Simon Jones

😱 Recently David Spitz reported that the average SaaS company now takes 35 months to pay back GTM costs, up from 19 months 2 years ago. Some companies are taking up to 10 years... and some are already bouncing back! The metric in question is the S&M-to-Net New ARR payback period. So what’s causing this & how can it be reversed? 🚀 Let’s break it down: 🔍 Possible & Probable Causes ♦ Marketing & sales strategies have become less effective ♦ Increased competition is leading to higher customer acquisition costs ♦ Inflation & economic downturns impacting customer spending  ♦ Budget cuts in marketing & sales due to economic uncertainties ♦ The SaaS market is becoming more saturated, making it harder to stand out ♦ Longer sales cycles as customers evaluate more options ♦ New products may not align with shifting market needs  ♦ Inefficient targeting of ideal customer profiles ♦ Poor alignment between sales & marketing teams ♦ Inefficient sales processes & lack of proper training 🔑 Here are some Ideas & Recommendations to Fix It: Improve GTM Efficiency ♦ Put more focus & effort on your GTM maturity level & what steps you need to take to achieve greater GTM efficiency ♦ Refine your target audience & ensure you are reaching the right customers with personalized & relevant messaging. Realize up to a 760% increase in revenue ♦ Foster better collaboration between sales & marketing teams to ensure aligned strategies & goals. This can result in an average of 32% annual revenue growth Optimize Sales Processes ♦ Invest in continuous training for your sales team to improve their skills & efficiency. Can improve sales performance by 20% ♦ Utilize CRM & other sales tools to streamline processes & track performance more effectively. Can improve sales by up to 29% Enhance Product-Market Fit ♦ Regularly gather & act on customer feedback to refine your product & better meet market needs. Customer feedback loops can improve customer satisfaction by up to 15% ♦ Innovate & improve your product to stay ahead of competitors to provide unique value to customers. Innovators and disruptors grow 4x faster Economic Adaptability ♦ Consider changing your pricing model to lower the barrier to entry for new customers. This can increase conversion rates by up to 30% ♦ Monitor & manage your S&M costs closely to ensure they are aligned with revenue goals. This can lead to a 10-15% increase in profitability Leverage Data & Analytics ♦ Regularly track & analyze key performance metrics to identify areas for improvement. Data-driven decision-making can result in 23 times better acquisition ♦ Implement A/B testing for your marketing campaigns to determine the most effective strategies. This can improve conversion rates by 10-30% 🚀🚀 These recommendations should help any company reduce their GTM payback period & achieve more sustainable growth! #SaaS #GTM #BusinessGrowth #SalesStrategy #MarketingEfficiency #CustomerAcquisition #NetNewARR #BusinessOptimization

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We are seeing a big pick up in transaction activity at Catalant Technologies, and therefore "First 100 Days" planning and implementation. A BIG thank you to our partners in the Expert community below (Who combined have led hundreds of First 100 Days Value Creation Plans and Implementations) for collaborating on the playbook and deep dives on the critical factors you need to get right.   (1) Setting up the Integration Management Office: Michael Scherer (2) FP&A Investments: Benjamin Lehrer (3) Talent and Culture: Sapna Harichand (4) Change Communication: Niki St Pierre, MPA/MBA (5) Capitalize on Commercial Opportunities: Rob Lekai   Download the asset below: https://lnkd.in/euh8UJWu

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If you don’t write the RFP, don’t respond to it. Last year, I decided to break this rule. It turns out, it’s a rule for a reason :) What happened? We had an inbound from a well known brand. Their requirements were a great fit for us. Still, I was cautious. Then, we had our first meeting. The vibes were vibing. Their buying team was really digging our approach. They were giving us all sorts of positive feedback. I should have thrown cold water on my face and said: Thanks but clearly you have someone else in mind for this. So, we respectfully decline to participate. Did I do that? Nope. I got our team to invest a ton of time and energy into the proposal. To be honest, it looked awesome. It was awesome. Our final presentation was a hit! They loved it! Then 2 weeks later they sent a note saying we wouldn’t be selected. So I asked for a call to understand why They had chosen one of the big 3 consulting firms who had worked with them for years…and written the RFP after another engagement they did. 🤦‍♂️ I knew better and I went for it anyway. I wasted my time and energy. Worse, I wasted our team’s time and energy. Don’t make the same mistake I did. If you don’t write the RFP, don’t respond to it.

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Evan Liang started digging into buying groups a few years ago, knowing it was going a step beyond the recent ABM trends. And there's a reason everyone at #pavilionCMOsummit2024 had a slide, a section or an entire talk about the buying group or team or committee. Or multithreading. Or a dozen other similar threads. Because an efficient business that isn't mired in GTM bloat needs to look at how quickly and effectively they can weave together individual leads into a larger account map. Then trace different intents, different stakeholder positions, different objections and different outcomes. This webinar is probably your best jumping off point for a entirely new set of adventures in marketing.

