SaaS Backwards - Reverse Engineering SaaS Success: Recent Episodes

Ken Lempit

Join us as we interview CEOs and CMOs of fast-growing SaaS firms to reveal what they are doing that’s working, and lessons learned from things that didn’t work as planned. These deep conversations dive into the dynamic world of SaaS B2B marketing, go-to-market strategies, and the SaaS business model. Content focuses on the pragmatic as well as strategic, providing a well-rounded diet for those running SaaS firms today. Hosted by Ken Lempit, Austin Lawrence Group’s president and chief business builder, who brings over 30 years of experience and expertise in helping software companies grow and their founders achieve their visions.

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Guest: Mark Walker, CEO at Nue.io

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SaaS pricing isn’t breaking because of AI — it’s breaking because most revenue systems were never built for the speed and complexity of today’s models.

In this episode, Mark Walker, CEO of Nue.io, joins host Ken Lempit to unpack why modern SaaS and AI companies are abandoning legacy CPQ and billing stacks for a flexible, unified revenue infrastructure built for rapid change.

Key highlights:

Why legacy CPQ + billing can’t support modern SaaS pricing
How committed consumption + bank-billed models are reshaping monetization
Why speed of configuration is now a GTM advantage
What RevOps must rethink as pricing experiments explode
How elite teams thrive on hard problems and high-velocity execution

If you’re a B2B SaaS founder, CRO, CMO, or RevOps leader navigating complex pricing models, upgrading your revenue stack, or preparing for next-gen AI monetization, this conversation will change how you think about scaling.

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And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guest: Brent Adamson, Co-Author of The Framemaking Sale & Co-Founder of A to B Insight

SaaS sales teams obsess over beating competitors—but the real battle isn’t across the table. It’s in the buyer’s mind.

In this episode, Brent Adamson—co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer and Co-Founder of A to B Insight—joins host Ken Lempit to reveal why most SaaS deals are lost to no decision at all, and how his new book, The Framemaking Sale, helps buyers build the confidence to act.

Brent explains how the sales playbook has evolved from “teach them what to think” to “help them trust themselves”—and why the future of B2B growth depends on changing how we sell, not what we sell.

Key insights from this episode:

Why no decision—not competitors—is killing SaaS deals
How to turn buyer anxiety into deal confidence
Why “trusted advisor” means helping customers trust themselves
How marketing and sales can guide smarter, faster SaaS buying
The mindset shift every B2B sales leader needs now

If you’re a B2B SaaS CRO, CMO, or founder looking to increase close rates, reenergize your go-to-market, and win against the status quo, this conversation will change how you think about selling.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guest: Melanie Nabar, Vice President at Volition Capital

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SaaS founders often see only two funding paths—venture or private equity—but there’s a smarter middle lane that keeps control where it belongs: with the founder.

In this episode, Melanie Nabar, Vice President on the Software Team at Volition Capital, joins host Ken Lempit to unpack how growth equity works, when it’s the right fit, and the scale-up mistakes that stall promising SaaS companies.

Key insights from this episode:

Why growth equity can fuel SaaS scale without losing control
The biggest post-funding hiring mistake founders make
How AI is reshaping go-to-market efficiency in SaaS

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO, CRO, or founder navigating scale-up challenges, funding strategy, or go-to-market transformation, this episode will help you see where real growth capital fits—and how to make it work for you.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

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Guest: Rob Belcher, Managing Director at SaaS Capital

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SaaS founders often think equity is the only path to growth—but giving up ownership isn’t the only option.

In this episode, Rob Belcher, Managing Director at SaaS Capital, joins host Ken Lempit to break down how growth debt works, what investors really look for in valuations, and how B2B SaaS leaders can finance smart without losing control.

Key insights from this episode:

Why growth debt can fund SaaS expansion without heavy dilution
The financing ladder every founder should understand—from angels to private equity
How valuation multiples are shifting and what drives them higher
The role of clean contracts, retention, and growth rate in exit outcomes
Why AI is creating a “priced for perfection” split in SaaS valuations

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO navigating fundraising, growth efficiency, or exit strategy, this episode will help you sharpen your playbook.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guest: Braydan Young, Co-Founder and CEO at SlashExperts

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Buyers don’t want another “book a demo” button—they want proof from people like them.

In this episode, Braydan Young, Co-Founder and CEO of SlashExperts (and previously co-founder of Sendoso), joins host Ken Lempit to share how buyer-led growth is reshaping SaaS sales and why the old way of running references at the end of the deal cycle is broken.

Key insights from this episode:

Why moving customer references earlier can shorten sales cycles by 4–6 weeks
How authentic peer conversations double conversion rates compared to demos
What CROs can learn from Sendoso’s hypergrowth—and its “we grew too fast” moment
Why handwritten notes and simple gifts outperform flashy, expensive ones
How to turn the “dark funnel” into a competitive advantage

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO looking to accelerate pipeline, increase deal size, and close faster with fewer wasted demos, this episode is a must-listen.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guest: Courtney Hiller, Founder of All Points Agency --

You wouldn’t hire one person to build your product, sell it, and run support. So why are B2B SaaS companies still expecting one marketer to manage a million-dollar media budget?

In this episode, Courtney Hiller, founder of All Points Agency, joins host Ken Lempit to break down how to build a modern media engine that actually performs—and why yesterday’s paid strategy won’t cut it in 2025.

Key insights from this episode:

Why splitting strategy, creative, and media buying unlocks performance
What most in-house teams get wrong about channel mix and audience targeting
How to fix attribution when your sales cycle is 6–12 months
Why creative volume—not just creative quality—is the new growth lever
How to use Reddit, Meta, and programmatic without wasting your budget

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO managing six-or seven-figure ad spend, this episode will help you rethink your team structure, channel strategy, and ROI expectations.

Referenced in the episode:

How Brand Building and Performance Marketing Can Work Together - Harvard Business Review

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And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guest: Hikari Senju, Founder & CEO at Omneky --

AI isn’t just generating ad copy—it’s reshaping the entire performance marketing playbook for B2B SaaS.

In this episode, Hikari Senju, founder and CEO of Omneky, shares how the platform evolved from an enterprise solution to a self-serve powerhouse—and why smart creative strategy matters more than big budgets.

Key insights from this episode:

Why brute-force creative testing consistently outperforms guesswork
How ad performance data can directly inform GTM messaging
Why brand inconsistency across platforms kills trust and conversion
How AI-powered ads are becoming core to revenue strategy

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO looking to improve ROAS, scale faster with fewer resources, or make AI actually work for your GTM team, this episode is a must-listen.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

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Guest: Adir Ben-Yehuda, CEO at Autonomy AI --

The go-to-market playbook for AI SaaS is being rewritten in real-time, and those who cling to old models risk being left behind.

In this episode, Adir Ben-Yehuda, founder and CEO of Autonomy AI, joins host Ken Lempit to share how his team went from zero to 70 customers in months by ditching outdated frameworks and building a brand buyers can trust.

We unpack:
✅ Why “Crossing the Chasm” no longer applies in the age of ChatGPT
✅ How brand marketing now beats lead gen in AI go-to-market
✅ What it really takes to convert skeptical enterprise buyers
✅ The shift from SEO to “share of response” in AI search platforms
✅ Why every SaaS GTM leader must become an orchestrator—not just a doer

Adir also breaks down the sales motion that helped Autonomy scale so quickly—and shares how his team leverages live demos and social proof to close deals in a single call.

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO navigating AI adoption, rethinking pipeline strategy, or looking for a more effective way to win technical buyers, this episode is your cheat code.

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And the best part?

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Guest: Ray Meiring, Co-Founder & CEO at QorusDocs --

Scaling a SaaS business from consultancy roots to enterprise success requires more than just great tech—it takes ruthless focus, smart go-to-market choices, and a deep understanding of your buyer.

In this episode, Ray Meiring, co-founder and CEO of QorusDocs, joins host Ken Lempit to share the lessons learned on his journey from South Africa to the U.S. market and how QorusDocs carved out a winning niche in AI-powered proposal automation.

We unpack:
✅ Why founder-led sales can’t scale—and how to move beyond it
✅ The trap of chasing SMBs after funding (and what to do instead)
✅ How QorusDocs found product-market fit through one anchor customer
✅ What every SaaS CRO and CMO should know about RFP response teams
✅ The critical role of marketing in driving pipeline (not just sales)

Ray also shares the moment venture funding pushed them off course—and how doubling down on their ideal customer profile helped them reset, rebuild, and grow more efficiently.

If you're a SaaS CMO or CRO scaling into enterprise, navigating founder-to-function transitions, or wondering where AI really moves the needle, this episode is packed with firsthand insight.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

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Guest: Sammy Greenwall, Founder of Henry.ai --

What if your go-to-market motion could skip past theory and build from real-world pain?

That’s exactly how Sammy Greenwall, founder of Henry.ai, approaches commercial real estate—and why his vertical AI startup is scaling without traditional sales or marketing.

Sammy’s background as a CRE professional-turned-founder gave him not only insight, but language, trust, and distribution advantages. In this episode, he shares how founder-market fit drives everything from product strategy to GTM efficiency—and how it’s paying off in a space historically allergic to software.

Sammy also pulls back the curtain on:

How PLG became a byproduct of customer obsession—not the plan
Building a waitlist-worthy brand (with no ad budget)
Creating real enterprise value in a low-trust, high-volume industry

Three Key Takeaways for B2B GTM Leaders:

1. Founder-Market Fit > Generic Product-Market FitSammy’s deep domain experience gave him a faster path to traction: he didn’t just “identify” pain—he lived it. That meant smarter onboarding flows, tighter feature prioritization, and messaging that clicked with buyers the first time. CEOs and founders with industry-specific experience should lean hard into that unfair advantage.

2. PLG Isn’t a Tactic—It’s the Outcome of Product ObsessionHenry.ai didn’t set out to be a PLG company. Instead, they tracked usage down to individual clicks, met with every early user, and iterated daily. That intensity created a product people wanted to talk about, which fueled organic adoption, referrals, and even early enterprise wins.

3. AI Doesn’t Just Accelerate Work—It Replaces ItIn CRE, Sammy’s platform cut multi-week deal deck creation down to hours. That kind of workflow disruption isn’t about “boosting productivity”—it’s about letting revenue-generating staff focus on high-value activities like deals and relationships. This shift reframes AI adoption for skeptical buyers and opens the door to premium pricing.

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And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guests: Ken Rapp (Co-Founder & CEO) and Emily Lagasse (VP of Marketing) of Bluestream --

What if the key to SaaS growth isn’t more leads, but fewer customer drop-offs post-purchase?

In this episode of SaaS Backwards, we sit down with Ken Rapp (Co-founder & CEO) and Emily Lagasse (VP of Marketing) of Blustream, the platform pioneering post-sale engagement, to explore how product ownership experiences are unlocking revenue, retention, and lifetime value.

According to Rapp and Lagasse, most brands obsess over acquisition, but lose up to 70% of customers before the second purchase. Blustream flips that script by transforming post-purchase silence into an intelligent, AI-powered dialogue that guides customers through onboarding, usage, care, and reordering.

Key takeaways include:

📦 Unboxing is a retention opportunity
🤖 AI predicts drop-off and upsell moments
🛠️ Don’t launch on platforms too early
🎯 Vertical focus beats “sell to everyone”

If you’re a SaaS CRO or CMO looking to drive net revenue retention, boost repeat purchases, or reimagine how post-sale moments can be monetized, this episode is for you.

🔗 Blustream Journey Builder

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Guest: Casey Woo, CEO & Founder of Operators Guild & FOG Ventures --

What happens when startups are built not by armies of specialists, but by lean teams of senior generalists paired with AI agents?

In this episode of SaaS Backwards, we sit down with Casey Woo—CEO and Founder of FOG Ventures and the Operators Guild—to explore how AI is transforming the fundamental structure of companies.

According to Woo, the org chart of the future isn’t just flatter and faster—it’s hybrid, where strategic, multi-discipline humans lead and AI agents handle executional work once done by junior staff.

From finance and support to engineering and ops, AI is hollowing out the middle, forcing leaders to become broader, sharper, and more cross-functional.

Think “Special Forces” over traditional departments. The operators who thrive will be the ones who can think horizontally, move fast, and execute across domains.

Other key insights from the episode include:

🪖 Why early-stage startups need “scalers”—T-shaped operators who do a little of everything—to survive guerrilla warfare, not corporate specialists trained for big wars.
💥 The rise of roles like COFO (Chief Operating + Financial Officer) as titles and functions blend in response to new business demands.
🚀 A framework for understanding when to bootstrap vs. raise VC—and why many founders get it wrong by ignoring ROI and lifestyle trade-offs.
🌍 How Casey accidentally grew the Operators Guild into a 1,200+ member global force, and why its culture of “give more than you get” is key to its explosive success.

If you want to understand what the next wave of high-performance SaaS companies will look like—and who will build them—this conversation is essential.

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Guest: Google’s NotebookLM --

In this special episode of SaaS Backwards, we handed the mic to AI.

We took our newest ebook on reviving inbound marketing—coming soon for download—and ran it through Google’s NotebookLM to see what kind of podcast it could generate.

The result? A surprisingly sharp—if occasionally cheesy—take on how B2B SaaS companies can reimagine their go-to-market strategies for today’s buyer. You be the judge.

The episode explores why the traditional inbound playbook is falling short and what CROs and CMOs must do to adapt. From the collapse of predictable revenue models to the rise of buyer-centric marketing, we break down how to align sales and marketing, test messaging organically, and coordinate campaigns across email, ads, and outreach.

Key Takeaways:

The old predictable revenue model no longer works in today’s B2B SaaS landscape
Buyers now do deep independent research before ever talking to sales
Marketing and sales alignment must happen before the formal buying process begins
Jobs to Be Done and qualitative ICPs help create relevance and resonance
Organic testing (especially on LinkedIn) is essential before scaling paid campaigns
Email, ads, and SDR outreach must be tightly coordinated around buyer triggers

If you’re a SaaS leader looking to modernize your inbound strategy and connect with today’s buyer, this episode offers a bold, practical roadmap—created by AI, guided by strategy.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

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Guest: Eli Portnoy, Founder & CEO at BackEngine --

As B2B SaaS companies scale, they often lose touch with the customers who got them there.

In this episode, Eli Portnoy, founder and CEO of BackEngine, sits down with Ken Lempit to talk about the critical breakdown in customer feedback systems—and how generative AI can help leaders hear what really matters.

We unpack:✅ Why customer feedback loops break as SaaS companies grow
✅ The hidden costs of misaligned feedback channels and weak ownership
✅ How AI can synthesize 100% of customer interactions—without surveys
✅ What separates elite SaaS companies from the rest when it comes to NRR and churn
✅ Why CS leaders are uniquely positioned to become strategic feedback owners

Eli also shares the story of losing his biggest customer before a major fundraise—and the moment he realized feedback was everyone’s problem, but no one’s job.

If you're a CMO, CRO, or CS leader building a feedback-driven growth engine, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

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Guest: Ayse Guvencer, Fractional SaaS CMO & GTM Executive --

As AI changes how B2B buyers evaluate software, many marketers are missing the forest for the trees.

In this episode, Ayse Guvencer, fractional CMO and GTM advisor to SaaS and MarTech startups, joins Ken Lempit to deliver a blunt reality check: AI is disrupting the search journey, pricing models, and even how buyers interact with your brand—before your SDRs even know they exist.

We unpack:

✅ Why Google is now a navigational tool, not a discovery engine
✅ How AI-driven tools like ChatGPT are shaping shortlists and decision frameworks
✅ The rise of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and what it means for visibility
✅ Why “Service as a Software” is redefining outcome-based pricing
✅ What AI browsers and agentic advertising could mean for reaching the “hidden figures” on buying committees

Ayse also shares practical guidance on how marketers can stay ahead of AI-native competitors, avoid falling for adtech black boxes, and reframe their role in this fast-changing ecosystem.

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO trying to stay ahead of the curve, this is one of those episodes you’ll want to listen to twice.

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Guest: Jim Curry, CoFounder at BuildGroup --

Is AI really transforming your SaaS business—or just adding noise?

In this week’s episode, Jim Curry, co-founder of BuildGroup and former Rackspace exec, discusses how AI is transforming both the products and operations of SaaS businesses—and why most companies are missing the opportunity.

Jim shares how BuildGroup's operator-first, long-term approach to investing gives them an edge when helping SaaS companies scale, especially in today’s AI-first environment. He explains why AI should be seen as an infrastructure wave (not just a flashy product feature), and how CROs and CMOs can practically apply it to go-to-market execution.

We cover:

Why AI gives incumbents an advantage (if they act fast)
How to use AI to reduce CAC and improve GTM speed
Where traditional SaaS GTM playbooks break down in an AI-native world
Why demos and SDR workflows are ripe for automation
How BuildGroup partners deeply with founders post-investment

If you're a SaaS executive thinking about where to apply AI for real impact—without waiting for a full replatform—this conversation is packed with insight.

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Guest: Ken Lempit, President & Chief Business Builder at Austin Lawrence Group

Are your SaaS ads actually doing their job, or just burning budget?

In this week’s episode of SaaS Backwards, Ken Lempit and Jason Myers of Austin Lawrence Group go deep on what GTM leaders get wrong about advertising in 2025:

Why most SaaS ads look and sound the same (and fall flat)
Where messaging fails long before the click
How to align sales and marketing in a high-consideration buying cycle
The overlooked power of direct mail and live events
When to pull back on spend—and how to know it’s time

If you’re spending more but converting less—or just tired of “safe” campaigns with no spark—this conversation will challenge your assumptions and give you a new playbook.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

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Guests: Ken Lempit, James Ollerenshaw, and Rob Curtis --

Voice is the new frontier in SaaS — but are we ready for the implications?

In the third episode of our AI Series, Ken Lempit is joined again by James Ollerenshaw and Rob Curtis to explore how voice and AI are colliding to transform the way B2B SaaS companies operate — from the way products are built and sold to how customers are supported.

We dive into:

The shift to voice-first interfaces and its implications for product design
Real-world use cases in sales, customer service, compliance, and manufacturing
Why voice as a data source may be more valuable than voice as an interface
How voice AI can unlock productivity gains — and which roles are at risk
The compliance, privacy, and cultural risks of voice-powered surveillance
Predictions on headless SaaS, ambient computing, and the next big AI disruption

This conversation goes longer than our typical episodes, but trust us — it’s worth every minute. Stick around for smart insights, practical frameworks, and some provocative predictions that CROs, CMOs, and SaaS builders shouldn’t miss.

📢 Learn more about Rob’s venture at standuphiro.com
🧠 Connect with Ken at austinlawrence.com

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Guests: Ken Lempit, James Ollerenshaw, and Rob Curtis --

AI isn’t just a bolt-on anymore—it’s rewriting the rules of SaaS from the ground up.

In this episode, Standup Hiro co-founder Rob Curtis and tech strategist James Ollerenshaw join host and GTM expert Ken Lempit to unpack how Agentic AI is forcing SaaS leaders to rethink everything: product design, go-to-market, customer trust, and even internal culture.

From natural language interfaces to the rise of AI “co-workers,” they break down why SaaS companies that adapt will dominate—and why bolt-on AI features won't be enough to survive.

📌 Key Takeaways:

The Age of AI Co-WorkersForget copilots. The next SaaS revolution will be about true AI teammates—systems that work with you, not just for you.
Natural Language is the New UISaaS buyers are expecting to talk, not click. Voice-first experiences and conversational commands will soon be table stakes.
Trust Is the New BattlefieldEnterprises are more forgiving of human errors than machine mistakes. To win with AI, SaaS leaders must prove not just capability, but reliability.
Bolt-Ons vs. ReinventionTacking AI onto legacy products won’t cut it. Companies willing to re-architect around AI-native principles will seize the biggest opportunities.
Invisible Software is ComingMany SaaS tools will fade into the background, powering workflows behind the scenes. The battle for customer love (and margin) starts now.

Heads up: This episode runs longer than usual—but for good reason.
We go deep into the real-world implications of Agentic AI, from product strategy to pricing models, trust, and the future of SaaS UX. If you're a SaaS leader trying to stay ahead of the AI curve, every minute is packed with actionable insights that could reshape how you build, sell, and scale.

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Guest: Sjoerd Handgraaf, Chief Marketing Officer at Sharetribe --

The most overlooked growth lever in SaaS? Positioning.

In this episode, Sharetribe CMO Sjoerd Handgraaf reveals how redefining product positioning transformed their trajectory—and why many SaaS companies are still getting it wrong.

Handgraaf takes us inside Sharetribe’s journey from chasing big logos to doubling down on their true customer: non-technical marketplace founders. Along the way, he shares hard-won insights about product-market fit, AI disruption, and why going “back to basics” in marketing may be more transformational than the next tech trend.

📌 Key Takeaways:

The Power of Saying NoWhy Sharetribe walks away from enterprise deals—and how that clarity unlocked faster product development, happier customers, and less internal chaos.
Product-Market Fit is a Moving TargetWhat feels like “fit” today can vanish tomorrow. Sjoerd explains why it's not a one-time milestone, but a constant process of adaptation.
The AI Threat is Real—but MisunderstoodLow-code and AI-assisted development may lower technical barriers, but they don’t replace the need for reliability, support, and fit-for-purpose tools.
Content Marketing That ConvertsSharetribe’s global growth is powered by giving first—through books, podcasts, and resources that attract high-intent buyers before they’re even in-market.
Global from Day OneHow to build a self-serve SaaS product that scales globally—even from a startup hub like Finland.

