Saturday, 29 January 2022

SaaStr

SaaStr

What Channels Did — And Didn’t — Drive Traffic to SaaStr.com Last Year

Posted: 29 Jan 2022 07:11 AM PST

Times have changed in the almost 10 years the SaaStr blog has been around!  While the blog keeps growing and is the hub of the SaaStr community, it’s now just one spoke:

  • Our podcast gets 100,000+ downloads.
  • Far more folks find our content on social media than directly from our blog.
  • We have 120,000+ subscribers to our newsletters and send 1,000,000+ emails to them per month.
  • SaaStr University has 12,000+ founders sharing learnings and taking free courses on it.
  • And our events are a massive source of content and engagement, both IRL (Annual, Europa, etc), and since Covid, almost 100,000 have attended our digital events.  We never even did a digital event before March 2020.

So SaaStr is a lot of places, and a lot of things.  But while SaaStr is no longer just a blog, its website is still its heart and core.  And for the content marketers out there, it may be at least a little interesting to see where our traffic growth to SaaStr.com in 2021 came from.  And … didn’t come from:

1. Organic was up 13%, but not as much as I’d hoped.  I’m no SEO expert but it seems like our SEO rankings now compete with each other.  Good to see it’s still growing, but I wish it magically built on itself even faster at scale.  We continued to refresh older top content, but it’s not clear this really has a huge net impact based on the raw numbers, although it seems to based on basic Google keyword searches.

2. Newsletter was up 27% in terms of driving website traffic.  I actually again thought this would be higher, mainly because we substantially improved the SaaStr Daily newsletter, added the SaaStr Insider, and as a result, sent a lot more emails in 2021.  Still, +27% is still pretty good.  I expected a little bit more though, given how chock full of content our newsletters are, and that they drive almost all their traffic to the website.

3. Twitter up 29%, but almost entirely from the @jasonlk handle.  @saastr handle declined as source of web traffic.  This is interesting and something most of you may know, but social media services that just recycle content as new posts don’t seem to perform very well anymore.  I put a lot of work into @jasonlk, but @saastr is still mostly just AI-driven links to our content. The @jasonlk twitter account drives 5x the traffic that @saastr does.  Social media recycling engines aren’t what they once were.

4. LinkedIn is very vibrant, and up 34%.  If you are in B2B and aren’t catching up with your LinkedIn feed, you’re missing a lot. Some junk, and a lot of self-promotion, no doubt.  But a lot of engagement and energy.  It’s a bit harder to use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your own site than Twitter, because LinkedIn’s algo heavily penalizes posts that include URLs in the main post.  Still, even with that challenge, traffic from LinkedIn to SaaStr.com was up 34% at our scale.  Almost all of that came from my account, with almost 200,000 followers.  The SaaStr LinkedIn account with ~20,000 followers for now is just recycled bot content, and that has very low engagement, like on Twitter.  We’ll work on that in 2022!

5. eBooks up 112%.  OK this was a surprise.  We need to understand this better.  Our eBooks are really, really good.  Like excellent good.  But we don’t regularly publish new ones all the time.  So my #1 learning is a strong eBook can have a really long tail.  And check them out here.

6.  YouTube up 281%, but from a smaller base.  We didn’t (unfortunately) take our YouTube channels seriously until 2H’21 — we waited way too long given how insanely good our YouTube sessions are, with CEOs of Notion, Atlassian, Slack, Databricks, Monday, Mailchimp … everyone!  We’re investing much more here in 2022.  First up, it’s much better scheduled and organized.

So that worked.

What didn’t work in 2021 … and admittedly, we put zero effort into these channels, so it’s no surprise:

7. Facebook, down 20%.  Recycled content just doesn’t work here.  Maybe we should have a Facebook group, but we put that energy into SaaStr University instead.

8. Quora, down 13%.  This one (still) hurts a little.  We have 70,000,000+ total views on Quora and 1000s of amazing answers and pieces of content, but it’s mission has changed and it just doesn’t drive the internal engagement on Quora, or the traffic to SaaStr, it used to.  In the early years of SaaStr, Quora was a far more important platform than anything else for us.  Quora was our community, and it was wonderful.  But that platform moves on.  A reminder of the benefits (scale) and risks (goals can change) of building on others’ platforms.  We still love Quora and invest there, but it’s not what it was for us.

