenue closed from "inbound leads"  being very different.  Chris sees an average of 50% lower CAC for inbound leads that close as compared to outbound generated leads that close (for the mid-market). When you factor in the higher close rate for inbound leads, the CAC Ratio can be 50% - 67% lower than traditional outbound lead generation programs. Revenue, Pipeline, and Customer Acquisition Cost are the TOP THREE metrics that every modern B2B marketer should use as their NORTH STAR!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Holding key financial leadership roles at Qualcomm and Palantir Technologies by itself positions Bijan Moallemi, Founder and CEO of Mosaic Tech as a uniquely qualified finance leader. Factor in his innovative use of technology and automation to enable more efficient hyper-growth and his desire to make this level of automation available to anyone trying to implement a strategic finance function in the B2B Cloud industry, Bijan is a market visionary. His story starts with the challenges he found upon joining Palantir as a 100 person, yet $2B Enterprise Valuation company.  Even at that lofty valuation, even the most basic financial questions were difficult to answer with the existing infrastructure, and would often take days, by which time decisions that could have been informed with the data were already made.  His first task was to implement the right infrastructure to move from reactive to proactive financial planning, management and ultimately become a forward looking, strategic finance organization.   At Palantir, Financial Operations including all FP&A, business operations, budgeting, forecasting and included all of the systems that drove all revenue including financial and CRM systems.  By owning the end to end system architecture, it allowed the team to have a scalable, and nimble financial operations function.   Most finance organizations face the challenge of requiring source data from multiple systems across the organization.  By having the primary underlying systems responsibility, coupled with the ability to define the standard data ontology across the customer lifecycle and organization. When pushed on how Bijan defines a "strategic finance function", he started by highlighting the key components of a strategic finance function "Get the Right Data to the Right People on a timely and digestible basis".  The role of the CFO has become more technical, and the toolkit required for a modern CFO have not kept up.  A primary cause is that access to the data and insights are not typically available at the speed or context required. 52%  of B2B SaaS/Cloud metrics required for a strategic finance function are currently being captured and calculated manually in excel and Google Sheets.  Unfortunately, many metrics are still siloed within each function, such as Sales, Marketing and Customer Success.  Until his data is integrated, normalized and available in real-time, decisions will continue to be made on backward looking, historical information versus the relevant data from yesterday or even today.   Think about this, how can you plan for next month or next quarter with data that is only available 10-30 days AFTER the new accounting period has started??? One of the key attributes for the modern finance leader is the ability to "tell the story" that the data is telling.  Bijan refers this to the "synthesis" of the data deserves a much greater share of mindshare and time. If you are responsible for generating or the recipient of SaaS/Cloud metrics to help make metrics informed decisions, Bijan and his unique insights how to deploy and leverage standardized, integrated and forward looking insights to make better metrics informed decisions while building a modern, strategic finance function are a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Being the CEO of a B2B SaaS company that creates a new market category, grows the company to >$100M ARR, and then purchased for over $1B by a top tier Private Equity firm may be the ultimate goal of many entrepreneurs - but for Nick Mehta and Gainsight, it is just the beginning. Nick Mehta, joined Gainsight as CEO in 2013.  Back then, Gainsight had just changed its name, launched its first user conference, and initiated the strategy to build a new market category for B2B SaaS - Customer Success Platform and a community for the recently created profession of Customer Success Manager (CSM). The decision to create a new category + a community was necessary because the evolving role of CSM's were not only the Gainsight users but also the target buyers.  Building a category is associated but different from building a community.   Creating a community of future platform customers was a core requirement to increase the target addressable market of potential buyers.  Pulse was the Customer Success community, and it had to go beyond "customers".  It became a forum and community for customer success professionals to discuss topics of interest including compensations, roles/ responsibilities, and best practices for Customer Success professionals. Nick highlighted that building a new category is probably not the best approach if a category currently exists (think Snowflake and Zoom Video).  If the market category does not currently exist, think carefully about the steps, and resources required to build a new category and how a community can amplify the category. When I asked Nick about how Product-Led Growth (PLG) would impact Customer Success , Nick started with his belief that PLG will fundamentally change the B2B Cloud Go-To-Market motion.  The control and power will accelerate its shift to the customer, and as a result Sales and Customer Success alignment, even integration will be even critical. The Cloud infrastructure companies are the most advanced in the PLG + Customer Success model.  Their Customer Success (CS) team works very closely with the customer to ensure they are receiving maximum value and expanding their use of the product.   Nick highlighted two approaches to sales and customer success alignment: 1) relay race model where sales hands off the customer to CS to ensure they are successful; 2) Sales and Customer Success work collaboratively across the entire customer journey to ensure engagement, adoption, value, customer satisfaction, expansion and share the related goals and measurements. When asked the top metrics to measure Customer Success, Nick highlighted both leading and lagging indicators.  For Customer Success, Nick highlighted the top lagging indicators as renewals (GrossDollar Retention Rate) and expansion (Net Dollar Retention Rate).   In fact, recent research conducted by both Gainsight and by RevOps Squared independently, showed that NDR was the number one factor impacting Enterprise Value:Revenue multiples.  The Gainsight framework for leading indicators is called DEAR: 1) Deployment; 2) Engagement; 3) Adoption; 4) ROI.  Next is the experience side including Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, and even support case trends. Lastly, we discussed the role of product analytics in the PLG model, in concert with how Customer Success will require deeper and broader insights into the customer's product utilization. Insights including which paths most customers follow, which paths end in user frustration and abandonment, and in the WOW category, how to build Customer Success directly into the product! Nick Mehta is a great listen for any founder, CEO, and/or operating executive who shares the belief is that customer value = customer success and the added vision of building a "Human First" company! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS founders continue to find new financing options to both grow their business and/or be rewarded for their sweat equity investment. Akeel Jabber's journey from petroleum engineer, to gym founder, to real estate investor and now "micro private equity" investor has one common thread - entrepreneurship focused on how to generate cash flow Akeel's first area of focus to generate returns +  cash flow was investing in the stock market.  He quickly identified that the large institutional investors on Wall Street had an unfair advantage as measured by technology, access, and sophistication.  