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Guest: James D. Wilton, Founder & Managing Partner of Monevate --

The advent of AI is forcing a complete rethink of traditional SaaS pricing—particularly the long-standing dominance of user-based pricing.

In this episode, pricing strategist James Wilton explains why AI-native products are undermining the foundations of per-seat pricing models.

Unlike traditional SaaS, where users are the proxy for value, AI tools often perform tasks autonomously, disconnecting cost from usage in unpredictable ways.

As a result, the most value-aligned and sustainable pricing approach for AI-powered platforms is shifting toward usage-based models.

Wilton argues: "If you’re still defaulting to user-based pricing, you’d better be ready to defend it."

📌 Other Takeaways:

Misaligned Incentives in AI PricingWith AI, the metric that drives cost (compute) is often not the same as the metric that reflects customer value—creating tension between profitability and value-based pricing.
The Rise of Usage-Based PricingAs automation and AI reduce the need for additional users, user-based pricing loses its relevance. Usage-based models offer better alignment with customer value and revenue scalability.
Customer Expectations Are ChangingEnterprises prioritize cost predictability. Even in AI-native environments, buyers want fixed pricing or capped usage tiers to maintain budget certainty.
Real-World Example: Help Scout’s PivotWilton shares a case study on Help Scout’s move from per-user to “contacts helped” pricing. The shift improved customer satisfaction, better aligned with value delivered, and even offered greater revenue predictability.

📚 James Wilton’s Book:Capturing Value: The Definitive Guide to Transforming SaaS PricingGet the blueprint for designing pricing that drives both growth and profitability without shortchanging strategy.

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Guests: Ken Lempit, James Ollerenshaw, & Rob Curtis --

AI is transforming SaaS—but not in the way most leaders think.

Forget the headlines claiming "SaaS is dead." The real shift isn't just in tools—it's in how fast software is built, marketed, and bought.

In this episode, Rob Curtis (VC-backed founder), Ken Lempit (SaaS GTM strategist), and James Ollerenshaw (AI advisor) break down what AI means for the future of SaaS—and why B2B CROs and CMOs need to rethink their strategy now or risk falling behind.

From the death of mid-market software to the rise of agentic AI, they map out how SaaS leaders can adapt, differentiate, and thrive in this new reality.

Key Takeaways:

Agentic AI is here: Build for agents, not just users.
The middle is collapsing: Niche depth and data win.
Ideas now beat execution: Speed favors bold builders.
Risk fuels innovation: GTM teams lead AI adoption.
Data is your moat: Structured models drive defensibility.

Ken, Rob, and James offer B2B SaaS leaders a high-level yet practical view of what’s next—and what it’ll take to win in an AI-native world. If you’re a CRO or CMO thinking about survival and scale in 2025, this episode is your blueprint.

Plus, don’t miss:

👉 Rob Curtis’s AI Venture Studio – StandUp Hiro, where he’s building AI-native tools at lightning speed

👉 Rob’s Substack – Future Work, where he shares front-line insights on building in the agentic age

👉 This Crunchbase articleon why VCs are betting on Human x AI teams over foundational models

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Guest: Guy Rubin, Founder & CEO at Ebsta --

Most B2B SaaS leaders know their top performers carry the team, but few understand why the performance gap keeps widening.

The reality is that just 14% of reps are now responsible for 80% of revenue, and the gap between A-players and everyone else has grown to 11x. Fixing this isn’t about more training or new tools—it’s about creating consistent, data-driven sales execution across the entire go-to-market team.

In this episode, Guy Rubin, Founder & CEO of Ebsta, shares insights from the 2025 B2B GTM Benchmark Report (in partnership with Pavilion) and explains how SaaS companies can close the performance gap, improve forecast accuracy, and drive revenue by making data and behavior work together.

Key Takeaways:

Top Performers Win with Consistency: The biggest gap isn’t talent—it’s execution at every stage of the funnel.
AI Enables Better Selling, Not More Noise: When AI is used to extract insights, not automate spam, it becomes a game-changer.
Full-Cycle Reps Are Back: 45% of companies are ditching the SDR model in favor of holistic sales ownership.
Engagement Drives Forecast Accuracy: Momentum scoring predicts risk before it’s too late to course-correct.
Success = Process + Behavior + Data: Sales isn’t just about gut feel anymore—it’s finally becoming data-driven.

Guy offers CROs and CMOs a blueprint to scale what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and win more consistently—making this episode a must-listen.

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Guest: Srikrishnan Ganesan, Co-Founder & CEO of Rocketlane --

Most B2B SaaS leaders know that onboarding is important but underestimate its impact.

The reality is that 97% of churn at first opportunity is decided in the first 90 days, making onboarding the most critical stage in the customer journey and the defining factor in revenue growth and long-term customer success.

In this episode, Sri Ganesan, Co-Founder and CEO of Rocketlane, shares how SaaS companies can transform onboarding from a fragmented process into a strategic advantage. From community-led growth to automation-driven efficiency, he reveals what top SaaS companies do differently to drive retention, expansion, and revenue acceleration.

Key Takeaways:

Onboarding Determines Retention & Growth: The first 90 days define whether customers will churn or expand.
Community-Led Growth Builds Credibility: Building an engaged audience before launch fosters trust and momentum.
Automation Eliminates Inefficiency: Siloed tools slow teams down; all-in-one platforms drive success.
Market Validation is Critical: The biggest factor in startup success isn’t the product—it’s picking the right market.

Sri shares actionable strategies for SaaS CMOs and CROs to create onboarding experiences that drive retention, expansion, and revenue acceleration—making this episode a must-listen.

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Guest: Christina Richards, Fractional CMO & Author of Rise of the AI-Powered CMO --

Most B2B marketers think they’re using AI effectively. The reality? Many are barely scratching the surface—and failing to leverage AI as a true revenue driver.

Christina Richards, fractional CMO and author of Rise of the AI-Powered CMO, breaks down how AI is transforming go-to-market strategies, reshaping demand generation, and redefining the role of marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

The biggest shift? AI is moving from a tool for efficiency to an autonomous operator, changing how marketers engage customers, optimize campaigns, and drive pipeline growth. Those who fail to adapt will fall behind competitors who are already leveraging AI-driven personalization, predictive lead scoring, and hyper-targeted ad strategies.

Christina shares actionable insights on how B2B CMOs and CROs can embrace AI—not just for automation, but as a strategic advantage to accelerate growth and revenue.

Key Takeaways:

AI is Now Critical Infrastructure: It’s no longer just a tool for automation—it’s transforming how companies generate revenue.
CMOs Must Become Revenue Architects: The role of marketing leaders is shifting from brand builders to full-funnel revenue drivers.
AI-Driven Search is Changing SEO: If your content isn’t optimized for AI-generated search, your audience may never find you.
Agentic AI is Here: Autonomous AI agents are moving from experiment to execution—marketers must prepare now.
First-Party Data is a Competitive Advantage: With hyper-personalization on the rise, companies that don’t own their audience data will struggle to compete.

Get ready to rethink your marketing strategy in the age of AI—or risk being left behind.

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Guest: Zach Wright, Co-Founder & CRO of Syft AI --

Most sales teams are still stuck in outdated prospecting tactics—mass email sequencing, generic outreach, and hoping something sticks. The reality? These methods are failing fast, and sellers who rely on them are drowning in low response rates and missed pipeline goals.

Zach Wright, co-founder and CRO of Syft AI, breaks down why traditional sales prospecting is broken and what today’s B2B SaaS sellers must do differently to cut through the noise, engage decision-makers, and win more deals.

The biggest mistake? Relying on volume instead of relevance. Buyers are overwhelmed with hundreds of templated emails daily, and most outreach feels impersonal, irrelevant, and easy to ignore. Instead of spamming prospects, Zach shares how AI-driven prospecting helps sales teams pinpoint the right accounts, at the right time, with the right message.

He explains how top sales teams are:

✅ Ditching “spray and pray” prospecting in favor of targeted, intent-driven outreach. ✅ Using AI to surface active buying signals—so reps only reach out when there’s a real need. ✅ Personalizing at scale without relying on ineffective AI-generated fluff. ✅ Bringing cold calling back—and why it’s working better than ever.

If your outbound efforts aren’t converting like they used to, this episode will change the way you think about prospecting—and show you how to start winning more meetings with high-value prospects.

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Guest: Peter Cohan, Author of Doing Discovery --

Most sales teams think they’re great at discovery. The reality? About 80% are getting it wrong—and it’s the single biggest reason why deals stall, go to a competitor, or die with “no decision.”

Peter Cohan, author of Doing Discovery, breaks down why traditional discovery methods are failing and what SaaS sales teams must do differently to uncover real customer value, build compelling business cases, and stop losing winnable deals.

The biggest mistake sellers make? Rushing to the demo before fully quantifying business pain. If you can’t pin down the numbers behind a buyer’s problem and desired outcome, you’re making it nearly impossible for them to justify the purchase—let alone get buy-in from their team.

Peter shares practical strategies to flip the script on outdated discovery calls, avoid the “interrogation” trap, and use discovery to drive urgency, not just collect pain points.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Uncover the Value Gap: The secret to avoiding “no decision” isn’t just probing for pain—it’s quantifying the gap between today’s reality and the desired future state.

✅ Vision Reengineering: Most buyers don’t know what they don’t know. Learn how to introduce new ideas without losing control of the deal or giving away discounts.

✅ Turn Discovery Into a Two-Way Conversation: Stop making prospects feel like they’re on trial—use quid pro quo techniques to make discovery a collaborative process.

Get ready to rethink how you approach discovery—or risk losing more deals than you should.

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Guest: Ty Tinker, Head of Analytics at AdQuick --

What if everything you thought about billboard advertising was wrong?

Ty Tinker, Head of Analytics at AdQuick, breaks down the myth that out-of-home (OOH) advertising is unmeasurable and outdated. In reality, leading SaaS companies—including Dropbox, Salesforce, and Shopify—are embracing billboards, transit ads, and airport placements to drive brand awareness, accelerate sales cycles, and even generate measurable leads.

Ty reveals how brands are leveraging data science, AI, and sophisticated measurement techniques (beyond old-school QR codes) to track campaign performance. He also shares why smart SaaS marketers are treating OOH as a long-term investment, not just a one-off trade show play.

Key Takeaways:

📊 Out-of-Home Can Be Measured: Advances in mobile device tracking, mixed media modeling (MMM), and causal inference are proving OOH’s impact on website traffic, MQLs, and pipeline growth.

🚀 Credibility Wins Deals: Buyers shortlist SaaS vendors before ever visiting a website. Strategic OOH placements—especially at airports and conferences—ensure your brand is top of mind when it matters most.

🎯 The Right Placement Changes Everything: SaaS brands like Shopify and Shield AI are hyper-targeting decision-makers using billboards in high-traffic business areas, conference zones, and even airport walkways.

Want to see if out-of-home advertising fits your go-to-market strategy? Tune in now!

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Guest: Jon Miller, Co-Founder & CEO of a Stealth AI Startup --

Jon Miller, co-founder of Marketo and former CMO of Demandbase, argues that B2B marketing’s traditional playbook—built on predictable demand generation, MQL scoring, and SDR-driven outbound—is broken.

The “gumball machine” approach, where marketers expect predictable revenue by simply feeding in budget and campaigns, no longer works. Buyers have evolved, becoming more resistant to outbound tactics and opting for anonymous research.

To succeed, revenue leaders must shift from short-term lead generation to long-term brand building, customer experience, and relationships.

Key Takeaways:

🔹 The Death of the MQL Machine: Buyers have learned to avoid traditional lead capture tactics, making it essential to rethink how marketing contributes to revenue.

🔹 Brand Awareness > Lead Generation: The most successful companies focus on being top-of-mind when buyers do enter a purchasing cycle, rather than scrambling to capture leads in the moment.

🔹 AI Will Kill the Old Content Playbook: The rise of AI-driven search and inbox filters means generic, mass-produced content won’t cut it. Instead, companies need to invest in original research, experiences, and trusted relationships.

🔹 New Metrics for Marketing Success: Instead of obsessing over short-term pipeline metrics, CMOs should measure brand perception within key accounts, engagement quality, and community strength.

This episode is a must-listen for SaaS revenue leaders struggling to adapt their go-to-market strategy in a world where buyers don’t want to be sold to.

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Guest: Kerry Cunningham, Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense -- 85% of buyers initiate the first conversation with vendors—on their terms. If your marketing still revolves around capturing leads and pushing outbound sales, you're already behind.

Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research at 6Sense, shares insights from their Buyer Experience Report 2024, revealing how today’s B2B buyers operate—and why most SaaS companies are out of sync.

Buyers come into the process knowing who they’ll evaluate, and 90% of the time, they buy from their initial shortlist. If you’re not on it, no amount of sales effort will save you.

🔍 So, what’s the playbook for modern marketing? Kerry explains why demand creation—not just demand capture—is the key to winning future deals. Marketers must move beyond gated content, outbound cadences, and “hunting” leads. Instead, they need to build brand presence early, engage in buyer communities, and ensure their company is top-of-mind long before a purchase is in motion.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Only 1-3% of your ICP is in-market at any given time. Most SaaS companies waste time on buyers who simply aren’t ready. ✅ Buyers ignore cold outreach until they decide to engage. 50% receive calls and emails for weeks (even months) before responding. ✅ Analysts and consultants influence over 80% of SaaS deals. If analyst relations aren’t part of your strategy, you’re missing a major growth lever.

💡 The companies winning today aren’t chasing buyers—they’re positioning themselves as the obvious choice before a buying cycle even starts. Kerry shares how 6Sense does this and how your team can apply these insights to future-proof your marketing.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to shift your strategy for today’s B2B buyer.

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Guest: Maxwell Nee, CRO at ScoreApp -- Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer of ScoreApp, shares the strategies behind scaling a low ARR SaaS product to 9,000 paying customers worldwide. By leveraging the principles of quiz marketing, ScoreApp turns engagement into actionable insights, driving top-of-funnel lead generation, accelerating sales cycles, and refining customer experiences.

The platform’s success stems from a relentless focus on understanding user needs before development, validating concepts with 3,000 prospects prior to launch, and building personalized, gamified experiences that deliver measurable value.

Maxwell’s perspective on SaaS growth is rooted in actionable principles: prioritize customer input, focus on enterprise value over personal branding, and invest in scalable systems.

His advice for marketing leaders emphasizes clarity in messaging, the importance of simple, compelling copy, and always aligning content with the needs and emotions of the target audience.

Key Takeaways:

Focus on Validation: ScoreApp validated its concept with 3,000 prospective users before launch, ensuring a strong product-market fit from the start.
Personalization and Gamification Drive Results: Interactive quizzes generate higher engagement and conversion rates by combining self-discovery with actionable insights.
Clarity Over Complexity: Simplifying messaging and focusing on the audience’s pain points can significantly boost engagement and lead generation.

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Guest: Ken Lempit, President & Chief Business Builder at Austin Lawrence Group -- In this episode, Austin Lawrence Group’s Ken Lempit shares a bold approach to overcoming the inefficiency of traditional advertising campaigns.

He emphasizes a new strategy: combining foundational customer interviews with rapid, real-time testing via high-frequency organic social media posts.

This iterative approach helps identify messaging that resonates most with target audiences before significant ad spend, enabling SaaS companies to avoid costly missteps.

Lempit calls out outdated "ivory tower" methods, where messaging was developed in isolation and assumed durable for years.

Today, he argues, messaging must evolve constantly based on audience engagement.

Key Takeaways:

Real-Time Validation Beats Guesswork: Test messaging in organic social media environments before committing ad budgets. Insights from live engagement can refine campaigns and improve ROI.
Messaging Is No Longer Durable: Static messaging fails in today’s dynamic market. Iterative testing ensures campaigns stay relevant and effective.
Drive Action with the Cost of Inaction: Instead of focusing on ROI, highlight the risks of staying in the status quo to compel prospects to act.

This practical framework bridges the gap between creative intuition and data-driven decisions, setting a new standard for SaaS advertising.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

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Guest: Steve Brothers, CEO of Splashmetrics --

With 77% of millennial buyers avoiding sales interactions until they’ve already made a purchase decision, buyers are consistently clear about what they need: fast, personalized, and self-directed answers.

Yet vendors stubbornly stick to outdated practices, forcing buyers into their processes rather than meeting them where they are.

In this episode of SaaS Backwards, Steve Brothers, CEO of Splashmetrics, explores how modern B2B buyers are reshaping the sales process—and how many vendors are failing to adapt.

He discusses how Splashmetrics bridges this gap by enabling companies to deliver tailored, interactive content journeys that put buyers in control while providing sales with critical insights to close deals more effectively.

Key Takeaways:

The buyer is in control: Buyers prefer to self-educate, completing 80% of their research before engaging with sales. Vendors must adapt or risk irrelevance.
Outdated models kill opportunities: Relying on traditional MQL-driven processes results in 95% of SDR outreach being ignored.
TheSplashmetrics solution: The platform allows buyers to “choose their own adventure,” and bridges the sales-marketing divide to create a truly buyer-centric experience.

This episode is a wake-up call for companies still stuck in yesterday’s playbook.

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Guest: Beth McHugh, Fractional Product Leader --

When deals stall, buying committees often default to doing nothing. Why? Because they didn’t all agree that the problem was worth solving.

In this episode, Beth McHugh explains why pain points alone rarely drive action and how the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) methodology identifies the “struggling moments” that compel prospects to move forward. These critical moments are when a prospect or team collectively decides that a problem can no longer be ignored.

Beth shares why JTBD is, in her view, the most effective way to uncover the true motivations behind customer decisions. Beyond improving product-market fit, she highlights how JTBD creates alignment across sales, marketing, and product teams, ensuring everyone is focused on what truly matters to customers.

Key Takeaways:

Struggling Moments vs. Pain Points: Not all pain points are actionable. JTBD uncovers the struggles customers are motivated to resolve.
Driving Differentiation: JTBD helps identify where your product stands out by focusing on the jobs customers are trying to accomplish.
Faster Product-Market Validation: With JTBD, you can prioritize development efforts that directly address critical customer needs, reducing wasted resources.

Tune in to learn how to move beyond surface-level insights and position your SaaS offering as the solution customers can’t ignore.

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We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Guest: Bob Moesta, Author of “Demand-Side Sales 101”In this episode, Bob Moesta, author of Demand-Side Sales 101, reveals why uncovering your customers’ “struggling moments” is the single most efficient step for any business. Whether it’s product development, marketing, or sales, understanding the root causes behind why customers make a change transforms every decision you make.

As Bob explains, customers don’t buy products—they hire solutions to make progress. Without a clear struggling moment, there’s no motivation to change, and no sale. By focusing on these moments, you’ll align your entire go-to-market strategy, saving time, money, and effort across teams. Key Takeaways:

The Struggling Moment as a Catalyst: Every purchase starts with a struggle. Most companies fail to uncover this because they focus on features or pain points instead of the deeper context driving change.
Align Teams Around Progress: When marketing, sales, and product understand the customer’s struggle, handoffs disappear, and everyone works toward the same goal—helping the customer progress.
Most Companies Miss the Mark: 60% of B2B proposals fail due to “no decision.” This happens because companies don’t clearly define or quantify a problem worth solving.

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Guest: Peter Cohan, Author of “Great Demo!”

Have you ever walked into a software demo, hoping to learn something new, only to sit through a “Harbor Tour” of irrelevant features?

You’re not alone – and neither are your prospects.

Peter Cohan, author of Great Demo!, joined us on the SaaS Backwards Podcast to unpack the biggest demo mistakes SaaS teams make:

❌ Starting with the how instead of the why❌ Overloading prospects with unnecessary features
❌ Failing to tailor demos to decision-makers

His solution? Flip your demos upside down. Start with the results your prospects crave, not the laundry list of features.

Peter also shared:
✅ How to identify wasted demos (hint: 30% of them are)
✅ Why "vision generation demos" are the key to nurturing leads
✅ The metrics that show if your demos are working

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Guest: Randy Likas, Head of North America Go-to-Market at Nektar

Traditional marketing tactics are losing their edge, with MQLs falling short as costly, outdated signals of real buyer intent.

In this week’s episode, we explore tactics for CROs to tackle the “great ignore” with guest Randy Likas, Head of North America Go-to-Market at Nektar, a revenue efficiency platform that unifies customer interaction data and helps you discover new revenue opportunities.

Randy discusses how CROs must reevaluate their playbooks and processes, focusing on how to re-engineer strategies and redeploy technology to align with emerging trends in buyer behavior–positioning the CRO role as not just operational but transformational.

Key insights you'll gain:

How changing buyer behaviors, like the "great ignore," are reshaping outreach strategies
Why MQLs are losing relevance and how to focus on buying groups instead
How breaking down silos between sales, marketing, and success boosts revenue efficiency

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Guest: Isabelle Papoulias, Fractional GTM & Business Operations Executive

Pipeline isn't just a metric—it's a team sport.

But when marketing, sales and customer success work in silos, it creates a fractured buyer journey and practically guarantees you’ll miss opportunities.

So, who should be responsible for driving this cross-functional alignment?

