The Customers We Visit Are Worth 40% More Than Those We Don’t

So I use SaaStr itself as a bit of a lab to keep my learnings on sales & marketing fresh.  We have 150+ sponsors and I continually learn from them.

One thing I’m a bit embarrassed to admit is we didn’t actually crunch the numbers to see what happens when we go visit our sponsors in person.

The answer? 40% higher revenue per sponsor, and about 10% higher logo retention when we showed up in person.

You move on.

They almost certainly don’t invest in your space, at least not as your stage, with your risk profile, etc.

-> At a higher level, you basically can’t convince a VC to invest in a space, an idea, a startup they genuinely aren’t interested in. Save your energy.

Way too many founders send 2, 5, 10 emails after a “No” trying to convince a VC to invest.  Don’t bother. 

Instead, just ask them if there’s interest in getting added to your investor updates.  If they say Yes, drop them into your monthly or quarterly updates you do for potential investors.  A drip campaign to them is always a good idea.

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

Win customers by creating compelling offers with flexible pricing, billing, and bundling options with end-to-end automation. Learn more at the SAP booth in the Sponsor Hall, Hanger West! 

1. Make sure you have a strong Head of Customer Success … whose #1 goal is reducing churn. Too many early-stage VPs of Sales don’t have a strong “wing person” running customer success.  And importantly — resist the urge to have this Head of CS own upsells as their #1 KPI. That may seem to help short-term revenue, but it will lead to a de-focusing on driving down churn.
2. Go visit all your top customers in person, even once a quarter per top customer if you can. Far fewer customers churn if you visit them in person. We’ve been saying this on SaaStr for 10+ years (!), and yet I see fewer and fewer sales execs flying to meet customers.  Zooms are great, and try to do 5-10 Zooms a week with customers, too.  But they aren’t enough.
3. Read your team’s emails and listen to their calls. If you don’t, they’ll often say things that are just plain wrong. And lead to unnecessary churn. You might not want to do this, but you have to.
4. Put together a strong onboarding team. And drive up your activation rates and time-to-value. Try to get every single customer to fully be on-board within 30 days in general — or much faster for many apps. At least 90% at a base case onboarding in 30 days, ideally much faster if you sell to SMBs.  Klaviyo for example hits 90% activation in 30 days even with 100,000+ SMB customers and $600m in ARR.  If customers are slow to use you, they may never really use you. And they’ll be much more likely to churn.
5. Do pilots, if customers want them. Don’t resist them. Too many sales execs resist pilots, since they seemingly add risk to the deal, and often force you to resell the deal just a few months later as the pilot ends, in essence. But a pilot also aligns everyone to value and gets them on the same page. And it in essence roots churn out and identifies it early, during the pilot — when there’s still a chance to do something about it. Just remember to do Paid Pilots only. No one values a Free Pilot or Super Cheap Pilot, so no one puts in the work on the prospect / customer side.

So our weekly live Workshop Wednesdays have been a hit!!  We bring in a top, tactical SaaStr speaker live on Zoom for a deep dive on a core topic, then open it up for some great AMA!   Almost 4,000 folks have signed up so far!

Upcoming ones:

• September 13th: Stephanie Opdam, Principal @ Notion Capital
• September 20th: Kristina Shen, General Partner @ A16z 
• September 27th: Patrick Moran, Former CMO and CRO @ Calendly and Rafael Alenda, Former Vice President, Product Marketing @ Salesforce
• October 4th: Andreas Helbig, Partner @ Atomico and Laura Connell, Partner @ Atomic
• Oct 11th: AMA with Jason Lemkin
• Oct 18: Lavanya Shukla, VP of Growth @ Weights & Biases
• October 25th: Sterling Snow, Former CRO @ Divvy

This edition of the SaaStr Weekly is sponsored in part by Booking.com

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