9. Medium, down 28%.  Medium has never performed for us, although clearly it has for others.  A reminder a platform that works for some may not work for others.

10.  Google News, down 24%.  A minor bummer.  It’s always fun to see a piece of SaaStr content make Google News, it’s fun to see, like Hacker News (not the same, but both are fun).  For whatever reason, our content didn’t perform as well there in 2021 as 2020 — even though we added more “Google News”-friendly content like our 5 Interesting Learning series.  Hmmm!

The bottom line is we had some surprises, like the strong performance of eBooks.  But overall, the channels we set goals advanced the most and made the biggest impact.  And the ones we put no effort into, actually shrunk.

That’s just what you’d expect.

A related post from a little ways back here:

The post What Channels Did — And Didn’t — Drive Traffic to SaaStr.com Last Year appeared first on SaaStr.

Top 7 Regrets in Hiring VPs. Firing Them Is Not One of Them.

Posted: 29 Jan 2022 05:38 AM PST

Q: Have you ever regretted firing an employee?

No.

I've regretted, and still regret almost daily:

  • Waiting too long to make a critical hire. You overload the existing team, and progress stalls out.
  • Not closing my A+++ top choice for a role, no matter what it took. This haunts me to this day. When there is a true game-changer, do whatever it possible takes to close them. And then even when they say No, remember, you still have another chance next week, next month, and next year.
  • Underhiring. Not hiring someone experienced enough for a role.
  • Hiring for the logo.  Just because they worked at Zoom or Twilio does not mean they can do it at your little startup.
  • Not topping a hire that has truly reached their limits. It's tough to time this right, but if you leave someone in a senior role too long, once the business has gotten too big, you slow down.
  • Settling for a top hire. At some point, sometimes, enough time goes by that you have to settle. But it's never a great thing.
  • Not working things out. With a key employee that left. Don't let emotions cloud your decisions here too much. Find a way to keep the great ones, even if the role and position have to change.

But firing?

For most of us, by the time that comes — we realize we should have done it months ago. Not only has the damage been done, but it continues to compound. And so much time was lost, without progress.

That, you never look back on. You just wish you'd done it much, much earlier.

(note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer)

The post Top 7 Regrets in Hiring VPs. Firing Them Is Not One of Them. appeared first on SaaStr.

It’s Back On!! SaaStr Miami Meetup 2022: Th Mar 3 in Wynwood

Posted: 28 Jan 2022 05:20 PM PST

 

We’re back on for Miami!!  Our 3d SaaStr Miami mega meet-up!!
SaaStr Miami brings an awesome, 100+ founder + exec + VC SaaStr meetup to Miami on Jan 5th!

About SaaStr Miami

SaaStr is coming to Miami for an epic evening of networking and community at the super cool outdoor-indoor Veza Sur in Wynwood! Grab your ticket to join us on Thursday, March 6, and get ready to meet incredible SaaStr speakers and talk about all things SaaS!

Agenda

  • 4pm: Meet-up and Cocktails
  • 5-6pm: Roundtables. You’ll choose 2, 30-minute sessions.  We’ll have the CEO of $2.3B Salesloft, to answer your questions on how to go big, and the CRO of $12.3B Brex, to answer your top questions on scaling sales teams these deals, and other great SaaStr leaders sharing how to scale!
  • 6-7:30pm: Dinner, Cocktails and Networking

We hope you’ll join us for this fun night of learning, sharing and networking with hundreds of fellow SaaS founders, executives and investors!

Space is limited, so don’t wait to reserve your ticket.

The post It’s Back On!! SaaStr Miami Meetup 2022: Th Mar 3 in Wynwood appeared first on SaaStr.

Scaling Your Startup 10x From $20M to $200M with Sapphire, Lightspeed, TripActions’ CRO, and 6Sense’s CMO (Pod 522 + Video)

Posted: 28 Jan 2022 09:42 AM PST

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization?

Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.