In this episode, fractional GTM leader and business operations executive Isabelle Papoulias breaks down how SaaS companies can realign their go-to-market teams under unified leadership for faster growth and smarter execution.

Key insights you'll gain:

How common goals and shared metrics across teams drive alignment
The benefits of a CCO or CRO with a broad understanding of GTM strategies
Advice for ditching “lead generation” as a success metric in the enterprise sale

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Guest: Warren Zenna, Founder of The CRO Collective

Scaling a SaaS company is no walk in the park.

At a certain point, operational complexity demands more than just growth—it demands cross-functional alignment. Enter the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

In this episode, we dive into the evolving role of the CRO with expert Warren Zenna, founder of The CRO Collective and Zenna Consulting Group, and host of the CRO Spotlight podcast.

Warren unpacks why misalignment between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success persists—and how the CRO may be uniquely positioned to fix it.

Key insights you'll gain:

What it means for a SaaS company to be “CRO-ready”
Why scaling companies make the same costly mistakes—and how to avoid them
Practical tips for CROs, CMOs, and CEOs to align teams and drive revenue growth

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Pricing and packaging can either bog down your go-to-market engine or fuel it to peak performance.

This week’s SaaS Backwards podcast features Dan Balcauski, Founder and Chief Pricing Officer at Product Tranquility, a consultancy that helps high-volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new products.

In this episode, Dan discusses the critical role pricing plays in a SaaS business model and why leadership teams must view it as a dynamic lever, not a "set-it-and-forget-it" element. He dispels the common myth that success hinges solely on what you charge, emphasizing instead that who and how you charge are the real determinants of success.

Breaking this down, Dan walks through the four key elements of SaaS packaging: price metric, price model, offer configurations, and price fences.

Our conversation also explores how to conduct a pricing study, realigning pricing strategies, AI's role in pricing decisions, and the ever-debated topic: should pricing be displayed on the website?

This episode offers actionable insights for SaaS leaders looking to harness pricing as a powerful tool for growth and market alignment.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The impact of pricing and packaging on revenue, profitability, and valuation
Why pricing is a critical lever for growth in SaaS businesses that shouldn’t be overlooked
Signs a new CMO or CRO should look for to determine if pricing needs attention at a prospective employer

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Gifting can be a powerful outbound strategy that captures attention far more effectively than an email.

In this week’s SaaS Backwards podcast episode, we spoke with Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Sendoso, a gifting and direct mail platform that helps revenue teams 6x second call rates, double win rates, and close deals 29% faster.

Kris shared how his background in software sales and experience with gifting inspired him to create Sendoso. He provided insights into the company’s initial go-to-market strategy, its evolution from a "growth at all costs" mindset to a more efficient, profit-driven approach, and how this shift has shaped its success.

We also discussed common objections and misconceptions about gifting, such as it being “too expensive” or impractical without someone’s address—and how Sendoso addresses these challenges.

Kris backed up Sendoso’s impressive results with client success stories: Gong influenced over $30 million in pipeline by mailing pinatas, Guru improved meeting conversion rates by sending cupcakes, and Verkada saw a remarkable increase in ad conversion rates by offering a Yeti mug as a meeting incentive across social media and LinkedIn campaigns.

Read more Sendoso success stories here and view customer examples here.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The power of gifting as an outbound strategy
How Sendoso helps clients select the right gifts for the right people at the right time
Insights into the fundraising process and the current environment for startups

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Building meaningful connections with individuals using different channels can be more effective than running an ABM program that only provides a shallow understanding of what’s happening within an account.

In this week’s SaaS Backwards podcast episode, we spoke with Dmitri Lisitski, Co-Founder and CEO at Influ2, a person-based advertising platform that allows you to reach specific people within target accounts and see who interacts with your ads.

Dmitri takes us behind the scenes and discusses how his frustration with imprecise ABM platforms led to the creation of Influ2, which aims to solve this problem by targeting individual decision-makers within an account rather than only providing this broad view.

We discuss the orchestration between sales and marketing and the significance of nurturing relationships over time in enterprise sales. Dmitri explains how the best thing marketing can do for salespeople is target the same account they’re trying to chase and influence their decision, build awareness, and track intent.

Our conversation also covers the role of thought leadership in generating conversations and supporting the sales process, the impact of AI on content creation, and attribution challenges in B2B marketing.

This episode provides valuable insights for SaaS CEOs, CMOs, and B2B marketing and sales professionals.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The humanization of sales and marketing in the enterprise motion
Why the use of AI in content development falls flat and what to do instead
Measuring the impact of advertising on revenue

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

We often emphasize the importance of understanding what’s being talked about in sales conversations to shape content strategy and tell unique, compelling stories.

In this week's SaaS Backwards podcast episode, we talk with Parthi Loganathan, Founder and CEO of Letterdrop, a platform designed to help companies do just that.

Parthi explains how Letterdrop’s AI assists companies in creating content that resonates with more buyers by leveraging the language their customers actually use, cutting down the time and improving the quality of their thought leadership content.

He also shares how Letterdrop supports SDRs in delivering value and helps companies uncover and understand their customers' unmet needs.

We also discuss the ongoing shift in SEO, the growing focus on LinkedIn, and the decline of traditional outbound sales tactics such as cold calling and cold emailing.

Our conversation with Parthi offers valuable insights for SaaS CEOs, CMOs, and marketing and sales professionals in the B2B space.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The importance of getting context and relevance right before scaling it
Why cold calling and cold emailing no longer works
Insights on future opportunities for content on LinkedIn

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

The ability to leverage data and prioritize sales and marketing efforts is essential to the success of enterprises with broad addressable markets.

Recognizing the struggles enterprises face in managing vast amounts of data, this week’s SaaS Backwards podcast guest Elio Narciso, saw an opportunity to improve how sales reps identify targets and prioritize their efforts.

Elio is the Co-founder and CEO of Scalestack, an all-in-one data enrichment, prioritization, and activation platform that allows go-to-market teams to easily map GTM data from many different sources to their ideal customer profile and their sales engine.

In this episode, Elio gives us a look into Scalestack’s origins. He recounts his background in advising startups at AWS and how it led him to uncover pockets of inefficiency in their go-to-market motions, such as a productivity gap for sales reps and a general dissatisfaction that companies have with their data.

Throughout this episode, Elio reflects on lessons from his past ventures, addresses common sales and marketing challenges, and highlights Scalestack’s mission and capabilities.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How hiring well is essential for scaling startups and managing that scale
Why focusing on enterprise clients can be advantageous for a startup
Strategy for building partnerships to reach more potential customers

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Send us a text

Consolidating sales and marketing into the office of the CRO might be a controversial topic, but it can be healthy for demand and sales functions to become enmeshed.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards podcast, our guest Cliff Simon, CRO of Carabiner Group, explains how aligning demand and sales functions can create a more cohesive and effective go-to-market strategy.

Cliff shares his belief that companies need to have a unified leader at the very top of everything go-to-market. He breaks down how sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and why looking at everything through a revenue lens is critical for success.

We also discuss Cliff’s collaboration with Nick Toman, author of The Challenger Customer and Carabiner Group’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer. Cliff highlights Nick’s expertise in market research, referencing his latest report, "Commercial Success in 2025 Hinges on GTM Strategy."

Topics covered in this episode include the evolution of enterprise sales as SaaS companies scale, achieving capital efficiency in go-to-market strategies, and measuring progress in enterprise sales.

Looking for ways Carabiner Group can boost your Revenue Operations? Check out the GTM Tech Stack Audit and Analysis Workbook—a valuable resource for mapping the relationship between your GTM strategies and technology stack.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Advantages of combining sales and marketing under the office of the CRO
The state of go-to-market and insights on how to achieve capital efficiency
How to measure progress in the enterprise sale

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

With all the current tools and technology available to salespeople, many have naturally slipped into a less personal approach than what used to be the norm. As a result, their calls and emails are ignored, and they struggle to get quality leads.

This highlights the need to go “back to the future,” or back to the basics, and adopt a personality-driven, people-forward sales approach to cut through the noise.

In this episode, we spoke with Alex Grace, the founder and CEO of Velocity Sales Consulting, about his process when coming into a company as a new sales leader or CRO and how he uncovers why things aren’t going as planned.

Alex calls this a welcome change in sales, stating, “You'll hang up on an SDR that's using a line, but you're not going to hang up on a person that sounds like a person.”

Alex also discusses a common alignment issue between sales and marketing, noting that one can’t exist without the other and how they should be like an old wrestling tag team, working together to reach a common goal.

Overall, Alex shared valuable insights into stepping into a sales leadership role, people’s innate ability to sell, the power of saying no, going back to the basics, and alignment between sales and marketing.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How to take advantage of top salespeople’s skills to help other salespeople on the team to improve
What KPIs matter and tracking what makes a meaningful conversation
The consolidation of sales and marketing leadership into the office of the CRO

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Thanks for listening to the SaaS Backwards Podcast, brought to you by Austin Lawrence Group. We help SaaS firms reduce churn, accelerate sales, and generate demand. Learn more at AustinLawrence.com.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

According to this year’s B2B TrustRadius Buying Disconnect Report, where they surveyed 200 B2B brands and over 2000 tech buyers, 2024 is the “year of the brand crisis.”

Across the board, brands are spending 38% on brand marketing and 53% on demand, which is understandable given the shorter time frame to justify ROI.

The problem is that buyers make decisions based largely on who they’re familiar with, so those who have established recognition and trust over time will be the winners.

In this episode, we brought back TrustRadius CEO Vinay Bhagat, who discusses how to better integrate brand marketing with demand generation to develop that trust.

Vinay also stressed the significance of the voice of the customer and the need to activate it across digital channels.

Overall, Vinay shared valuable insights into B2B marketing, the critical role of brand and demand generation, and the strategic use of customer voice and intent data.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The significance of brand recognition in making the shortlist for buyers
Insights on generating organic traffic by leveraging high-quality user-generated content
The varying importance of product demos in the sales process

Other resources to check out:

Our Previous Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Thanks for listening to the SaaS Backwards Podcast, brought to you by Austin Lawrence Group. We help SaaS firms reduce churn, accelerate sales, and generate demand. Learn more at AustinLawrence.com.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, we spoke with Steve Oriola, CEO of Unbounce, a landing page platform empowering marketers by combining their expertise with AI insights to create and optimize high-converting marketing campaigns.

Steve discussed Unbounce’s recent acquisition of Insightly, a robust CRM with advanced AI and machine learning capabilities that addresses the needs of mid-sized organizations. He explained how this merger aims to break down silos between marketing and sales, focusing on the entire customer journey rather than departmental divisions.

In this episode, Steve shared his extensive experience in the SaaS industry, particularly in marketing and sales applications, and discussed his role in partnering with founders to help them realize their visions.

Steve provided insights into potential partnerships with investors as a CEO candidate. He explained that the right investor should have at least one of three things: operating experience, strong pattern recognition, or deference to the operator.

The conversation also touched on capital efficiency in go-to-market strategies. Steve emphasized the need for early investments in marketing and sales to get the flywheel effect, leading to long-term efficiency and growth.

CEOs and CMOs of SaaS companies and founders considering partnering with investors or bringing in a CEO to help scale their business will find this episode relevant and insightful.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The significance of brand equity in driving business success, especially in competitive markets
The role of AI in marketing and sales software and the value of machine learning applications in optimizing tasks and decision-making
The importance of founders partnering with experienced CEOs to scale their businesses effectively

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Thanks for listening to the SaaS Backwards Podcast, brought to you by Austin Lawrence Group. We help SaaS firms reduce churn, accelerate sales, and generate demand. Learn more at AustinLawrence.com.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Paid advertising is often one of the largest budget items for SaaS companies, making it a critical channel for facilitating sales and driving growth.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, we flipped the script and had our very own Ken Lempit, President and Chief Business Builder at Austin Lawrence Group, as the guest. Ken shared his insights on the challenges SaaS companies face in achieving capital efficiency in their go-to-market strategies, particularly focusing on advertising.

Our conversation explores the prospect experience as a foundational element of successful advertising campaigns. Ken discusses key areas where companies have the most control and can significantly impact the prospect experience, including optimizing landing pages and providing sales reps with proper training and resources.

This episode highlights the significance of taking a holistic approach to advertising strategy, continuous optimization, and being hands-on with internal teams and external agencies to ensure advertising budgets are spent effectively.

Ken's insights into diagnosing issues within existing campaigns and media spend and his actionable tips for optimizing advertising performance make this episode an invaluable resource for SaaS marketing leaders and CEOs.

Key takeaways from this episode:

A holistic model for understanding where advertising touches across the business and how to view all elements that contribute to successful advertising
Insights into how to diagnose problems in current campaigns
The importance of looking at the entire prospect experience and optimizing landing pages and follow-up processes

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Thanks for listening to the SaaS Backwards Podcast, brought to you by Austin Lawrence Group. We help SaaS firms reduce churn, accelerate sales, and generate demand. Learn more at AustinLawrence.com.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

To drive sales and growth, SaaS companies need to have clear messaging, target the right prospects, and leverage industry expertise.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, we spoke with Will Robinson, CEO of Encapture, a platform specializing in intelligent document processing for industries like banking, lending, and insurance.

Will discussed the challenges associated with selling to highly regulated banking institutions and his strategies for overcoming them, emphasizing the importance of building a strong business case and navigating complex decision-making processes.

Our conversation also touched on Encapture’s journey of shifting from a professional services model to a SaaS model, including the changes in culture, sales strategies, marketing approaches, and the integration of AI technology into their product.

In this episode, Will provides valuable insights for SaaS CEOs on marketing tactics, targeting prospects, and the value of clear and simple messaging.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Strategies for navigating the complex sales cycle in financial institutions
Effective marketing strategies for generating leads and building credibility
How SaaS leaders can build trust with potential buyers through simple and relatable messaging

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Listen, assess, plan, execute, iterate. This week’s podcast guest Janet Jaiswal outlines these as the essential steps in developing and implementing successful marketing strategies in the SaaS industry.

Janet Jaiswal is Blueshift's Global VP of Marketing and has 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS marketing, working with companies like IBM, eBay, and PayPal.

In this episode of SaaS Backwards, she discusses her expertise in scaling companies through effective go-to-market strategies and the importance of process, technology, and skill sets at different stages of a company's growth.

In our conversation, Janet provides insights into the relationship between SEO and content marketing, the importance of identifying and refining the Ideal Customer Profile, and the critical role of product marketing in driving alignment between marketing and product management.

Overall, this episode provides a comprehensive look at the strategies and tactics that SaaS marketing leaders can use to drive growth and enhance profitability for their organizations.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The changing landscape of search engine algorithms and the importance of prioritizing content that conveys value quickly
The challenges and opportunities of ICP expansion and insights into the process
Why product marketing is crucial when scaling a SaaS company

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free messaging audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

A community can be a "cheat code" for rapid learning and career advancement, and this week’s guest knows that better than most.

In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing and Growth at Pavilion, the world's largest private community for go-to-market leaders.

Our conversation explores the concept of community-led growth and how Pavilion encourages this by providing a platform for members to grow their network, sharpen their skills, and develop lifelong connections.

Overall, Kathleen provides valuable insights into the intersection of community, social media, and growth strategies for SaaS companies.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The importance of community-led growth for SaaS companies and strategies for leveraging communities to drive growth and engagement
How CEOs and marketing leaders can use social media to build relationships, drive pipeline, and engage with prospects
The challenges executives face in prioritizing social media efforts and the need to shift from viewing social media as a "nice to have" to a "must have" for business growth

This episode is ideal for SaaS CEOs, CMOs, and marketing professionals looking to leverage community-led growth strategies, enhance their LinkedIn presence, and drive pipeline through organic and personalized outreach.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

The transition from product-led growth (PLG) to an enterprise sales motion is a strategic shift that many SaaS companies are making in order to accelerate growth and enhance profitability.

This transition is driven by a variety of factors, including the need to scale, reach new markets, and meet the evolving needs of customers.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting Juan Jaysingh, founder and CEO of Zingtree, an AI-enabled customer experience automation platform.

Juan provided insights into why and how his company made the shift from a PLG model to an enterprise sales motion, emphasizing the need to focus on large enterprise customers who benefit the most from Zingtree's complex, no-code workflow solutions.

In our conversation, Juan detailed the challenges and organizational changes required to make this transition, including adjustments in personnel, product development, and customer service.

Juan's experience and insights provide valuable lessons for CEOs, CMOs, and other professionals in the SaaS industry looking to understand the challenges and strategies involved in transitioning from a product-led growth model to an enterprise sales motion.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Challenges and considerations for SaaS companies transitioning from PLG to enterprise sales
How to improve customer experience by providing SaaS solutions that can be implemented quickly and show immediate impact
How Zingtree incorporates AI into its platform to enhance customer support workflows and provide relevant information to agents

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Transitioning from a Product-Led Growth (PLG) motion to an enterprise sales motion requires strategic alignment and effective change management within a SaaS Marketing team.

In this week’s episode, we discussed the challenges and considerations in this transition with Karen Budell, the CMO of Totango + Catalyst, two SaaS software companies collaborating to drive sustainable revenue through customer relationships.

Budell highlights the significance of grasping the nuances of the buyer's journey and understanding the shift in market dynamics when transitioning from a PLG approach to targeting enterprise customers.

She also focuses on the importance of change management during this transition and tackling challenges head-on to ensure a successful integration and go-to-market strategy. She likened it to moving in with a partner and combining belongings, emphasizing the necessity of open and honest conversations within the team.

This episode also touches on the importance of thought leadership and the role of written content, industry events, and proprietary events in marketing. Executives involved in mergers and acquisitions within the SaaS industry and marketing professionals interested in transitioning marketing strategies from PLG to enterprise sales will find value in Karen’s insights.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Why early learnings, customer feedback, and market insights are essential for crafting a successful merger strategy
The crucial role thought leadership plays in influencing the buying committee
The need for alignment, transparency, and clear communication in agency relationships

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

SaaS entrepreneurs must be adaptable and willing to pivot based on feedback and market needs.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, we spoke with Mo Hallaba, the CEO of Datawisp, a company that simplifies data analysis for business users. Mo discusses the challenges he faced in user acquisition for his gaming platform and how a networking group he started for the gaming industry led him to meet his current co-founders.

Mo shares his unconventional journey from finance to entrepreneurship and discusses the unique challenges and rewards of starting a SaaS business.

Overall, this episode provides valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey, the importance of adaptability, and the strategies for building and growing a successful SaaS company.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Why starting a networking group can be a valuable strategy for driving opportunities and connections in the SaaS industry
How being open to pivoting and making adjustments based on market feedback can lead to finding product-market fit
How conducting demos as data consultations can lead to more targeted and efficient sales processes

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

With the growing frustration among marketers with traditional pay-per-click and social media advertising, what can a SaaS CMO do to get their message in front of the right people at the right time?

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards Podcast, Co-Founder and CEO of SparkToro Rand Fishkin joins us to discuss how they’re solving this problem by providing valuable data on where to reach target audiences outside major platforms like Google and Facebook.

SparkToro is a market research and audience intelligence tool designed to help small and medium businesses, independent entrepreneurs, and challenger brands uncover the publications and people influencing their target audiences.

Rand discusses the challenges and opportunities in the current marketing landscape, emphasizing the need to return to traditional media planning and the importance of investing in sources of influence beyond the big platforms.

He also touches on the recent leak of Google's Content Warehouse API and its implications for SEO, stressing the importance of earning media and retaining valuable content creators.

Our conversation with Rand covers audience research, marketing strategies, team building, content marketing, AI impact, SEO, and predictions for the future of marketing. This episode provides a wealth of insights for SaaS CEOs and CMOs looking to navigate the evolving marketing landscape and leverage audience research to drive growth.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How having known and trusted team members, like co-founders, can reduce risk and improve the success of a startup
The importance of thought leadership in content marketing and the need to create content that resonates with amplifiers, not just customers
SEO and link-building strategies and the importance of focusing on quality links from pages that receive traffic rather than just acquiring links from various domains

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Utilizing the network effect by onboarding partners of customers simultaneously can lead to organic growth and increased platform adoption in SaaS companies.

In this episode, Doug Heckman, Chief Solutions Officer at Surefront, discusses how they leveraged the network effect to drive and accelerate the adoption of their collaborative platform. By providing a no-cost license to every partner of their customers and handling the onboarding and training process at their own expense, Surefront facilitated a seamless transition for all parties involved.

Doug also highlights his passion for solving "unsexy" but critical problems in the industry. The conversation provides deep insights into Surefront's journey, challenges, and innovative strategies to achieve success.

This episode is ideal for individuals involved in enterprise software solutions and CEOs and CMOs of B2B SaaS firms looking for strategies to drive their businesses forward and accelerate growth.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How a deep commitment to customer success, especially at the enterprise level, can drive outsized growth and reputational benefits
Strategies to push customers off the status quo, including demonstrating the ROI of adopting a solution and highlighting the costs of doing nothing
How focusing on decision support content and targeting customers further down the buying cycle can lead to more impactful SaaS marketing efforts

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

The role of thought leadership is changing in content marketing, especially for SaaS companies.

In this special episode hosted by Jason Myers, our usual host Ken Lempit, President and Chief Strategist of Austin Lawrence, takes the guest seat to dive deep into the evolving landscape of content marketing and thought leadership for SaaS companies.