As he searched for alternative avenues to build cash flow, he identified technology assets with recurring revenue streams as an attractive investment area - especially for the less than $5M ARR B2B SaaS companies that were not growing  50%+ per year. Akeel's first experience at $99 Social highlighted that with the right focus on go-to-market programs, processes, and operational excellence, smaller B2B SaaS companies could accelerate growth, and thus cash flow + enterprise value for founders and investors alike.  This experience led to the founding of Horizen Capital.  Horizen Capital is focused on investing in 5 Users have different CLTV (lower churn)Blended hides realityWhen asked how does a founder know if it's time to sell or just fund their company, Akeel suggested to ask these two questions:       #1: Am I still enjoying running my company?      #2: What am I trying to achieve by taking micro PE money?                        - Exit and go do something new                       - Accelerate my company growth rate  Akeel shared the top sites and companies that a B2B SaaS founder looking for a potential exit/acquisition should know about: 1. M&A Advisory Firms 2. Empire Flippers 3, MicroAcquire 4. Flippa If you are an entrepreneur, especially one in the B2B SaaS business looking for strategic investment and growth support, this Metrics that Measure Up episode with Akeel Jabber is a great listen...as is the SaaS District Podcast that Akeel hosts! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Renee Cullinan, founder of "Stop Meeting Like This"  is pivoting her highly successful career as a high tech executive and then founder of a pioneering consulting company that focused on how to increased company productivity and employee satisfaction by eliminating the wasted time associated with internal meetings and email overload. In this episode of Metrics that Measure Up, we focus on both the metrics associated with increased employee productivity and then on the increasing importance of understanding and enhancing stakeholder satisfaction. White-collar employees, especially senior executives spend most of their time in meetings and composing and responding to emails.  Using a typical executive, they spend approximately 25 hours per week in meetings, which equates to 1,200 hours per year, and on average, 32% of that time is wasted.  Think how much more productive you can be with having an extra 400 hours (10 weeks) to invest in higher value, strategic activities? Unfortunately, not enough companies tackle this productivity opportunity, often because of the inherent challenge of the existing culture of a company.  Fixing this requires consistent, ongoing executive commitment which means having a long-term employee productivity orientation. Biopharma companies lead the way in being willing to take on this opportunity, due to their historical long-term orientation. In the "very interesting" category, Renee actually found the work from home environment during the pandemic, actually helped to increase the productivity of meetings and the Renee shares 5 questions to determine if your organization is positioned to capture this hidden productivity drain: Are you a manager or maker? How many hours are you in meetings per week? Which of the following statements is more true?        - I control my calendar or my calendar controls me Given my role, the # of meetings I am in is?       - too many       - just right       - too few What percentage of total meeting time is wasted?       - late starts      - late arrivals requiring repeating conversations      - technology snafus Next, we pivoted to Stakeholder capitalism and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG).  My first question was if only 50% of companies are willing to invest in tackling internal employee productivity,  how willing are they to take on ESG.    Renee highlighted that internal productivity and employee satisfaction are too often a "HR" initiative and thus are often dead on arrival. In contrast, ESG is driven primarily by external constituents, by regulatory bodies like the SEC, and potential customers, especially in the Fortune 500 are now requiring ESG responses within vendor RFPs and many board of directors are linking executive compensation to ESG metrics and measurements. Socially responsible investing is also increasing measured by shareholder investment decisions, in fact, the percentage of US-based assets under management that use ESG criteria to make investments increased by 42% over the last two years. I asked Renee if small, high-growth B2B SaaS companies can justify investing in ESG initiatives.  The response, if you are selling to Enterprise-class companies, ESG leadership will be a competitive advantage in acquiring new customers AND socially conscious employees. Renee's example of the social impact of "free meals" at high tech companies and its impact on local businesses and the local community are not understood, or at least not prioritized. If ESG and stakeholder capitalism + increasing employee productivity are topics you are interested in promoting within your company,  Renee is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Revenue Operations is positioned to be the revenue architect across the customer journey.  That is a bold statement and the perspective of one of the leading revenue operations thought leaders, Jeff Ignacio. Revenue Operations hit an "inflection point" in 2021.  Jeff believes the rapid growth of B2B SaaS companies has highlighted the incongruency that customers are experiencing due to the "drops" in internal hand-offs between marketing, sales, and customer success. Jeff believes Revenue Operations should act like Product Management.  RevOps customers are the marketing, sales, and customer success resources who need the right data, at the right time, in the right context delivered by the right process.  This includes understanding the "customer experience" with their company at every stage of the customer journey. Product-Led Growth has led to a new requirement for Revenue Operations, and that is the ability to leverage and integrate the data from product analytics platforms into the revenue tech stack.  These new "data operations" skill-set is not typically available in existing RevOps organizations, and may even require a new operations group. Is a Chief Revenue Officer required to make revenue operations fully productive? Jeff said this is helpful in early-stage companies when the customer journey is less mature.   In larger organizations with more well-defined and mature organizational structures, the need for a CRO to make revenue operations effective is less important. Jeff defines revenue operations to include 4 pillars: Process  Enablement  Advisory  Support When asked about Revenue Operations being more "strategic" versus "tactical", Jeff's first recommendation was to allocate time slots upfront to strategic activity.  Secondly, Jeff said that "ruthless prioritization" in understanding what is critical path to achieving the measurable goals that have been established. This includes becoming comfortable with setting expectations with your stakeholders, including being able to push back when requests are not aligned with the mutually agreed-upon goals. Jeff also recommended that asking "what are you trying to accomplish" upfront when asked to execute an activity will be a good step in moving from reactive resource to strategic asset to the revenue leadership team.  Another idea was to start thinking more proactively about what the data you are creating suggests, and start to provide more strategic ideas and recommendations to address negative trends highlighted by the data and reports. When asked about the optimal "profile" for a revenue operation professional, Jeff highlighted a few key attributes, especially business acumen and the ability to clarify, thus understand the real goals of the executive stakeholder.  Jeff also suggested using a case study approach to interviews to understand how the candidate has applied their skills in similar situations. Will revenue operations be a must-have experience for the CRO of the future?  Jeff's answer was nuanced, highlighting skill sets including data analysis, process design competencies, and system design will be valuable, but having hand's on RevOps experience will be a plus but not a requirement. I then asked Jeff to pull out his crystal ball and predict how Revenue Operations will impact business performance - thus be measured.  