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Why do so many of my salespeople fail to perform as expected? It's a loaded question. Or, is it? In our corporate sales training experience, we've seen that evaluating underperforming salespeople in the pre-hire sales assessment is crucial for success in your business.
Almost nobody expected 2020 to turn out like it did. At the end of 2019, we were all dutifully making our annual plans for the coming year, projecting revenues, segmenting markets, doing all the things that good sales departments do.
We get so much about prospecting wrong. We reach out to people who are far outside our ICP, people we should never be talking to, wasting our/their time. We contact other prospects, only to pitch our products and services, ending with, “Are you interested, can I invite you to a demo.” We don’t do our homework, we don’t understand the customer, their challenges or where they might be interested in helping.
I’ve been investing just long enough now to see start-ups fall out of product-market fit. When I started blogging on SaaStr.com back in 2012 (!), I didn’t really think this happened. I thought folks got out-sold, lost to the competition, and even failed to evolve. But I didn’t get that apps with happy customers, and some real traction, could fall out of product-market fit.
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.
By Stephanie Carrillo , Senior Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing. It is typical for companies to be given a marketing budget before setting sales goals for the year. According to the article B2B Budget Benchmarks: how much should you be spending on average 9-10% of the company’s annual revenue is allocated towards marketing efforts. But often, when I work with clients, I see a big disconnect between the sales goal and the ability to drive enough lead volume to meet the sales goal wi
When we talk about business, we quickly get to talking about the numbers–revenue, profit, EBITDA, EPS, growth, market cap, market share, customer retention, customer satisfaction, headcount, productivity, inventory, cash flow, assets, liabilities, and on and on. SaaS companies have invented their own versions of the numbers, including ARR, CLV, LTV, CAC, MRR, Churn, and so forth.
When we talk about business, we quickly get to talking about the numbers–revenue, profit, EBITDA, EPS, growth, market cap, market share, customer retention, customer satisfaction, headcount, productivity, inventory, cash flow, assets, liabilities, and on and on. SaaS companies have invented their own versions of the numbers, including ARR, CLV, LTV, CAC, MRR, Churn, and so forth.
One of the very firm SaaStr-isms what that while $0-$1m ARR is Impossible, and getting from $1m-$10m ARR is Unlikely … that getting from $10m to $100m ARR is Inevitable. Let’s take a look at a version of that basic math. Today, the very best SaaS companies are scaling faster than ever. Often 200% or even 300% at $10m ARR. Look at Zoom, Slack, Datadog, UiPath etc.
Even before the uncertainties of COVID-19, Americans were underslept. And there’s a lot of research that shows we’ve been quite unproductive as a result. The current crisis has introduced even more threats to our sleep and productivity. Anxieties keep us up at night , and distractions from working from home , burnout from a lack of boundaries between our professional and personal lives, and the cognitive overload of Zoom are all killing our focus.
Deal review after deal review, I see the same thing. Sales people don’t seem to be managing the process, they are responding to what the customer is doing (or not doing). This is particularly frightening, when one recognizes customers don’t know how do buy, they wander through the buying process, going back and forth, starting and stopping, changing direction, getting lost.
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.
One of the classic original SaaStr posts was on the Top 10 Questions to Ask a VP of Sales Candidate. All the questions still hold today, interestingly. We did an update of that classic post below together with this brand new video on the topic: Use this script for hiring that first VP of Sales. It works. Ready to hire your first VP Sales? But haven’t done it before?
By Win Salyards , Marketing Coordinator for Heinz Marketing. Generosity is one of our key values at Heinz Marketing. We work to live that throughout our customer experience and engagements. We believe our clients are our partners and should be treated as such, and part of that is celebrating significant life events with them. I was recently asked to review our client gift process so we could better respond and scale.
We were caught in a perpetual struggle between Sales and Marketing. Sales blamed Marketing for not attracting enough high-quality leads , and Marketing claimed Sales wasn’t nurturing leads enough. There was a stark disconnect between one end of our pipeline and the other. Marketing never knew what happened to their inbound leads, and Sales would work with leads they knew nothing about.
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.
These days, if you raise money at a >=$80m-100m valuation, and are oversubscribed, most bigger Silicon Valley VC firms will offer to provide some founder liquidity. And these days, the valuations where it is offered is creeping down a bit as bigger funds do earlier stage deals. It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s so they can buy more and/or win the deal.
Capturing and sustaining buyers’ attention can be a real challenge in the SaaS world. With the rapid evolution of SaaS products, buyers’ expectations are also increasing. Besides, new players are entering the market and doing all that it takes to prove their mettle. And how can we forget the old players who are innovating and improving the user experience to maintain their position in the industry?