Ken and Jason discuss the shift towards creating high-quality, credible content that can truly engage and move prospects off their status quo, driven by an increasing demand for authenticity and value from consumers.

The duo also delves into the importance of meaningful conversations and the need for sales and marketing teams to work closely together. They emphasize the value of understanding buyer motivations to refine messaging and go-to-market strategies and create content that addresses their specific problems and needs.

Ken and Jason’s insightful discussion covers thought leadership, content marketing, outbound sales motions, integrated marketing and sales approaches, and the changing landscape of B2B advertising.

This episode is ideal for CMOs, CEOs, and SaaS industry sales professionals looking to accelerate growth, enhance profitability, and drive meaningful conversations with their target audience.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How to effectively attract and engage prospects with thought leadership content
Why SaaS companies should reassess their content strategies in favor of how-to guides, infographics, and in-person experiences
How to adapt to the increased necessity of paid promotion and advertising

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

In SaaS companies, there’s a need for sales and marketing teams to work together closely toward common goals and understand each other’s perspectives.

Amy Osmond Cook, co-founder and CMO at Fullcast recognizes this need. Fullcast’s platform ensures all teams can access the same data to establish seamless communication and strategic alignment, eliminating revenue pain points and improving overall business efficiency.

In this episode, Amy shares her journey from running a marketing agency to co-founding Fullcast and her experience as a woman in the C-Suite, offering advice to her younger self and women executives.

Amy also dives into her extensive experiences as a fractional CMO and the advantages it offers SaaS startups, such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and the ability to scale operations up or down as needed.

This episode is ideal for SaaS CEOs, CMOs, and startup founders looking to optimize their revenue operations, align sales and marketing efforts, and gain insights into the benefits of fractional CMO leadership.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The positive impact of effective revenue operations on SaaS companies
How effective marketing in early stages can accelerate growth and ensure long-term success for SaaS startups
The importance of perseverance and adaptability for women in leadership positions

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Building a strong foundation is essential for long-term business success, especially when faced with unexpected challenges.

We spoke with Dave Dittenber, Co-Founder and CEO of BYOD, who faced the ultimate challenge with the unexpected passing of his Co-Founder, Frank Luijckx. He recounts the loss and emphasizes how Frank’s forward-thinking and meticulous planning had a lasting positive impact on the business’s trajectory and contributed to its continued success.

In this episode, Dave shares his remarkable journey from starting as a dishwasher at age 12 to becoming the CEO of a cutting-edge AI company that powers Mabel, the first virtual restaurant assistant.

He also provides personal insights into the challenges and strategies of funding a tech startup, stressing the importance of prudent financial planning and maintaining investor confidence through transparency and strategic growth.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How active participation in industry associations offers key insights, connections, and mentorship for software entrepreneurs
How transparency with investors helps build trust and drive business growth
The importance of thorough documentation, recovery plans, and strategic playbooks

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Building a business with the intention of a future sale requires meticulous planning and organization from the outset.

In this episode, Payment Brokers Founder and CEO Jeremy Lessaris, a serial founder with multiple successful exits, emphasizes the importance of the early organization of books, records, contracts, and agreements as a critical factor in boosting valuation and streamlining the exit process.

Jeremy also stresses the significance of maintaining a well-organized data room for due diligence during a business sale. He recommends creating a dashboard with KPIs and metrics to provide a clear overview of the company's performance and demonstrate the business's progress to potential buyers.

Throughout this episode, Jeremy explains how SaaS entrepreneurs can position their companies for a seamless exit process and maximize their valuation when it comes time to sell.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Focusing on revenue generation early
Keeping costs low while striving to reach revenue milestones
The value of mentorship in helping entrepreneurs navigate business challenges

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Enterprise search has been around for quite some time, and it often conjures images of outdated intranet searches within the confines of an organization's internal networks.

So how do you shift the focus from “old school” methods to a more dynamic, AI-powered approach that connects various applications, enabling intelligent query responses and contextually relevant summaries?

That’s the gist of the conversation with Brandon Most, Head of Marketing at GoLinks. In this episode, he also delves into the unique challenges of marketing multiple products with distinct brand identities and how to manage this within the market's shifting dynamics strategically.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

The transition from a product-led growth model to an enterprise motion, adapting to market changes and budget shifts.
The nuances of executing a multi-product marketing strategy and the importance of qualified pipeline metrics over mere volume.
The role of peer review sites in generating demand and supporting SEO efforts.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

With a startling low average tenure of 18 months, today’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is struggling.

The pressure primarily stems from the need to drive growth in a capital-efficient manner. This includes rapidly accelerating revenue growth while managing and optimizing the cost of sales and marketing operations, often within a constrained budget or shifting economic conditions.

It's this intense focus on both top-line growth and cost efficiency that’s contributing to the high turnover and short average tenure of CROs, as they must quickly demonstrate success in these areas.

So, what can they do about it?

In this episode, Guy Mounier, Co-founder and CEO of Aptivio returns to the podcast to talk about:

How CROs can gain the visibility they need into their go-to-market motion so they can pull the right levers.
Why working with recruiters may help to ensure a company is ready for a CRO before hiring.
What the future sales tech stack and use of AI may look like.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

We all know video is important to grow exposure, but creating enough is still challenging. The tools are complex, production is expensive, and it can be overwhelming just to come up with ideas.

In this episode, Aug X Labs founder Jeremy Toeman talks about his personal frustration with the complex tools just to make basic videos that can be used on websites and in social media posts that led to the creation of the company.

And their goal is to make video creation as simple as writing an email. Try it out at meetaugie.com

The platform allows users to generate videos using AI, without facing a blank canvas.

But as with most startups, the road has not been a straightforward one, and we discussed the challenges of founding and growing a startup, particularly in the tough fundraising climate of 2023, the launch of ChatGPT, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

How to be prepared for challenges and setbacks in the startup journey and having the stamina to persevere
How Toeman created playbooks to deal with unexpected challenges
Staying focused on the core mission of the company despite setbacks

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

If you went to the doctor for a sore throat and she said, “Last time I had one, this is what helped me get better” versus “I looked at the clinical trial evidence for 5000 people with your symptoms in your age range, geographics, and background,” which of those solutions is more viable?

That’s how Sahil Patel, CEO of Spiralyze views the world of A/B testing.

Spiralyze crawls and scrapes 34,000 websites that A/B test to find the repeat winners, analyze why they won, and run those same tests for its clients.

And the results are impressive–they often demonstrate a 20 to 30 percent lift in conversions from the traffic they’re already getting.

Even their homepage message guarantees a 30% conversion lift in 90 days.

Having been a client of Spiralyze at his previous company, Patel’s journey as their CEO harkens back to Victor Kiam’s famous 1979 ad boasting that he liked Remington razors so much that he “bought the company.”

Key Takeaways from this episode:

Is that video on your homepage hero helping you or hurting you?
Why an email box next to your demo CTA will convert higher than sending to a landing page
Why making bold, quantitative, and specific claims on your website will boost your credibility

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Feedback is not just a tool for improving products, but a strategic asset that can drive growth, innovation, and competitive advantage.

In this episode, Satya Ganni, CEO of Beamer and Userflow, explains the importance of feedback in reducing churn in product-led SaaS companies.

Feedback provides valuable insights into customer needs, preferences, and pain points, which makes it a critical component of product management success.

By listening to customer feedback, Beamer is able to identify areas for improvement, prioritize feature development, make informed decisions about product strategy, reduce churn, and drive success.

Actively soliciting and incorporating customer feedback can also help companies ensure that their products meet their target audience's needs and continuously improve to stay ahead of the competition.

Additionally, Satya discusses the recent merger of Beamer and Userflow, two product adoption and engagement platforms for product-led SaaS companies, to create a leading platform in their industry.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The challenges and opportunities of merging Beamer and Userflow
The foundational pillars that product-led SaaS companies should prioritize to achieve success
How addressing churn factors helps retain customers and build long-term relationships

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

In this episode, we delved into the transformative power of algorithms in business with Jason Radisson, CEO & founder of Movo, a platform that provides real-time scheduling flexibility and improved workforce management for large companies with frontline workers.

Jason recounted his time at Harrah's Entertainment, where they used data to optimize customer interactions and significantly increase profitability over others on the strip. He explains how his background in algorithmic management has influenced his approach to business models.

Jason also shares his thoughts on combatting SaaS churn by identifying the root causes and understanding customer behavior to accurately predict and deal with it proactively.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

The importance of modeling and forecasting to drive profitability, especially in the context of reducing churn
Building models to predict customer behavior to leverage marketing spend
The challenges and opportunities of the gig economy

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

As a startup with shaky product market fit, prospective customers often want to associate you with a mature category so they can determine where it might fit in their tech stack—or not.

But for Warmly, the existing categories represented only a small subset of their capabilities—albeit cheaper than the mature tools.

And they couldn’t just settle for being known as "Drift but cheaper.”

In this episode, Alan Zhao details his transition from CTO to marketing chief, a move that was pivotal in steering Warmly’s narrative away from established market constructs and taking control over the narrative that would differentiate itself from the myriad of sales tools on the market.

Other key takeaways from this episode:

The pros and cons of “category creation” to set yourself apart from competitors.
The importance of tailoring your message to address specific pain points for each segment.
How to better understand the buyer journey of the 95% of those who visit your website but don’t fill out a form.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

As a seasoned sales expert and popular sales podcaster, Brian Burns has more than a few opinions about how companies are selling to the enterprise today.

Most notably, because reps haven’t been taught the difference, they try to make up for the lack of pipeline by increasing outreach activity.

That may have worked in 2011 when the Predictable Revenue Model gained prominence (and our inboxes weren’t flooded with sales pitches).

But today, the compartmentalization of prospecting and closing won’t result in more complex deals, where decisions are ruled by committees and often end in “no decision.”

In this episode, Burns talks about how today’s reps should be learning about selling in the enterprise, such as working with champions and how to continuously move the deal forward.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Why much of the complex deal is counterintuitive and relies on guiding the sale instead of reacting.
Why measuring outcomes that lead to revenue generation is more important than tracking activities that may not directly contribute to sales.
Why you shouldn’t hire salespeople based on their Rolodex (or industry connections for the youngsters).

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Originally, the founders of Plytix set out to create an analytics platform for e-commerce that measured the performance of a product (instead of a website) so brands could see how end users interact with them, even when sold on a third-party website.

But even after positive early traction and investment, they were stalled—many of the brands didn’t have their product information at the ready.

So, they built a simple source of truth—a Product Information Management (PIM) so they could get access to the product information that they needed.

As it turns out, that was the larger need from SMBs—a PIM they could afford.

After realizing the broader market opportunity, Plytix leaders made some hard choices and pivoted.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The nuances of being a European-based SaaS targeting the US market
The importance of understanding the customer creation engine before implementing an attribution model.
The challenges of scaling beyond the ceiling of just in-market leads.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Having moved from a miserable culture in investment banking to an incredibly positive one at tech startup ZipRecruiter, Jonathan Fields learned early in his career the profound impact culture has on an organization.

So inspired, in fact, that he and his co-founders worked nights and weekends to create a platform that could make those elements scalable and easy for companies to adopt.

The result is Assembly, a platform that focuses on creating opportunities for coworkers to connect beyond work-related tasks has enhanced the overall employee experience and fostered a sense of community within organizations.

Initially, when they surveyed people about what they want from work culture, there weren’t a lot of surprises: they want to feel recognized, appreciated, and acknowledged for their hard work. They also want mentorship and career development opportunities.

But as companies moved to more hybrid work during the pandemic (and remain so today), one new concept dwarfed the others in comparison: the “work best friend.”

So, to emulate those types of interactions in their platform (beyond Zoom happy hours), they created channels for culture ideas, such as pets, volunteering, and favorite company moments channels, to facilitate interactions between coworkers beyond work-related tasks.

Profitable since day one, Assembly has successfully positioned itself as a thought leader by focusing on content development early and today has attracted $14.5M in funding.

Key takeaways from this episode:

How investing in thought leadership and content creation early helped establish credibility and drove sales inbound.
How to position your SaaS as a “must have” versus a “nice-to-have”
The importance of researching the landscape, competitors, and buyers before diving into a venture.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Are you making one or more of these mistakes in your messaging?

Given the number of websites that we review regularly, chances are that you are—and that means leaving revenue on the table.

In this episode, Ken and Jason from Austin Lawrence Group discuss the eight common mistakes that SaaS companies make with real life examples.

So if you’re revisiting messaging and content strategy this year, or you’re frustrated with the quality of leads coming through your website, this episode is for you.

A few key takeaways:

How to avoid making vague statements that cause cognitive dissonance with some prospective buyers.
Why you shouldn’t lead with AI
Why it’s crucial to gain problem agreement by clearly identifying and addressing the problem they’re trying to solve.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Business development poses big challenges for today’s SaaS.

It becomes twice as ineffective every year as people learn how to ignore you.

And it’s such a grind that it’s hard to find good people who want to stick with the sales development rep (SDR) position over the long term.

To get engagement on the phone today takes the right experience, technology, and triggers.

That’s why we sat down with Gabriel Lullo, CEO of Alleyoop, an outsourced SDR service that specializes in lead generation and relationship management to talk about the future of outbound prospecting and whether or not it’s a good idea to outsource this function.

They realize that clients may want to move this function in-house, and so they train their SDRs to eventually take a full-time position in that role.

Key takeaways from this episode:

While cold calling is not dead, the skill sets required to make it work are paramount—they must be prepared, sound human, and sell the appointment rather than the product.
Whether through marketing or an SDR function, nurturing leads is critical to long-term success and will probably not be done adequately by an account executive on quota.
Gabe also shares his vision for the future of SDR, where nurturing and following up with leads will continue to be crucial, and where AI will serve as an enhancement rather than a replacement for human interaction.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

We’ve all been frustrated by those pesky ads that pop up when trying to read an article.

We understand that publishers are trying to capture more of that lost ad revenue, but the solution is not to create such a poor experience that it drives consumers away.

And the rise of ad blockers is not the only problem for publishers.

The decline of traditional tracking methods due to privacy regulations and browser changes, such as the death of the cookie, threatens the business model even more.

Dan Rua, CEO of Admiral, believes that both publishers and visitors need to care more about each other.

Through their Visitor Relationship Management platform (VRM), publishers can offer visitors different value exchanges based on their preferences, such as ad-free experiences, email relationships, or subscriptions.

The results for publishers are a no-brainer, receiving an almost immediate return on investment for many.

Other key takeaways from this episode:

Focus on solving specific problems first – Admiral started with ad block recovery as their beachhead and became the best in the world.
How they went from founder-led sales to a scalable machine once they’d achieved product-market fit.
The benefits of having a strong product team as founders and how they understood everything that’s needed to contribute to revenue early on.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

In this episode, SaaS Backwards host Ken Lempit switches places to the guest seat to discuss upcoming trends in SaaS marketing for the new year and what companies will have to do to be successful.

Ken is the Chief Strategist of the Austin Lawrence Group, a growth marketing agency specializing in B2B SaaS, and has a 30-year track record in software marketing.

The key areas discussed include:

As outbound prospecting gets harder, how will companies be successful?
How will sales and marketing KPIs shift toward more meaningful measurements?
Will traditional techniques like postal mail and custom publishing make a comeback?
And will generative AI take its place as a tool instead of a replacement for people?

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Pricing is often the most overlooked “P” in the SaaS marketing mix. We see it in our marketing practice often.

Companies may be averse to raising prices for fear of losing customers, focusing on other priorities like product development, or simply don’t understand the impact on the business.

In this episode, we caught up with Pat Meegan, Senior Partner at Maple Street Advisors, who talks about assessing the opportunity for pricing growth regularly by looking at four key indicators:

Leadership doesn't have a clear pricing strategy that everyone can point to and have confidence in.
Inactivity in pricing for a significant period (six months to a year).
Market data that indicates the potential for better pricing or an optimized pricing structure.
Value-added to the product without corresponding pricing adjustments

And given the risks such as customer churn or dissatisfaction, Meegan provides insights into how companies can approach pricing to drive growth and satisfy both their customers and investors.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

How to evaluate a DIY approach to pricing or bringing in an external advisor
How to determine if pricing is a lever you can pull for growth and profitability
How to pressure test new pricing strategies to mitigate churn risk

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

When going through a repetitive and time-consuming mortgage application process in 2017, Mang-Git Ng was surprised that the process wasn’t automated.

He realized that there were many industries that still operated in the internet dark ages and that moving all these PDFs and paper documents to online forms could solve a major problem.

But after he and his co-founder had built their initial product, they struggled to gain traction, especially with limited sales and marketing experience.

Through much experimentation, they started identifying patterns in their customer base and certain industries (like human resources workforce management and insurance) that had a need for generating, processing, and signing documents, and their product was a great solution.

By focusing on these verticals, Anvil was able to deeply understand the challenges and language used in these industries, allowing them to speak to their target customers more effectively.

Six years later, Anvil is a seven-figure ARR SaaS company that has raised $10M in funding.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Finding patterns in your customer base that can be exploited for niche-based selling
How to sell to companies that are resistant to change
Why you should focus on sales and marketing early in the process

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Because of the challenges in the current financing environment and the cautious approach of strategic buyers and private equity firms for SaaS companies, we invited Marty Magida on to discuss practical strategies to enhance company value and navigate the complexities of the M&A market.

Magida is the managing director of Berkery, Noyes & Co an independent investment bank providing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory to middle-market leaders in the global information, software, services, and technology industries.

Marty advises listeners to stay informed about industry trends, cultivate relationships with potential buyers, and pay attention to the metrics that drive acquisitions.

It’s a must listen for all SaaS leaders that plan to raise funding, exit the business or participate in a merger or acquisition.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

Manage risk profile by reducing concentration and striving to be asset light.
Improve consistency of results by focusing on recurring revenue and making it costly for customers to switch.
Maximize value by building a strong management team, ensuring reliable financial reporting, and cultivating relationships with potential buyers.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

You’ve probably never thought about what goes on behind the scenes when you return a product, but there’s a lot to it.

In this episode of the SaaS Backwards podcast, Chuck Fuerst, CMO at ReverseLogix, gives a look behind the scenes at some of the challenges and opportunities in the returns management system category.

And because it’s so complicated, their go-to-market strategy requires problem agreement to be considered. And because companies enter different stages of problem awareness, the company has adopted a modular approach to pricing and packaging that allows them to take advantage of a land-and-expand strategy.

Overall, the Fuerst emphasizes their need to stay close to customers, understand their pain points, and deliver value through a comprehensive solution that addresses their needs one step at a time.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

How active listening shapes their messaging and positioning
Building credibility and validation through analyst relations
How ReverseLogix takes a modular approach to pricing to fit their land and expand strategy

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

As a CEO, you probably don’t care much about how your accounting and bookkeeping is done.

But you do want insights you can drive once your month is closed out. Burn rate and cash flow comes to mind.

At the Ascent conference in New York, we caught up with Swapnil Shinde, CEO of Zeni, a SaaS that claims to have the world’s first finance operations platform for startups that includes intelligent bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services.

Key Takeaways:

When it comes to defining ICP, the sharper the knife, the faster it cuts
Finding the right accounting software mix for startups
The state of AI technology being used to drive accounting insights faster

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

You may have noticed that deals today take longer to close and scrutinized heavily.

So, what do SaaS companies need to do?

Spencer Dent, Founder of Clozd says to make sure you understand the how the decision-making process, people involved, and priorities have changed.

And since the CFO plays a bigger role, it’s less about ease of integration and more about the bottom line—and you’d better be ready to prove it.

Key takeaways:

Are ROI calculators worth it anymore? With people caring more about potential loss versus gain.
Determining the narrative customers must believe for your solution to be a good decision.
How should win/loss analysis impact your positioning and messaging.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

For our 100th episode, we’re excited to interview Brent Adamson, the global head of research with Ecosystems, a SaaS platform for collaborative customer value management that helps its users quantify and align with customers based on the value being delivered.

Adamson is most known as the co-author of the books The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. And as marketers, both books have been instrumental in shaping our view of content development as an agency and the role it plays in furthering the B2B sales process.

But with everyone trying to teach customers something new and lead with insights (whether they’ve read Challenger or not) the overall impact on customers is less likely to enlightenment, and more likely to overwhelm.

So, instead of seeing your content and thinking, “Oh wow, I’ve got to do something different,” they’re thinking, “Oh no, here’s another thing I have to worry about.”

Adamson takes the role of content a step further in this episode, explaining that both the marketing and sales process today not must only build trust for the supplier, but also within the prospect's mind so that they can accomplish the implementation on their end.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Why B2B marketers should focus on creating a collaborative and value-based conversation with customers, rather than simply presenting ROI calculations, and generating content.
Why it’s important to help customers feel confident in their decision-making process by providing context, connecting them to relevant content, and addressing their concerns about implementation.
Empathy is a crucial skill for salespeople, as understanding how customers think about their business and helping them feel better about themselves can lead to successful sales outcomes.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

Coming from sales positions where she’s carried quotas, Brandee Sanders knows what having skin in the game for marketers looks like.

And it’s not tracking MQLs or developing a strong tech stack.

It does look like examining the data to find repeatable opportunities for sales pipeline.

In other words, do we truly know how and why closed/won opportunities entered our orbit and what motivated them to take action to purchase?

