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It was a couple of days before the end of the quarter. I was a VP back at Salesforce when one of my reps came to me with a request. “Hey David, I’ve been working with this customer for a while now and I think we can get the deal done by our deadline. We have all the terms ironed out. The only thing is, they’re asking if they can pay quarterly instead of annually.
In many segments, competition-to-the-almost-death seems the norm in SaaS. Just look at Larry Ellison or Marc Benioff. While both seemed to have mellowed a bit recently, you can still see it in their eyes, their press releases, their ads in the Wall Street Journal. Ellison and Benioff clearly want to kill their competitors. And each other. Every day.
Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? More than you probably would think. You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. First, figure out how much revenue you need to close in the next twelve months. Because that’s more than now. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. This is generally derivate of your deal size.
One way to describe our current environment is AC/DC, an acronym for the A ccelerating, C onstant, D isruptive C hange we have been experiencing in the 21st century. In the late 1990s, there were people who suggested the world would end with the millennium. Even though the Earth is still spinning its way around the sun, the people predicting the end of the world were right, even if their predictions were too literal.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
Being the salesperson companies desire is no easy task, especially with vast differences in the company culture. Never assume a sale; work for it instead is the motto, but for a moment, let’s assume you like your place of work and you want to be a likable salesperson. The ultimate goal of a business is to create a loyal fan base. Similarly, salespeople are to strive to earn a returning and referring clientele.
Building rapport in selling is really all about being caring and friendly, asking the right questions, and offering great advice and solutions. There are 5 competencies that make a salesperson strong at developing relationships in sales.
With all the doom and gloom on Twitter, you could be forgiven for thinking SaaS customers have somehow evaporated. And perhaps they will. But not today. Not today. Kyle Porter, CEO of Salesloft, was kind enough to share that well into nine-figures of ARR, they are not only growing 53%, but hit the plan early for this quarter — and are seeing no signs of any slowdown, at least not yet.
With all the doom and gloom on Twitter, you could be forgiven for thinking SaaS customers have somehow evaporated. And perhaps they will. But not today. Not today. Kyle Porter, CEO of Salesloft, was kind enough to share that well into nine-figures of ARR, they are not only growing 53%, but hit the plan early for this quarter — and are seeing no signs of any slowdown, at least not yet.
Every salesperson can be sorted into one of two primary categories. The first category is a salesperson who needs something from their prospective clients. The second is a salesperson who knows something that is valuable to their clients.
This weekend, in celebration of the beginning of summer, I was invited to a dinner with friends. At the end of dinner, the host brought out one of my favorite desserts, key lime pie. I feigned politeness, letting everyone take their pieces before I served myself. Truthfully, it was pure selfishness, I wanted to get a bigger piece of the pie. For many of us, I’m one of those, there’s always the tendency to go after a bigger piece of the pie.
Now that consumers expect speed and hyper-personalization in all things, marketers have to find innovative ways to meet demands and maximize their budgets. To do this, marketers are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning. In fact, there is a new term just for this – “AI Marketing.” Customer expectations have never been higher.
So two big PE $10B deals happened in SaaS this week, one agreed, the other closed. And the difference are so stark, they highlight all the changes in SaaS in just a few months: Zendesk agreed to be acquired a PE syndicate for $10.2 Billion , going private. Anaplan’s deal to be acquired by PE firm Thoma Bravo for $10.4 Billion closed. Not only were the prices basically identical, but so were a few other facts: Both had a nice, roughly similar premium price (usually necessary to get a deal done t
Today’s buyers expect more than generic outreach–they want relevant, personalized interactions that address their specific needs. For sales teams managing hundreds or thousands of prospects, however, delivering this level of personalization without automation is nearly impossible. The key is integrating AI in a way that enhances customer engagement rather than making it feel robotic.
Oxford defines a crutch as a prop, a support. While there is nothing wrong with needing a little support, the crutches salespeople rely on harm their results, often without their knowing why. Here we will look at a number of crutches, what salespeople believe they do, and why they prevent sales.
For those who know my background, many may be surprised. But I love selling–and I love working with highly professional sales people. I can think of few things more exciting, challenging, and rewarding than selling. Yeah, there’s the challenge of meeting quota, there’s the reward of blowing away your comp plan. But that’s not really why I love selling.
Link building is vital in SEO since it helps to drive organic traffic via browsers, particularly in competitive markets. It’s a fact that if your SEO approach is really not high-grade, you’ll wind up hidden deep in the search engine results pages, which is the last place you would like to be. To avoid this, you could hire SEO marketing services.
Product-led growth (PLG) is driving some of the fastest growing B2B companies. While these solutions can propel organizations forward, this approach requires business leaders to make strategic decisions around what’s needed to scale that success.
What if you could help your sellers stop wasting 72% of their day on non-selling activities and focus on bringing in revenue? Incorporating AI in your enablement workflows can help you cut down on busy work, get projects done faster, and let your team (and you!) focus on making a bigger impact. We put together this guide to show you how to use AI to cut time and costs for projects, including collateral creation, development of training videos, and automating tedious processes.
One either believes in leadership or they do not. You might doubt that there are people who don't believe in leadership but, in fact, there may be more of them than there are people who believe that strong leadership is critical to high performance.
