15 Ways to Help Your Sales Team in 2022; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

There was a very curious thing in Zoom’s financials leading up to its IPO that I am surprised no one commented on, at least that I saw. But as a founder, it jumped out at me.

In 2017, Zoom’s cash burn was exactly equal to its Gross Profit.  In other words, it burned exactly $0.  It didn’t make a profit that year (although it does now), but nor did it even lose a nickel. And it was pretty darn close to equal in 2018 and 2019 as well.

Coincidence you say? Hardly. Not from one of the greatest SaaS CEOs and founders of all times.

Zoom Had a Burn Rate Budget. So Should You.

We last took a look at Atlassian at around $2B ARR, and more subtly has changed than you might think.  Atlassian has gone almost 100% Cloud since then, and has held up nicely in the overall public markets even as others have taken bigger hits.  Perhaps because it combines strong growth with significant free cash flow.

At $3B ARR it’s growing 37%, and free-cash flow is running at $800m a year.  That’s insanely cash-creating, with a 29% free-cash flow margin.  Wow.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Zapnito

2022 — the year we’re now in the New Normal.  Back to getting on jets, doing real events and field marketing, but also … living primarily distributed start-up lives, on top of Zoom.

We've shared a few ideas on how to help the sales team make this your best year so far.

At the 2022 SaaStr Miami Super Meet-up the other day, Salesloft CEO Kyle Porter pointed out an interesting statistic from the recent Vista SaaS CEO conference:

Public SaaS companies that are hyper sales efficient haven’t been hit nearly as hard, if at all, compared to those that are less efficient.

Take a look at ZoomInfo, Bill.com and Atlassian for example.  All three are hyper-efficient.

So the more founders I talk to about how often they do in-person team meetups now, the fewer really do them often enough.  Companies that were distributed pre-2020 generally did and do a quarterly meet-up in person, to get everyone together, often at a rotated location.

But now that we all run distributed teams, most folks aren’t really bringing their teams together as often as they should.

Only 29% of folks are formally meeting every quarter.

It’s time to do better.

One little way we can help — bring your entire team together to 2022 SaaStr Annual in the SF Bay Area Sep 13-15.  The weather is perfect in the Bay Area then, and Annual is now outdoors and open-air, spread across 40+ acres.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Snyk

In most SaaS companies, a sales rep’s quota is in the end 3x-5x their OTE (i.e., salary + target bonus).  Generally low with smaller deal sizes and SMBs, and generally approaching 5x in the enterprise and with bigger deals.

Why?

Three marketing leaders discuss the importance of community, data, and experimentation, as well as the do's and don'ts of using agencies.

Featuring Katrina Wong (VP Marketing and Demand Generation, Segment), Asawari Samant (Head of Marketing, Anyscale), and Jeffrey Yoshimura (CMO and Customer Experience Officer, Snyk)

• SaaStr is seeking a Strategic Customer Success Manager to be an integral part of our revenue team ensuring that our sponsors have a wonderful experience with SaaStr and continue to increase their investment every year.
• G2 is looking for a Director of Product Marketing to be responsible for providing leadership, structure, and direction to a talented team of product marketers. This is a highly cross-functional role requiring close partnership between product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams and will collaborate with customers and partners globally.

533

Motivating and Organizing your Sales Team with Marilee Bear, SVP NA Enterprise Sales at Zendesk

534

Marketing Secrets to Hypergrowth from Building Elastic, Zuora, and Segment

535

Hacks for Founders of High-Growth Startups with DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

You can push your team to do what you want them to do

Or you can let them run at what they are great at

A bunch of folks on twitter making fun of $5m at $20m post vs. pre

It's actually a good point, as this is often an easy way to bridge the gap in founder-VC negotiations

Instead of just asking for a higher valuation (as a founder), you ask if it can be pre instead of post

You want to hire that VP that

* Did it all before

* Worked at the best logo

* Built the whole team

* Closed all the top customers

* And did it in your industry

But if they really did it all ...

Why would they want to do it again?

Snowflake grows 101% at $1.6B in ARR ...and ...

Stock price falls

#toughoutthere

© SaaStr 2022

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