How To Present a Quarterly Sales Forecast to Your SaaS Company Board
While most companies put real thought into how they present numbers in their post-quarter board decks and other management reports, one area in which you’ll find a lack of discipline is in how they present quarterly sales forecasts to the board. They’re typically done as a quick update email to the board. They’ll usually mention […]
Using “Win Themes” to Improve Your Sales Management and Increase Win Rates
At most sales review meetings what do you hear sales management asking the reps? Questions like these: What stage is this opportunity in? What value do you have it at in the pipeline? Is there upside to that value? What forecast category is it in? In what quarter will it close? What competitors are in […]
How To Sales Manage Upside and Unlikely Deals
If your sales organization is like most, you classify sales opportunities in about four categories, such as: Commit, which are 90% likely to close Forecast, which are 70% likely to close Upside, which are 33% likely to close Unlikely, which are 5% likely to close And then, provided you have sufficient pipeline, your sales management […]
SaaStr Podcast #179: Dave Kellogg, CEO @ Host Analytics On The Most Commonly Misunderstood SaaS Metrics
Welcome to Episode 179! Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M […]
The Two Archetypal Marketing Messages: “Bags Fly Free” and “Soup is Good Food.”
There are only two archetypal marketing messages, exemplified by: Bags Fly Free, a current advertising slogan used by Southwest airlines. Soup is Good Food, a 1970s campaign slogan used by Campbell’s soup [1]. Quick, what’s the difference between these two messages? Soup is Good Food answers the question “why buy one (at all)?” while Bags […]
The Two Engines of SaaS: QCRs and DEVs
I remember one day, years ago, when I was a VP at $10M startup and Larry, the head of sales, came in one day handing out t-shirts that said: “Code, sell, or get out of the way.” Neither I, nor the rest of marketing team, took this particularly well because the shirt obviously devalued the […]
“Always Scrubbing the Pipeline” Means “Never Scrubbing the Pipeline.”
Perhaps you’ve seen this movie: CEO: “Wow the quarterly pipeline dropped 20% this week. What’s going on sales VP?” Sales VP: “Well, that’s because we cleaned it up this week.” CEO: “That sounds great, but you said that last week.” VP of Sales: “Well, that’s because we scrubbed it then, too.” CEO: “So shouldn’t it […]
Beyond CRM
We should start discussing what’s beyond CRM. I chose the word beyond advisedly. CRM is far, far from dead or even in decline so after would be completely incorrect. But CRM has already changed so much that it may be time for a rethink. Also, many of the tangential technologies that have turbocharged CRM in […]
Can You Scale Sales in the Bay Area? $30k ACV is Probably The Cut-Off
Silicon Valley / SF has gotten incredibly expensive. Rents, salaries, and perhaps most importantly, turnover. I’ve invested in 5 French start-ups. SF costs 2x Paris, fully burdened. It’s crazy. And sales teams have gotten particularly expensive, because they don’t quite scale the same way engineers do. You can pay great engineers a ton, eventually, because […]
How to Walk From a Deal
Like it or not, once in a while it’s appropriate for a vendor to walk away from a prospective deal. Why might you want to do that? You think your product is a poor fit with the customer’s needs. You believe there is insufficient budget to achieve success on the project. You feel like the […]
