SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK
All of it! ChartMogul have compiled their version of the “ultimate" SaaS Metrics Cheat Sheet
Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending August 14, 2020
COMPENSATION
Ready to hire some salespeople for your team? Read this post from Jason Lemkin on how to construct a framework for the first SaaS sales compensation plans. Then (shameless-plug) - check my deeper dive articles on SDR and AE compensation benchmarks.
PERSONALIZATION
SaaS marketers are turning to personalization more and more to increase their conversion rates, improve customer success, and increase the quality of sales/marketing funnels. Great article here from Chart Mogul on the (modern-day) personalization fundamentals. As a teaser: Personalization reduces acquisition costs as much as 50% and 87% of companies see a lift in key growth metrics when they employ personalization.
CONTENT
Just like Sales, at the early stages, the creation of content also sits with the founders. I’ve put together a nifty 3 step guide from FirstRound Capital: Step 1. How to position your startup, Step 2. how to write well, and Step 3 top tips for telling stories.
INVESTMENT
When taking on money from investors, they often request a very specific kind of share from you - preferred stock (or "preference shares" in the article). Here is what this means and why.
PRODUCT
This one is for all you product managers. Lenny Rachitsky has curated a list of templates and frameworks for Product Management (there are also a bunch of others in there too) - definitely a bookmark-able page!
WEBSITE
Do you have a pretty high churn rate from your home page or landing pages? Maybe you have a trust problem. This article outlining the Trust Pyramid is very much worth a read but TL;DR A website must meet users' basic trust needs before a visitor can be expected to engage meaningfully. With the Trust Pyramid, there are 5 distinct levels of trust-based engagement, each with separate design requirements.
SALES
Hands up if you like cold calling! To quote the opening from this article "Cold calling is like a neat suit. It gets the job done and it never goes out of style”. But read it! It’s a seriously comprehensive guide to getting cold calls done successfully!
ENTERPRISE
SaaS in the Enterprise is so hot right now! But it’s hard! This article equates it to riding up and over a rogue wave - it’s a bit extreme but to add pragmatic layers on top of that dramatic metaphor Enterprise SaaS margins are experiencing significant downward pressure as commoditization and competition pressures increase.
REVENUE GROWTH
This one is from the archives as I consider it one of the best presentations at SaaStr Annual - it’s from Mark Roberge of Stage 2 Capital and Harvard Business School. Providing a handy step-by-step guide to revenue growth (downloadable PDF!)