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Despite tightening marketing budgets, in-person events continue to be a core marketing channel for B2B SaaS companies. According to Sagefrog Marketing Group, LLC, in person trade shows and events are the leading area of marketing spend for 2024, with 38% percent of respondents saying that exhibiting or sponsoring in-person conferences will be a tactic they employ. It’s clear marketers understand the value but with budget pressures and a move towards efficient and sustainable growth, 41% say the pressure to prove the value of their marketing efforts is high. For events in particular, justifying the spend and proving the ROI is more important than ever. In our latest blog post, we look at the different ways to sponsor events, why events remain a core B2B SaaS marketing channel, and run through three ways to measure the ROI of your event marketing efforts. Blog post first in comments section. How are you measuring ROI for Events? #Events #conferences #ROI #marketing #saas #B2B #saastock2024

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What we were promised: a unified ops function for all GTM teams. 😎 What we got: a new name for sales ops. 😔 The labels aren’t really the issue here. It’s the fact that alignment across functional ops teams still seems elusive in many companies. These are some common objections to creating a unified RevOps function: 😰 Functional leaders are worried about their ops teams becoming less responsive 😰 MOPS and CS Ops worry about getting swallowed up by Sales Ops and losing autonomy  😰 Marketing and CS worry their needs won’t be prioritized if RevOps reports to a sales leader These concerns are legitimate and need to be addressed. But they don’t change one simple reality: a lack of alignment among operational teams is usually just a mirror of the lack of alignment among the GTM functions. And these silos harm business performance. Instead of focusing on the challenges, let’s look at what a business can GAIN when ops teams are strongly aligned or unified: 🗺️ A holistic view across the entire revenue process ⚖️ Initiatives prioritized by business impact rather than executive fiat 🥰  A more unified and seamless customer experience 💰 More efficient tech spend with fewer redundant tools 🤝 All revenue teams rowing in the same direction 🤗 Pooled ops resources and mutual support 💪 A stronger ops function that can manage performance rather than just close tickets These teams DO exist, and this week on RevOps FM, I spoke with Julia Kim, who leads one of them at Electric. Julia leads a very mature RevOps function that supports marketing, sales, CS, and partnerships. Not only does this org structure work—her team is a driving force behind the business, which wasn’t at all the case when ops teams were embedded in their functions. In this episode, Julia shares: • The scope and structure of her team • How they plan and prioritize • How they balance running the business as usual with innovation and strategy • How RevOps can have different objectives at different stages of maturity • How she finds efficiencies across the tech stack • And much more Episode link in the comments 👇 —--- P.S. a unified function is one way to achieve alignment, but I don’t suggest it’s the only way. At my company, for example, my team supports marketing and BDR Ops and reports into marketing, while all other ops teams are centralized. This still works very well because a) The marketing leader also reports to the COO, ensuring consistent priorities b) Marketing ops still works closely with other ops teams, has regular cadences, shared OKRs, etc. So the key factors here are a centralized reporting structure and close collaboration. P.P.S. I feel like I've seen the meme I used before somewhere. If you created it first please raise your hand and I'll gladly give credit 😊

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A big part of being a successful CRO is thoughtfully pushing back… 1️⃣ on your sales team for over optimizing comp 2️⃣ on your CEO / board around unrealistic revenue expectations 3️⃣ on your finance team for aggressive operating plan assumptions 4️⃣ on your marketing team for not enough leads 5️⃣ on your product team for not shipping fast And the list goes on and on 💪 The 🔑 is to do this thoughtfully with the right intent and tone. It starts with building trust with people, closely aligning to what’s right for the business and staying open to multiple points of views. 🔥 If you don’t love conflict, revenue leadership may not be for you! 🙌 Pressure is a privilege my friend 💎 Happy scaling 🚀 #cro #revenueleadership #startups #sales

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Image tagging has been a major endeavor in the M&E industry. How can we reduce the amount of resources? Sam Bogoch, CEO of axle ai, Inc. has the answer. Axle #AI is an AI-driven #mediamanagement #company that provides #software for various segments in that #industry. The time needed to #tagmedia has always been the #Achillesheel for this industry. The #traditional approach has been to assign this task to #interns, but there is never enough time or #workers available to do it properly. Sam was surprised to learn how tedious image tagging is when he first went into a studio and witnessed the process firsthand. He saw a group of interns looking at #videos and discussing what they saw. They would then create tags like “blond hair” or “car crash” to describe the #scene. Axle AI fills this labor gap by using AI to tag #images, which has proven to be a game changer in #media #management. Be sure to check out this #episode of Data Unchained and more on all your favorite #podcast platforms! YouTube - https://lnkd.in/gd2xTgX3 Google Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/giX5CHvn Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/3yTKqxe Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3s9IVHs Amazon Music - https://amzn.to/3VAyIkZ

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Be sure to register for this upcoming webinar with my colleague Grant Spradlin for a deep dive into the state of enterprise LLM adoption and why enterprise teams are leveraging multiple LLMs and inference providers.

