The Latest from SaaStr: Make Buy Out Contracts Part of Your Sales Toolkit

So we’ve done a few good posts on SaaStr about how to steal a customer / prospect from a competitor.

And yet, I still see so few SaaS companies doing even the most basic steps here. 

Too many just ask, “Is there anything we can still do to win your business” … once the deal is totally lost and long since signed with another vendor. 

Why do they even bother? 

I get that most sales teams aren’t structured to really put in the work here, to steal a customer.  But there is one simple thing you can do — enable and put guidelines in place for buy-out deals.  To buy potential customers out from long-term contracts they’ve already signed and paid for with the competition.

So with our first SaaStr APAC behind us, it's time for the 4th SaaStr Europa! This time we're moving to London, for the biggest Europa ever!

Right now we're tracking to 162% of 2022's attendance in Barcelona, which was already a record. We're hoping to approach or hit 5,000 total SaaS founders, VCs and execs in London!

We'll have 100+ speakers and workshops, and 500+ Braindates, including:

• Bill Magnuson, Co-founder, CEO @ Braze
• Sterling Snow, CRO @Divvy
• Diego Dugatkin, CPO @ Box
• Spencer Kimball, CEO and Co-founder @ Cockroach Labs
• Nowi Kallen, Managing Director @ Salesforce Ventures
• Joe Thomas, Co-founder and CEO @ Loom

Speaker submissions are open! Apply here now!

About 50% of our sponsorships are already sold out, and booths are chosen first come, first serve. Want more leads in 2023? Then reach out to us to sponsor here.

So get excited!! We're taking over the cool Tobacco Docks in hip East London for 2+ action-backed days, across 7+ stages, and 100s and 100s of braindates and mentorship sessions, along with our classic Meet-a-VC program.

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.

There are tons of customer success veterans out there. So you can find folks to join you. Even just a few years ago, there weren’t enough folks when enough experience to be your first “head of customer success.”  Now there are 100s and 1000s.

But the bad news is, many can’t really do the job a start-up needs at a leadership level.

I’ve watched so many VP/Head/Directors of Success hires just not work out … so I thought it might be a good time to update our quick interview checklist from a few years back.

In particular, being an individual contributor customer success professional does not always breed leadership.

If the company actually shipped a strong product people respect — not bad at all.

If the company shipped something cr*ppy, a POS hack that looks like it — it’s a negative, at least to folks that have really shipped products to production.

Don’t worry too much.

There aren’t enough great seasoned product folks out there.  There just aren’t enough.  So we have to hire every great product manager we can get.  And it’s often not their fault they didn’t pick the next Slack.

We don’t blame you if the start-up failed.  We don’t even care — so long as you’ve proven you can ship A+ level software.  Ideally, that at least some customers have purchased.

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

Revenue has always been at the top of list of "Things Businesses Want More Of."

But not like this.

A global SAP survey shows companies are seeing beyond traditional growth tactics and are shifting focus on sustainability as a critical way to boost revenue, increase efficiency, and mitigate risk.

While technically true, especially if you’ve raised a lot (as many did in the Boom Times of late 2020 to early 2022), I believe embedded in this thinking is some bad advice.

VCs are expecting a positive return on their investment.

They are wishing for 100x their money (that’s what “makes” a fund), hoping for at least 10x their money, OK with 5x, and will settle for 2x-3x.  And even 1x, if the company fails or deeply struggles.

So if you raise money at say, a $50m valuation, and want to sell for $40m … yes, that’s a problem. The VCs will not be happy. They may even block the sale.

But …

Three things.

I get it. In a sense, it happened to me — once.

But I’ve learned a few things:

• No one cares. They really don’t.
• It can make you look a bit petty or weak (fair or not). No one wants to work with, or for, a weak CEO or VP.
• There aren’t always 2 sides to every story per se, but it’s often at least a little nuanced. You’re often at least 1% at fault, or at least not perfect. You may not have been fired for cause, but you likely weren’t perfect. No one is. It’s not really worth it to get into that.  Fault is almost never 100/0.  Fault, in fact, often doesn’t even really matter in the end.
• It doesn’t matter. It’s done. People get fired, managed out, and quit for a million reasons. It doesn’t matter. It’s done.

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