The go-to-market playbook

Going from $20 million to $200 million can be tricky, especially since many strategies that would've worked for you before might need significant changes or adjustments now. Recalling how Latané operated when 6sense was scaling up, she says:

Before $20 million, your workforce is in beast mode, where everybody does everything and you're building your team with swiss army knives to reach your mark. When you get to $20 million, you grow your team with dedicated specialists.

Here are three things that helped 6sense reach this mark and beyond:

  1. Defining their revenue operating model by hiring for RevOps and not taking the common DevOps and SalesOps approach. This model worked backward into pipeline quotas which defined how much revenue they needed to create every week, month, and quarter. The go-to-market segment worked together on key metrics across the revenue board.
  2. Building an outbound motion that captures demand efficiently. For this, they made their BDRs laser-focused on behavior-based signals, ICP, and recurring processes to help them become account executives. 
  3. Never thinking small and instead made decisions that were bold and audacious for a company of their revenue size. This helped them break out of the noise and keep away from play-it-safe strategies.

According to Carlos, you don't go from $20 million to $200 million with a great product alone or a sexy demo. You need repeatability based on a strong foundation. This foundation has three pillars:

  1. Recruiting: You need to have clarity on the profile of a successful account executive and how you'll identify them, quickly assess them, and retain the exceptional talent in your organization.
  2. Skilled development and enablement: You can't disrupt a market by hiring people from legacy vendors hoping they'll figure it out. You need people with fresh thinking, especially sales athletes and leaders who know your market. Once you hire them, you need to train and enable them to become even more talented sales professionals with knowledge about databases and expense management.
  3. Execution: If you have great performers and an excellent training program, you need a robust implementation framework to bring all of it together. This includes pipeline generation, champion building, and qualification.

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Does PLG really help scale by a large amount?

To get from $20 million to $200 million, you'll take bigger deals with huge companies. Here, PLG would come in handy if you're selling to a smart tech company, and they can easily connect the dots with a great demo or use case. Carlos says:

To scale, you’ll go to companies where decision-makers are involved who may never use the product. You will need to build an agile sales team able to discover pain points, build real value, and sell top-down as well as bottom-up. This has been our key to go up-market and scale at TripActions.

For Latané, a huge part of being a CMO and go-to-market leader is being obsessed with experience—product, sales, customer interaction, and marketing. So, bringing a product experience to the customers in the form of a snack can work tremendously to showcase the product's true value.

To adopt PLG in your demand motion, you need to offer your audience something more interesting than your generic blog content gated behind a sign-up form to engage them. Here, offering an experience like a calculator or something juicier is an integral part of the modern go-to-market motion.

The friction between sales and marketing

Marketers need to understand that the only asset sales have is time, and they must choose how they spend every second of every day wisely. So, marketing teams should consider the sales team as their most precious and expensive channel.

Marketing teams must separate the most winnable demand signals and focus on the sales velocity model to put the sales team in a position to win and focus their efforts in the right direction. From a marketing perspective, Latané says:

The more sales and marketing can work together to triangulate on a plan that isn't just quota-built, but market-driven, the better shape we'll all be in, and the better results it'll get collectively.

When there's tension, marketing looks for a metric, and sales externalize the responsibility for the pipeline. From a sales perspective, Carlos says:

Highly functioning executive teams are empathetic of each other. As CRO, if I'm part of a high-functioning team, I have a stronger relationship with the CFO, Head of Product, and the Head of Marketing than I do with my team. This makes us completely aligned with what the company cares about.

Maintaining talent and culture during rapid growth and scaling

As you're scaling a sales organization, it's essential to understand who you want to hire. For example, TripActions believes their quota-carrying sales reps should have intangible qualities such as intelligence, drive, grit, coachability, and values, and tangible qualities such as pipeline generation, champion building, and qualification. 

Being clear on the ideal picture of each role will help you build a team with high talent density. If you don't have great talent or a talent-defining framework, it'll be challenging to develop a strong culture as you grow and move forward. 

In terms of culture, there should be a greater focus on two-way and peer-to-peer communication in the form of quarterly business reviews and other activities. If you have a talented team with open communication, this can help promote culture.

Organizing mid-year field kickoffs on a large scale where you invite your go-to-market team, along with the sales, can help set the tone for the entire year. 

