SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Everyone loves Ask Me Anything sessions with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, and for good reason. What metrics should we expect in this environment? Until the second half of 2020, most companies had enough apps and weren’t looking on their own to spend more. It was never easy, and the easier times lasted too long.

Quota 79

Quota GTM Price Finance 79

Iannarino

JULY 31, 2021

Your goals and measurements should be based on these two outcomes. My reasoning here is that a second meeting is evidence that the salesperson has created enough value to be able to continue the conversation. A focus on these two outcomes will never fail to pay dividends long into the future. No more pushy sales tactics.

Objectives and Key Results 342

Objectives and Key Results Contract Sales Clients 342

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

But I did see that certain of my weaknesses still were impacting how well we could do: I didn’t get on enough jets. I didn’t visit enough of our biggest customers in person. The ones I did visit, we never lose. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr I remained a serial recruiter.

Growth 97

Growth Follow-up Customers 97

Iannarino

JUNE 24, 2021

“Do whatever it takes” sounds like a good way to succeed in sales , until you recognize that there are no constraints or guardrails. As a professional, you should not do “whatever it takes” when that charge would cause you to lie, steal, or harm others: your character and reputation are too precious to trade for money.

Sales 289

Sales Cross-sell Clients B2B 289

Iannarino

JULY 29, 2021

The Gist: Salespeople are being taught to fear cold calling by people who should know better. There is never a reason to fear calling a stranger, especially since every won deal starts by meeting a stranger. He argued (and I agree) that the phone should start your sequence. First, one-to-many messaging is marketing, not sales.

Cold Call 353

Cold Call Referrals Clients Appointment 353

Iannarino

JULY 10, 2021

Generally, salespeople don’t spend enough time preparing for the conversations they have with their clients and prospects, even though conversational effectiveness makes the difference between meeting or missing their goals. But your client has their own needs too, and they won’t buy from you out of the goodness of their heart.

Clients 280

Clients Conversion Up-sell Start-ups 280

Search Engine Land

MAY 17, 2024

Spoiler alert: it’s not good. ” Charley Brennand (PPC Consultant & Founder): “Google will never put advertisers’ needs before their need to grow profit.” Clearly, trust is a major issue – and in the court of public opinion among advertisers, Google has already been found guilty.

Trust 139

Trust Price Consult Clients 139

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Should Be The Priorities of SaaS Founders During The Early Stages? Try it all — and lean in on what you are good at. Most founders don’t understand their markets well enough in the beginning. They don’t do enough interviews, meet enough potential customers, do enough work, etc.

Engineering 93

Engineering Meeting Product Customers 93

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2023

Most founders never get a decent offer to buy their company. Generally speaking, there is no sane reason not to take the first, good exit. Buy a nice enough house. Usually … that first pretty good offer comes in just when it is getting good. Odds are, risk and time adjusted, you’ll never get a better offer again.

Sell 140

Sell Up-sell Start-ups Price 140

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2023

If you don’t know/follow Brian, you should, he’s one of the best thinkers/practitioners I’ve met in selling. Hmmm, sounds like an opportunity for those who are customer focused…… ) There’s another perspective, that pervades both good and bad economies. All because of our good friend, FOFU!

Customers 115

Customers Pitch Meeting Sell 115

Search Engine Land

OCTOBER 10, 2023

Those lucky enough to be part of the beta test have seen and experienced firsthand what Demand Gen offers, though deeper insight is still some time away. It’s a good way of finding new audiences, exactly what Google has said Demand Gen seeks to do. Daily budget should be: Either 15x your Target CPA.

Campaign 121

Campaign Clients Territory Conversion 121

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

The relationship between investor and founders should be supportive. And some are very, very good at this. VCs are wired to take bad news along with good. And if you hide things during the fundraising process that are important and come up later — expect the relationship to never recover. #4. But there are frictions.

Up-sell 88

Up-sell Trust Sell Meeting 88

Search Engine Land

APRIL 18, 2024

The AI-only approach While it’s true that AI tools are getting more sophisticated by the minute, that doesn’t mean we should act too soon. The AI-only approach While it’s true that AI tools are getting more sophisticated by the minute, that doesn’t mean we should act too soon. A good process. I fall into the second camp.