His responses: 1) Customer Acquisition Costs; 2) Expansion time and profitability to enter new markets. Lastly, Jeff discussed the need for RevOps to move from working "in the business" to "on the business".  This will enable RevOps to become a strategic advisor, with a seat at the executive team table. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) and B2B Sales - how do they co-exist in the evolving world of Go-To-Market strategy in B2B SaaS? On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Tim Geisenheimer, Founder and CEO of Correlated.   Tim's first experience was leading a sales team in a PLG company where he experienced the change in how customers first experience a product.  PLG requires the sales team to truly understand "HOW" customers are using the product, and adjust their sales outreach accordingly. First, we discussed the real and perceived risks that sales face in a PLG company.  Tim said that sales is critical in PLG companies, though the skills and approaches change. Sales professionals must become product consultants who can help users gain the most value from the product.  This requires the sales professional to have much deeper visibility into how the user is using the product. Second, we pivoted to discuss how PLG may impact pipeline development and the Sales Development function.  One of the interesting changes is that the number of inbound leads increases dramatically in PLG companies, and SDRs will be required to learn the skills of inbound lead qualification instead of outbound led generation. This evolved into the creation of a Product Qualified Lead (PQL).  A PQL is the scoring of a potential paying customer based upon how they are using the free version of the product. Some of the common variables used to score a PQL include log-in frequency and are they using high-value features.  These two primary signals can be used to score a lead and help prioritize which users and accounts to reach out to first. Is "Value-Based Selling" still a key sales skill required to be successful?  Tim went back to the need for B2B sales professionals to have better product knowledge, as it relates to the business value delivered. I pushed Tim on 'if" Customer Success is better positioned to help free users become paying customers?  His response centered on the need for sales to become product consultants and that sales skills will be critical to optimizing free users converting into paying customers. Tim highlighted that a foundational element required for sales to be productive in PLG companies is having easy-to-access and understandable product analytics information available by the user, by account in the Customer Relationship Management platform.   I asked Tim if "existing" CRM vendors can provide the required functionality for this?  In response to this question, Tim highlighted that existing CRM tools are limited in providing this functionality, in part due to the relational database model that traditional CRM tools are based.  The most common "metrics" that he sees Chief Revenue Officers being measured upon in PLG companies is "existing customer expansion" and "Net Dollar Retention Rate" which highlights one of the most attractive aspects of the "land and expand" model for PLG companies.  Average Time to Expansion is a new leading indicator that PLG companies are tracking, with best-in-class companies seeing 60 days from the time a client first signs up to expanding their "paid" usage. The classic "Close Rate" metric will be different in PLG companies, and not as important as other expansion-centric metrics.  The other topic we discussed was if "sales comp plans" are changing in PLG companies.  One change is assigning sales reps longer to accounts to shepherd the "expansion" journey.  In fact, Snowflake has no CS  resources as sales own total responsibility for existing client expansion. If you won revenue responsibility in a PLG company, this is a great listen to understand the evolving world of sales in B2B SaaS and Cloud companies. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Leaders of Growth - a phrase that could refer to many B2B SaaS companies and executives. Today, we speak with Arthur Nobel, principal at Knight Capital and author of Leaders of Growth. Leaders of Growth is the result of 47 interviews with B2B SaaS operating executives and investors.  Brand name B2B SaaS executives including Mark Roberge, Matt Chappell, Katie Christian, Nathan Latka, Wes Bush, Patrick Campbell plus 42 more B2B SaaS executives with hands-on experience in scaling companies beyond Product-Market Fit. Arthur first shared three different ways to define the journey and stages that B2B SaaS and Cloud companies go through. 3 views on company journey stage:   - Sequential (Series A, Series B, Series C, etc)   - Revenue approach ($1M, $5M, $10M, $20M, etc.)   - Company Maturity Model We then dove into whether investors actually modify their investment thesis and enterprise valuation models based upon the above 3 lenses?  Revenue growth, especially the velocity of growth remains a primary variable which VCs use to establish company value. The thing that stood out the most from the 47 interviews was the AUTHENTICITY of everyone interviewed.  Also, their openness and willingness to share their experiences and lessons learned...especially those learnings through failure as well as success. The second theme he identified was the top-down view that investors shared and the bottoms-up perspective that the majority of operators used.  When asked to explain what "top-down" and "bottoms-up" meant, Arthur shared that operators were much more focused on the more pragmatic "what" drove the business including topics like hiring, culture, tactical approaches whereas investors were much more focused on conceptual thinking, such as frameworks and methodologies. When asked common challenges that the growth leaders faced, Arthur shared six common categories:    - Departmental objectives at each stage of growth   -  Data challenge - including what metrics to measure and prioritize at each stage   - HR Challenge - such as hiring the right people at the right stage   - Documentation and enablement - critical as employee count increases   - Process challenge - well defined. documented and systemized after 20 - 30 employees   - Tooling - having the appropriate platforms and systems architecture at each stage I asked Arthur if he has developed a framework to help B2B SaaS companies scale within and across each stage of growth?  He highlighted this is a very complex task, as each company's journey is unique, but would try and share his initial thoughts: High-level framework: -Scaling is not a point but a continuum that dictates using a stage by stage maturity model:      - Ad-hoc      - Process introduction     - Repeatability      - Predictability     - Scalability It is also very important to define the maturity model for each function and against the six common challenges that were highlighted above. We then discussed the concept of thinking, planning, and acting like you are already in the next stage of maturity versus continuing purely executing current state processes, activities and tactics. Some examples that Arthur shared on the traditional "VC" stage basis: Series A = Replicability     - Build a strong initial leadership team    - Lay a solid foundation Series B = Predictablity    - Establish Senior team    - Become more structued and documented Series C = Scalability    - Be careful of silos    - Use shared metrics to align cross-functional teams  Learning from those who have already been there is the key theme of this episode! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Make it, Don't Fake It is a mantra that has long lived in the entrepreneur start-up culture in the B2B tech industry! Sabrina Horn is not only a pioneer in the B2B Tech public relations space, she is one of the most networked executives in the B2B tech industry. After only 4 years in the corporate world, Sabrina took the plunge to found The Horn Group, with a specific goal to help B2B tech companies exploit the impending business transformation created by the personal computer.  Her first "pitch" to bring on her first customer was to an early stage, enterprise software company with less than 50 employees - that company was PeopleSoft which became one of the world's largest B2B enterprise software companies. The rest of her 24 year+ run as the CEO of the Horn Group is one of the most successful and admired companies in B2B tech public relations.  