Price Qualification: The Tiffany Way
Most salespeople are familiar with so-called BANT qualification: does the prospect have Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe in order to make a purchase? While Solution Selling purists dislike BANT (arguing that it’s great way to find existing deals that have been already rigged for the competition), most sales organizations today use BANT, or some form of […]
Slides from My SaaStr Annual 2019 Presentation (5 Questions CEOs Struggle With)
Thanks to everyone who attended my session yesterday at the amazing — and huge — SaaStr Annual 2019 conference in San Jose. In this post, I’ll share the slides from my presentation, Five Questions SaaS CEOs Wrestle With (and some thoughts on how to answer them). The folks at SaaStr recorded the session, so at […]
Rule of 40 Glideslope Planning
Enterprise SaaS companies need a lot of money to grow. The median company spends $1.32 to acquire $1.00 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) [1]. They need to make that investment for 14 years before getting to an IPO. It all adds up to a median of $300M in capital raised prior to an IPO. With such vast amounts […]
SaaStr 2019 Presentation Preview: Five Questions SaaS CEO Wrestle With
I’m super excited for the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2019 conference in San Jose from February 5th through the 7th at the San Jose Convention Center. I hope to see you there — particularly for my session from 10:00 to 10:30 on Tuesday, February 5th. Last year they ended up repeating my session but that won’t be […]
Balancing The Need For Validation
To some degree, we all need some validation to feel good and perform better . As we grow as leaders, it becomes a big part of our lives to balance the need for validation of folks in our team. Too little and they may never realize full potential and too much and you will never […]
An Update on the SaaS Rule of 40
Thanks to the folks at Piper Jaffray and their recently published 2018 Software Market Review, we can take a look at a recent chart that plots public software company enterprise value (EV) vs. Rule of 40 (R40) score = free cash-flow margin + revenue growth rate. As a reminder, the Rule of 40 is an […]
Two Natural Reactions That Great Managers Suppress
Most employees tolerate their managers more than love them. According to a year-old survey in Forbes: Only about 50% of employees say the boss values their opinion. Only 35% of employees feel inspired by their boss. Some 25% say they can do a better job than their boss does. Almost 20% say that their boss […]
A Simple Trick To Get Your CEO Closer to Your Team
Startup VPs sometimes lament that their CEOs don’t really know the people on their teams, don’t realize how smart and talented they are, or fully appreciate the value of their teams’ work. How, they wonder, can they build a better bridge between their boss and their teams? The answer is simple: invite the CEO to […]
Making your point !
One of the most embarrassing professional development moments for me was a class on communication that I took as a trainee in TCS in 1999. The instructor video taped me – and went through the replay, pointing out everything that went wrong with my short presentation, in excruciating detail. He concluded with “If you don’t […]
Should Your Startup Have a Quota Club? (And How Much to Spend on It.)
December is when most SaaS startups are closing out the year, trying to finalize next year’s operating plan (hint: I know a software company that can help with that), starting to get a clear view on which salespeople are going to make their number, and thus beginning the process of figuring out who to invite […]
