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March was a big month for our blog SaaSX with lots of new subscribers and some great content. Here are a few highlights!

10 SaaS Fundamentals I take for Granted (That Don’t Always Happen)

Justin kicked March off with 10 SaaS fundamentals that many of us take for granted. Though not intended as a stack rank or complete list of SaaS fundamentals, this list ties back to the 80% of a SaaS’s business that looks very much like every other SaaS’s business. While it’s the other 20% that differentiates, the fact remains that you have to execute against that 80% to even get to the other 20%. This checklist is a great resource for double-checking your work and making sure you’re not leaving out important fundamentals along your SaaS journey.

“Sometimes the best way to get back to basics and execute is to take an objective look at execution against the fundamentals. Those SaaS fundamentals make up the 80% you have to get right before you get to optimize the 20%.”

Perfecting the SDR to AE Handoff

My first article of March discussed the SDR to AE handoff and the importance of getting it right. Running a sales department is a hands-on operation, day in and day out. As sales leaders, we must constantly review playbooks, listen to calls, evaluate reps, and monitor conversations between SDRs and AEs.

When both SDRs and sales reps have the skills needed to meet your buyers wherever they are in the purchase process, sales teams are so incredibly elegant in their process that prospects never even realize there is a handoff. In this article, I share some tips on getting that handoff just right.

“When sales teams are too process-driven, it’s not going to be a good buyer experience because it forces your buyer into your process instead of meeting the buyer where they are in their process.”

Data-Driven SaaS Growth Relies on Meaningful, Accurate Data

As many of you know, Justin and I are big believers in data-driven SaaS management. Almost everything in a SaaS business can and should be measured. But it’s important to understand that though this data may be understood by you, this does not mean it’s understood by your team. Additionally, if they understand it but perceive the data as shaky or inaccurate, the entire data-driven management process is undermined. Meaningful and trustworthy SaaS data comes with maturity and scale, and in this article, Justin breaks down what that requires – and what that really means. Passionate people get behind data they believe in.

“Trust is critical to belief. Belief is critical to passion. And passion means the difference between striving to think big and settling for incremental gains.”

The 4 P’s of SaaS: People, Product, Playbooks, and Process

Most common SaaS problems fall under one of four different categories: People, Product, Playbooks, and Process. I call these the four P’s of SaaS. When the four P’s are all aligned and functioning well, great performance follows. And if we aren’t hitting numbers or executing well, then something within the four P’s isn’t right. In this post, I break down the dangers, complications and subtleties within each of these four P’s, and teach you how to figure out which of the four P’s may be getting in your way.

“When the 4 P’s are aligned, optimized and healthy success is certain to follow. So the next time you are facing a business problem, pull back and evaluate each of these areas. This can be applied at any level of the organization—from company wide to a department to a team.”

New Customers Ghosting? Your Onboarding Could Be to Blame

Emily Alford published a great article on the SaaSX blog last month, providing a reality check to readers facing high customer churn early in their onboarding process. It can be hard to admit that your onboarding process could be to blame for new customers ghosting you, but a recent study done by Hubspot found that 60% of churned customers could not see the value in the product, and churned as a result of that operational disconnect. A strong onboarding process can keep customers interested in your product by quickly (and accurately!) proving value. In this article, Emily asks some important questions to help you find the holes in your onboarding process.

“No matter how simple and desired outcome-driven you think your onboarding process is, if you fail to make a good first impression, your customers could be coming away unsatisfied.”

How Effective Are Your SaaS Learning Loops?

Justin closed March out with a great piece on SaaS learning loops, and how to build effective learning loops that will empower your team and help your company grow. Over the years I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve seen concentrated pockets of institutional knowledge in growing SaaS companies. The result of that concentration is much more than dependency on those individuals. It directly impacts scalability even more significantly – it retards momentum and growth. How effective are your SaaS learning loops?

