The Latest from SaaStr: Want Happy Customers? Implement the 5-Visits-Plus-2-Badges Rule

If you are a SaaStr reader, you’ll know how passionate I am about Customer Success, since Day 1.

For one simple reason: Second Order Revenue.

Upsells. Renewals. Word-of-Mouth. Champion Change. What it all means is that if you do it right, you’ll make 6x or more the revenue from your customers after the sale itself. The details on that math here.

And I passionately believe in measuring things. Churn, upsells, renewals, and all that, and compensating against it. And about measuring and identifying Almost Churn.

There may come a time, or two, in your company when you just don’t know what to do. 

And for more of you than usual, that’s right now.

When:

• You aren’t growing fast enough.  and/or
• The competition seems to be getting the best of you.  and/or
• You can’t raise financing.  and/or
• You just lost an important deal.  Or maybe more than one.  and/or
• That great new initiative you were so excited about.  Isn’t really working.  and/or

Well, anything like this.

These are some of the most stressful times, because it’s latent stress.  You aren’t failing that day, and you may not truly be “failing” in a way most people can see or measure.  But things just aren’t going the way you think they should.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by MERGE

Merge’s Unified API allows you to access 150+ integrations across HR, payroll, ATS, accounting, CRM, and ticketing systems.

What do some of the most successful PLG companies have in common? How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond?

In the newest episode of the official SaaStr podcast, a few iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR.

Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success at Apollo.io, and Chris De Vylder, CRO at Sentry, to pass along key lessons from their growth journey.

A few things that surprise you as a founder:

Things at the beginning and even later are sort of … slooow.

Yes, lots is always seemingly going on at a start-up.

But the reality is, major releases happen only a few times a year. Really Big sales deals don’t close every day.

I first came from a services business where everything was fast and mission-critical (IPOs, $1b acquisition, financings, big corporate deals). In the services side, everything had to be done that week, and everything truly was mission-critical.

I had trouble transitioning to start-up life. Yes, a thousand things are always going on in a start-up, with not enough people to do them.

But the most mission-critical things evolve relatively slowly. Even running out of money generally takes time.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by SAP

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition delivers the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation to navigate change in the high-tech industry.

As the number of Cloud and SaaS IPOs increase, each one becomes a little case study.  We’ve looked at many of them in our 5 Interesting Learnings series.

And one thing we can see is that many big successes were far from overnight success stories.

• It took UiPath 10 years to get to $1m ARR!
• It took Procore 10 years to hit its stride!
• It took Squarespace 5 years to get to material revenue.

These long-time-to-success stories are more common than you might think, and worthy of their own post.

But here, we’re going to use them just to illustrate a point.

The current public market environment might look like a great SaaS crash for many people. In reality, it’s not a crash. It’s a leveling out from a period of explosive growth.

As growth appear to slow, how do we get back to the fundamentals, find the things that are great about SaaS that are measurable, and help people see the value in your business? 

In this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Salesforce Ventures Investor, Jessica Bartos, shares the 5 metrics every SaaS company should care about in any market environment, especially the one we’re currently in. 

The way we work has changed. A rapid rise in remote work has led to broader talent pools and hiring options for companies and greater flexibility for employees.

With office life forever changed, how can companies use in-person face time most effectively?

In this presentation, TravelPerk COO Huw Slater and CPO Sally Sourbron share actionable strategies for incorporating IRL into company life to drive engagement and boost your bottom line. 

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