According to Sanders, the disconnect is that “Most marketers just roll over in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I have a great idea for a campaign.’ They won't look back and say, retrospectively, ‘Is this at a target audience that we know is an ICP? Is this going to be the type of content that even performs for us? Are we going to do a video when, like, 99.9% of closed/won came through a webinar or a podcast?’”

As the new CMO of Revenue.io, Sanders immediately got entrenched in the data to find opportunities for repeatable processes that would fuel her roadmap to success.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

· How to build a roadmap to ensure your success as a new CMO/marketing leader

· Where AI is today in analyzing sales conversations and delivering real-time insights

· How the role of the CMO is evolving to become more data-driven and revenue-focused

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Strategic initiatives often get de-railed when CEOs delegate them instead of taking ownership. This lack of clarity can lead to confusion and lack of focus throughout the organization.

That’s the problem Ulf Arnetz is solving through his Swedish-based company Howwe, a SaaS enterprise platform for CEOs to orchestrate and operationalize strategy implementation at every level of their organization.

The platform allows CEOs to prioritize goals, track progress and align teams towards achieving revenue and profit targets.

And like most, his entrepreneurial journey wasn’t a straight line.

Check out the full episode where Ulf teaches us the importance of solving specific problems, focusing on measurable results, starting from the bottom, embracing micro-delegation and more.

Key Takeaways:

· Why success strategies rely on top-down micro-delegation where each level of the organization take ownership of their specific goals and initiatives

· How the company transitioned from consulting to a SaaS with 96% of their revenue coming from licensed subscriptions.

· A look into Sweden’s entrepreneurial ecosystem - a great place to start and grow software companies.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Probably best known for helping Gong grow from $200K to $200M in five years, Chris Orlob talks about following his passion for helping people learn valuable sales skills through his new company pclub.io. (That’s short for President’s Club for non-salesy folks).

But sales training wasn’t the original focus.

Originally, they started out to build a company called QuotaSignal that sold a hiring value proposition, but since hiring took a nosedive in the current economic climate, had been developing an online sales training course that took off.

One of his biggest differentiators in his training is the focus on selling the CFO—and if you’ve paid attention to this year’s TrustRadius report on the buyer/seller disconnect, you know that they’re playing a bigger role in most enterprise purchases.

Other key Takeaways from this episode:

Why every SaaS should re-evaluate their pricing model on a regular basis
How to find the right buyers in an account, arm your champion, and write compelling business cases, and multi-thread.
How they quickly grew their training through email, Linkedin and word-of-mouth.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

The attribution problem has long been a challenge for marketers—probably first articulated by John Wannamaker when he said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

It seemed like marketing tech had solved it (for a minute)—until buyers went and changed their behavior.

So how do we map the customer journey today?

That’s where today’s guest Steffen Hedebrandt, Co-Founder and CMO of DreamData.io comes in.

DreamData is a B2B revenue attribution platform based in Denmark that helps companies understand how they acquire new customers by extracting data from various silos such as CRM systems, marketing automation systems, and websites, and creating clean customer journey maps.

Key Takeaways:

Focusing on customer success as a growth strategy.
Expanding beyond Denmark to penetrate the US market.
Understanding that the buyer doesn’t know they’re in a funnel.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Seemingly not too long ago, searches for new products and services overwhelmingly started at Google. And it made sense to optimize for keywords, so you’d appear organically on page one.

But things have changed—just a bit. And no one is more qualified to talk about those changes than our guest Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro and formerly the founder of Moz.

As Fishkin notes, today if you ask Google a question, over half the time they’re going to give you a snippet with an answer. And as soon as generative AI for search gains prominence, that's going to be closer 80%.

And even though search isn’t dead, for most small cap SaaS businesses, spending too much money and effort on it is probably wasted.

So where can today’s SaaS find where its audience is hanging out?

That’s where SparkToro comes in and you can try it free on their homepage.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Why you shouldn’t be too heavily influenced by investors.
Why building and promoting tools might be a superior SEO strategy for SaaS.
What the future of AI generated content might look like.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Sales and marketing alignment was never a problem for Acrolinx, as evidenced by Christopher P. Willis’ title: Chief Marketing & Pipeline Officer.

Acrolinx is an AI-powered content marketing engine that integrates with content tools to provide real-time advice on brand, tone, clarity, compliance, and consistency.

In this episode, Chris talks about the value of tracking engagement data and its usefulness for sales and introduces his Global Active Awareness Score (GAAS), a comprehensive methodology to measure awareness and attribution by tracking every touchpoint and interaction with the audience.

It assigns points to each touchpoint based on its importance and impact, such as website visits, media coverage, social media engagement, and more. The goal is to track the movement of the GAAS number from month to month, identifying areas where awareness is growing or declining.

By analyzing the GAAS, the marketing team can make informed decisions about their strategies and initiatives, holding team members accountable for their contributions to the overall awareness score.

Key Takeaways:

How to create alignment that ensures the creation, progression and future fueling of the pipeline.
Why business development reps fall under marketing at Acrolinx and help track engagement over setting meetings.Insights into Chris’s messaging development process as they launch the next generation of their product.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Even in a very healthy business, you must keep looking for innovation.

That’s the gist of this episode’s message with Dan Miles, Chief Operating Officer of TVEyes.

TVEyes is a search engine for impactful video and audio measured by audience and level of information and newsworthiness. Historically, that was primarily broadcast TV and radio, but over the last few years as audiences migrated to online platforms like podcasts and streaming video, TVEyes has innovated its software platform to capture all the data.

And AI is certainly playing a big role in that today.

But even though their business is focused on data mining, Miles and host Ken Lempit talk about how companies should pay more attention to the data that they’re collecting.

It might be worth something.

Key Takeaways

The importance of alignment around pricing and packaging, especially as it extends through the sales process.
How to scale marketing and sales efforts strategically.
Why you should constantly reevaluate pricing strategies to stay competitive.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

We all know that personalization, context, and relevance are necessary to get a cold email opened.

But that takes a lot of time and energy to customize each communication, and when only 3% of your target audience is in-market at any given time.

And that’s where Buzzboard comes in.

The company has developed a platform that utilizes AI and proprietary data to create personalized content and conversation starters for sales organizations. This platform leverages a data set of 30 million businesses and 6,000 signals, allowing sales organizations to generate hyper-personalized content such as emails, cold call scripts, and social media messages.

In this episode, David Howard, Buzzboard’s VP of Marketing discusses how AI is helping sales reps minimize much of the research and strategizing work by analyzing prospects and generating a response.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

How aligning marketing and product teams has yielded an increase in engagement from customers and prospects.
How shifting to shorter, product-centric content has helped potential customers visualize the benefits of driving more free-trial signups.
Why Hyper-personalization is the future of sales and how AI is helping do it at scale.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

In this episode, we talked to Fred Rockwell, owner of the upcoming Ascent Conference in New York (Oct 30) about the advantages of attending events in-person, how they’ve changed in a post-covid world, and why he structures his events to create more bottom of the funnel opportunities through private invites.

The SaaS Backwards Podcast is also excited to be the official podcast sponsor of the Ascent Conference and will be recording episodes at the show.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The importance of building connections in-person as opposed to only online.
The challenges of bootstrapping a business and how to be resilient
How to remain relevant, even when the market changes rapidly.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Effective messaging is paramount for SaaS companies to attract and convert the right types of customers. And according to this week’s guest Anthony Pierri, Partner with Fletch PMM, most are getting it wrong.

They try to speak to too many audiences at once.
They use vague and broad statements that don’t resonate with anyone.
They use wishy washy language.

Today’s marketers have been influenced by big companies that prioritize branding and awareness, which won’t be an effective strategy for the cash-conscious startups.

Instead, companies should focus on product marketing and differentiation to clearly communicate their unique value proposition front and center on the homepage throughout all content.

Don’t miss this episode where Pierri outlines their process for that.

Key Takeaways:

Why use case positioning is probably going to be the most effective for B2B SaaS.
How to align your messaging to your target audience’s struggles and pain points.
Why you should use specific benefits to differentiate.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

Criminals have developed efficient business models that make it cost-effective to attack even small enterprises.

No company is too small, and the need for awareness and understanding of the evolving threat landscape, particularly with generative AI is at an all-time high.

But simply training staff not to click on this or not to write down their password on post-its isn’t going to be enough.

Our guest, Dr. James Norrie, CEO of CyberconIQ, realized that the key to changing behavior is through personalized education—and by understanding individuals unique characteristics, preferences, and vulnerabilities it becomes possible to tailor educational interventions.

Now with a rapid evolution in the marketplace, emerging SEC guidelines, and changes to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) everybody is beginning to realize that when technology has created a problem, it can’t always be used to solve it.

Key Takeaways:

The important difference between raising capital and running a business—they’re both full time jobs.
Why the recent SEC Guidelines requiring the disclosure of material cybersecurity incidents and risk management, strategy and governance by public companies is important for all SaaS companies to map to.
Why they developed free training at techellect.com to enhance confidence in AI applications.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

As a Chiropractor, Brian Capra never intended to become a software developer—but it seems like something bigger was a play.

Because the healthcare system, particularly insurance companies, have historically been biased against chiropractic care, chiropractors must be more entrepreneurial. They must understand marketing, building relationships, sales, and managing a business to succeed.

And they often don’t understand the game that big insurance plays when it comes to delaying or denying payments.

Those frustrations led Capra to form a partnership with some individuals who had a technology solution for medical billing to create Genesis Chiropractic Software to provide chiropractors with a more efficient and effective way to manage their practices.

Key Takeaways:

How streamlining processes and prioritizing training to enhance the customer experience will lead to more referrals.
The importance of tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like churn rate, growth rate, and customer satisfaction.
Why you should be open-minded and aware of opportunities that come your way

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

The B2B world is different today, and (unfortunately) there’s no one formula that works across the board. It’s not outbound versus inbound. It’s not advertising versus content.

Every organization has a unique formula that will consistently drive meaningful conversations with targeted prospects.

Therefore, you'll never see a productive organization where there's a lot of animosity between marketing and sales leadership.

In this episode, Ben Page-Fort, who works with early and growth stage FinTechs to develop and execute go-to-market strategy, talks about how sales and marketing alignment is no longer a goal—it’s a must have.

And it’s all hands on deck to find the right formula because we’re all in the same boat.

Key Takeaways:

Hiring for today (their skillsets match the current needs of the organization) and not by trying to anticipate future needs.
The importance of setting qualitative goals and key performance indicators with all revenue growth stakeholders committing to driving results.
When joining a new organization as a marketing or sales leader, it's important to understand and respect what is already working and avoid making drastic changes without fully understanding the existing strategies and successes.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

And the best part? It’s absolutely free.Get started today!

There’s nothing like an economic slow-down to thin the herd. Companies take longer to buy, consolidate resources, and rethink their go-to-market strategy.

So why are companies doubling down on yesterday’s strategies?

Normally the host of SaaS Backwards, Ken Lempit, President of Austin Lawrence, sits in the guest seat this week to answer questions about how SaaS leaders need to approach marketing to engage today’s buyer.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

Demand generation involves both demand capture (or lead generation), which is a short-term focus, and demand creation, where you’re creating relationships over the long term with potential customers not yet in a buying motion.
Creativity is back. With the proliferation of content and generative AI, it’s the creatives that are going to figure out how to stand out from the crowd.
Why all B2B SaaS marketers should read the Challenger Customer if they’re using thought leadership content.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

When a company starts out, verticalization may not be the best thing. In fact, today’s guest Corey Quinn, fractional CMO and GTM strategist prefers to work with companies who went broad first, since there’s value in exploring different verticals and learning the nuances in the different markets.

But at a certain point, verticalization becomes necessary to scale. It reduces complexity, improves marketing, and helps to differentiate from the competition.

In this episode, host Ken Lempit and Quinn discuss how to narrow down and exploit areas of specialization.

Key Takeaways:

Understanding your best fit customer by conducting qualitative and quantitative analyses of your business.
The role of thought leadership content and the importance of ensuring subject matter expertise within the chosen vertical.
Ensuring that your marketing efforts align with your sales process and provide valuable insights to potential customers during sales conversations.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

It’s never been harder for marketers generate an audience where you can have impact than it is today.

The media landscape has exploded and the number of choices we have as marketers has never been more varied.

In many ways, we’re now paying for the sins automating a process of building trust and relationships.

In this episode, Anthony Kennada, Co-Founder and CEO of Audience Plus talks with Ken about how the marketing pendulum is swinging back from marketing automation, inbound, and maximizing SEO to its original intent—creating value for an audience in a more authentic way.

Key takeaways:

How to create the authentic content that B2B buyers care about today.
Why first party data will be crucial to personalize content and prove impact in the face of changing data privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies.
How the shift towards owned media will help marketers regain control over their lead-to-revenue process and reduce reliance on third-party platforms and algorithms.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

As martech SaaS founder, Steve McDonald acknowledges the tendency to believe that their product is so exceptional that customers will naturally flock to it.

But then reality sets in and you realize that maybe Shoeless Joe Jackson wasn’t whispering in your ear after all.

There’s a lot of risk for customers to invest in something new, and content marketing is the obvious way to build trust. But with the volume of noise out there today, your development process must be strategic, methodical, and efficient.

In this episode, Ken and Steve geek out on the role that content plays for today’s SaaS and how thought leadership actually works to spark conversations with prospective customers.

Key takeaways:

Why podcasting is still an effective way to create thought leadership content efficiently and effectively.
Marketers should consider creating themed podcast series that focus on specific topics or industry challenges.
Why it's important to invest in thought leadership that delivers customer insights early on to establish the company as an expert to spark conversations with prospects.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

When joining MadKudu as a Marketing VP, Shannon Curran knew they were so much more than a predictive lead scoring platform.

She wanted to shift the conversation from product-led growth (PLG) to a focus on hybrid funnels and revenue generation. And because it would be a huge challenge to cut through the noise in the MarTech/RevTech space, they engaged an external consultant to conduct research and help with the positioning process.

They explored the competitive landscape, market trends, and the company’s unique value proposition.

Through testing and feedback, they arrived at the positioning as a revenue automation intelligence engine, emphasizing the company's ability to predict and prioritize revenue-generating actions, automate revenue intelligence, and provide data-driven insights for go-to-market teams.

The repositioning efforts showed a 2X increase in demo conversions.

In this episode, Curran talks about:

The importance of positioning before messaging and branding, as it provides a solid foundation for effective communication and differentiation in a crowded market.
Vetting new job opportunities: funding, understanding their key metrics (CAC, LTV, churn), board involvement, and the experience of the founders.
Using a test and learn approach to their messaging change by conducting bi-weekly tests on their website, paid advertising, and other channels to gather data and feedback.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Outbound selling is here to stay—but to make it work, efficiency is key.

Of course, the task at hand isn’t lost on Salesintel.io CEO Manoj Ramnani, who’s tools are designed to do just that. Salesintel.io is a go-to-market intelligence platform that helps marketing, sales, and revenue operations teams research prospective accounts and find contact information.

Ramnani is most excited about “Predictive AI” where it has the potential to predict future intent based on historical data so that sales teams can target the right prospects and tailor their outreach accordingly.

For example, if a company has recently purchased Salesforce and is using it for CRM and HubSpot for marketing, and you have six BDRs and AEs, it is highly likely that they would be interested in purchasing a sales cadence software.

In addition, Ramnani and host Ken Lempit discuss:

How the sales process is shifting towards a demand generation approach and what it takes to build efficient pipelines and generating meaningful conversations with potential customers.
The role of AI and machine learning in enhancing account intelligence and making it more actionable.
Outbound sales efforts are still essential, but sales leaders need to embrace the changing sales landscape, leverage AI and account intelligence to drive efficiency, and prioritize personalized and value-driven outbound sales efforts.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

A good co-founder is hard to find.

But what if you could hire one on an hourly basis?

That’s what Jason Shapiro, CEO and founder of 82i talks about in this episode. 82i is a strategic growth services firm that serves as “a co-founder for hire” to help with growth functions such as raising capital and hiring so founders can keep their eye on what truly matters--revenue.

Key takeaways:

The dynamic nature of investability and the importance of building on a solid business foundation while remaining open to creative solutions to attract investors.
How and why a founder may need to “let go” of certain things to build an appropriate team for growth.
Why an overconfident founder could scare investors away

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

In this episode, guest host Jason Myers interviews Alex George, the head of marketing at Hint Health--a platform that is redefining healthcare by providing back-end software for the direct primary care market.

Alex shares insights into Hint Health's go-to-market strategy and how they enable the growth of the direct pay model in the healthcare industry. The company adopted a HubSpot-like model for educating its client practices resulting in 90 percent of client acquisition being inbound.

Key Takeaways:

How to use educational content as a key driver of business success.
Aligning content with the buyer journey and how to ensure they can find what they need with minimal resistance.
Leveraging agencies to and collective members to deliver superior marketing results.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

In this episode, Allyson Havener, VP of Marketing from TrustRadius is back to talk about their yearly report on the B2B buyer-seller disconnect with some serious updates.

Last year, the report focused on the self-serve economy—they want product information readily available without talking to sales and then they would validate customer proof points.

All of that still holds, and the good news for vendors is that companies are still spending on technology.

The bad news is that with the changes in the economic climate, it’s all about consolidation, time and cost savings, third-party validations, and in many cases, adding the CFO to the buying committee…

Yuck.

That all translates to some significant changes for most B2B vendors’ go-to-market strategies if they want to align with today’s buyer.

For example:

Because the content noise volume confuses buyers, they’re relying more on their own past experiences and ability to research proof. That goes way beyond what vendors are used to providing in their content.
If you’re not transparent in your pricing, buyers will find it, potentially from your competitor.
More than ever, buyers are resistant to talking to sales until they’re way down the funnel. And if they easily can’t get the information they’re looking for…

This is a must-listen episode for all B2B marketers that want to stay ahead of the competition.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

We talk a lot with our customers about the 97%. The people who have problems you solve, but don’t know there’s a solution and certainly don’t know about you.

That’s what we talked about with Olgo Noha, CMO of SplitMetrics at the recent Ascent Conference in San Francisco.

Split Metrics is in a relatively new market with little competition—but there is little solution-awareness.

Therefore, their strategy has focused on education. And when you have a complex product that requires education—customer creation is the name of the game.

Also in this episode:

Looking for the pivot in terms of go to market or your product or even operational side of things.
How SplitMetrics restructured their sales teams to focus on a single portfolio of products.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Why are some SaaS companies raising significant funds while others struggle to find their first customers or determine what to build?

We caught up with Sanjit Singh Dang, the Chairman and Co-founder of U First Capital, at the Ascent conference and he shares his insights as a VC evaluating startups—most notably how VCs now require more proof points on the customer side and ask the crucial question of "why now?" to evaluate product market fit with startup opportunities.

He also discusses effective pitch tactics, such as showcasing customer feedback and engaging in whiteboard sessions to understand the entrepreneur's passion and clarity of thought.

Check out this episode for valuable insights into today’s world of SaaS and AI investments.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Does anyone really understand their health benefits?

Most of us have experienced going to HR with a benefits question, only to be redirected to a call center just to sit on hold and maybe get answers.

Guy Benjamin, CEO and co-founder of Healthee, developed a way to simplify this age-old problem with a platform that lets employees easily navigate their health and wellness benefits, and even helps choose the best plan for them.

In just two years, Healthee has managed to raise $26 million dollars. But it hasn’t been simple or easy. Benjamin declares that starting Healthee has been his toughest challenge yet - even more challenging his prior experience as an Israeli fighter pilot.

He shares his experience as a founder, and other key takeaways including:

The perks of outsourcing the R&D team from Israel (and spoiler, they are not all financial)
How AI boosts customer experience and gives key insights to employers
Hiring the right experts to fill in your knowledge gaps
Finding the champion in the organization you’re selling to - in this case it’s HR

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

When Stacy Epstein became the CMO of Freshworks a few years ago, their PLG motion was doing okay. But approaching marketing from her success with other enterprise SaaS startups, Epstein expanded the marketing and sales motion to include more traditional demand gen tactcis—direct sales, events, Account-Based Marketing.

Now they can fully meet the buyer where they’re at—calling it Buyer Led Growth.

In this episode recorded live at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco, Epstein shares her expertise including:

How the PLG motion is different and should be treated.
Dealing with churn in the early years
Freshworks incorporation of AI and why you might not want to share everything with ChatGPT.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

What are you trying to do in your forecasting process that you're not getting from your CRM?

That’s the question Aviso set out to answer for its clients by leveraging advanced analytics. Their software helps sales teams optimize their strategies, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve their sales outcomes.

At the recent Ascent Conference in San Francisco, we sat down to talk with their chief marketing officer Amit Panda who shared how they found their product-market fit during the pandemic, the ability to adapt to changing market dynamics, and the significance of building a strong brand.

Key takeaways:

Leading with pain points instead of demoing features.
Investing where others aren’t in a cost-efficient way.
Positioning agility when copycats catch up.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Chip House has had a long career in SaaS with companies such as ExactTarget, Salesforce, and SharpSpring.

Now as the CMO at Insightly, we caught up with Chip at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco and got him to share his experiences with all things B2B marketing, including:

Product-market fit
The role of customer success in marketing
Leveraging AI, and
Solving the attribution problem.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

How many good sales emails have you gotten?