To determine the return on investment for public relations, she has two recommendations: 1) Ask yourself what does success looks like one year from now; 2) look at outputs versus outcomes like increasing inbound leads, social engagement, market sentiment, etc. Secondly, she recommended having a range for success versus a single point and having the right tools to measure the impact of PR. Public relations goals also need to be dynamic and evolve with both the company and the market that the company exists and the market it targets to acquire new customers.  PR is part science and part art, and cannot be successful without continuing to evolve the strategy and the measurements of success. The "founders curse" was one of the first topics we discussed that was highlighted in Sabrina's book.  This happens to entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs who have an emotional bond to their company that is similar to a parent/child relationship.  This can lead to the effect of having blinders on and not listening to the market's feedback on your company and what they really need.   Having a founders agreement might be prudent, and even identify key inflection points in the company growth that may require the founder to take on a new role. Also, having mentors who are not part of the company and will provide objective, unbiased feedback is critical to maneuvering difficult moments and decision points.  Sarina even recommends founder performance reviews by the board and conduct an annual "self-assessment" to ask yourself where my company is headed, what is needed to achieve the next phase of growth and am I still having fun! As a founder, surrounding yourself with an executive team that is not like you, has different experiences, and even disagrees with you is a critical skill to develop.  Having a team that shares your passion and excitement for the company vision is a foundational element for every member of the leadership team to share.  This materially impacts building culture and building a strong brand. Establishing "founding company values" early on is foundational to the company culture.  As a company grows, the values may evolve by shifting in meaning and/or priority, but remain as a beacon throughout the company's evolution.   Being a CEO is a never-ending, learning journey.  Being in the CEO role is key, as learning on the job cannot be replaced by reading, theory or external advice alone...experience matters.  In fact, Sabrina highlighted that the experience from losses is typically the largest learning opportunity.   Being a CEO is a "lonely" place to be, and having a network of advisors and mentors who have shared the role of CEO is an incredibly valuable resource. The "isolation iceberg" is real, and Sabrina even mentioned how giving back was a great outlet to feel more connected. MAKE IT, DON'T FAKE IT!  is a great read for any founder, CEO, or aspiring entrepreneur considering embarking on the founder's journey! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jordan Henderson is a lawyer by education, who transitioned into a B2B tech career that has spanned sales operations, customer sales, sales management, and ultimately revenue operations.  This well-rounded career journey led Jordan to a career in Revenue Operations. RevOps can be the "canary in the coal mine" for a B2B SaaS company.  Revenue Operations are problem solvers.  Being able to monitor the day-to-day "Go-to-Market" operations provides a unique opportunity to be an early warning factor when things are not performing as planned.   Being a trusted "canary" requires building credibility through the consistent use of foresight and insights into the customer acquisition, retention, and expansion processes.  When asked about RevOps being a "tactical, reactive" function versus turning strategic, proactive insights into predictive foresight, the conversation took an interesting turn. To move from tactical to a strategic function, Jordan recommends proactively taking a larger role in "business operations". Go beyond providing reports and dashboards to the executive team, and instead analyze what the reports/dashboards you developed are telling you about the future of the business and Go-To-Market performance. A pre-requisite to becoming a strategic partner,  RevOps professionals need to first learn everything possible about the functions you are supporting, including marketing, sales, and customer success.  Then instead of just responding to administrative requests, come back with not only the requested deliverable but also recommendations on how to improve the information you just delivered. Jordan also highlighted why it is imperative to understand how the company level objectives, like ARR Growth, CAC Payback Period, and Net Dollar Retention are impacted by the "leading indicators" that RevOps has unique insight and access.  If you focus on the "outcomes" that your boss's boss cares about, you are much better positioned to be a strategic advisor to the CEO and CFO. The path to RevOps is well served by having experience in the operating roles you are supporting.  Jordan has sales, sales management, customer success, and business operations experience which has informed his orientation to the strategic impact that Revenue Operations can have on revenue growth and pipeline performance.  When I asked about being held to "objectives" that you do not ultimately "CONTROL", Jason highlighted that RevOps can have more impact on company and revenue performance than any single, quota-carrying rep. Next, we turned to how the customer journey can be impacted by RevOps.  Jason agreed that in theory, this is a good goal, but that Revenue Operations does not  "YET" truly understand the internal customer buying process, and is something that should be factored into how internal processes and inter-departmental hand-offs are managed. Finally, we discussed the sales technology tool landscape and the potential evolution of a revenue operations platform.  The first step Jordan takes towards the goal of a revenue operations platform is the consolidation of existing Martech and Salestech.  Vendors like Syncari, Clari, and Kluster are three early market leaders.   The RevOps Squared Revenue Operations framework, which is comprised of three layers: 1) Data; 2) Process + Platform; 3) Business Insights. If you are aspiring to be or already are a revenue operations professional, or a Chief Revenue Officer considering the creation of a  Revenue Operations function, Jordan is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marketing Operations to Sales Operations to a VP, Customer Success.  This carer path serves as an amazing foundation for a Revenue Operations executive. This is exactly the career path that Alison Elworthy, EVP of Revenue Operations at HubSpot. Alison's experience as a customer success executive was an eye-opening experience for a career-long operations professional who had not previously invested time interacting with customers. Alison's experience working with HubSpot customers led HubSpot from being a "function-out" to a "customer-in" focus for Hubspot's recently formed revenue operations function. How to bring the customer needs into revenue operations?  Alison created a "Voice of the Customer" team that resides within Revenue Operations.  The primary goal of this group is to ensure that every member of the RevOps team shadows customer conversations to life. Monthly "customer first" meetings include all HubSpot executives to listen to the most recent, highest priority customer needs. Next, we discussed how to staff a "Voice of Customer" function, which centered on bringing in both internal CS resources and external personnel with outside perspectives.  One tool is the "customer roadblock" portal which enables customers to be part of the voice of the customer data collection process.   One topic that came through loud and clear from this process was that hand-offs between marketing, sales, and customer success were negatively impacting the customer experience. As we dove into the "hand-offs" issue, the concept of the "revenue flywheel" evolved.  First,  the revenue operations team identified that there were not common metrics across the internal functions and/or the customer journey.  