Share

It’s Q4 - it’s been a long quarter. We don’t want to waste your time with a story about how Yeehaw Junction, Florida’s first mayor’s pet-project paved the way for Zapier’s bootstrapped growth from $0-$140M without a sales team.

Here are 13 things you can do to make it home by Christmas with more closed wons on your Salesforce than turkeys that will… not be forgiven this month.

On Demand Generation:

Live in the moment but market it too 🫡

There’s no time like Q4 - when you need quick wins under your belt - to cut straight to the chase. Some good ol’ moment marketing is handling the load previously borne by traditional marketing funnels.

SEO SEM 🔎

Bottom-of-funnel keywords are your quickest wins.

1. Position against your competition like ClickUp:

2. Fulfill an immediate need like Grammarly:

3. Or plug yourself in the Q1 planning conversation like Amplitude:

Twitter Out, LinkedIn In ✅

Ah, good ol’ LinkedIn, where Q4 content is rife, the codebase has largely remained the same, and buying intent is high. No better place to…

4. Drive Q4 urgency like Gong:

5. …or get meta with it like Hubspot:

More than just a floating head on a zoom screen 👩🏻‍💻

Show your prospects that you're more than just a bust on a zoom screen.

6. In-person events are back in vogue.

Turns out people buy software from people. Especially when a recession hits. Go figure 🤷🏻‍♂️

In these recessionary times, SaaS companies are reverting to what's worked best through other tough times. Making personal connections, meeting people face-to-face, and DocuSigning shaking on it 🤝

On the back of Q3’s SaaStr Annual ‘22, Hubspot Inbound, and Dreamforce ‘22, we’ve since seen:

• SaaStock 2022 in Dublin

• Cohort 22 by Amplitude in SF

• Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon

• Data Meetup hosted by Statsig in SF

• Pavillion Executive Dinners across the globe

…and more coming this week and next, like:

• B2Believe: The inaugural LinkedIn B2B marketing summit

• Marketing Gamechangers meetup hosted by Sequel x Mutiny

Locked, loaded, and gated 🔐

7. Gated content

Call it a lead-gen hero or marketing villain, gated content is the flavor of the season (and… a great qualifier of informational intent as a bonus)

• Partner up like Chargebee sponsored OpenView’s “2022 SaaS Benchmarks Report” that dropped this week.

• Engender traditions like Amplitude’s second edition of the “Product Report”

• Or repurpose content into cheat sheets, templates, e-books, and reports like Gong & Gainsight

The devil is in the subject line

8. The art of an expertly crafted outbound sequence

Step 1 - The open: Stand out in inboxes by creating intrigue - surprise people (“Something’s not right”) and ask questions that create mystery (“How did I do?”)

Step 2 - The delivery: There are no hacks here. Deliver against the intrigue (“You might be turning away 30-80% of signups if you ignore personal domain signups. Something’s not right”) or mystery (“I ran your LinkedIn profile through our demographic-based lead-scoring tool. How did I do?”)

And Step 3 - The action: Sign off with ONE clear ask.

On Selling…

9. Predictability in Pre-emption

"You better brace yourself" - infamous and prophetic words from June '22.

Unfortunately, Jamie Dimon was bang on, and we find ourselves in one of the worst recessions of the last few decades. SaaS buying intent is at an all-time low. But buyers continue to window shop.

How many of you have heard - "It was great," "This is exactly what we need", or "I've been looking for this for a while" after a demo, only to then not close the account?

As a revenue team, it's important to stay laser focussed on deals that are ACTUALLY going to close. It's about spotting the smoke (in a deal) early - 'cause boy, is there probably a fire.

What are the best sales leaders doing?

Asking for small next steps:

“Would it make sense to loop in the rest of your team so they can weigh in?”

Pre-empting concerns.

"Sounds like the value isn't there for you."

Re-validating priorities.

“Before we go too much further, can I check something out with you? When you consider everything on your plate, is this issue high enough on your ‘priorities slide’ to have staying power?”

10. Inbound... thou art a flaky thing ❅

"Businesses who respond to leads in five minutes or less are 100x more likely to convert opportunities." - This study by the Harvard Business Review

100 flipping X!

SaaS buying Intent is fleeting. And much like that piece of candy you dropped the other day, 5 seconds (minutes) is all the difference between no one batting an eyelid and people giving you funny looks when you pick it up.

Catching your prospect in the moment can be the difference between missing Q4 and surpassing targets.

And don't just take my word for it. Try signing up for Chorus or ProductBoard (with your business email, of course) and keep an eye on your cell phone 😉

11. But Call. Don't text 😬

Over 3x.

That's the difference in meeting booked rates when you call your lead vs. email them.

Pick up those cell phones y'all. Bots e-mail. Humans call.

12. Buyers want to hold on to what they already have

"People are twice as likely to buy to avoid loss than to gain anything."

In a world where the upside is increasingly tough to imagine, buyers would pay to hold on to what they already have vs. (possibly) gain something more.

On expansions…

13. Focus on NRR

It's easier to earn a dollar from an existing customer (who's experienced your product's value) than from a new one.

And you don't need to be a public market company for this to be true. If you're past $15-20 of ARR, a good chunk (if not a majority) of your ARR growth is probably driven by account expansion.

But how do you know which of your accounts are primed for expansion?

Maybe you ask your CS reps 🤷🏻‍♂️

But they don't have all the information. Every mouse click, invite sent, paywall hit, feature interaction, or blog opened. If only there was someone (something) who did 🧐

Try Toplyne - it's free

Leave a comment

We help PLG companies (such as this one☝🏼) with their GTM experiments: be it monetization, activation, or retention. Start small, rapidly iterate and deploy at scale 🚀

Some housekeeping…

Is your mailbox trying to keep our content away from you? 💔 What can you do about it? Mark this email as ‘not spam’ 😱 or move it from your promotions to the primary folder 👉🏻 It’s very easy!

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends if you feel like it.

How did you like this week’s newsletter?

Go on,… we’re listening.

Legend 🤩 - Great 😄 - Good 🙂 - OK 😶 - Meh 😒