“It’s all very simple. The idea is to build upon what you’ve done. And for new ideas and refinements to be inspired by that water under the bridge. A cultural mandate and a few extra minutes a day can translate into incredible value and competitive advantage. And, in the end, pockets of deep institutional knowledge are widened — reducing dependencies and dramatically increasing your organization’s scalability.”

We hope you will join us over on the SaaSX blog where we write about lots of stuff just like this! Plus we’ve got podcasts, calculators, scorecards, and ebooks, so hop on over there.

We’ve been busy over on the SaaSX.com blog covering operations and marketing in February. Here are a few highlights!

Does Your SaaS Need a Contracts and Compliance Manager?

I focused two of my articles last month on the subject of contracts and compliance managers. This is a really important topic for SaaS companies, and one that often gets overlooked – even by us! We hadn’t talked much about this on the SaaSX blog and so I decided to dive into the importance of hiring the right person to fill this role.

My first article of February asks a question with a (hopefully) simple answer. Does your SaaS company need a contracts and compliance manager? The answer is almost always yes, and in this first article, I explain just why that is.

“No matter what scale you are, if you are selling a SaaS product to the enterprise, you should hire a contracts & compliance manager as soon as you can. This role can accelerate your sales cycle, and help you meet the demands of the enterprise buyer.”

How to Hire a Contracts and Compliance Manager

After we discussed what the role of a contracts and compliance  manager is and established the importance of having one, I decided to share a follow-up article with some tips on how to hire the right one for your SaaS business. In this article I explain what makes a good contracts and compliance manager, how to interview one and even share a couple interview questions to get you started!

“Once you have done a few contract reviews together and are confident that they are catching everything that needs to be caught and are doing redlines well, you can start to review their work in a different manner. They will surface issues to you to decide on, they will make recommendations proactively on how to navigate through certain terms or negotiations. They will get themselves into the driver’s seat pretty quickly.”

SaaS Marketing Tactics Series: Attribution Planning

Justin launched a great series on SaaS marketing tactics last month that is awesome. In part one, he explains the concept of marketing data pipes and the importance of controlling what flows through them. He also dives into SaaS marketing attribution fidelity, what it is, how to track it, and shares a downloadable SaaS Marketing Attribution Planner to help you on your way.

“In order to have valuable, historical attribution analysis and reporting, you need consistent, high-fidelity data. What does that mean? It means you can’t have attribution values change names or structures over time.”

SaaS Marketing Tactics Series: Content Marketing Asset Tracking

Part two of the SaaS marketing tactics series focuses on content marketing asset tracking and breaks down the types of content marketing assets, the asset tracking axes and includes a downloadable Content Marketing Asset Tracker. Both pieces of this series are short, sweet and highly educational.

“One thing is for sure, even a nascent startup SaaS will create hundreds of assets per year. And, planning, tracking, and managing those assets is a bear. Do it well and your content marketing thrives. Do it poorly and you’ll lose control in a heartbeat.”

SaaS Product Feature Release Go-to-Market (GTM)

Justin’s last article of the month takes a long look at SaaS product feature release go-to-market (GTM) implications, churn and feature release GTM failures, and release GTM common sense. Similar to the two articles mentioned above, this one includes a downloadable SaaS Feature Release Go-to-Market Template, providing you with a good starting place for a hierarchical, chronological, and organized approach to high-impact, successful feature releases.

“I’ve found a lot of failures in SaaS companies start with missing documentation. That’s not because over-processing is a good thing — it’s not. It’s because the act of writing and having a GTM doc helps you think through touchpoints, impacts, relationships, dependencies, and opportunities.”

Why “Enduring” Is a Third Option

We closed out February with a guest article from Biso Collective’s Dave Gray. In this article, Dave reflects on the question “can software companies really be enduring?”, and shares some very unique perspectives on what it really means to build an “enduring” company. Dave believes that building an enduring business is a viable alternative to the typical strategic buyer or private equity exit, and explains why this non-traditional “third option” can provide a lucrative outcome the owner can be proud of.