After developing a holistic "revenue model", they were able to define metrics across three levels of operations including Vital Signs, Pulse Signs, and diagnostics.  Vital signs are the top 5 KPIs that the CEO and Chief Customer Officer ( CCO) tracks.  The pulse signs are the top 10-15 metrics that directly impact the company-level metrics.  The diagnostics enable internal resources to double click into the source data that impacts both the pulse signs and vital signs.  By doing this, Alison highlighted this helped to increase the RevOps team investment on forming strategic insights (foresight) versus reactive activities and historical "hindsight". Next, we pivoted to the role that platforms and systems play in a "Customer-In" focus while enhancing internal alignment. Alison highlighted "systems as the foundation" for efficient Go-To-Market operations.  As the conversation evolved, the importance of "DATA" was highlighted as a co-equal, foundational priority for Revenue Operations.  In fact, Alison highlighted the same question to marketing and sales results in different answers due to the inconsistency of the data. If you are contemplating or just starting your "Revenue Operations" journey,  Alison's experiences, insights, and ideas are a great place to start! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Wes Bush, founder and CEO  of ProductLed. Wes's journey to founding ProductLed and becoming a leading voice on Product-Led Growth started when he was responsible for demand generation for B2B SaaS companies.  Specifically, when he led demand generation at Vidyard, they launched a new product that allowed them to evolve from "hosting videos" to providing a self-service tool that allowed end-users to quickly film, edit and share videos across email and social media channels. This launch quickly led to over 100,000 users and eclipsed the value to Marketing Qualified Leads almost overnight. This experience started Wes to think that there were not well-defined "playbooks" for companies to leverage as they started to evaluate and take the first steps into a Product-Led journey. Wes shared the PLG "Layer Cake" model, which highlights the foundational elements required for any PLG program:  1. Data Layer - getting a solid product analytics infrastructure in place  2.  Product Layer - gaining deep insights into the User Experience  3. Conversational Layer - when and how to interact with the user In a sales-led motion,  traditionally only sales and marketing are deeply engrained in the process and the metrics that predict outcomes.  In a PLG motion, every function can benefit from having access to the product analytics to inform their decision making such as:  - How users are finding out about and then to start using a product (Marketing) - When users are at a point of activation, that the probability of converting to a paid user or enterprise-wide license is most likely (sales) -  Where in the product on-boarding process do users start to attrite or stop using the product (products) - What features are used in the product that most correlate to customer retention (Customer Success) Tooling and platform infrastructure will need to evolve in Product Led companies.  Specifically Wes sees a day when a platform that natively includes both product analytics information + internal outreach resource process information resides natively. Integrating product utilization information into existing CRM tools is a good short-term band-aid, but not an optimal solution long-term. Freemium versus Free Trials each have appropriate use cases,  One of the primary variables for which model to use is how long does it take to reach that "aha moment", often referred to as the "Activation Point".  For products that inherently have longer journeys to achieve real user value, a freemium product may perform much better than a time-restricted free trial period. Product Qualified Leads (PQL's) the #1 metric for the PLG motion.  A critical component of the initial PQL is proven activation point(s) that predictably lead to higher conversation rates to paying customers.  Another variable to consider is the ability to supplement product utilization data with Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona data to optimize both the conversion rates and validate the current understanding of the best target customer cohort(s). Time-to-Value is another key metric to capture, and factor into both the PQL criteria, but also into the product roadmap.  The "SOONER" a user can experience value, the higher returns on your PLG investment. We wrapped up this episode with Wes providing three things to consider if you are evaluating whether  PLG makes sense for your company: 1.  Technology is deflationary - users want to pay less over time 2.   Enterprise customer buying process is up 55% - find a way to decrease that for them 3.  Product experience has become part of the buying experience Don't "TELL" them - "SHOW" them - a key tag line in the Product-Led Growth economy!!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product Analytics + Product Led Growth are critical partners for success. Ken Fine, CEO of Heap Analytics recently joined me on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast to discuss the inextricable linkage between these two concepts. PLG currently exists in a continuum of maturity, with some companies managing the entire customer lifecycle using a product-led motion, while the majority still using a traditional sales led motion Ken believes the dominant Go-To-Market model in the future will be an artful combination of both a product-led and sales-led motion with a key focus on reducing friction across customer acquisition, expansion, and retention. Some products are better suited for PLG, and others that require more configuration, integration, and implementation assistance will be better served with a combination of product and human assistance. Ken highlighted that PLG is applicable across every stage of the customer lifecycle. PLG requires developing a hypothesis, testing the concept, then using data to determine the efficacy of the experiment, and then continuously iterating to optimize the performance metrics. Activation is the point in a journey where a user finds value from using a product in a PLG motion. Often, activation is referred to as the “aha moment” for a user. Identifying the “activation point” is a blend of art and science, with a strong focus on data that directly impacts company value impacting metrics such as new customers, revenue, share of wallet, etc. Ken’s experience includes being the CEO of a company that deploys Product Led Growth in combination with a Sales Led motion.  When asked about the “predictive” data they found to predict conversion to paid, Ken highlighted that when users progressed to using their query tool "x" number of times, conversion rates are higher. In addition, when users leverage their integration feature, that provides a “step level function” in conversion rates. The number of times a PLG company reaches out to a free trial or freemium during free product utilization is an evolving process. Based upon a user reaching an “activation” point, they have a product specialist resource reach out, and are still developing a global heuristic using a “test and learn” approach to determine the number of outreaches that optimize the conversion rate. When asked about the best “resource” to reach out to free or freemium users, Ken highlighted that “it depends”. In their model, a solution consultant with deep product knowledge is the initial resource to reach out to provide product-centric assistance but also are trained to identify sales opportunities. Product Qualified Led’s (PQL) is a new metric that highlights when a free trial or freemium user has reached an activation point and is in a position to convert to a new or expanding customer. PQL’s are scored on different levels of qualification, similar to an MQL, though much more qualified based upon actual product usage and engagement. PQL’s go beyond hypothesis and use proven product usage analytics that are predictive of conversion. In summary, Ken shared that if you have traditionally had a sales-led model, that change management is a critical, yet often overlooked element of deploying a PLG model. In short Ken shared - “NAIL IT BEFORE YOU SCALE IT”! If you are considering or recently started your PLG journey, Ken and Heap Analytics are a great follow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Crowell Richard is responsible for growth across the OpenView Partners portfolio. OpenView Partners is a leader in advocating Product Led Growth strategies across their portfolio, which includes leading PLG companies including Calendly. Sam has invested in her career preparing for a growth role in a PLG focused venture capital firm, including learning the secrets of digital marketing in a digital agency, and then for 5+ years at an early stage, PLG company, Dispatch, ultimately acquired by Vista Equity, a leading Private Equity firm in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Product Led Growth companies see 80% - 90% of their initial freemium/trial users acquired using digital marketing techniques such as SEO,  though conversion to paid customers only occur 50% - 60% of the time without the involvement of a human resource.  