Personally, I can count them on one hand.

Most of us can sniff out a sales email in a split second--the headline is cheesy, it’s about them, and it’s completely irrelevant. Obviously, sellers haven’t done their homework.

That’s the opportunity we discussed in my interview with Lavender AI’s Jen Allen-Knuth and Will Aitken at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco. Their tool helps sellers write better emails—or as Aitken says, “stop them from writing such bad ones.”

Using AI to comb through millions of sales emails, Lavender has solid data on what works and what doesn’t to coach your sales team before they hit send, giving them the best opportunity for engagement.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

The best structure for sales emails that you’re probably not doing.
Why emails under 50 words and boring subject lines get the best replies.
The most overlooked thing by sellers. (Hint: it’s about them and not about you).

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

People just don’t pick up the phone like they used to, and as a result, outbound call response rates are few and far between.

A rep that makes 100 calls a day may only get a handful of connects. It’s such a grueling and inefficient process that many companies have abandoned the phone altogether.

The problem is that sales ultimately is based on having valuable conversations. And if you’re not having them, your pipeline will suffer.

So, what if you could improve the connection rate and have more conversations?

That’s what Orum’s VP of Sales Colin Specter talked to us about live at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco.

Their product claims to be the most efficient way to generate human-to-human conversations on the phone by using AI to drive more live conversations and bring back the buzz of a sales floor—even when reps are virtual.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The importance of product-market fit to scale.
The addition of long-term demand generation after succeeding with short-term sales KPIs.
The importance of finding the champion that will do the hard selling internally for you.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Why can a person with an iPhone in their bedroom with no budget create videos that get millions of views, while B2B companies that hire professionals can’t seem to get a fraction of that engagement?

That’s the problem Michael Hoffman set out to solve with his company GatherVoices.

Traditional agency production processes are expensive, slow, and don't scale well, which hinders B2B companies from creating video content for various channels like social media and websites.

When you look at consumer videos, it’s the funny, interesting, and fantastic stories that go viral—and it has little to do with the production value.

Hoffman proposes that B2B companies think differently about their brand and how they produce more “authentic” video content and find what resonates.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

To scale video production efficiently, companies should prioritize capturing genuine stories from customers, employees, and partners, avoiding overproduction, and focusing on delivering authentic content that resonates with their audience.
How to tap into user-generated content by actively encouraging users to share their experiences through video.
Hoffman’s perspective on when, how, and why to take investment and the importance of finding investors who share your vision.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

In this episode, fractional CMO Andrew Bolis shares how owning a pipeline number and being responsible for specific revenue-related targets not only helps sales and marketing teams work towards common goals, but also provides leverage in conversations with the CFO.

Other Key Insights from this episode include:

Bringing in the right fractional CMO for your situation.
Working with agencies to fill in skill gaps and drive faster results.
Justifying marketing expenses with the C-suite.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

You’ve probably heard the criticisms of B2B marketing—it’s boring and lacks creativity.

And besides, it’s way too expensive to produce ads like B2C companies.

In this episode, Melissa Rosenthal, Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp shares her approach to creating remarkable content without breaking the bank.

Coming from B2C powerhouses like Buzzfeed and Cheddar, Rosenthal immediately saw the blue-ocean opportunity in B2B to differentiate. So, she built an in-house creative agency at ClickUp by investing in the right people and equipment to produce Madison Avenue quality content at a fraction of the cost.

As a result, they’ve taken on the gorillas in its crowded space, growing from 60 to over 1000 employees in under three years.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The portfolio approach to creative that enables ClickUp to create hundreds of pieces of content cost-effectively instead of betting the farm on a singular campaign.
Why you should treat your entire content strategy as an evergreen campaign
Why securing leadership buy-in from the beginning is crucial in fostering a culture of creativity.

Check out some of ClickUp’s Youtube ads here:

Before ClickUp
Super Bowl Ad 2022
Jira Gets Fired
Evolution of GPT

Other resources to check out:
Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Working at Google’s mapping team, Steve Benson thought that field salespeople needed a lot more functionality to adequately plan their routes.

So, in 2012 founded Badger Maps and set out to build a tool where field sales teams could not only build routes, but also visualize their customers on a map on their mobile device that automatically connected with their CRM.

To ensure product/market fit, Benson personally talked to hundreds of field salespeople to ensure that this was a problem worth paying for and not just a nice-to-have.

Key takeaways from this episode:

When and what skills/background to look for when hiring the first salesperson.
The importance of founder involvement in early product management.
Debt vs. equity financing and how Badger Maps used debt most effectively.
The role that thought leadership content played in building their reputation.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

When Susan Peich joined Monitaur AI as their head of marketing earlier this year, the power (and dangers) of AI was still mostly talk amongst data scientists.

How quickly things change.With the rise of ChatGPT in recent months, AI's power (and danger) are now at the forefront causing companies to scramble to figure out how to handle its governance.

That’s where Monitaur.ai comes in. They help companies in highly regulated environments such as insurance, healthcare and financial to not only leverage the potential of AI and ML but also to mitigate risks.

In this episode, Peich talks with host Ken Lempit about what companies should be thinking about today with AI Governance including:

What investments in AI and ML are right for the business
What are responsible and ethical uses of AI and ML and developing governance models
Generating supervised inputs and outputs to generate evidence-based reports for compliance.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

If we’re being honest, there's a big difference between the imagined buyer's journey that marketers invent and what’s happening in reality.

But then, we’ve always made those assumptions because it’s nearly impossible to track.

Or is it?

That’s what Molly St. Louis, Head of Marketing at DealTale talks about in this episode - applying AI to track the previously un-trackable journey.

DealTale is a SaaS that leverages causal machine learning methods to track buyers while they’re still anonymous (by IP address) and then backfill their information later when they fill out a form—even when it’s months (or years) later so they can see what is transpiring and then replicate it in future campaigns.

With their innovative ChatGPT-like interface, campaign analytics become accessible to all marketers, not just those in large companies with data analysts.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

The importance of understanding causality for mapping customer journeys.
How AI can go deep on attribution, customer journey mapping and causality.
Remember that marketing is fun, and not to worry about always “getting it right.”

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

In this episode, Matt Trifiro, CEO of Vapor.io, joins host Ken Lempit to discuss the insidious tyranny of artificial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how to fight back against their oppressive hold on SaaS marketing.

Long gone are the days when early adopters of advertising platforms could easily dominate their market niche, as the law of diminishing returns has caught up with all forms of marketing, leaving SaaS marketers struggling to find innovative ways to attract and retain customers.

But with CFOs and CEOs demanding increased results on yesterday’s KPIs, how can SaaS marketers break free from the shackles of convention and embrace experimentation and agility?

Find out in this enlightening conversation, where Trifiro and Lempit explore topics such as:

Establishing a culture that’s tolerant of experimentation and agility by constantly testing and iterating.
How investing in customer retention is the real determination of lifetime value.
Why you should always be asking, “what could I be doing with that money?” Is there a better way to spend it than on 10 BDRs or $100K tools?

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Despite building a great product and amassing close to 1000 customers, LiquidPlanner struggled to continue on the same growth trajectory.

Customers expected broader capabilities. Competitors had more money. And as access to capital tightened, the board decided to look for a partner.

They found Tempo, a complimentary business that will help deliver better portfolio management capabilities as well as its connectivity to Atlassian’s Jira–something their customers are looking forward to.

Even though the acquisition happened a few weeks ago, the focus is squarely on delivering better portfolio management capabilities and confidence to project teams than anyone else in the market.

In this episode, LiquidPlanner CEO Ted Hawksford talks about the salesmanship involved with internal stakeholders–and while it’s not the 10X valuation that most startups hope for, it’s the best outcome for everyone involved.

Key takeaways:

The challenges and concerns that arise when the two development teams are asked to work together before the deal is consummated.
Communications with customers about an impending acquisition and providing assurances about the future of product development.
The importance of having clean books before entering an acquisition and preparing for every detail to be scrutinized.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

For marketers, breaking through the trust gap is getting harder. Prospective buyers won’t believe it without some third-party validation.

So, how can you break through that trust gap in a new and innovative way?

That’s the problem Jeff Ernst set out to solve as the founder of SlapFive, a customer marketing solution that makes it simple to engage and mobilize customers to drive growth.

In over 2000 interviews with CMOs during his tenure at Forrester, Ernst notes that overwhelmingly, the number one thing that buyers trust and seek out is what their friends and colleagues think and what your other customers’ experiences are.

“They want a crystal ball into the life of a customer. They know it’s not perfect and don’t expect it to be--and they can only get that from your current customers.”

In this episode, Ernst talks about his journey as an entrepreneur and shares his advice on:

How to leverage customers in ways beyond case studies, testimonials, and referrals.
How to find an unmet need in the marketplace and ensure product/market fit.
And most importantly, what marketers should be doing today to build trust with both current and prospective clients.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Having spent a decade growing a retail mortgage origination business, Jason Doshi noticed that the movement of funds surrounding the real estate transaction was still very antiquated.

A few years later, he built Payments.io, a SaaS digital platform that allows title companies and real estate brokerages to send and receive digital money transfers, saving everyone money and time while reducing the risk of fraud.

Doshi recently raised $3 Million and he talks in this episode about their challenges and opportunities such as:

White labeling as a strategic initiative
Providing a competitive advantage to customers in a challenged market
Soliciting the customer’s input in establishing your business model

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Starting his career as a research scientist, Harsha Rajasimha became interested in addressing the issue of clinical trial recruitment after realizing that many promising drugs were not making it to market due to recruitment delays.

To better understand the problem, he conducted interviews with 3,000 stakeholders of clinical trials, including patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies and found that 85% of those delays were because of recruitment issues.

Rajasimha created Jeeva Informatics, a platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify potential candidates for clinical trials based on their medical records and other data. The platform also helps to match patients with clinical trials that are appropriate for them.

The company has had success in improving clinical trial recruitment rates, with some trials seeing a 50% increase in enrollment. Jeeva Informatics is also working to expand its platform to include a wider range of data sources and to improve the user experience for patients and physicians.

Key takeaways:

Conducting research and gathering insights from stakeholders before building a product is critical in finding product/market fit
Technology, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, can play a role in addressing complex problems and improving processes.
Creating a product that is easy to use and meets the needs of users is important for adoption and success.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

There’s a tendency for entrepreneurs to believe that the motivations for starting a company is the fame and fortune.

But as Aseem Chandra, co-founder and CEO of Immersa explains, “That's the absolute wrong reason. You get into a startup because you love the problem, and you can't wait to see what that solution's going to turn out to be, and you're willing to give 10 years of your life to it.”

Knowing that the two biggest reasons for startup failure (they run out of money and irreconcilable differences amongst the founders) Chandra first made sure that they had the disagreement piece solved before starting. He chose a co-founder that he trusted and could establish a process for working through disagreements positively.

The money piece is a bit trickier, especially coming from big company background where many work habits don’t apply in startup world.

In his transition from big companies into startup world, Chandra operated as an entrepreneur in residence with Global VC Fund Mayfield to take the time needed to “unlearn and re-learn” how to run a startup.

Today, Immersa has raised over $10M in series A funding, and with a relatively small staff, they’re positioned well for growth.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Choosing the right partners and executive team and how to operate on trust
How an “entrepreneur-in-residence” might be a good path
The customer research involved in ensuring product-market fit

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

While working for a large manufacturer in the film and broadcast industry and visiting over 200 Film and TV studios, David Kaszycki spotted a big problem.

Engineers had to stay up to date with updates, critical security patches, general maintenance and accessing manuals and documents for over 10,000 different pieces of technology.

With his partner, Kaszycki started Beam Dynamics to build a common interface platform that would bring all of it together. Engineers can upload or connect their inventory list and access the data on thousands of manufacturers.

Now with incredible potential to expand in multiple industries such as stadiums and arenas, hospitals and houses of worship, Kaszycki has opted for the profitability path instead of pressured expansion from VCs.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The unforeseen advantages of building a startup in a smaller city.
The difficulties of defining a new category where there isn’t a competitive offering.
The importance of building a strong team and keeping everyone aligned.
Working with large system integrators and resellers as partner channels.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Is it possible to get to minimum viable product (MVP) in 100 days or less?

Our guest this week, Michael Lazor, CEO of SPSoft says it is with the right development partner and the necessary preparation.

Easier said than done.

SPSoft is a software developer specializing in healthcare and telehealth and in this episode, Lazor talks through his methodologies for:

Choosing the right development partner (lots of pitfalls to avoid)
Combining internal and external development resources
The research and prep work required for building your MVP, and…

…should you even do an MVP at all?
Lazor shares his experience developing products no one bought, and what you could do instead to minimize investment losses.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Why do 90 percent of acquisitions fail for the buyer?

According to Ari Kahn, President and CEO of Bridgeline, a big reason is because they’re not leveraging the customer base to create greater lifetime value (LTV), so they don’t adequately recover the original customer acquisition costs (CAC).

Bridgline Digital has acquired its way to a suite of SaaS solutions that bridge the gaps between marketing, content, commerce, social and insights to grow online revenue for its customers.

Kahn’s secret acquisition sauce comes in evaluating targets that make sense both from a selling perspective (getting new logos) and by enhancing customer lifetime value for its existing customers by bringing appealing new technologies.

In this episode, Kahn shares his stories and specific methodologies for bringing companies into the fold, including:

His first acquisition during the dot com bust
Understanding the CAC to LTV ratio
Strategies for dealing with “the cash flow trough”
How providing multiple paths for customer solutions leads to greater LTV

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Like most SaaS companies, Brandon Metcalf, CEO & Founder of Place struggled with the outbound sales model.

Out of necessity, they started looking at why companies weren’t buying their products. They found that over half bought nothing.

In other words, no decision.

So they decided to flip the script and educate prospective buyers on what could happen instead of finding the people whose arm they could twist a sales conversation.

They put a lot of work into messaging, revamped their website to let buyers self-serve, they started a podcast, and focused heavily on LinkedIn content.

Less than a year later, they saw a flurry of inbound activity, and for the first time had more revenue from it than any other source.

If you’re struggling with the outbound sales model and don’t know how to fix it, this episode is a must listen.

Other interesting topics include:

Building products on Salesforce – the pros and cons
Recruiting the right people by getting specific on the ask
How to use podcasting to stay in touch with your customers

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

There’s a lot of hype with Product-Led Growth (PLG) with the promise of low-cost customer acquisition and streamlined expansion.

But as Peter Zawistowicz, Pace’s head of marketing says that when you introduce a PLG motion into an organization with an existing direct sales motion, you get an interesting set of problems.

Most notably, sellers in a PLG motion are almost always left in the dark while still trying to hit their numbers.

Intercede too early and it could artificially inflate price points.

On the flip side, self-serve customers that lack proper guidance when problems arise could leave money on the table and lead to churn.

That’s the problem that Pace is tackling with a new set of tools that are built for customer facing roles that allows them to focus on the users that really need their attention and eliminating the rest of the noise.

In this episode, Zawistowicz draws on his (and the founders’) background with companies like Gremlin and MongoDB that successfully implemented PLG motions to help Pace customers to find enlightenment—the right mix of sales and customer service intervention to maximize growth.

Other notable topics include:

What to do when you don’t have product-marketing fit
Not getting beat by hype cycles
Getting the DIY champion on your side
How to provide salespeople with actionable insights vs letting them self-serve

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

It’s estimated that 40 percent of all warehouse worker movement is wasteful. A simple example is a worker having to walk through and assemble 12 items that need to be shipped to a customer. What’s the optimal order of items to minimize the steps

That’s the problem Yosh Eisbart, CEO of Fullfilld is tackling with their warehouse management orchestration platform. Their system paints a “digital twin” of the physical warehouse, digitizes it, and ingests all that data into the software.

So instead of a static image (which doesn’t communicate any data about optimal flow), they’re able to use AI and ML to capture data around the entire buzz happening in the warehouse beehive, analyze the data and calculate the optimal workflow.

As compelling as this solution potentially is for warehouses, Fulfilld must overcome problem awareness issues and status quo bias to penetrate new accounts.

How are they doing it?

Eisbart shares his learnings about crossing that chasm including:

Getting those first five customers to demonstrate product-market fit
How they vetted “smart money” that could impact business development from the beginning.
Overcoming “problem awareness” by launching smaller components and expanding based on use cases.
Their strategy for scaling through channel partners.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

As fans of the Challenger Sale methodology, we know that getting prospects to move off their status quo to make a change is paramount to winning a new deal.

But as Tim Riesterer Chief Visionary for B2B Decision Labs (and self-professed “research nerd”) talks about in his new book The Expansion Sale, growth for a vast majority of companies comes in retention and expansion.

Because most deals start out too small, underpriced, and overserviced, the question is how to keep and grow those customers when it comes to renewal time? (Oh, by the way, the price is going up.)

In many ways, renewing isn’t just renewing. And upselling isn’t just upselling. It’s all reselling.

Therefore, challenging their status quo won’t help you—you are the status quo, and you want to leverage that.

And there’s more commercial activities in that existing customer interaction and engagement that you need to be savvy about, such as:

How to defend your position as the status quo bias
Transitioning from the decider to the doer and setting up the business case
The four must-win commercial moments of the client relationship
The framework and content choreography for having the renewal conversation
Documenting mutual investment so they view change as a loss and view the new vendor as “risky business.”

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

The Expansion Sale: Four Must-Win Conversations to Keep and Grow Your Customers

Today’s B2B tech buyer has a much greater expectation and appreciation for self-service—they don’t want to have to jump through hoops or talk to a sales rep to find out what the business does.

But what to do about it?

It’s a difficult shift for traditional marketers and sellers—to be more buyer-centric--which is why we talked with Tyler Lessard, vice president of marketing at Vidyard, a video technology company that provides marketers and sales teams with custom video messaging and analytical tools.

Lessard provides an action-packed 30 minutes of tangible advice…stuff you can do right now to have a greater impact such as creating a library of on-demand demo videos (and how to sell it to the hyper-competitive leadership crowd).

And, rethinking the “Get a Demo” button that most of you have in the hero image.

He challenges you to think about what customers want when they come to your website:

They want to see what you do
They want to see the products in action so they can really understand how it works.
They want to learn about your pricing.
They want to understand how you compare to others.

And then…they’ll want to talk to sales or do a live demo.

“It’s not about selling better, it’s about helping customers buy better,” he says.

Maximize those things, and you’ll be WAY ahead of the pack.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

If you want to make good on the promises you made to investors and grow the company the single most important thing the C-suite needs to get right is hiring.

That’s why we spoke with Michael Bertoni, CEO of PhillyTech.co—a hiring agency dedicated to SaaS.

Most startups have no idea how to hire people and build high-performing teams. They think they can do themselves and find out quickly where the mines are buried.

With a background in sales and lead generation, Bertoni has developed a method that is 100 steps deep. They’re hunting talent by hyper-targeting, and that specialization, combined with his prowess for lead generation, is what makes them so successful.

In this episode, Bertoni shares some of the ingredients to his secret sauce including:

Finding SaaS specialized help that understand how the business operates and the roles and responsibilities required
Must focus on hypertargeting – much like Account Based Marketing (ABM)
How to optimize the hiring process and provide the candidate a great experience
Why the best candidates aren’t on the market, and how to attract them.

At the 2019 Ascent Conference in New York, Aptiv.io’s CEO Guy Mounier recalls their informal poll about how well their demand generation programs were working.

Two-thirds of respondents said, “we’re fine” or “we’re good.”

Fast forward to the same conference in November 2022 and almost everyone was struggling to cut through the noise to generate qualified leads. Even those with good results were still getting pressure from boards and investors to produce more leads at a lower cost.

Effective demand generation has become like Moore’s Law in reverse – you have to double down on marketing spend every year to maintain the same number of leads.

To solve this conundrum, companies have gravitated towards AI platforms that identify buyer intent signals to prioritize account focus—a space Mounier calls “Revenue AI” where AI platforms can identify buyer intent signals for accounts potentially entering a buying window.

Only a third of the survey respondents knew about the potential of these platforms though—and 90 percent of them said they couldn’t afford it--the value for the money and the complexity didn’t make sense to deploy.

The game changer according to Mounier is to have a 360-degree approach to intent signals (versus the siloed approaches that exist today) and do it a quarter of the cost.

With market uncertainty, and the average CMO tenure at 40 months (2020), conducting an executive level job search at some point is inevitable.

While most trade off past relationships, Justin Schmidt, VP of Marketing at Compt.io suggests that “something really magical” happens by putting on the candidate hat and interviewing again as somebody off the street.

By taking interview opportunities that he ultimately didn’t think he would be interested in, Schmidt found value in “the batting practice” - honing his interviewing skills, asking better questions, and “getting the jitters out” for the right opportunity.

Added to Compt’s leadership team in August, Schmidt passes along advice from his recent job search experience including:

How he found the right opportunity (and the right CEO)
Interviewing for the first time; exerting control of the content and narrative, and having the right mindset
Getting proper help on resume writing, career coaching and questions to ask.
Building a new team leveraging past experience, but not beholden to it.

At the kickoff of their recent user conference, Dave Becker, CEO of CampusESP told the story of the person he first approached with his company idea for a SaaS that enables parent involvement in higher education.

She told him that “parent involvement is a fad, and I don’t think you have a company here.”