“To me, building an “enduring” business is about truly keeping the next 15 or 20 years in mind. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can ignore the next 1 or 2 years — it’s a balance. However, we’d probably all benefit from not focusing so much on the next quarter.”

We hope you will join us over on the SaaSX blog where we write about lots of stuff just like this! Plus we’ve got podcasts, calculators, scorecards and ebooks, so hope on over there.

Planning Your First Annual Sales Kickoff? Here’s Your Checklist.

My first article of the year isn’t so much an “article” as it is a quick and helpful checklist for anyone tackling their first annual sales kickoff. Sales kickoffs often get overlooked or pushed aside because they don’t feel as necessary and beneficial as they really are. No matter your size, nothing could be more important than coming together at the start of the year (and really the start of each quarter too) to review, plan and collaborate. This checklist is a great place to start planning yours!

“Once you have a few salespeople you should begin the regular cadence of kicking off the year and quarters together in a slightly formalized way. It’s an important part of forming your culture, it’s good discipline to start early, and it helps ensure everyone is headed on the right path towards quota attainment.”

SaaS Marketing Science

Justin wrote a great two-part series on marketing art and science, their unique differences and how they intersect. What is SaaS marketing science? As mentioned in the article, SaaS marketing science is about knowing things rather than guessing or assuming things. Knowing who your customer is, what they value, the verbal and visual languages that resonate with them and so on.

Next comes the art of SaaS marketing…

“SaaS marketing is a special combination of science driving art, and art driving science. If either the science or the art is weak, the machine fails. And if it’s the science that’s weak, it can be hard to know what’s failing and why. That’s why we’re starting with the science. It’s not that the art is secondary, it’s just second.”

The Art of SaaS Marketing

As mentioned above, the art of SaaS marketing is equally as important as the science behind it. When we talk about art, we’re not only talking about look, feel and design. Although those things can’t be overlooked, we’re also talking about function, messaging and much more. When the art and science diverge there’s opacity between the quantitative and qualitative sides of the house, alignment and transparency suffer and your team’s sense of shared purpose and accountability is compromised. Building a finely tuned SaaS content marketing machine requires both science and art to work together, and the people on either side to work toward the same common goals.

“In SaaS content marketing, you will ultimately find ceilings to content effectiveness. But shortening the distance between your baseline and ceiling is the key to faster results from a finely tuned SaaS content marketing machine. That’s the sweet spot where the science and art are much more than the sum of their parts.”

In SaaS Sales, Meet Your Prospects at Their Point of Awareness

What does a waterfall have to do with SaaS sales? This article is all about the importance of meeting your prospects at their point of awareness, and assisting them along on their journey to becoming a customer. I like explaining this process through the metaphor of a waterfall, and breaking it down into three parts: The top of the waterfall, the mid-point, and the rapids. In this article, I share some advice on how to determine where your prospects are, how to meet them where they are in their consideration, and move each one into the rapids.

“When opening a conversion with a prospect, you must always consider the appropriate level to start the conversation and you must quickly shift the conversation toward the prospect through effective questioning. Your goal is to tell very little about your company/product/solution until you have learned about them. You do this by answering questions using funnel-aware skills, but following with a question to understand where they are at in their awareness/evaluation.”

My Favorite Sales Engineer Interview Questions

This one is exactly what it sounds like. When hiring a sales engineer, the only three things that matter are culture fit, ability to understand your product & sales process, and ability to demo. In my last blog post of the month, I shared the questions I ask when screening for all three.

“The best sales engineers get themselves up to speed. If you point them in the right direction, introduce them to the right people in your company, and give them a few resources, they will go make themselves a product expert on their own. They will teach themselves, figure out their demo talk track and spread their wings before you can bat an eyelash.”