The type and complexity of the solution directly correlates' to the requirement for the engagement of a human resource to assist the user to become a paying customer. The approach and skillset of the resource initially reaching out to the PLG acquired user is different than in a traditional sales-led environment.  Additional insights, including how they are using the product, possibly areas they have not yet experienced, and allows the vendor's initial outreach to be with a much warmer, engaged led. Product usage, often derived from a Product Analytics platform is a critical foundational component for a PLG company.  One of the areas of focus is how product usage information is provided to the resources responsible for user outreach.   A new consideration for revenue operations is how to provide product usage information within the construct of CRM environments.  Though not a primary topic today, the need for a different CRM for PLG  companies may be a new market opportunity. Top Metrics for PLG companies: 1. Organic Search:  What % of traffic and new users come from SEO 2. User Journey Metrics:   3. Activation Rate: where people are finding value in your product 4. CAC Payback Period:     - must  be much quicker for PLG companies, with 50% of trial users 3. Activation point reached quickly      a.  1 week - 1 month 40% - 60% of PLG free users represent "Zombie Users" which will never convert.  Activities by agents, robots, and poor fit users represent this category and should be identified as early as possible. We also discussed "Product Qualified Leads" or PQL's.  This is a key metric that is calculated based upon product utilization by free/trial users.  It's interesting that only 35% of PLG companies are using PQL's.  This is an increase over the past year, but still not being used by a majority of PLG companies.  PQL's provide a unique opportunity to decrease the friction and resulting lack of alignment that MQL's have introduced between sales and marketing. Natural Rate of Growth is a new "PLG" centric metric that OpenView Partners uses to understand the organic growth rate of PLG companies. Lastly, if you are an early-stage professional considering a career in B2B SaaS,  Sam shares her advice that you create your own rotational program to gain a well-rounded understanding of how B2B SaaS companies operate across all functions in the company. Sam provides a wealth of insights and advice for any B2B SaaS company considering or are in the early days of a PLG strategy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Clayton Whitfield founded SaaSOptics to provide B2B SaaS founders and operators a platform that made it easier to capture, calculate and make better metrics informed decisions. Clayton shared that the core metrics that form the foundation of B2B SaaS company value have not evolved significantly over the 12 years since he founded SaaSOptics, but the understanding and comfort with the metrics have evolved.  Clayton also highlighted that because there are no "standards" governing body in the industry, so there are multiple variations and interpretations of the exact input variables of the core metrics. The discussion evolved into a "hammer and nail" analogy, where if you only focus on one metric, say Customer Acquisition Cost Payback Period (CAC Payback Period), and do not understand the inter-dependencies of other key metrics, such as Rule of 40 or Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio or even Gross and Net Dollar Retention can lead to incorrect decisions. Next, Clayton shared the importance of "Cohort" analysis, and why calculating metrics based upon groups of customers that share a common trait, such as industry or timeframe they became a customer.  As an example, if Financial Services is a well-represented industry segment across your customer base, it would be instructive to understand the Gross and Net Dollar RetentionRates of all customers in the Financial Services industry that became customers in 2016 vs 2017 vs 2018, etc.  Lifecycle Renewal Curves allow you to see the churn rates after annual term renewals in year two vs year three versus year four.  This is an often-overlooked cohort-based metric that can directly inform Customer Success resource allocation and materially impact retention rates for underperforming cohorts. As an example, Clayton highlighted a cohort that became customers in 2017 that represented a time when the customer on-boarding process was less robust, and thus customers were churning at a higher rate than in later years after the new customer on-boarding process was enhanced.  As a result, the company allocated more Customer Success resources to that cohort to re-train and support that customer cohort to course correct the lower than average retention rates for that specific cohort. Next, we discussed the difference between leading versus lagging indicators in the metrics ecosystem.  Clayton highlighted why usage data, made available via a solid product analytics infrastructure can be a great leading indicator of customer churn risk.   Another example of a good leading indicator is Net Promoter Score (NPS), which has a strong correlation to Gross Dollar Retention.  A caveat is to measure NPS for both the buyer and the user which normally provides different NPS scores and inform you where to prioritize increased Customer Success and/or sales resources.  The discussion evolved into the importance of having a well defined Key Performance Indicator framework that identifies the top tier leading indicators, by function that have a direct, causal relationship to the industry standard lagging indicators such as Rule of 40, CAC Ratio, Gross and Net Dollar Retention and Customer Lifetime Value to CAC. Finally, we discussed the stage appropriate use of metrics.  As an example, we discussed Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio, which is a metric that requires the understanding of customer churn over time.  If a B2B SaaS company only has 12-24 months of operating industry, the churn rate is not established with any historical significance, which will result in an artificially high Customer Lifetime Value which can lead to investment decisions based upon false positives. Speaking with the founder of a B2B SaaS company, turned Chief Customer Officer who uses metrics daily to increase customer satisfaction, retention, and thus company value is a great listen! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Usage-Based Pricing is all the rage across multiple B2B SaaS news outlets.  Subscription-based pricing has been the standard pricing model for over 20 years, which has provided B2B SaaS companies more predictable revenue growth over time versus the famous end of quarter "hockey stick" of perpetual licensing software companies. However, companies such as Twilio, Snowflake and DataDog have been using "Usage-Based" pricing to achieve Net Dollar Retention Rates of 130% - 150% and associated Enterprise:Revenue multiples of 20x - 25x. On this episode of Metrics that Measure Up, we speak with Adam Howatson, long-time subscription software executive, and currently CEO of LogiSense, a leading Usage-Based Billing platform company to better understand the trend and what is required to deploy a successful Usage-Based pricing strategy. The first topic we covered was the transition from a perpetual license model to subscription pricing, which was really a cost-plus model that included value for the hosting and intellectual property.  