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5 Reasons Not To Raise Prices on Existing Customers. And 2 Better Ways to Do It Anyway.

This post is by Jason Lemkin from SaaStr


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I remember the first time I tried to do the Old Price-Raise-Without-Notice tactic. We’d closed Qualcomm in Year 1 for the grand total of $10,000.  Not all of Qualcomm, but a nice division.  It was a great logo in Year 1, and our champion and buyer did 3 webinars for us, an external case study — and an internal case study at Qualcomm.  They were magic, these pieces of content.  He also did reference calls for us with great prospects in the industry.  Yes, we earned it.  But it was also a gift.
But as time went on, we got a bit better at pricing ?  No else anything like Qualcomm was paying less than $60,000 a year by Year 2, and by the time the Year 3 renewal came up, no one way paying less than $100k+ for the same level of service Continue reading "5 Reasons Not To Raise Prices on Existing Customers. And 2 Better Ways to Do It Anyway."
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The science of sales development: how Everstring uses intent data to build pipeline

This post is by Collin Stewart from Predictable Revenue – The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.


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On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes Jack Veronin, Senior Sales Development Manager at EverString. The post The science of sales development: how Everstring uses intent data to build pipeline appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales..
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How to Pick a Term Sheet: OpenView’s 5 Step Framework

This post is by Mackey Craven from Openview Labs


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Editor’s Note: This article was co-authored by Mackey Craven and Sean Fanning.  A great deal has been written about venture investments, ranging from up-to-date reporting on round sizes and valuations (just read the most recent Crunchbase, Pitchbook or CBinsights blog) to breaking down the complexity of a venture deal into consumable components (Brad Feld’s and Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals is hands down the best resource on the topic). Let’s say for a moment that you’ve read all that, executed like hell, and find yourself in the enviable position of choosing between multiple term sheets – how do you choose which one to take? While the answer is sometimes easy because your favorite firm gave you the best terms, it’s rarely so straightforward. Through supporting CEOs in OV’s portfolio, we developed a simple, yet powerful, framework for picking a term sheet. Our five steps will help you compare the
Continue reading "How to Pick a Term Sheet: OpenView’s 5 Step Framework"
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Should Your Startup Employ Both Assisted and Unassisted Trials to Acquire Customers?

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


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A founder posed me a question earlier this week: Do you have any data/perspective on whether it’s worth keeping the unassisted free trial flow vs. providing only one path which leads to a demo and an assisted free trial? This is a complex question. Let’s break it down. The unassisted free trial has benefits. There’s a deeper discussion in this post: Confessions of a Perpetual Freeloader.
  1. You capture the buyer at the point of maximum intent and reduces the activation energy of the sale.
  2. You broaden the universe of people who try the product. You educate the market on your product.
  3. You establish longer term relationships with customers since they can engage with the brand and product earlier on in their journey.
  4. You create barriers to entry by reducing the cost of customer acquisition and inhibit newer competitors who might disrupt using this acquisition strategy.
There are also costs.
  1. Unassisted Continue reading "Should Your Startup Employ Both Assisted and Unassisted Trials to Acquire Customers?"
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How should our new and 1st VP sales and VP marketing work together and with the CEO?

This post is by Jason Lemkin from SaaStr


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The simplest forcing function to help your first VP of Sales and Marketing work well together is for you all to agree on what the #1 core metric in the funnel is. And then what the core goals are there for each month and quarter of the year.
  • Is it X leads per month?
  • Is it a certain number of MQLs? Or is it SQLs? Or is it SQOs by number?
  • Or is it Y $$ of opportunities?
  • Or is it simply Z $$$ of closed/won business?
I.e., pick >one< phase/stage of the funnel as Priority #1 for the Demand Gen+ Team Goals. (This of course is in addition to your MRR growth goal). And have your VPS, VPM and CEO agree on that stage as your core marketing KPI. And then your VPM will know exactly what she or he is accountable for delivering to
Continue reading "How should our new and 1st VP sales and VP marketing work together and with the CEO?"
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“What Does Customer Service Mean To You?”

This post is by Elen Veenpere from Groove Blog


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“What does customer service mean to you?” is one of the most popular questions asked when interviewing support agents. It’s also one of the most bullshit-y ones. As with many “classic” job interview questions (especially the dumb placeholder ones like “how many golf balls fit into a school bus?”), there is a lot of discussion […] The post “What Does Customer Service Mean To You?” appeared first on Groove Blog.
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How SendGrid Prioritizes Core Product Improvements [Podcast]

This post is by Blake Bartlett from Openview Labs


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Scott Williamson, VP of Product at SendGrid (recently acquired by Twilio), is no stranger to utilizing a product to drive growth. He explains the nature of product led growth at SendGrid and how it calls for ruthless prioritization in the core product and a focus around making changes that positively impact the most people. He also discusses the importance of listening to your customers, prioritization of your roadmap, launching a new product within an existing company and much more.     Prefer to listen on iTunes? Listen here.
The post How SendGrid Prioritizes Core Product Improvements [Podcast] appeared first on OpenView Labs.
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Product, Pricing, Marketing, and Data: Essential Building Blocks for SaaS Success

This post is by Wendy Schott from Openview Labs


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I have always enjoyed the hands-on aspect of product development. You might say I was a geek before being a geek was cool. Early on, I also realized that I have a knack for articulating technical information in a way that business people can understand. This is a handy combination of skills in the SaaS world. It allows me to see a problem, figure out how to solve it technically and then effectively explain it to people who might not be quite as tech savvy. These skills have served me well in a variety of roles, most recently as the CRO for Abstract, a small-but-passionate company that is addressing a technically ambitious problem: redesigning the design process. We have developed a common infrastructure that supports the modern design workflow and helps make the design process more accessible to the non-design teams within an organization. We’re working to wrangle the
Continue reading "Product, Pricing, Marketing, and Data: Essential Building Blocks for SaaS Success"
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Introducing Indefinite Snooze

This post is by Lesley Yarbrough from Groove Blog


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Do you find yourself missing the Pending status in Groove lately? Well we’re excited to announce a new feature that will help fill that void. As part of the transition to Groove 2.0, the Pending status that we had in legacy Groove didn’t make the cut. We wanted to simplify statuses into a single, one-click […] The post Introducing Indefinite Snooze appeared first on Groove Blog.