How to Hire Between the Lines for Your SaaS Stage

Justin closed out January with some thoughts on hiring SaaS talent for the stage of your company. Simply put, there are people who are makers or creators, and those who are users of things created by others. When searching for SaaS talent, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two and hire with those considerations in mind. Not properly considering the stage of your company during the hiring process can yield devastating results.

“One of the biggest mistakes a startup can make with early, key hires is to give users maker responsibilities.”

And that’s the highlight reel from last month. I hope you will join us over on our blog SaaSX.com for lots more stuff like this!

Take Customer Churn Reasons at Face Value And Do Something About It

I started December off with an article discussing customer churn, the reasons for it, and how to reverse it. Customer churn needs to be solved  with systemic, strategic changes and requires urgency, practicality and a tactical approach. If you’re looking to reduce or reverse customer churn, this article is a great place to start.

When working to improve customer retention, in addition to evaluating the overall value a product is delivering, I think it’s also important to take churn reasons at face value. I worry that industry advice is to dig into “customers getting value”, because it skips over the very obvious. Look at the reasons customers say they are churning and do something about it.”

When SaaS Marketing Segmentation is a Bad Idea

Justin’s first article of December tackles the lesser-known aspects of proper SaaS marketing segmentation. Everyone knows SaaS marketing segmentation is good – but can SaaS marketing segmentation be bad? When? And how? Justin answers all of those questions and more.

SaaS marketing should not be about activity or busy work. Effective SaaS marketing — the kind that lowers CAC and creates capital-efficient growth — is fundamentally authentic. If you can’t bring that level of authenticity to segmentation, at least bring it to your generic messaging. Relevance is the holy grail of content marketing, but it doesn’t come easy.”

A Surefire Way to Hire The Best Candidates

This is an article I wish I had when I started out as a new sales leader. Hiring can be a tricky process for those who don’t have much experience, and the challenge of selecting the right people can be overwhelming. I base my hiring decisions on the quality of the questions candidates ask me, and in this post, I share the four things I look for most when interviewing new candidates.

Good questioning is a pass/fail for me. If a candidate has soared through the entire recruiting process with flying colors, but hasn’t asked any great questions during the process, it’s a fail. Sometimes a heartbreaking one for me when I really like someone and think they could be a strong fit….but, this has to be cut and dry.”

The Opportunity Cost of Unimportance in a Growing SaaS

This is such an important topic, yet it rarely gets discussed in the SaaS world. In this post, Justin calls for SaaS company leaders to think about what they’re teaching their teams by asking them to spend time on things unrelated to what they really want them doing. Opportunity cost is real, and when we make unimportant things important, we make important things less important. Wasting time is expensive and it slows growth, damages morale and compromises your company’s success.

Time is fixed and that opportunity cost is very, very real. Everything we ask our people to do with their time is a tradeoff for something else. I don’t want my best people wasting any of their time. In fact, I want them to understand that I’m obsessed with helping them waste as little of their time as possible.”

Four Common SaaS Sales Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Emily Alford published a great piece on common SaaS mistakes that you may or may not know you’re making – and shares some great advice on how to fix them.

Most SaaS founders like to think a good enough product sells itself, but an increasingly crowded landscape means it’s easy for even great products to get lost in the shuffle. Building a strong sales team that truly understands a customer’s industry-specific needs is one of the best ways to make sure a SaaS product gets the attention it deserves.”

What Can You Expect From a New Sales Leader?

Hiring sales management is one of the most delicate, fraught-with-risk things we do as entrepreneurs. In my last article of the year, I attempted to alleviate some of the pressure that comes along with that process by offering a quick list of the five things every “new” sales manager should be focused on.

More than anything you want a startup sales manager to deeply understand your customer, your product, and your value proposition. They may help you define these, depending on your stage, if they aren’t already defined.”

And that’s a wrap for last month! Stay tuned next month for lots more SaaS management and execution best practices from us over on the SaaSX.com blog.