Adam believes we are in a similar pivot from subscription-based pricing to Usage-Based Pricing. One main component of the trend to Usage-Based Pricing is the customer requirement to have more transparency on what they are being charged for and to ensure those variables are directly linked to the value they are receiving. Adam believes the trend to Usage-Based Pricing will be long-lived, and the next material transformation for the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Usage-Based Pricing is a very strategic decision, as it impacts the entire monetization strategy of your business.  A key starting point is to ensure you put yourself in the shoes of your customer, and then confirm with your customer/buyers that the element you are using for Usage-Based pricing is validated as a key-value contributor to the buyers. Using a "hybrid model" may be the most prudent way to deploy a pricing model that uses a fixed subscription pricing to cover the vendor's cost, and then adds on a usage-based subscription billing element that becomes the primary profit driver for the B2B SaaS company. Another key element to model out prior to any Usage-Based Pricing strategy is to understand what the minimum baseline of pricing is required is to cover fixed costs of providing the service.  This evolved into the importance of having the right resources, especially data analysts and monetization experts who provide a balanced approach to the impact on both the vendor and the customer using multiple scenarios on the usage, that include the usage of variables such as seasonality, macro, and micro-economic trends and internal expense trends. Product analytics is another trending topic across the B2B SaaS due to the increasing use of Product Led Growth as a primary customer acquisition motion.  A solid product analytics foundation will be critical to understanding customer usage patterns and trends.  This analysis will provide insights for pricing and monetization resources to facilitate which usage variables are best positioned to serve as the foundation for a Usage-Based pricing strategy. The conversation kept coming back to the central theme of "ensure the Usage-Based Pricing variable used" is validated as directly aligned to the VALUE the customer receives.  Most importantly, ensure this value is tested with the actual customers and potential buyers, and not based upon INTERNAL assumptions within the vendor. If you are considering Usage-Based pricing,  it will be important to understand the increasing requirement for transparency, value for money, easy access to usage data and even stakeholder value will contribute to the emergence of the "USAGE ECONOMY". Adam is a true expert on all things Usage-Based Pricing and Billing, and is a great source of information for any company evaluating how to operate within a Usage Ec See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B SaaS Metrics are talked about in board meetings, investor diligence, executive team meetings, and recently across every corner of the internet from industry influencers and thought leaders. As the host of the Metrics that Measure Up, I was thrilled that I could speak with Dave Kellogg, one of my long-term follows, and a master of all things B2B SaaS metrics. Dave is a multiple-time, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer of B2B Software and SaaS companies, and a highly sought after advisor, board member and speaker. During this episode, we discuss the top five metrics that Dave advises every B2B SaaS founder and CEO to calculate and they include: ✔ Committed ARR (CARR) ✔ Committed ARR Growth ✔ Net Dollar Retention Rate (NDR) ✔ Net Promoter Score (NPS) ✔ Employee Net Promoter Score ✔ BONUS METRIC - Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (CAC Ratio) Next we discussed why Net Dollar Retention (NDR) is a less fungible metric than "Churn". One example of "gaming" churn is to include all customers, including multi-year deals in annual churn calculation. Survivor bias is one caution for NDR, where a company will look at a cohort of customers today and look at how much ARR they represented a year ago - which is not a best practice for NDR calculation. The next thing we discussed is which metric(s) have the highest impact on Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples. Traditionally Rule of 40, and company growth rate were the two highest impacting metrics to enterprise value. I suggested to Dave that we are seeing NDR having a much higher impact on EV, and in real-time, Dave calculated the R^2 of NDR which was .35, and three times more causal impact on EV than growth! The other item we discussed was "selection bias" which happens when you look at the public B2B SaaS/Cloud company's metrics, and target their metrics as the benchmark. It's important to remember that these are the BEST of the BEST, and many SaaS metrics will look much better at scale (> $250M) and in those companies that were able to go IPO. We also discussed how some metrics, even something as seemingly simple as "Win Rate" can be miscalculated. Dave has seen several companies take the number of opportunities at the beginning of the accounting period, dividing that into the # of closed-won deals, without considering that many of the opportunities that are still open will close in subsequent accounting periods. Dave once wrote a blog entitled "Don't be a Slave to Metrics". A couple of pithy, and easy-to-remember quotes included: "Metrics work for us, we do not work for the metrics" and " Metrics reflect strategy - they do not drive strategy". If you are just learning B2B SaaS metrics or are a seasoned SaaS metrics veteran, this episode is a must-listen for anyone responsible to led a SaaS company and/or calculate and present your top-level performance, company value-creating metrics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Benjamin Shapiro started his internet marketing career at eBay, one of the first, largest and most data-driven marketplaces in the world.  Ben's 7 years at eBay provided him the foundation of being a great digital marketer, including SEO and content marketing. Ben caught the Silicon Valley start-up bug, and spent the next 8 years in marketing leadership at B2C early-stage companies, and then he started the MarTech podcast in 2015. Ben's initial experience with podcasting was "an experiment that went wrong".  In this case, wrong meant it was more successful than he could have even dreamed, and quickly he had over 1 Million downloads and a business that usurped his consulting business. The MarTech podcast was launched to be part of a content marketing program to drive awareness for his consulting business.  When Ben first started the podcast, there was not much quality content on MarTech.  Within just a few months, the MarTech podcast hit 10,000 downloads and began to provide monetization opportunities, and quickly evolved to be the centerpiece of his career. Ben shared his perspective on the MarTech industry, and his definition is broader than just "software" that marketers use, but also includes all of the technology, including platforms including Google, Facebook, Snap, etc. in concert with traditional "MarTech SaaS" vendors. C-Level executives have become more focused on MarTech and how it can positively impact brand as well as traditional customer acquisition and expansion metrics.  They also are becoming much more focused on how their company can harness the power of the leading platforms in concert with their internal marketing technology platforms. Ben shared how MarTech has impacted his podcasting business growth.  When building a MarTech stack, he started with what his customers needed, how he could measure their engagement and conversion rate, and thus how he could optimize revenue generation for the podcast to leverage MarTech best practices. One example was being able to capture unique identifiers for each listener on his podcast, and then drive advertising revenue through re-targeting campaigns for his sponsors.   When I asked Ben about the metrics he uses to measure the health of his podcast, he first defined the differences between impressions, downloads, unique listeners (a listen is not a listener).  The problem with using downloads as a key measurement is that a download is often not a listener.  