Nine years later, the company has gone from fad, to nice-to-have, to need-to have with over 260 schools representing over four million parents using the platform.

So, how do you pull off category creation?

Certainly not with VC money, although, not for lack of trying.

“It’s a long journey of educating people on the problem, educating them on a solution, and then educating on your solution.”

In fact, Becker shares with fellow entrepreneurs that however long you think it’s going to take, double it.

In this episode, Becker shares key learnings such as:

How difficult it is to get those first few customers.
How they used extensive market and customer research to build a foundation for client acquisition.
Why they had to abandon branding and positioning that didn’t serve the value proposition.
Why it’s important to find the right support network early.

In his bathroom at home is a hole in the door that Becker refuses to fix. “It’s a reminder of how hard this is, and it keeps me grounded.”

If you’ve had the experience working with a large company, day one consists of paperwork--lots of it--and it contributes to a poor first impression.

Simply increasing the percentage of people that accept offers and actually start work would have a massive bottom-line impact.

And it’s not just day one. Research shows that what happens in the first 90 days of an employee’s tenure plays a big role in retention.

It’s hard for the all-in-one HR software behemoths to be experts at every component an HR team must solve, but so is getting traction as a best-of-breed startup.

That’s the situation CEO Mike Ehrle walked into a year ago at Click Boarding, a SaaS that’s an employee experience platform and provides modern compliant HR solutions to impact higher growth and retention rates.

In this episode, Ehrle sheds some light on his experience with:

Fixing internal issues and transforming to a collaborative culture
Dealing with unforeseen issues he missed in his due diligence (like development staff located in Ukraine prior to Russia’s invasion)
The need for product and business expertise to build key relationships in target accounts.

If you’ve found it harder to engage buyers today, our interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of TrustRadius is a must listen.

For the last five years, TrustRadius has published a report based on surveying 2000 technology buyers and hundreds of vendors to understand how buyer behavior is changing.

Today’s buyer has an overarching desire to control their journey and it isn’t linear. They want to find information online without barriers, transparent pricing, use case validation, independent validation, and the ability to touch and feel the product through a trial or demo of some kind.

While some vendors are waking up to the fact that old sales and marketing playbooks are falling apart, they’re not sure what needs to change.

In this episode, Bhagat details what’s working, including:

Developing content that’s educational and informs the buyer while aligning with the company’s narrative
Changing the sales and marketing mindset to help the buyer along their journey of discovery
The role that analysts should play as independent, third-party devices
How to imbed customer listening functions into marketing strategy
The different levels of buyer intent data and what it means for engagement

And much more…

Get the report here: 2022 B2B Buying Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer

Working as a CFO for tech companies in Australia, Jason Atkins saw a need to automate the very manual and frustrating process involved in equity raises–compounded by a global workforce.

While doing volunteer work in the Gold Coast tech scene, he met his soon-to-be cofounder Kim Hanson and together established a SaaS called Cake Equity with a goal to make equity easier to handle for all stakeholders.

Together, they established a beachhead market in Australia by niching down into startups where the competition was scarce, but knew they had to identify larger markets to grow.

Given the willingness to use software and technology, combined with a spirit of innovation, expanding in the US was an obvious choice.

We caught up with Atkins on his whirlwind US tour to talk about:

The current fundraising environment
Establishing a beachhead in Australia and thinking global-first
Leveraging off of the success of Australian-based Atlassian and Canva.
How starting a services firm helped in the establishment of a SaaS
And their overall sales journey – starting with founder-led, followed by marketing and sales-led and landing on product-led growth

When you take a marketing leadership position for a startup where the opportunity is wide open, what do you prioritize?

That’s the situation Matt Dilworth faced back in February (2022) when he joined Anduin, a fintech SaaS startup that streamlines private market transactions.

Having followed CEO and co-founder Eliot Hodges whom he’d worked with previously at Blend. Dilworth found that partner marketing was the biggest low-hanging fruit opportunity because the company already had established relationships that could be leveraged.

Also, especially important since private equity, venture capital and hedge funds work largely by referral.

He was also a bit shocked by the direct referrals to come from public relations and attributes their success by being holistic and organic about the communities they wanted to penetrate.

Dilworth has a lot of great advice for marketing leaders that find themselves with a growing startup in need of prioritization and direction including:

Leveraging off current relationships to bolster referrals,
How to use public relations to communicate with existing networks and carry your messages to broader communities,
And leveraging partner marketing to take some pressure off early sales and marketing teams so they can establish long-term initiatives that creates customers.

It seems like lead generation has become the Red-Headed stepchild of modern marketing. But it’s certainly not going away—especially since most SaaS companies have built their sales and marketing infrastructures around it.

It does need to evolve though, and that was the gist of our discussion with Cristina Daroca, Senior Director of demand marketing at Riverbed Technology.

Leads are not created equal.

For example, if someone wants a demo or to speak with sales, “Speed to lead” still applies. You should follow up with them as quickly as possible when they’re sales ready.

However, for content downloads of assets such as white papers, it’s not a good idea to annoy them with a quick phone call. Instead, try understanding where they are in their journey so you can provide the right assistance at the right time.

Daroca also talks about how ABM and demand generation should not be separate functions and must work closely together. It’s when people start engaging with content where your ABM motion can start.

Overall, lead generation and the lead funnel aren’t the problem. It's about how we evolve that to ensure that we're creating the demand so that when leads come in, they’re the ones we actually want.

Like sales, marketers have a hard time with a product or service they don’t believe in.

When Amber Bogie was searching for the right marketing opportunity, she was less concerned about the product and more concerned about joining a mission driven company.

So, she developed a quadrant:

What does the company offer as a product?
What is the company culture and how does that fit in with you?
What is the role itself and how does that fit with how you want to grow?
What kind of leadership does it have?

She found that at Reachdesk—a company committed to delivering customers and prospects a moment of delight and connection had the right mix.

Now three months into her new gig, Bogie is bringing a holistic view of the marketing and sales funnel where targeted demand generation fills the top, and once they enter the CRM, account-based touchpoints begin with channels and tactics creating a flywheel effect.

And account-based experience (ABX) is the key piece to create the flywheel. Brand drives demand, ABX throughout the entire journey, and customer advocacy fuels back to the top.

Aligning with Sales is job one for David Gabriel, head of marketing for the fast-growing startup eVolve MEP.

“Sales has the hard job. They’re in the trenches and we want to do everything we can (as marketers) to make their jobs easier.”

That doesn’t mean that they aren’t looking at the long-term picture—they do many things that keep them in touch with their customers.

For example, they surveyed customers during COVID and found they were itching for group interactions. So they put together a Top Golf event, and it completely sold out. “If we’d followed the mainstream thinking on events we would have missed out on that opportunity.

Surviving at a startup requires serious agility combined with a north star of profitability and marketing ROI.

Gabriel achieves that by hiring “T-Shaped marketers,” which he defines as having a core skill but can also serve as utility players in all aspects of marketing. Depending on what sales is seeing determines what marketing focuses on - so the marketers have to be ready to pivot.

Most companies do “checklist marketing” by default: We need to be on every social channel. We should have a newsletter for every customer segment. We need to go to all these conferences.

Fractional CMO Yasmin Morrison challenges her clients to think about marketing more like an investment portfolio and every quarter, you make bets.

If it doesn’t pay dividends, get out. Double down if it does.

And you can put the odds massively in your favor if you apply the 80-20 rule (also known as the Pareto Principle) where a small percentage of activities drive a large percent of results.

For example, 20 percent of your web pages are driving 80 percent of your traffic. Or, 20 percent of your blog posts are driving 80 percent of your leads.

“Because SaaS companies collect a lot of data, they’re usually sitting on a gold mine,” she says.

After conducting market research for one client, she found that two out of 100 integrations had significantly more demand than all the others combined.

They wrote one blog post on one topic and one use case. A month later, they had 10Xed their web traffic.

Speaking in terms of marketing as an investment portfolio will also improve communications with the CFO—it’s language they understand.

Having been with Refine Labs, MJ Peters knew how to sniff out the opportunity to work with a company that gets marketing.

Now four months into her new gig as the VP of Marketing for CoLab Software, MJ talks about building a demand gen first marketing model where marketing is measuring only Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and Sales Accepted Opportunities (SAOs) as opposed to anything further up the funnel (like MQLs, content downloads, etc.) that’s normally tracked in the lead gen model.

That’s still hard to do—the industry has problem awareness (engineer tools live on a desktop making it hard to collaborate efficiently) but making the case to do anything about it is still a tough sell.

And it takes time. Demand gen happens more slowly than lead gen because you’re measuring lagging metrics instead of leading indicators.

Leadership has the stomach for it though. They’ve invested heavily in customer research, and MJ sees the opportunity to create a category for “Design Engagement Systems” where people would eventually search more on that term, leading right to them.

Given that most companies aren’t working with a blank slate, MJ also has advice for those that want to make the shift but can’t turn lead gen off overnight.

And as long as they’re open minded, the right marketing leader can have a big impact.

Where most SaaS companies experience problems with the effectiveness of demand capture strategies, Paddle had the opposite problem—they weren’t focused on long-term customer creation.

In the beginning, that was fine because they “were so busy and productive "Hoovering" up the in-market demand.”

Davies says that as a CMO, you always carry two time frames in your mind. One which is this quarter and next, making sure you’ve got a full pipeline, and the second timeline, which is how we’ll be positioned two years from now and how we’re warming them up now for future sales.

Some just aren’t ready now, and you don’t want to lose them in the future.

Another problem was messaging. Salespeople were stumbling around explaining the company’s mission to their customers.

Davies set out to change the overall company narrative to fit more in line with the Challenger Sale where you reframe the problem for prospects so that they’re looking at this problem in an entirely new perspective and bring them along for the journey.

“That results in a much easier sale whether they’re with sales or self-serve, they can go faster with less friction because marketing has paved the first few roads for them.”

In other words, demand generation for Paddle is making sales easier, and Davies explains in a way that all SaaS companies can emulate.

Getting specific about your ICP is an old saw—but why then aren’t more companies marketing efficiently?

Our guest, Annie Wissner, says the reason is because we’ve become too used to bull markets where you have wiggle room in marketing execution.

“We're still in that digital wave where it's primarily about Google Search, but there's a lot of other methodologies that can be utilized to get to customers and prospects in a much lower cost and effective manner.”

The times they are a changing—and those of us like Annie that have been through three recessions have a good idea about what comes next.

Bottom line, the companies that operate marketing with efficiency will thrive and those that don’t…

Well, don’t be in that category.Check out this episode for some clear strategies you can execute on immediately.

Suuchi Ramesh, founder and CEO of Suuchi Inc had envisioned a need for one single source of truth in supply chain across suppliers, factories, brands, retailers, warehouses, and customers when they began operations in 2017.

A bold vision, for sure.

But the timing (pre-COVID) helped making the space ripe for disruption.

In the same way that you’d eat an elephant (one bite at a time), Ramesh was able to break the problem statement into parts by connecting brands and retailers in the fashion industry with the network of factories in the Western hemisphere and expand to beauty, and Food & Beverages that make up 90 percent of their clientele.

Today, after successfully building from a series A fund raise three years ago, their efficient money management strategy has positioned them well for growth as they raise the next round and expand their go-to-market strategy to generate demand in the 10 percent dramatically increasing their total addressable market.

We knew that Dan Johnston, CEO of WorkStep had a great story about how they’ve shifted the go-to-market strategy as they’ve expanded post series B--especially for B2B SaaS marketers that have had to make the case for patience.

That’s in here, but the overall story is much bigger than that.

Having started managing a third-party logistics warehouse that imported trampolines, Johnston noticed something unsettling. It was staffed primarily with temp workers fraught with hidden costs.

Not only is there constant turnover and constant training, but there’s also a detrimental human impact. Workers can’t move up in the organization and lose $5-$6 per hour in the spread.

People shouldn’t be treated as cogs in a machine. They have valuable skills that are critical to the success of an organization. They’re talent.

That was the problem to solve. Starting small, WorkStep limited itself to Portland, Oregon where they provided software solutions that make it easy to directly employ frontline workers for their supply chain roles.

Starting small also gave them a big opportunity to learn about what their customers and their employees really need—to reduce turnover at scale.

Recently, WorkStep wrapped up a $25-million Series B fundraise to add fuel to what’s already working, and the best part is that the entire ecosystem wins.

The founding story of Fireflies.ai told by co-founder Krish Remineni sounds like a post-college rock band that turned into software hack.

Instead of going to graduate school (working as a PM at Microsoft), Remineni took his would-be co-founder up on an offer to “hang out” and “work on different things” in some free co-working space that a VC had given them in Boston.

When they had something real, they went back to San Francisco, went heads down, boostrapped, went through an accelerator, and raised a seed round.

A month later, the pandemic hits, everyone goes remote, and the roller coaster ride begins.

In the past 4 years, Remineni and co-founder Sam Udotong have been scaling up the abilities of an enterprise voice assistant (or AI) meeting assistant. But it’s a lot more than the mystery attendee you see popping up in your Zoom meetings.

But competing in a crowded space (with technology that wasn’t new) Remineni and co-founder Sam Udotong knew they needed a broader vision for the product.

So, they started looking at what teams needed that could be accomplished beyond automated notetaking. Their idea was transforming the product into voice workflow system for enterprises and for organizations.

For example, if you’re in a zoom meeting, you could say “Fireflies, pull up the Q2 financial reports and tell me what went right and what went wrong.”

Fireflies has capitalized on a product-led growth strategy from the beginning. They don’t spend very little on advertising today, and instead, doubled down on the freemium model, which gets the Fireflies.ai name is naturally viral in every single meeting.

Also, because they’ve spent a lot of time and effort to integrate with the major CRMs, and because they have a compelling vision of what could be done with the tech in the future, we’re switching our transcription service now.

Before you buy tech for Account Based Marketing (ABM), and even before you start picking target accounts, check out this episode with StrategicABM’s Chief Marketing Officer Declan Mulkeen.

Their firm is 100% focused on ABM and Mulkeen talks about how the tech vendors have popularized the approach in recent years, but they didn’t create it. (it’s been around for over 20 years, and he proves it.)

But today, most companies are getting into trouble by purchasing the tech first and launching ABM programs second.

That’s only one of the myriad of reasons that companies are experiencing poor results according to Mulkeen, who advises that "you should do ABM without technology and get it working first. And then you can worry about what tech you need later."

In fact, the only tech you need is a pen and paper. Write a strategy, think about the business outcomes, start small, test and measure.

If you’ve been struggling with ABM, wonder if it’s the right strategy, or don’t understand how it fits with other marketing and sales initiatives in the first place, the answers are waiting for you here in this action-packed 30 minutes of straight talk about ABM.

Referrals are the lifeblood of every business. The cost of acquisition is the lowest, and they tend to close faster and at higher rates, making the sales process WAY easier.

So why do companies spend so much on paid channels where the cost per lead is going up and the quality is going down at such a rapid pace?

Referrals have always been hard to scale—especially if you haven’t trained your people to ask.

Referral Factory founder Kirsty Sherman believes she’s figured out a solution, even for B2B SaaS companies, where the referral process can be embedded into the platform by providing incentives for users to easily refer their connections.

Raising capital for your SaaS has one purpose—to amplify and scale the business. It cannot define the business model or product-market fit for you.

And once you raise capital, the whole dynamic changes. The pressures are different (you’re now on the clock to deliver return for investors) and so is the go-to-market strategy (the founder relationships won’t be enough to scale).

With several successful fundraises and exits under his belt, Jeff Solomon, CEO of Markup Hero talks about how he’s bootstrapped companies to a certain monthly recurring revenue rate that made it much easier to attract the right capital.

Having started his current venture (Markup Hero) as a side project, he’s now able to decide whether or not to keep it as a lifestyle business or raise capital for a bigger exit.

Most companies fail with ABM because of their ad hoc execution. They target accounts as a wish list and continue to do business as usual.

The truth is that successful ABM requires an organizational mindset shift, and that doesn’t happen by changing it all at one time.

“Marketing usually gets it,” says Jennifer Leaver, senior global ABM Manager at Bazaarvoice. “The tougher sale is with sales. There’s a lot of change management involved.”

Leaver’s approach to ABM adoption was to start small with “sales friendly’s” (Two salespeople out of 200) where she piloted an ABM program and focused on engagement metrics into their target accounts such as click-through rates, impressions, and web traffic.

Later, she was able to measure pipeline in terms of full funnel metrics, they increased pipeline generation by 129%, increased opportunities by 57%, and deal velocity increased by 122%.

With triple digit number increases across the board, full adoption after that wasn’t hard.

If you’re thinking about adopting an ABM program or would like your ABM to reach its full potential, this episode is a must listen.

Healthcare is one of the most difficult industries to penetrate, even for established brands.
They’re risk-averse, have strong defenses against being sold to, sales cycles are long and they significant data protection requirements.

So how do you do gain traction as a financial management startup targeting hospitals and healthcare systems?

In this episode of SaaS Backwards, Ben Beadle-Ryby talks about how they’ve met this challenge by:

Building the company around subject matter experts with deep industry roots to earn immediate credibility and early customers
Leveraging VC connections who have connections in the space
Ensuring that they have all of the necessary certifications to protect data
Investing in long-term demand through thought leadership; positioning Akasa as thought leaders in AI applications for healthcare
Aligning his company's employees, customers and prospects around a larger mission to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare in the U.S.

Ben also talks about ways they built the company to increase the odds of being successful, including how they built the founding team and product concept. He introduces the idea of "founder dating," that helped them work on team dynamics and recruitment, as well as doing a lot of up-front work to "pressure test" their initial product ideas.

There's a lot of takeaways here in just 30 minutes... enjoy!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Business Development Representatives (BDRs) have typically been a sales function, as part of the compartmentalization of sales functions defined in Aaron Ross’ Predictable Revenue (2011).

What worked well for a decade has met challenges today. They don’t want the phone calls or emails until they’re ready.

In short, buyers have changed their research and buying process--what was predictable five years ago is…

Well, not so much.

Because prospecting is actually marketing, some innovative organizations have moved them under marketing and changed the incentives to focus on engagement over number of meetings booked.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for many B2B companies that have built their sales (and marketing) infrastructures around the Predictable Revenue Model.

As Vice President of Marketing at Intellum, Robyn Hazelton has led the charge to move their BDRs under marketing, develop a closer relationship with sales, and align all their sales, marketing, and customer success motions around the buyer.

In this episode, she talks about how they made the move to marketing, the organizational challenges, and how to use the data to drive better decisions.

The results speak for themselves—dramatically shorter sales cycles and four times higher revenue over the previous year.

It’s an illuminating interview and will help you evaluate whether or not your current sales and marketing process could be modified for greater efficiency.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

We’re at an inflection point as sales and marketing practitioners.

Some of us have heeded early warning signs as marketing and sales KPIs become harder to achieve, and others are just starting to pay attention. Or rather, they’re being forced to—because buyers are taking more control and our outdated methods of prospecting are off putting. They don’t want your phone calls pressuring them to take a demo. They’re ignoring your emails. And worse, when you are a motivated buyer, you first have to go through the SDR gauntlet of BANT questions, only to be handed off to someone down the road that can actually answer your questions.

We have to do something different, but what?

Nelson Gilliat, author of The Death of the SDR and Birth of Buyer Centric Revenue, thinks he has some answers.

He also makes some bold assertions about the future of the Predictable Revenue Model that turned B2B sales into an assembly line of specialization, and talks about how some innovative organizations are already experimenting with different models that are in-line with their buyers to great success.

Gilliat also questions the whole model of quotas and commissions (that predates the Predictable Revenue Model) with some interesting arguments about how it not only incentives the wrong behavior, but also how it short changes people in their professions.

While it sounds like a pipe dream (only a handful of companies are experimenting with different models) Gilliat does pinpoint many of the root causes of problems with our modern sales process that we’ve had for years.

There are also some baby step changes that you can make today that will move your organization in a better direction down the lin

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

In this episode we explore the product-led growth go-to-market motion with Breezy Beaumont, head of growth and marketing at Correlated. It's a SaaS that helps product-led growth companies to find expansion, upsell, cross-sell, and other revenue opportunities based on how people are using their product.

If like us, you're trying to distance your marketing from the "fake" MQL, you might consider a product-led growth go-to-market strategy. It's no small change if your product cannot or does not already support free users and provide you with instrumentation and in-app promos to sell users an upgrade. But the benefits are huge.

We all know and use one or more PLG applications daily (Slack, LinkedIn, DropBox, Calendly). But can we make it work where we work? If the product was made to support PLG, or can be made to do so, now what?

Among the really interesting subjects we explore are:

How the pipeline is different for PLG. It's a continuous cycle not linear. And this has benefits beyond the upsell in terms of staying close to your customer.
How your organization is different with PLG. Sales, marketing and customer success are now much more integrated and collaborating throughout the customer life cycle.
How sales can now be customer and product advocates vs driving people through what she calls a "manufactured" pipeline (love this, btw).
And how the old model for predictable revenue has to give way to a more statistical and usage-based view of where and when revenues will be achieved.

It's a refreshing take on what we all do for a living. Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Brian Trautschold is not your usual YCombinator alum, though he does credit his success in part to what he learned from the experience and the people he's met.