Sports 114

Sports Niche User Experience Gaming 114

Martech

APRIL 17, 2024

Here are three steps email marketers can and should take now — even if they’re not “bulk” senders — to stay on Google’s good side and keep their email compliance up to speed, regardless of their ESP. Issues in any of those areas can be enough to fall out of line with Google’s requirements, so it’s time to get a handle on all of them.

Technique 97

Technique Campaign CRM Gaming 97

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Someone could present the data here, stand up, and say we had a good quarter. They should be talking about 60% of new logo ARR, 93% of expansion ARR, etc. Instead of a good quarter, it was a semi-catastrophic quarter. You’re misleading by cherry-picking the good numbers. It never changes? But they didn’t.

X-functional 114

X-functional Trust Presentation Drivers/motivators 114

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

Today that would be a dream, but in 2011, people didn’t understand the metrics around recurring revenue businesses, so investors weren’t sure it was a good business. This was a really good business with 90% margins. $.50 You never catch up. Then, someone would sell it for you for $50 to $400. That’s where you have to be.

Engineering 94

Engineering Price Cross-sell Niche 94

Search Engine Land

AUGUST 28, 2023

Why should you try TikTok’s Smart Performance Campaigns? Implementing just the Complete Payment or Complete Registration event is not enough. But for many businesses, some calls to action may be completely irrelevant, so you should eliminate those unsuitable for your client. You can add up to 30 TikTok ads.

Campaign 97

Campaign Objectives and Key Results Clients Conversion 97

Search Engine Land

APRIL 5, 2024

My comment got a lot of engagement, so the idea for this article was born: There are good arguments why you could say that audits are indeed a waste of time, but this cannot be generalized. There are enough of those already. In “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt says that good strategy contains three elements: A diagnosis.

Hospitality 100

Hospitality Consult Clients Construction 100

Search Engine Land

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

In-house teams constantly juggle a never-ending pipeline of SEO projects, from competitor analysis and technical maintenance to launching new products and website migrations. Having a good understanding of the “what” and all the planned projects is a good start for your project management, but to make it work, you need to know also the “why.”

X-functional 117

X-functional Territory Launch Follow-up 117

Spiro Technologies

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

But the communities that have sprung up online have mainstreamed these assumptions like never before. . So if one sales job wasn’t a great fit, you should at least try another one before throwing in the towel for good. You can close anyone if you’re good enough. Making money is all that matters.

Commission 111

Commission Inside sales Outside Sales Up-sell 111

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

Founders should let marketers do what they’re good at and backfill their weaknesses, rather than trying to control every aspect of marketing. Founders should support their hires’ strengths rather than undermining them, even if they personally don’t believe in the strategy. And so much more!

Drivers/motivators 98

Drivers/motivators Growth Product Technology 98

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Someone That Seems Good … But Always Job Hops? 2 If they never stay anywhere much more than about 20-24 months (pretty common), they think they know how to do it … but they really don’t. They didn’t stay long enough to truly run the playbook. It just happens again and again. #2

Promote 92

Promote 92

Search Engine Land

FEBRUARY 5, 2024

We should look at ways to speed up and automate our work where possible. Dig deeper: How to demonstrate E-E-A-T in AI-generated content Based on direct inputs only AI is only as good as the prompts provided to it. Although I’m sure there are people losing sleep over that. It can come up with strategies and automate processes.

Engineering 126

Engineering Pitch Growth Strategize 126

Martech

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

A good feedback loop gives you actionable information and answers key questions, such as the best channel to reach a particular individual or audience segment or what offers are most compelling. As I’ve often counseled my customers, as long as you learn something from experiments, they are never failures. New ways of working.

Customers 102

Customers Government Start-ups Process 102

Martech

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

he’ll be discussing how MOps should prepare their stacks and teams for customer experienced-based AI. Q: How far along should marketing operation teams already be in preparing to use AI and gen AI? If you aren’t sure where you should be, ask your leadership team how important AI is to them, and then act accordingly.

