Is a Bigger Booth Worth it at Top Industry Events?

So a question for the ages of marketers — is a bigger booth worth it?

I had my doubts after 9 years of SaaStr Annuals. I assumed they’d all perform kind of the same.

But, I was wrong.

The data:

• Qualified Leads this year ranged from 95 at lowest-yielding of almost 200 sponsors, to 1597 at the top — a wide range
• But on average, each Gold got 207 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Super Gold at 249 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Platinum at 481 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Diamond at 661 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Mega and Unicorn?  Over 1,000 Qualified Leads

Now of course, there’s a causation vs correlation debate.

Do bigger sponsors just put more work in, because they are paying more? Perhaps.

We certainly see that in the case of competitors who have widely differing outcomes.

But I’m skeptical.

Some smaller folks work the hardest.  After all, it’s a bigger, and more important, investment for them in many cases.

Up Next: Wednesday, October 11th @ 10AM

Topic: Lessons Scaling Customer Success from 1 Million to 300 Million in ARR

Speaker: John Gleeson, Managing Partner and Founder at Success Venture Partners 

Workshop Wednesdays is new series where we’ll be bringing some of the best SaaStr speakers to you LIVE, every Wednesday. 

Each workshop will be hosted in a live, interactive 30-minute format at 10am Pacific each and every Wednesday. This workshop will be 100% LIVE, not pre-recorded, and will be hosted in an, interactive 30-minute format, including Q&A.

I’m not sure I’m a great giver of golden advice, but here’s my list of the best golden advice I’ve been given over the years.

And the advice holds as well today as when it was given:

Manage People — In General, and Earlier.

The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Managing people isn’t always fun. But embrace it if you want to be a CEO, a founder, and/or be a part of something bigger.

Listen to “Audibles” and Act on Them.

Your best bosses, VPs, mentors, and others will give you “audibles” — quick bits of micro-advice during pitches, customer meetings, interviews, etc. While you are in the process of working. They’ll see where you could improve in real-time. Take this real-time feedback and leverage it and act on it immediately. If someone else great is in the room with you, these audibles can make the difference between a positive outcome and a negative one.

Celebrate Your Wins.

This is tough to do right for most of us. There’s always the next quarter, the next milestone. But you have to truly celebrate the wins. Especially as founders, we tend to go heads-down after a win, because it’s just one step in a bigger plan. But the team needs to celebrate the wins, and maybe you do, too.

Spend 20%+ of Your Time Recruiting.

Recruiting isn’t fun. But nothing is more important once you have something. Force yourself to spend 20% of your time doing it. If you aren’t investing 20% of your time, you’re doing less important things with that time.

Go Visit Your Customers In-Person. Often.

Go visit your customers, partners, and prospects. Relationships aren’t built on the phone or a Zoom.  If you are going long, you gotta show up for the important ones.  And while Zooms aren’t the same, do more of them.  Do 5-6 customer Zooms a week.  And then somehow, really meet all your top customers.

Slow Down the Biggest Decisions. Speed Up All Other Decisions. 

Actually, I never got this golden advice but needed it. Big decisions — slow them down. If you are risking the company, it almost always can wait a week. Get more advice. Sleep on it. Mull it over. But everything else? Push those decisions down and move faster. As long as you can fix any mistakes later.

There Are Only a Handful Of Great Co-Founders and VPs. Go All-In on Them.

You will interview 100s and then 1000s of folks over your career, and hire many very good, pretty good, OK, and less-than-great folks. But just a handful will truly be able to move the needle for you. Go all-in. Let their weakness go, and backfill them. Support them when they make mistakes. Let them grow and hire and scale as far as humanly possible. Only a few will truly make a difference. Hire them immediately, over-compensate them with equity, appreciate them … and get out of their way. Let them run.

X marks the spot.

Next year marks the 10th edition of SaaStr Annual and will feature 3 days, and 13,500 B2B/ SaaS Founders, Executives and Investors, coming together to share their learning in the heart of Silicon Valley. 

We’ll once again take over the 40+ acres of the San Mateo County Events Center for SaaStr Annual 2024 on September 10-12th and we'll bringing the best in SaaS with us. Use our exclusive newsletter code for a discount on early bird tickets.

“My App Stack” is a new series where we dig in with top CMOs, CROs, CTOs and CEOs on just what apps they’re really using to run their business.  I always learn a lot from these — they are in essence a best practices list from each leader.  Last week we had a great one with Sean Falconer, Head of Marketing of Skyflow, check it out here.

This week we have Frank Dale, SVP of Product at Salesloft!

“When You Hire Your First Sales Rep — Just Make Sure You Hire Two” was one of the very first classic SaaStr posts, and I think it’s become somewhat conventional thinking now.

Don’t just hire 1 to start — it doesn’t save you money or time, and worse, you won’t be able to run an A/B test to see what works.

I’ve updated the post a bit for today, as first-time founders still tend to make this mistake, especially when bootstrapped.

Now you may somehow have enough capital to hire a VP of Sales and a bunch of reps right then and there.  I’ll talk about this — a lot — in some other posts.  Because I really learned a lot having a simply awesome VP Sales and sales team.

But most likely, you won’t have the resources to hire a whole sales team upfront.  You’ll want to start with one experienced rep.

And there’s only one problem with that: no matter how well that rep does, you won’t learn anything.  You need at least 2 to learn.

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

Achieving SOC 2 compliance helps you build trust, raise capital, scale your business, and rise above the competition. Download the checklist to get started.

It shouldn’t take more than a week, or even just a few days, to negotiate a term sheet.  That is — once a VC decides they truly want to do a deal.

There really aren’t many variables these days for seed to Series A deals, really just price and how much you are raising/selling.

Most of the rest of the terms are much lower drama than they used to be. Most VCs aren’t trying to control your board and your company in the early days anymore. (If they do, that may take longer to work out).

So what are the tips to get the best deal — but also to ensure the deal closes?

A few learnings and insights:

It doesn’t really matter “who goes first”. Many founders will expect a VC to “go first” and make an offer. They may also think it gives them some leverage. Perhaps it does, in later stage and oversubscribed deals, and in general at the margin. But going first also might have advantages, in letting you anchor high. I am just not sure it much matters in earlier stage investing.

Personally, I just ask. “What is your ask? How much are you raising? What valuation are you looking for?” It’s not a game for me, at least. I just want to know. I just want to know if I can do it, if I can meet the ask.

© SaaStr 2023

644 Emerson St. Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, 94301

If you'd like to stop receiving the SaaStr Daily, click here