One of the fundamentals in any kind of solution or value based selling is the ROI produced by the solution. Sadly, too few sales people even understand this, competing on cost and price, leaving the customer to determine the business case and the ROI of implementing a solution themselves. And they must do this, both to get approval to move forward, as well as to evaluate alternatives.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a growth tactic and revenue accelerator, but many sales reps and even sales leaders are skeptical about this approach. ABM doesn’t work without tight sales and marketing alignment. To get there, sales needs to be all in. That’s why the most important factor for ABM success is sustained change management. Learn: Why is sales and marketing alignment important to ABM?
One of the few you can see a clear path to $100B ARR for. — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? (@jasonlk) June 23, 2022. There are a lot of “VC-ism”, and one you hear a bit is The Clear Path. What’s that? It’s a way of summarizing the combination of current growth, TAM and future prospects into where things are going. E.g., “Yes, it’s early, but there’s a clear path to $10m-$20m ARR just doing what they are doing today.”. ”There are challenges, but with that level of growth, there’s a cle
Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali
As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.
It’s no comfort knowing you’re not the only one having trouble finding tech talent. Demand is high, supply is low. And everyone has teams and projects stuck in limbo. What would be comforting is a solution. Well, here you go. I’ve helped many marketing teams close the gap in their technical capabilities without writing a single job description. The reality is you have many more options than you can envision right now.
Innovation is critical for all of us. It enables us to… well, innovate. Innovation underlies change. It enables us to do new and different things, address new and different opportunities/markets, shift our strategies, products, markets. A lot is written about innovation. Much of it focuses on disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation probably overlaps, significantly, with invention.
Every closed deal requires two parts: the right buyer and the right seller. The right buyer is one who’s the ideal fit for your solutions. The right seller is one who has what it takes to guide the deal through the sales cycle and eventually, across the finish line. If one side of the equation isn’t quite right, there’s no deal. The vast majority of organizations have the first half of the equation down pat.
So we’ve done so many great things with Zendesk over the years, and now it’s the end of one era for Zendesk — and the beginning of a new one. It’s now “going private” for $10.2 Billion. It may well IPO again in just a few years, we’ll see. But this will be one of the last chances we get to see its financials and metrics as a public company.
ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!
Marketers play a large, proactive role in the buying-selling process to generate revenue across the entire buyer lifecycle – from generating a new customer, to contract renewal, to solution expansion and cross-sell/upsell. This is no small task, especially when B2B buyers, barraged by untimely automated messages, random cold calls and lackluster outreach from both sales and marketing, are opting out of vendor conversations.
Have you met with prospects who had very specific questions about the what , how , and when of working together? If so, you may have heard questions such as: What happens then? When will that be addressed? Your answers to those important “how to’s” are important to the Reflector buyer Tribal Type during sales conversations. The Reflector Tribe is the focus for this installment in the series: Convert Consistently with Customs and Connections.
Selling to new leaders in these uncertain times? Sellers are reporting to me that they are selling to an unprecedented number of first-time managers and leaders in businesses today. I’m … Read More. The post Selling to New Leaders in Uncertain Times first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.
Each week, we round up our most popular content so you can catch up on anything you may have missed. Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. AngelList: Seed Rounds Have Fallen 50% in Volume Since March. Big Companies Don’t Churn.
AI is reshaping marketing and sales, empowering professionals to work smarter, faster, and more effectively. This webinar will provide a practical introduction to AI, focusing on its current applications, transformative potential, and strategies for successful implementation in your organization. Using real-world examples and actionable insights, we’ll examine how businesses are leveraging AI to increase efficiency, enhance personalization, and drive measurable results.
No matter which stage of Google Analytics 4 implementation you’re currently involved in, the opportunities to integrate with other products shouldn’t be overlooked. The best part is that the basic versions are free for everyone, so there are quick wins to be had if you aren’t using these yet. Other features and reporting experiences aside, an edge that Google Analytics has over other analytics platforms is that it fits well with the Google Marketing Platform (GMP).
By Michelle Voznyuk , Senior Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing. In partnership with Bigtincan , we surveyed 206 professionals across multiple experience levels, company sizes, and industries to discover how teams are communicating the value of their solution in a way that addresses buyers’ wants, needs, and expectations, while simultaneously meeting the goals of their business.
In one of the early scenes from Martin Scorsese’s movie The Departed, Martin Sheen, playing a police captain, tells a young police recruit played by Leonardo DeCaprio that, “We deal in deception here. What we do not deal with is self-deception.” It’s a poignant line, and a reminder that many of us have stories we tell ourselves — stories that aren’t always true.
There may or may not be an extended funding winter in the coming months, but it’s clear that something is going on right now. One only has to read Twitter or any VC blog post to know that things have changed in the funding environment. Growth at any cost is no longer rewarded and startups need to pay close attention to their burn rate and runway. At SaaStr Europa, Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz shared tactical advice on how to weatherproof your financial plan for the funding downturn
Every marketer knows how important it is to prove their efforts drive sales opportunities, but that’s easier said than done. When problems like sales and marketing misalignment, lack of data, and wasted efforts persist, marketers can’t measure, prove, or increase their impact on revenue at a time when demonstrating marketing value is critical. Using analyst and expert data, this guide to marketing impact and content attribution explains: How B2B buyers use content The most common types of conten
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