However, work should always be fun—more than a grind. Latané says:

You should like what you're doing, how you're doing it, and with whom you're doing it. Since your people make the products, it's important for them to have fun and make your product fun for your customers.

Combatting burnout and maintaining morale during ever-evolving processes

Acknowledging that those on your team have personal lives and are going through hard things on a personal level is important. This doesn't mean giving Fridays off and calling it a day. Rather, get to know what's going on with each person on your team and make accommodations on an individual level. Carlos says:

People are most engaged when they're growing, learning, and winning. TripAction adjusted the meaning of success when the dynamics of culture transitioned. But they were scaling large and quickly. Reforming sales metrics became achievable in the new environment, and the team was no longer under as much pressure.

Key takeaways and final thoughts

You always need to be learning, growing, and challenging yourself and your people in the company. Additionally, you need to think bigger than you are today—if you're at $10 million, think you're at $100 million, or if you're at $100 million, think you’re at $300 million.

Finally, when you're hiring, slope matters more than scale. For example, a leader who's been a part of growing a company from $10 million to $40 million may have a better idea of building systems for scale and hiring and managing talent than someone who saw it grow from $80 million to $120 million.

The post Scaling Your Startup 10x From $20M to $200M with Sapphire, Lightspeed, TripActions’ CRO, and 6Sense’s CMO (Pod 522 + Video) appeared first on SaaStr.

5 Simple Tips to Improve How You Allocate Leads (In The Early-ish Days)

Posted: 28 Jan 2022 07:00 AM PST

Leads are just so .. precious in the early days.  It likely will be years until you have “too many leads” … if ever.  But especially in the early days when you as CEO can manually count every lead each month yourself, the last thing you want to do is waste any.

Once you have a handful of reps, one of the most important things you can do is route the right lead to the right rep.  Here are some simple, easy-to-implement tips in the early days:

  • Segment your leads, once you have enough reps to do so. At least, by Small, Medium and Larger leads (if they aren't all the same size). Focus will increase your revenue per lead.  Let reps specialize at the business process changes, questions and needs of customers of a specific size. Reps may all think they want the leads for "bigger" deals, but in reality, a rep that can close fast can often make as much or more money serving a higher volume of faster-closing leads.  You often can also use the smaller leads as a bit of training for first-time reps and SDRs moving to an AE role.
  • Round robin as the default, not territories — until you are a bit bigger. Sales leaders from bigger SaaS companies will often want to immediately divide the country and the world into lead territories. Once you have scale, a true sales ops leader and careful processes, this can sometimes be the right way to scale past reps 15, 20, 100+, etc. But before that, it's just a recipe for frustration. The territories are almost never equal or load-balanced in the early days. Round robin lead allocation is the simple way to do this in the beginning.  It’s by nature fair and load-balanced to simply route leads to reps in sequential order.
  • Take away / reassign any leads that aren't followed-up with quickly. Maybe within 24 hours. Or even faster. Route leads that aren't rapidly followed-up with to a rep with time to talk to them. You gotta do this.  Leads not only go stale — which is important — but when a rep doesn’t follow up almost instantly, that’s in general a clear sign she just isn’t excited about the lead.  Send it instead to someone that is.
  • Monitor which reps can process more leads than others. Later, this will be too much work. But in the early days, carefully tracking rep capacity can really help you get the most revenue per lead. Some reps simply will work faster than others. Not necessarily better, but faster.  Others are more deliberate.  Don't assign any additional leads to a rep that can't process anymore leads in a given month. You are just throwing away those leads.
  • Score your leads, and send the lower scored leads to someone. Implement a lead scoring process as soon as possible — but don't throw away the lower scored leads. Instead, send them to an SDR or a junior rep. You'll be surprised that quite a few will still close.  Maybe the absolute lowest scored leads won’t close very often.  But the ones with some score points, but not too many?  Often, just showing them some extra, additional careful attention and time will lead to them closing.

A bit more here:

and How to Close More Revenue Today — With The Leads You Already Have. Use The “3 L’s”. | SaaStr

(note: an updated SaaStr Classic post)

The post 5 Simple Tips to Improve How You Allocate Leads (In The Early-ish Days) appeared first on SaaStr.
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