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At Sigma, we recently closed our Series D round, securing $200 million. How did we do it? We leveraged the power of our own product to build an exceptional Data Room that wowed our investors. Your Data Room is the backbone of your fundraising efforts, housing critical information like historical performance, sales data, and financial models. But it's not just about data; it's about telling your story clearly and convincingly. See the difference data-driven storytelling can make. Check out our blog post by Orla Clifford and Jake Hannan 👇 #Fundraising #DataRoom #Investors #Startups #TechInnovation #SigmaComputing #DataDriven #SeriesDRound #Valuation #Growth #Transparency #Investment

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In our last clip from Ryan Walter of ProCFO Partners visit on Maven (ReferabilityMaven.com)'s Fractionals Unplugged podcast/vodcast, he talks about the challenges facing fractional CFOs. The willingness to focus rather than be all things to all people is top of his list. Being able to ascertain the key needs of your client quickly and deliver value from the get go follow right behind. Check out the rest of Ryan's episode by following the links in the comments below. DM me if your a fractional executive who would like to be a guest on our Show. #FractionalCFO, #FractionalExecutives, #Focus, #Value

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Great insights into how to leverage inputs and find the opportunity for commitment across the team.

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There's gold in these hills: 👉 Investments in retention can double as acquisition vehicles 👉 Customers do all of the selling to the prospects who join the events 👉 You can do no wrong by doing right by your customers Timeless lessons, Drew Neisser.

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Yesterday, I ran a GTMsession for GTMfund portfolio company founders and their executive teams with the brand and content marketing legend, Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈. (🤔 GTM what now? GTMfund… GTMnow…) Yes, we have more words attached to the acronym GTM, though not widely talked about since they’re internal. GTMsessions are monthly private digital live sessions on various go-to-market topics, led by an executive operator who is an expert in the field. They’re available to GTMfund portfolio companies and their executive teams. Being closed-door and not open to the public, these sessions allow any and all questions to be comfortably asked, the conversation tailored to be hyper-specific to startups and their current concerns, questions, etc. We didn't even get through half of the moderated points that I had prepared because the questions for Udi just kept rolling in (a good thing, that's the point of these sessions). Udi dropped some 🔥 insights that we’ll share more on later, but for now, Stan Rymkiewicz nailed summarizing key takeaways on how Gong thinks about content creation and distribution that I've dropped in the comments. One key pain point discussed in the session was the challenge of keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of content marketing. It often feels like by the time one strategy is implemented, its effectiveness has already diminished. So, what’s next? How do you stay ahead of the curve? Since GTMsessions are private, their recordings aren’t shared openly. However, the feedback was so phenomenal that we knew other revenue leaders could benefit from the conversation. If you’re a revenue leader looking to understand the future of content marketing and stay ahead of the curve: Join me for a GTMnow digital live event with Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈 , Jon Miller, and Pete Lorenco. You'll learn from them how to stay two steps ahead and walk away with content tactics and inspiration. 🗓 June 18th at 10:00 AM PST / 1:00 PM EST 👉 To register: https://lnkd.in/gsdsai23 (pictured here: two passionate hand talkers 👋 )

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My first job out of college, I worked at an agency that was implementing a new, innovative technology for B2B marketing - Marketing Automation Platforms. Ah, it was a simpler time: gated ebooks, email nurtures, linear journeys–total control and straight-forward measurability. That was OVER A DECADE  AGO. Think of how much has changed since then… ☎ In 2010, the majority of cell phones were not “Smart” (and we still called them as such). 🌩 “The cloud” wasn’t a thing. Over 90% of data was held in local servers. 📈 LI had less than 100 million users in 2010. Today, more than 1 billion users in 200 countries. It’s mind boggling to be pulling from the same playbook from over a decade ago. Technology has changed, society has changed, buyer behavior and selling has changed. And if you can’t take my word for it, take the word of the Marketo grandfather himself :)