Talking about their recent funding round of $15.5 million, he and his cofounders built the company to be capital efficient, and this has enabled business model and outcome flexibility; they don't have to be the next unicorn to achieve their own ambitions for the company. And the risk of failing to achieve unicorn status and being absorbed at a low valuation by a competitor, which "sucks for everybody," is reduced.

We dive deep on business model, too, in particular about how integrations can help drive the business. Brian's take here is refreshing, too. He talks about customer needs set the prioritization of integrations rather than taking a look at the ecosystem and deciding to build integrations based on market penetration of the players. It's a really organic way to approach it, and the way he puts it is interesting, too.

This CEO conversation is notable for how open Brian is with his decision-making, especially with the hire of a marketing leader to help move the firm from founders doing too much to professionalizing the organization and enabling scale-up.

There's a lot to take away in this conversation, so I encourage a listen! And as always, there's a transcript on our blog if you'd prefer to read it.

Let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

There are few marketing leaders with the perspective, experience and insights of Jay Gaines. He's also one of the more generous people I've met; he truly enjoys sharing his expertise to help other marketers. In this episode, Jay talks about:

Covid and the resulting content tsunami - good content just isn't good enough anymore
The value of context and empathy in marketing (you read that right)
How to use a quarterly "lightning strike" to cut through the noise and drive revenue
Making the case for creative - it's not all about the numbers (but you need to manage your KPIs)
How to use direct mail in today's world (yes, USPS direct mail)
When and how SaaS founders need to invest in product marketing
Talking the language of CFOs, a skillset that's as valuable as it is under-appreciated
And more

It would be hard to imagine anyone not learning something they can use from this episode.

Enjoy... and please let me know what you think! Thanks!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Finding the right marketing leadership position is difficult (to say the least). You must have alignment with the CEO and executive team from the get-go. And it’s even better when you can follow them from one opportunity to the next.

Now in her third opportunity with the same CEO, Helen Baptist from PathFactory discusses not only how to find the right leadership role, but also how to manage that change from within that so often required in a turnaround situation.

Whether you’re in the process of finding a new marketing leadership opportunity or putting out fires in your current one, Helen offers the following gems in this episode:

•Positioning yourself correctly for the opportunity
•What to do first in a turnaround situation
•Rooting out toxicity
• Buyer centricity to break down sales and marketing silos

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

It's a pattern we're seeing out there, and some agency friends experience in their careers when they make the mistake of putting themselves in this situation. CEOs at young companies hire a marketing leader, usually a woman with substantial experience, and expect her to singled-handedly transform the fate of the organization.

And being the "one woman army" is a really difficult position from which to generate success.

In a meaningful discussion of recent experiences she's had as a marketing leader, Jenn Edwards takes us through the highs and lows of being the sole marketing pro at a young company, questions to ask and her point of view on whether or not it's a good idea to even take such a position.

If you're thinking about a new CMO / head of marketing job and you think you'll be a OWA or OMA, this is probably a great episode to listen to.

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Success at Account Based Marketing is not (necessarily) about the tech stack, maybe not even at all about it. According to Kristina Jaramillo, president at Personal ABM, it's doing the fundamentals correctly from both a sales and marketing perspective.

Kristina makes a strong case for doing the strategy ahead of the implementation (I know, I know) and then dives deep on how she helps clients to make significant progress in strategic accounts with a highly personalized approach.

If you think ABM is right for your organization, or you are struggling to show ROI from the ABM program in place at your firm, this is the episode for you.

Let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Craig Fuller and his early-stage firm FreightWaves are living proof that media as a business is not dead. In fact, he's created a powerful new media company and with it a SaaS-like data subscription business to monetize the information coming out of the shipping industry.

Moving physical goods is an enormous business that most Americans haven't thought much about until recent headlines about logistics issues breaking supply chains. But Craig's company has been helping shippers and investors to take advantage of its unique aggregation of data to increase timeliness and reduce costs, and also to trade effectively on the data.

Craig likens his strategy to that of Bloomberg, LP, but in reverse. His media company is driving the revenues that fuel is data business.

Like me, you might be skeptical that anyone else can follow in Michael Bloomberg's footsteps... that he was singular phenomenon. But after listening to this episode, I think you'll want to dig deeper into this company, founder and business model.

We've long promoted the idea that owned media is important to help SaaS firms control the narrative and bring their stories to prospects and customers. FreightWaves does this as well as anything we've seen...since Bloomberg itself.

Let me know what you think!

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Every once in a while you have a conversation that truly changes how you think about the world. This episode was that kind of experience for me. Latane Conant is a thoughtful and thought-provoking proponent of a new way to think about marketing for B2B marketing leaders.

In one of the densest 30 minutes you'll invest in your marketing career, Latane covers these topics and more:

Calling for CMO title to mean Chief Market Officer, in recognition of the larger role CMOs should play vs the questionable KPIs they are often forced to report on
Abandoning the MQL in favor of a more holistic view of how organizations buy and qualifying them vs individuals
Targeting people and companies that fit your ideal customer profile AND who are in-market now, relying upon intent data to help reach your "dark funnel"
CMOs must be maniacally focused on predictable pipeline, sales velocity formula and net retention, the foundations of the SaaS business model

This episode and #16 with Casey Carey are really must-listens for CMOs that see the writing on the wall but don't have the blueprint for how they are going to move their SaaS companies forward. You've realized that stuff you've been doing is declining in effectiveness, but what next?

Let's discuss after you've had a listen!

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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Casey Carey is CMO at HR tech platform Kazoo, an all-in-one solution for SMBs. In a wide-ranging discussion Casey illuminates how he approaches the role of marketing leadership, how he's taken the focus off lead generation (he's in the camp that believes that lead gen is dead or nearly so) and how he aligns with sales to drive revenue for his company.

Many CMOs face the "lead generation imperative." Casey posits that lead generation is the outcome of great marketing strategy - that is - by positioning and messaging well, understanding the customer in a deep, nuanced and meaningful way, and letting them do their own research to decide if your solution is right for them, you can more than meet your objectives. And he has the numbers to back it up.

For CMOs wondering how they are going to thrive over the next two years (especially new CMOs seeking to re-establish credibility for marketing in their organizations), this is a mini-masterclass in elevating the role of marketing and driving revenue for SaaS.

Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
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Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Refersion was founded in 2014. Prior to that, CEO Alex Markov was in digital marketing and dabbled in programming since he was a kid. Alex credits his career experience in affiliate / influencer marketing to help him to reimagine affiliate marketing and innovate on the model.

Important innovations included simplifying the onboarding process for merchants, and also tapping into emerging managed e-commerce platforms like Shopify. Importantly though he came to it from a developer's POV, he based his innovations on intimate knowledge of the pain points and gaps in solutions that e-commerce entrepreneurs were experiencing

Refersion was an intentional bootstrap. It allowed them to rule their own destiny and manage to KPIs that were more organic to the business than what might have been mandated by VCs. Alex was moonlighting until the business was able to support his basic needs. He called it a grind-it-out business model that enabled him to work on his passion with very little risk. He learned a lot about the real world of business as a result of having to make traction with an MVP product.

Alex tested the need for the product before having it by setting up a landing page that explained the main features he planned to build. The first couple hundred responses encouraged him to build the product. Alex is the second SaaS Backwards guest to mention using groups on social media to generate feedback and initial interest in his product (also true of Lemlist).

"You either build your product or you raise money - very hard as a sole founder to do a good job at both," asserts Alex. As a bootstrap startup you have also to be willing to take a longer view. Hiring decisions are harder when you're keeping your eye on the bank balance. He made the first hiring decisions based on where he was spending too much of his own time, adding staff to offload work from his plate. And one of the key initial hires was in customer success, which remains a major focus for Refersion.

An early decision that helped him grow was to build a partner ecosystem - SaaS firms like Shopify but also agencies that craft the e-commerce experience. They spend a lot of time on teaching agencies about the offering and that adds to sales momentum. These investments in partnerships and a platform model have been the main drivers of Refersion's growth. It's an interesting contrast with the venture-fueled model of SDRs, AEs and a lot of outbound pressure to try and generate sales.

Alex recently sold the business to Assembly, an e-commerce company owned by Providence Strategic Growth, a decision he says was made at the right time. "All companies need to grow up," said Markov. "Now we have the best of both worlds, we can run the business as we always did but now it's like we're on steroids." He credits Assembly with accelerating investments in the business and bringing new capabilities via Assembly's extended family of companies.

It's a great interview and I can't thank Alex enough for sharing his founding and growth story.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Here's another episode that is just incredibly valuable for CEOs and CMOs at early stage SaaS firms. Whether you're a services firm moving to SaaS, bootstrapping, or pre-launch, there's a wealth of insight shared by Amit Bivas, VP of Global Marketing at Optimove.

Optimove is a marketing SaaS that helps companies to communicate right message to right segment at the right time... consistent with the micro-audiences we hear leading edge CMOs talk about -- targeting smaller and smaller cohorts to act on their motivations and intent.

Bivas explains how Optimove helps large enterprises to use data as a differentiator. In particular he talks about how it helps commoditized products and brands to create a better customer experience to create repeat purchase. And to customize that experience at scale and as their preferences change.

Optimove was originally a services firm taking data from retailers and wholesalers to understand how customers migrated from "state to state" or segment to segment. Early on, the founders knew they wanted to become a software company that could scale. All revenues from its services business were invested to build the software so they could have a platform to scale. Since it was started as a moonlighting project, they were able to funnel a lot of revenues back to product development.

Among the highlights from this episode:

When you start as a service provider you gain a lot of experience and understanding before you build the product. And those customers who you are selling services to can become your first customers for the software. And since you know their issues so intimately, you can build the roadmap based on real-world customer experience.
You do need to be prepared, however, for the reality that not every services customer is going to want your software, and you put at risk the services relationship when you transition to a software company - people still want their hands held.
You need to make sure that your critical mass is centered around the product not the service for a variety of reasons - ability to scale and when you do take investment, services are not as highly valued as SaaS revenues.
Moving consultants into customer success and solutions engineering roles also helps support the transition from services to SaaS.

A great interview and insights for those considering a startup or transitioning from an established services company to a Software-as-a-Service company.

Let us know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
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Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Terry Sydoryk is the CEO of Chaordix, a SaaS that helps brands to build communities with their end users. This sounds quotidian at a surface level, but it's remarkably impactful.

Effective growth and nurturing of a community can drive product innovation, enable feedback for consumer / CPG brands where it's hard to generate contact with end users and makes it possible to be closer to employees as well. B2B brands also can generate tremendous value from communities of users.

This episode is a great thought starter for product and brand managers who are looking for ideas on how to engage more deeply with end users. I also made a call for social media strategists to take a deeper look at communities as an extension of their SoMe plans.

Our conversation is also interesting in that this firm was originally a "consultant with kit" before Terry joined. In order to scale up, they realized that the crowdsourcing opportunity had a wider applicability than they could implement as a service and achieve growth ambition. And so, a SaaS was born.

This idea of a services firm leveraging a homegrown technology to transform to a SaaS model isn't new, but it remains a difficult transition to make. Terry offers valuable insights on how he helped make it happen.

You're really getting two episodes in one here!

Love to hear your feedback on this one.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

This episode features an enlightening conversation with business transformation change agent Michael Richardson , founder and managing director of Tech Azur, a consultancy providing support for digital business transformation initiatives, scale-up operations and c-suite advisory.

His advice? You don't have to learn everything the hard way. What does that mean? Operationalizing the organization to be able to scale is often a blind spot for CEOs. "What got you funded won't get you scale," according to Richardson.

As a founder, CEO or CTO, you should be proud of what you've built, early customer success and impressing investors. The skills to operationalize are not necessarily the same as what got you to your first big VC round. You have to grow the organization across many areas of expertise.

For founders, why would you seek an outside expert? The CEO when he/she presents wants to seem like a superhero, but the investors know there's no such thing as perfection and no exec can know anything. In fact, they look for continuous improvement and realism in how you plan to scale. Act in a foreground role or in a coaching mode. Don't mask the issues but deal with them.

The virtual c-suite exec can help you deliver on the pitch you made - and post-funding you're just 90 days from your first meeting with your new bosses. Take the weekend off post-close but now the hard work really begins. With a virtual c-suite augmentation you can keep the core team focused on the really hard work that is right here, right now - and amplify what the core team can do.

Examples - young SaaS firms dealing with large companies can be a mismatch in terms of process and procedure, and if it's your first big money raise, you might not know what is expected from your investors and get off to a bumpy start. Outsourcing a senior operating role can help you grow these skills in your SaaS.

Michael and I drill-down deep into what it takes to build a scaleable SaaS and there's a lot here for scale-up CEOs, CTOs and CMOs to learn from this deeply skilled and experienced exec.

Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.

SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Guillaume Moubeche is a fascinating SaaS founder. He recently gained fame for a PR stunt in which he publicly mounted a VC fundraising campaign only to turn down $30 million. But he is so much more than that. He's a real deal entrepreneur who cracked the code on bootstrapping his startup and he did so through a modern approach and old-fashioned focus on the customer.

"G," as he likes to be called, covers a lot of ground in this "things you can do, too," episode that should be of high value to any SaaS founder in the early days, VC-fueled or not. In particular, G talks about how:

Bootstrapping can lead to hyper-growth, and high profitability. The PR strategy around the public fundraising and rejection was to shine a spotlight on the viability of bootstrapped SaaS and his company in particular.
Creating a business was a way for him to create freedoms he experienced in a gap year between his chemical engineering degree and marketing studies. First business with his dad failed for lack of customers. Went in business with a friend to help others drive sales and then decided to start his own business helping others to drive sales.
He identified opportunity - saw that sales campaign tools available weren't doing the job. Met a couple of tech geniuses in an incubator, built some things for others and decided to form a company among them.
Built an MVP in a few weeks, took market and initial user feedback and kept innovating. Relentless iteration got them to a product and company that people really want to use.
Selling on value vs features. Lemlist's unique value proposition started with dynamic images within emails. Used his own tool to acquire customers. By running his own campaigns on Lemlist he could show how it worked.

This episode is a deep dive on how G growth hacked via organic, hand-to-hand marketing, sales and customer success.

He also talks about how focus is key - doing one thing as a big differentiator. Mass customization of email was the point of difference for Lemlist. Participating in FB groups (like startup founders) to generate audience and fans. And eating your own dog food to show the value of the solution.

G also talks passionately about how from the early days until today he remains most focused on his users, spending hours a day in touch with them to ensure his success.

Give the episode a listen and let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

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Gaurav Harode is the founder and CEO of Enablix, a sales enablement platform that makes it easier for marketing and sales to manage, collaborate on and share content with prospects. According to Harode, "organizations create content on a daily basis, but there's no simple solution to get it in the hands of salespeople."

He's got the mission sorted now, but his SaaS started out as a knowledge management solution. With so many well entrenched competitors, and ROI elusive, he found it difficult to gain traction. A pivot to helping sales be more effective has been key to growth and a path to a sustainable business.

The new positioning answers a true yearning within marketing and sales organizations to work better together and for marketing to be able to provide more relevancy in its content for the sales process. And speaking of that process, Gaurav reveals an interesting nuance in the difference between scripted journeys as envisioned by marketing and the truth of the iterative and somewhat random nature of enterprise sales and relationship building... and how Enablix helps its users to succeed in that environment.

Lastly, Gaurav discusses a lead generation tactic he's found that pays for itself, G2, and his search to expand investments in ways that are equally ROI-obvious. A great listen for those in early stages who want some inspiration on bootstrapping their SaaS products.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
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Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Neil Becker is a soft spoken yet hard driving CMO. His approach to marketing is that it must serve the organization's purpose, which is to sell its products. This puts marketing in a service provider role to sales, where the two teams share the same KPIs.

Interestingly, Neil is the second SoftBank-funded CMO to appear on the podcast (the other was Erez Yerselove of Globality), and they share a lot of perspective on the transformative nature of a $100 million investment.

This is a fast-paced and valuable conversation that touches on post-funding goal setting and building the organization to scale, how marketing and sales can do better together, ABM as a strategic practice (doing it for real), and the power of thought leadership to change marketplace realities.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Accelerating SaaS growth is a multifaceted challenge. For the right kinds of SaaS applications there might be nothing that accelerates growth faster than a strong integration or "platform" ecosystem. Fraser Davidson, CEO of iPaaS Cyclr goes deep in this episode on the value and strategy for building integrations.

Davidson puts forward the idea that there are three kinds of integrations: Strategic to the product, which should be built in-house (think Google Maps for a real estate SaaS); Commercially important to drive sales and retention (the more integrations in use, the stickier your SaaS); and, Emerging use cases that aren't yet important but might need a path to support and could develop into something meaningful.

Fraser also talks about what a CEO needs to consider post-funding - setting priorities as you scale your SaaS fueled by VC or PE money. It's a revealing and valuable conversation with a CEO who used to be a private equity exec, so he really knows the subject in depth. Lastly he talks about leadership at Cyclr being a match between a business exec and a tech visionary (he's the former) and how he makes that work to Cyclr's and his clients' advantage.

Fraser is a fascinating interview subject and his company is a valuable resource to SaaS firms which are scaling up. Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Erez Yerselove is a serial marketing leader whose company, Globality, is changing the way professional services are sourced. By applying AI to the process, the company creates efficiency in specifying requirements, finding the right partner (starting with incumbents) and negotiating a clearer scope and fairer deal for all.

Erez talks about innovating in professional services, reveals a new feature that enables proposal comparison "apples to apples" vs "apples to kumquats." Saving time for CMOs and CIOs as they procure services and for the suppliers as well is a key benefit. AI and natural language processing make the process of buying services more organized, detailed by asking questions buyers might not anticipate (going way beyond what is possible in an RFP) and effective by narrowing the choices to likely fits. It's also valuable for supplier diversity and finding suppliers outside your home territory or for services where the buyer has no network to draw from.

Interestingly Globality is an enterprise commitment to change the way professional services are procured, and so is an interesting case study in go-to-market. They're elephant hunting by design, with highly focused and strategic approach to identifying, proposing, and onboarding clients.. Conversely, there are thousands of suppliers on the platform who make themselves available to economic buyers.

This is a fascinating conversation with a successful CMO on how he's driving go-to-market for a groundbreaking product and service to its clients. Enjoy!

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
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Jim Sharpe was a man with a strategic plan just a few weeks into his tenure as CEO of Aventri, an enterprise-class SaaS for live events, when the pandemic hit. While many SaaS weren't impacted, his firm's life blood, trade shows and private in-person events, came to a halt.

Using his strategic plan as a starting point, Jim, his team and their board / investors, regrouped, reinvested and pivoted the business to support the virtual events his clients were holding. He's also driving toward a new vision for in-person events where virtual attendees are an important and permanent part of the strategy going forward.

This is very deep dive on how leadership can and did make the difference between go forward or go home... the pandemic could have been fatal to Aventri, but it looks like it won't just have survived but in fact will thrive as 2021 unfolds.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

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The irrepressible Dan Tyre is our guest for this episode, and he makes a compelling case that the Inbound methodology can and must be applied far beyond lead generation to make your company as successful as it can be. If you want to be jazzed up for 2021, this is the episode for you.

Dan talks about how the flywheel, a model that HubSpot introduced to represent the integration of sales, marketing and customer success, is central to achieving goals in 2021 and beyond. He also talks about how the principles of Inbound apply to organizing your business internally as well, as described in his book, "Inbound Organization." It's a great listen.

Resources for SaaS Execs

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Gregg Bienstock and his parter Tim Stevens follow a path we've come to recognize; subject matter experts who decide to get into the software business. Gregg provides a nuanced and "open book" look at how the company was formed, learned from its missteps and capitalized on its opportunities.

Gregg reveals another side of success we also are noticing as a pattern: he engages clients and leads his team with empathy, humility and open-mindedness. By allowing himself to be vulnerable he's developed relationships that matter, yielding fruit that helps him grow the business by meeting the real needs of his clients and prospects.

Resources for SaaS CMOs and CEOs:

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Vytas Kisielius, CEO of ReferWell, is one of the smartest, most perceptive, successful and approachable CEOs I know. He's the kind of leader you just innately want to help achieve his goals, right after meeting him.

In this episode, Vytas and I talk about what's working for his SaaS, how he needed to dramatically pivot sales strategy and product positioning to accelerate growth, how CEOs can know when to delegate as you are scaling and more. He also goes into some detail on the relationship he has with the firm's founder and investors. It's a great episode with a lot of inspiration and questions to ask for SaaS CEOs and CMOs as they scale their own enterprises.

Resources for SaaS CMOs and CEOs:

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
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SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Chalva is a wonderfully thoughtful CMO with a great background in advertising and consulting before he became a client-side marketing leader and multiple time SaaS CMO.

In this episode we talk about the new CMO's imperatives including alignment with the CEO and board, the need for a CMO to be a tech-savvy leader as well as a marketing leader, and how to build consensus and drive innovation. A great wide-ranging conversation with a powerful marketing mind.

Resources for SaaS CMOs and CEOs:

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.
SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

Joey Knecht, CEO of Proteus talks about how he manages his SaaS to success. He measures a lot but is unusually focused on the value of relationships.

In this wide-ranging conversation we cover buyer enablement, the role of the CEO as the company scales up and what's working for his BDRs today.

Resources for SaaS CMOs and CEOs:

Recently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?
Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:

Think your website could generate more leads?
Get our inbound lead generation self-assessment
Want to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?
Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.
SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.