GTM 89

GTM Consult Technology Technology 89

Search Engine Land

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

But what if that’s not soon enough, not fast enough or just not enough in general? Should you dominate the top commercial, money-making term in your space? That’s good! Throw in a canonical link for good measure. How to drive SEO results in the next six months SEO is a long-term game. Definitely!

Growth 113

Growth CTR Gaming Start-ups 113

Martech

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Any good MOps professional would agree. So, if the leader is willing to take that risk, what areas should they focus on to “get more value out of what we have”? So, if the leader is willing to take that risk, what areas should they focus on to “get more value out of what we have”?

Contract 105

Contract Technology Technology Price 105

Search Engine Land

APRIL 1, 2024

Has it never ranked for any keywords? Technical issues Firstly, it’s a good idea to check if there are any technical reasons why your page might not be ranking. But it just won’t rank. Your competitors’ pages are ranking well, even though (subjectively) they’re worse. Yours deserves to be top of Google. So why isn’t it?

Technique 123

Technique Legal User Experience Represent 123

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

What are the top 3 things you think we should upgrade in marketing? Make 100% sure what they say they think you should do is what you really want done. To help your candidates here though, make sure you’ve share enough data on how your funnel works today. How do you think sales and marketing should work together?

Pipeline 142

Pipeline Education Closing Up-sell 142

Martech

APRIL 4, 2024

But good email results depend on more than state-of-the-art technology, beautiful email designs or all the data you want. What takes email marketers from good to great? Anybody can push the “send” button on an email campaign. What’s missing? People with the kind of personality traits that set them up for success.

Strategize 88

Strategize Growth Campaign Legal 88

Salesforce

JANUARY 3, 2024

If you’ve navigated a digital experience easily, there’s a good chance that the designer and developer who built it had a strong working relationship. I remember I thought I was a good designer,” said Loftis. You never get too far.” This can create miscommunications. “I Of course, the bridge goes both ways.

UX 105

UX User Experience Clients Meeting 105

Search Engine Land

APRIL 19, 2024

Less is sometimes more We’re starting with a concept rather than a feature here, but just because you can add 15 headlines and four descriptions doesn’t mean you should also populate all of those slots. That’s all well and good for campaigns and ad groups that have big budgets and big volumes. This is why. .”

CTR 106

CTR A/B testing Objectives and Key Results Campaign 106

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2021

But here’s my list of things I don’t think you should do, almost always, in SaaS/B2B: Committing for less than 24 months to get to product-market fit. Less is almost never enough in SaaS. 12 or 18 aren’t enough. A little more here: A Quiet Plan B For When The Good Times Are a Smidge Less Good | SaaStr.

Start-ups 111

Start-ups B2B Meeting Closing 111

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2023

What should I do? And sometimes it almost never ends. That should be enough. If you had one good exit, you may not have another in you. What Should I Do? It’s crazy, but … you’re not alone. David Sacks made tens of millions at PayPal but had to do more. To do something even bigger.

Start-ups 92

Start-ups Meeting Growth 92

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2024

Should Your Free Edition … Be Even Free-er? Simply making an edition of your business app “free” will almost never on its own attract a significant number of users, unless your app is truly viral. Simply calling it “PLG” isn’t enough. Very free, in fact. All of their Free editions are amazing.

Trust 83

Trust Product Sales Customers 83

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2023

They never finished the project? They never paid? They never even showed up? Try to leave things, when things end, in as good a place as you can. It’s almost never worth it. Fifth, threatening a customer never, ever, never works. Not only will they not pay, but they will never come back.

Commission 98

Commission Start-ups Closing Customers 98

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Should I exercise my stock company stock options if they are $7 underwater? Even if you are in the money — a good sign — the taxes can be so high on exercise in some cases, it can hardly seem worth it. If the company has just done a big “up” round, that’s generally a good sign (faux unicorns of 2021 aside).

Price 73

Price 73