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What a GTM OS platform should focus on first and foremost… 🤔 Market problem that a business wants to solve! Too many orgs focus their GTM on revenue generation and “strategies” for revenue regeneration. Any GTM org that is not grounded on the market problem is not going to meet its objectives. The market problem and market strategy will drive everything else. I have seen this too many times where the focus is purely on sales and revenue. Had products climb G2 rankings in terms of customer reviews but growth was still hart to find. 🔎 That is why about 75% of products that are introduced fail to meet viable, profitable scale and are ultimately withdrawn from the market. My goal with GTM OS is to develop a lean and agile methodology/system for GTM leveraging the foundation of a robust GTM strategy - just the essential components that should be adopted by every org of every size - blended with the magic of data & AI (for transparency and efficiency). Some things that GTM Practitioners get wrong and that must be fixed for GTM orgs: GTM cannot start with defining the process or playbooks for revenue generation teams or  identifying sources of revenue or demand generation. It must start with defining what is happening in the market. You cannot define ICP before assessing the market opportunity and market landscape with direct and indirect competitors. Technically nothing is stopping you from defining ICP without that, but it most certainly can lead you down the wrong path. Understand first what the avenues are for achieving growth given the market focus - are you going to penetrate existing market, develop a new one, develop a new product or need to educate the market on a new concept - and how that maps to the product value prop for the market before defining metrics with which you measure success. Your metrics will depend on your growth strategy you pick. The alignment around metrics is not the hard part but alignment on what is the product, who is it for and how will we grow it and what competencies and resources you need is the hard nut to crack. Figure out your market strategy, ICP, product value prop, positioning, growth strategy, channels for messaging, and why you, and you have the building blocks of a solid GTM OS. The rest are details that can be executed with automation. Love to hear your thoughts 👇 #connectedgtm #gtm #b2b #productmarketing #sales

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How do you reduce costs while accelerating growth? That was the crux of the question posed in a post recently by Michelle Benfer after a dinner she attended with other Revenue Leaders. While Executive Leadership too often favors reducing " sales support staff" (aka RevOps/Enablement) over reducing sales headcount, Michelle argues that, when done right, RevOps makes revenue orgs less reliant on headcount not more. What do you think? This topic was tailor-made for The GOATS of Growth podcast, so I asked her to join me. In this clip you'll hear her describe what she thinks best-in-class RevOps looks like.  Michelle, you are what best-in-class GTM leadership looks like, and I thank you for joining me! Please follow Michelle for more great content and reach out if you have more questions--ONLY after listening to the episode. Here is the link to the full episode. https://buff.ly/3Cjhr6Q. Please subscribe to the show if you like what you hear!

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>50% of GTM leaders are prioritizing ecosystem-led growth in 2024. This change in focus is increasingly being reflected across the organizational hierarchy, with more emerging roles in partnerships and alliance management, while traditional sales and marketing roles are plateauing. No. This doesn’t mean that your sales organization is any less important. It just means that the nature of selling is evolving with the market. What is causing this shift? 1️⃣ Software buying is emulating retail buying experiences: As a digital-native millennial+ generation assumes more control over buying decisions, they’re looking for the same conveniences of self-serve, rep-free buying in eCommerce to play out in their B2B purchases. 2️⃣ Direct channels are offering diminishing returns: Most solutions are being actively qualified/disqualified much before your sellers get to interact with the prospect. G2 found that mid-market and enterprise buyers are more wary of sales interactions and instead prefer impartial sources (e.g., partner recommendations, marketplaces) of vendor qualification. 3️⃣ Evolution of inclusive channels for software commerce  Traditionally, direct sales, partner-influenced sales, and PLG happened on disparate forums, giving buyers no single means to interact with multiple stakeholders. For vendors, deal mechanics (e.g., contracting, invoicing, billing) also happened across multiple tools. This was a standardization issue that is now being solved by commercial cloud marketplaces. Buyers now have more avenues to qualify vendors across multiple criteria, and sellers spend less time in operations before closing a deal. As the market evolves, deals will be closed on procurement-driven channels — i.e., channels that are equally invested in offering buyers more choices and the ability to evaluate and exercise more control over their spends, than the traditional outbound-focused channels we have all grown up knowing. Your sales organization will need more support than pipeline enablement. They need active participation from partnerships, product, systems integrators … the whole nine yards … to stand out from the noise and “assist” the prospect in making a choice. All of this is already in motion on cloud marketplaces, and we’re here to help you upgrade. Drop me or my team a note if you need help getting started. #partnership #alliance #cloud #marketplace #GTMstrategy #GTM

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Do you think the buying experience got better or worse in 2024? I think I have a hunch... Shoutout to Navattic and Chili Piper for the launch of their 2024 report! Last year, after booking demos with the top 100 SaaS companies, here's the data they saw: 1️⃣ 35% never got back in touch with us 2️⃣ Average of 2 days for companies to respond 3️⃣ Only 17% of websites had interactive demos 4️⃣ 57% of websites had pricing pages (and 21% of those websites didn’t actually show price) In comparison, this year: ⭐ Average of same-day response time from companies ⭐ 68% of websites had pricing pages ⭐ 31% of websites had interactive demos Why did it get so much better than last year? The improvements reflect a shift towards prioritizing people-first experiences, making it easier and faster for buyers to get the information they need. Read our 2024 B2B Buyer First Best Practices Report to find out more. https://lnkd.in/ejDQsFzF

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