There’s no better way to ensure a customer bails on your solution than to make promises you can’t keep. And while it’s only natural to want to say a solution is better, stronger, smarter, and faster than the other guy’s, statements like that (if they’re not true) are likely to attract bad fit customers who […]
A SaaS Customer Success Team Org Chart Example
You can scale your SaaS customer success organization in a fairly predictable manner. The trick is to scale just slightly ahead of revenue, and to get creative to solve your most pressing problems. Here are some considerations and a few sample org charts to show you how. The 1st example is the most simple approach […]
Startup Life: Love it or Leave it.
Staff your startup with people who love the pace, rhythm and unpredictable nature of starting and growing a company. It’s really not for everyone. When you have people who just don’t get what it’s like to work in a startup environment, there will be a lot of complaining, a lot of bloated processes (that become […]
To Reduce SaaS Churn, Help Your Customers 24/7
Sometimes big questions get floated like, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What’s my passion?” or “How can we reduce our SaaS customer churn?” If you have ever dealt with customer churn, reduced customer churn, worked in customer success or run a SaaS company, you know the enormity of this question. It takes a village […]
50 SaaS Sales VP Interview Questions I Always Ask
Yes, I really ask every single one of these when I interview candidates for sales leadership. Last week I posted some thoughts about what a new sales leader should focus on in their first 90 days. Since then a couple of people reached out and asked me to share my favorite interview questions for a […]
An Annual Sales Compensation Letter Example
The first time I did quota and commission planning I shared it with my team in a Monday morning meeting. One of the reps said innocuously, “When are you sending us our annual comp letters?”. I had no clue what they meant, but I nodded my head and told them to expect it any day. […]
What Should a New Sales Leader Focus On?
I’ve been interviewing a lot of candidates for Director of Sales lately, and there is one question I always ask. “What will you focus on in your first 90 days?”. Of course, the obvious answer is “results”, but there is a lot more to it than that. There isn’t one right answer to this question. […]
11 Steps to SaaS Customer Success
I have been thinking a lot about the continuum of maturity in SaaS customer success organizations. It really boils down to degrees of a spectrum ranging from reactive to proactive. Here are the 11 areas I evaluate when assessing a customer success organization for strengths and weaknesses. How well they execute against these usually indicates […]
How To Give a Great SaaS Demo
If you are in SaaS sales, you know a great demo can make or break your chances of winning the deal. But what you may not know is what actually makes a demo great. Most demos—yes most—are simply terrible. Which is a shame, because giving a killer demo just isn’t that hard. Here’s a quick […]
The 4 P’s of SaaS: People, Product, Playbooks, and Process
When looking at a problem, I have a simple framework for evaluating what’s wrong. Is it People, Product, Playbook or Process (or some combination thereof)? When the 4 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 4 P’s isn’t right. […]