Click fraud occurs when a pay-per-click advertisement is clicked on by a user with malicious or disingenuous intent. Click fraud first came to light in 2005, when several major cases were taken to court. However, it continues to poison marketing campaigns—and find its way into more and more courtrooms. Juniper Research estimates that click fraud cost advertisers $42 billion in 2019.
Does this question sound familiar… “Actually, can you make this out to our CFO?”. You’re closing a deal and after sending the order form to your so-called champion, you learn that they aren’t the one signing. The fate of your deal now depends on someone you’ve never met. To make matters worse, today is the close date of this forecasted opportunity and your manager asks you when it’s coming in.
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.
Q: Can B2B sales ever be 100% automated? Of course it can. It is called self-service. And it works great, up to a point. The question is, do you want to do better than that? Do you want to sell deals much more than $299 / month? Prospects really want to a live human before putting much more than that, at least to start, on a credit card. Do you want to close more of the potential seats / revenue up front?
Every business is revenue-driven. SaaS businesses that have just started out in the market have to make their resources last for a longer time for maximizing the profit margin. This is a simple cycle of extending their stay in the market and compete. As a business, you have to start out with little expandable resources and you have to follow a strict plan of action for the customer base, the finance, the market research, and logistics!
Client loyalty can eventually span a lifetime, but to make it more attainable, we should take it one step at a time. Whatever situation we’re in, good or bad, we must ask ourselves what we refer to as the Loyalty Question: “What am I doing right now that will make the customer come back the next time they need what we sell?” It’s not about a lifetime.
There is a simple three-step mantra to generating more leads on LinkedIn (or any social media for that matter). ADD. POST. ENGAGE. Building an intentional digital presence is about meeting your buyers where they are and delivering value. Most B2B buyers happen to be on LinkedIn, so that’s where we’ll focus today. However, these strategies will work on any social platform.
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!
Q: What are the lessons you learned from building an MVP for a startup? I worry about the term “MVP” in SaaS. The only thing I think that matters in an “MSP” — a Minimum Sellable Product. A product that gets at least 10 paying customers. Here’s what often happens with MVPs that aren’t yet MSPs in SaaS: They break and don’t scale. A hack often doesn’t work even under moderate load.
In our previous product update article , we gave you a glimpse of what’s coming in this month. This post specifically revolves around a very crucial feature that we all are very excited about. We are proud to announce that Power Dialer is officially accessible to our users in the freshly-introduced Boost Plan. Power Dialer is one of the most demanded features by businesses to ace their calling game.
You wake up, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, you open the door and it's freezing cold outside. Or there is the opposite of that, when there are thick clouds, it's drizzling, you open the door and it's hot and humid as hell! Things aren't always what they appear to be. In early April, during the earlier stages of the virus-required lockdown, I wrote this article about some of the remote selling challenges that companies were experiencing.
Does LinkedIn InMail actually work for lead generation? The short answer is, it depends. LinkedIn has a reputation for high engagement for sales and high cost for marketing. And plenty of B2B brands already use the paid features of LinkedIn to great effect. That’s why the more important question isn’t whether InMail works, but whether it will work at scale, within your budget.
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.
Q: I’m Head of Product and I think our CEO is actively recruiting a VP of Product. What should I do? Go talk to your CEO. It’s totally fine to do that. You just … don’t know. A few additional thoughts and learnings: If you are potentially being “topped”, be a bit Zen about it. Don’t see it as a threat. It may mean you need to find another role, or another start-up at some point.
The virtual world is here…and it’s not going away any time soon. That’s why this series of short videos is so important. I’m sharing practical and actionable strategies for making your virtual sales conversations productive for you…and your buyer. These are actions you have control over, not your technology or your company policies. Conversations Not Sales Meetings.
Ugh, not another pipeline review! We all have those meetings we dread but are forced to sit through every week because it’s part of the process. Some of them are actually useless and can be removed from the calendar, while others carry immense value, but lack the structure and accountability to realize it. . As a team leader, you hold weekly or biweekly pipeline reviews with every rep to gauge the health of their active deals.
Mike Montague interviews Hamish Knox on How to Succeed When the Sale Goes Sideways. In this episode: Throw your current proposal out the window Don’t let the “sunk cost fallacy” get in your way Be emotionally unattached from the outcome You can’t lose anything you don’t have Empathize with your prospect Go back and reset You… The post How to Succeed When the Sale Goes Sideways [PODCAST] appeared first on Sandler Training.
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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