How to Close More Deals with Less Budget

This year has been tougher for almost everyone — hiring freezes, budget cuts, layoffs, and macroeconomic headwinds. 

For those in the business of getting customers for their companies, you might be expected to cut down on spend, yet you’re still expected to grow the company and find ways to sell. 

Datadog CMO Alex Rosemblat took the stage at SaaStr Annual 2023 to share how marketing teams can get more deals done with less budget. 

Was the operating mode of the past couple of years counterproductive or, at a minimum, less efficient for getting deals done?

So we’ve been talking about customer success at SaaStr longer than almost anyone else, going back to our very first posts in 2012, including on Second Order Revenue.

And we’ve used a lot of anecdotal data to suggest how much to spend on CS:

• $2m per CSM at scale
• $1m per CSM as you are scaling, if you can afford it
• Maybe even more in the early days if you have cash

And our SaaStr survey from a little ways back showed many startups are indeed leaning in here, and investing more.

But you can only spend so much of each $1, that’s the thing.  Especially in this new age of efficient growth.  At SaaStr we’ve been huge champions about investing early in CS.  But again, there’s only so much money.

So what’s the current, actual spend for CS?

Gainsight did a survey across all its top customers at its recent CXO conference and quantified it:

“At our CXO Conference 2 weeks ago, we shared that the customers in the room averaged 5.3% of fully-loaded CS cost as a percentage of ARR.”

So 5.3% is a number to back into, at scale.  And in fact, it’s even a bit less really than $2m per CSM.  Especially since it’s fully-loaded.

You may have seen our recent announcement that SaaStr Europa will be back in London next year on June 4-5!

Early Attendance for SaaStr Europa is already tracking ahead of goal, meaning you'll be able to meet, learn, and grow with 4,000 fellow SaaS Founders, Execs, and VCs all at once by the time the event takes place.

If you haven't had the chance to attend SaaStr Europa (yet), it's the place where you'll hear from world-renowned founders across 75+ tactical sessions, and enjoy access to the 1,000+ networking sessions. 

Right now you can save $30 on your tickets when you order before midnight October 31st!

So Domo is an interesting case study on SaaS entrepreneurship.  Founder Josh James had one of the earliest $1B+ exits in SaaS when Adobe bought his first start-up, Omniture, for $1.8 Billion way back in 2008. 

Omniture, now Adobe Analytics, is still big and it dominated web analytics, especially for bigger companies in the earlier days of the internet.

After a less-than-fun time being acquired, he came back and founded a next-generation enterprise analytics company, Domo.

It launched in a much more competitive environment but still grew quickly and IPO’d back in 2018.  After decades running SaaS companies, it was time for a break in 2022, and Josh eventually stepped down as CEO.

But then … things slowed down, to 5% a year at $360 million in ARR.

So in 2023, Josh came back as CEO again to return the company to growth.

Customer success is all about outcomes. If you’ve raised venture capital, you know net revenue retention is important. 

When we look at publicly traded companies, there is a direct correlation between NRR and Enterprise value. That’s the end state we’re going for.

What does NRR have to do with customer success? 

Everything! 

At last week’s Workshop Wednesday — every Weds at 10 a.m. PST — Former VP of Customer Success and current founder and Managing Partner at Success Venture Partners, John Gleeson, shares his lessons learned scaling customer success from $1M to $300M in ARR. 

Anyone looking to grow their customer success team, or rather, drive growth and NRR, will have some valuable takeaways. 

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.

We’re hiring at SaaStr!!

We’ve got at least 6 roles open:

• Director of Email / Growth Marketing.  Take over our complex email campaigns to drive event attendance and ticket sales, as well as our 4 weekly newsletters.
• VP/Director of Events.  Own the Annual + Europa, or at least a big piece of them.
• Director of Sponsor Success.  Make 50+ of our top 200 sponsors more successful and happy.  A very proactive role.
• Director of Digital Content.  Own our website, podcast, and social content.  Make it better and more efficient than they are today.
• Senior Sales Executive.  Own 50+ accounts.  Plenty of in-bound leads, and chance to hunt as well.
• Senior / Seasoned SDR.  Build relationships with the top marketers in SaaS!

Email us your detailed thoughts on the role if of high interest!  Please, no meetings just to “learn more”.  :). Email us directly if you know SaaStr and what we need!

Here are my learnings.

You do need to meet other founders, other execs, your partners, your customers, etc. It really does help over time.

So I’d do the following:

• First, there are usually 1 or 2 top events in your industry. I’d go every year if you can, either you or your co-founder. E.g., Dreamforce, SHRM, Money2020, ShopTalk, even SaaStr for founders and execs. Someone senior should go every year, mainly because the #1 event in the industry is where the top customers, prospects, partners, and other execs are.
• If you can, do 1 “getaway” event with other founders each year. One event where a few hundred top founders and execs gather. This is worth it to build relationships and connections. But again, it’s really only worth it if the attendees are truly of high quality. Second tier events are almost never worth it.
• Go to 2 local evening events a month if you are in a top tech center, e.g. SF, NYC, London, Paris, even Atlanta, Austin, Miami, etc. Go to the best 2 events a month (one every other week) where you can meet other folks. Bail after an hour if you don’t. Otherwise, it’s too much time in front of the computer and with your own team.
• Do your own annual customer event once you have someone to own it for you. You can start small, even with just a dinner or an afternoon. And do as many customer dinners in various cities as you can.
• Finally, a niche point, but the top tech industry events attract a lot of VCs. A lot of them. Over 800 SaaS VCs go to SaaStr Annual. I’m sure it’s well over 1,000 to Web Summit and more. Events aren’t per se a perfect way to meet VCs, but the top ones in tech attract a huge swatch of VCs. We have an entire dedicated VC Lounge at SaaStr Annual, and it’s packed all day long.

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