In the past, I’ve shared some perspective about whether sales or customer success should own SaaS customer expansion and renewals, and the answer was a resounding, “it depends”. “It depends” is one of my least favorite responses to a question. But in this case, it’s true. Ultimately both sales and customer success can be equally […]
A Straightforward Approach to Strategic Planning for Startups
Strategic planning is an area that many startup leadership teams struggle with. It’s often something companies want to do but don’t make time for. Or when they do it, it doesn’t really fit their business operating system and it ends up being outdated and forgotten as soon as planning is over. Until you have gone […]
How to Bring New Leadership into Your Startup
Someone asked me recently what the best way to introduce a new sales leader to a team is, and it reminded me of an answer I posted on Quora a couple of years ago about introducing new leaders into a startup. Sorry for the rhyme, but bringing any new leader into a startup environment is […]
5 Startup Roles That Help you Grow Faster
When you are growing fast you end up spending a lot of time getting the right people into the roles in the right structure to help efficiency, communication, quality, and results. Much of that work ends up being focused on departments, work to be done, and reporting lines. It’s neat and tidy. But, I’ve found […]
Who Owns SaaS Customer Expansion and Renewal: Sales or CS?
Determining if sales or customer success should own customer expansion and renewals is the age-old SaaS question. And not to spoil this article for you, but I don’t have the answer. Sorry. I know everyone wants a definitive verdict on this, but the good news is that either approach can work well. If you are […]
Hired a New Leader? Trust But Verify.
This is a story of how I allowed a new executive to join my team, run their function autonomously (hey, they had lots of experience!), and take their department to the brink of failure before I realized it. I like to think I can spot incompetence from a mile away. You probably do too. I […]
The Value of a Business Operating System
One thing many startups lack is a business operating system. A high-growth startup that isn’t using an operating system to run the business either isn’t familiar with the concept, or they are familiar but are afraid it will be too cumbersome to implement and restrictive to operate. An operating system might sound complicated to set […]
4 Essential C’s of Leadership: Communication, Clarity, Context, Consistency
There are many things that are essential to great leadership, but when there’s a people leadership problem it usually comes down to one (or more) of 4 areas—communication, clarity, context, and consistency. Let’s call these the 4 Cs of leadership. What is a people leadership problem? The symptoms look like this: Low employee engagement High […]
More on the SaaS Sales Playbook for Product-Led Growth
I recently shared a few quick thoughts on how the SaaS sales playbook has to be adapted to work well in a product-led organization. Here are some more details on those thoughts…in no particular order. Assess the current state. The biggest mistake you can make when building the sales motion at a product-led growth is […]
Adapting the Traditional SaaS Sales Playbook for Product-Led Growth
There is an inside sales playbook that many SaaS companies use. And with good reason. It’s a tried and true, time-tested way to sell SaaS. It’s effective and proven. If you work for a B2B SaaS company you probably know this playbook well. It’s some variation of…. BDRs work inbound leads (generated by marketing and […]
