My SaaStr Talk Abstract: 10 Non-Obvious Things About Scaling SaaS
In an effort to promote my upcoming presentation at SaaStr 2018, which is currently on the agenda for Wednesday, February 7th at 9:00 AM in Studio C, I thought I’d do a quick post sharing what I’ll be covering in the presentation, officially titled, “The Best of Kellblog: 10 Non-Obvious Things About Scaling SaaS.” Before […]
Using Time-Based Close Rates to Align Marketing Budgets with Sales Targets
This post builds on my prior post Win Rates, Close Rates, and Milestone vs. Flow Analysis. In it, I will take the ideas in that post, expand on them a bit, and then apply them to difficult problem of ensuring you have enough marketing demand generation budget to hit your sales targets. Let’s pretend it’s […]
Win Rates, Close Rates and Milestone vs. Flow Analysis
Hey, what’s your win rate? It’s another seemingly simple question. But, like most SaaS metrics, when you dig deeper you find it’s not. In this post we’ll take a look at how to calculate win rates and use win rates to introduce the broader concept of milestone vs. flow analysis that applies to conversion rates […]
Don’t Let Product Management Turn Into “The Roadmap Guys”
At many enterprise software companies product management (PM) ends up defaulting into a role that I can’t stand: The Roadmap Guys*. Like a restaurant with one item on the menu, the company defaults into ordering one thing from product management: a roadmap pitch. “The VP of PM is in Boston and Providence this week, can […]
Can You Solution Sell without Selling Solutions?
Yes. And for those who get the distinction, I’d might add, somewhat obviously. But too many people don’t get it. Too many folks equate “solution selling” with “selling solutions.” In fact, they’re quite different. So, in this post, we’ll try to make the world a better place by explaining the difference between selling solutions and […]
Are You a “Challenging” or Simply a “Difficult” Direct Report?
Most managers, save for true sycophants, want to challenge their boss. Few managers want to be puppet yes-people to the boss. They’ve worked hard to get where they are. They bring years of wisdom and experience. They want to push and challenge. But many don’t know when or how. More importantly, they don’t know what […]
Simple Rules to Make It Easier To Build Your Startup’s Board Deck
As someone who has assembled many startup board decks over the years, I thought I’d offer some advice to executives who contribute slides to board decks that should make it easier for the point-person to assemble, improve the deck’s appearance, and avoid any painful and/or embarrassing mistakes in the process. Marketing folks, who both build […]
The SaaS Rule of 40
After the SaaSacre of early 2016, investors generally backed off a growth-at-all-costs mindset and started to value SaaS companies using an “appropriate” balance of growth and profitability. The question then became, what’s appropriate? The answer was: the rule of 40 [1]. What’s the rule of 40? Growth rate + profit should be greater than or […]
Detecting and Eliminating the Rolling Hairballs in your Sales Pipeline
Quick: what’s the biggest deal in this quarter’s sales pipeline? Was that the biggest deal in last quarter’s pipeline? How about the quarter before? Do you have deals in your pipeline older than your children? If you’re answering yes to these questions, then you’re probably dealing with “rolling hairballs” in your pipeline. Rolling hairballs are […]
A Look at the Tintri S-1
Every now and then I take a dive into an S-1 to see what clears the current, ever-changing bar for going public. After a somewhat rocky IPO process, Tintri went public June 30 after cutting the IPO offering price and has traded flat thus far since then. Let’s read an excerpt from this Business Insider […]