What really matters is to know when a download is really a listener and you can target the unique listener via re-targeting to develop a valuable outcome for sponsors. Being able to map an IP address to a unique mobile identifier is one key data capture that will make your podcast much more valuable to potential sponsors and customers. Ben shares the MarTech stack he uses to accomplish this, including Libsyn,  ART19, Podsites, and Choozle. Ben shared that once you hit 10,000 downloads per month (3K-4K listeners) is a good initial point to start seriously monetizing your podcast.  This number is fungible based upon the target audience.  In fact, Ben recommended that your "target audience" needs to be broad enough to monetize the podcast, versus it being primarily a component of your content marketing program. Ben also highlighted that he has found that having a podcast of 20-30 minutes in duration will lead to a much higher listener completion rate. By taking a 50-minute podcast, and dividing it into 2 episodes has multiple positive effects, including being able to place ads at the end of the podcast which is actually heard. If you are an aspiring podcaster or a marketer desiring to learn about building a great podcast as part of your brand awareness and content marketing strategy, this is a great listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

During 2020, over 96% of B2B SaaS companies updated their messaging and positioning to counteract the short and long-term impact of the pandemic. Fortunately, there are experts on how to position your messaging and value propositions, including Bob Wright,  Managing Partner at Firebrick consulting who has helped over 400 B2B tech companies develop and launch new positioning. The first topic we discussed was why an outside consultant is required when the Chief Marketing Officer is well-positioned to led a messaging initiative.  The answer was the expertise developed from conducting positioning with 400 different companies, an experience base that no single CMO can possess. Bob highlighted why any positioning effort must start with the understanding that a cross-functional approach is critical to developing any new messaging platform.  At the end of the day, messaging and positioning must be about the buyer, and that the messaging must be about the buyer, not about your product, and its feature/function. Any positioning initiative must include sales and pre-sales consulting, in concert with customer feedback. Customer feedback is critical to gaining validation on the value that the buyer is receiving from your solution.   Being a "got to have" versus a "nice to have"  is critical to success. One key example is the  "digital transformation" inflection point that has opened the door to new, innovative vendors.  One key to successful positioning is to ensure you align your value to the buyer's and reality, not to your assumptions. B2B SaaS companies have to run three different businesses today including new customer acquisition, existing customer expansion, and retention.  This dynamic requires a "spin" on each of these three revenue-generating motion's messaging.  Though the foundation of the story needs to remain consistent, that words will need to resonate with the stated purpose. Positioning must be directly linked to key performance metrics.  Short term, it should center on increased revenue growth, higher selling price, and increased win rates.  A second measurement is how external influencers, including industry analysts who start to use components of your updated positioning. Positioning needs to be centered on the "buyer", and not industry analysts.  Positioning must  shift when speaking to the user versus the executive buyer. A short version will resonate best with users/buyers and a longer story is best for analysts and investors. Operationalizing positioning needs to cover sales, marketing, services, support, and product.  Having enablement, which includes a certification process that includes sales, services, and customer success is critical.  Do not forget to communicate the updated positioning with customers and factor their feedback into enhancements. Once everyone in the company is sick of hearing the new positioning, that is a great indication that it has stuck! Lastly, we discussed a customer's return on positioning investment.  This customer deployed a new "business-ready data" message, and within twelve months they increased ASP from $30K average contract value (ACV) to $70K ACV, and even closed eighteen new seven-figure deals in the two years following the updated positioning. We closed with the keys to success which including ensuring creating new positioning is a cross-company process that the CEO owns, not drinking too much of your own kool-aid, and removing overused words like scalable, easy to use, flexible, agility, and collaborative - these words mean nothing anymore and worse are boring! If your messaging and company are not standing out from the crowd, this is a great listen to hear the insights and advice from 400+ positioning programs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Product Led Growth and Usage-Based Pricing are two of the hottest trends in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.  Annual subscription pricing has been a hallmark of the financial model for SaaS companies.  Lately, the move to Usage-Based pricing has attracted investor demand that is pushing Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples up to 15x-25x.  Chris Mele, CEO of Software Pricing Partners discussed the caution around moving too quickly to Usage-Based pricing, and provides advice developed from consulting with hundreds of software and SaaS companies on their monetization strategy....yes monetization goes beyond just pricing! First, Chris highlights that "Consumption-Based Pricing" has been around for decades, and that there is not one model - there are many gradients of usage variables.  As an example, pricing based upon the number of locations or even the number of users are examples of consumption-based pricing, so it is critical to understand how the usage variable selected is directly aligned to customer value received. Next, we discussed in greater detail how critical it is to ensure that any usage-based pricing model is carefully evaluated and then validated by the customer as to the value they are receiving from the "pricing variable" that you select.  Customer Advisory Boards are one great source of pricing model feedback, specifically as it relates to the value they receive.  In fact, these sessions will often uncover value nuggets that you were not aware existed. Chris highlights that when considering a pricing model change, a foundational premise is to do "NO HARM" to your existing customer and revenue base.  Even as you test pricing models with existing customer's feedback, ensure they understand that their current pricing will be honored with a grandfather clause IF the new pricing model is deployed. A best practice is to implement new pricing first with either a new product and/or a new target market as not to do any damage to the existing customer base and their revenue. As Product Led Growth models continue to evolve, pricing models will be impacted.  Pricing is more than a one-time event, or even a single-dimensional subject, as packaging, product functionality, product roadmap, and go-to-market strategy are all impacted by pricing.  This is why Chris is recommending the need for a Chief Monetization Officer, who reports to the CEO.  It is their primary responsibility to ensure that all cross-functional impacts and requirements of a monetization strategy, including pricing, are considered and understood prior to any decisions or roll-out of a Usage-Based Pricing strategy. For some companies, the primary responsibility for pricing may reside within Marketing, but in the Product Led Growth economy, Chris recommends that monetization is best positioned within a Chief Product Officers domain if the company decides that a Chief Monetization Officer is not the best path at the present time. If you are considering a Usage-Based Pricing model, this episode is chalked full of insights and perspectives that can only be gained from the depth and breadth of pricing model experiences that someone like Chris Mele possesses. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.