The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

SaaStr 398: How To Price To Maximise For Upsell and Expansion, Why and When To Engage with Partner Programs & How To Correctly Segment Customer Profiles Most Efficiently with Rob Gonzalez, Founder & CMO @ Salsify

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Nov 18, 2020

Rob Gonzalez, Co-founder and CMO of Salsify, shares insights from his journey in the SaaS world, emphasizing the importance of timing and experience for founders. He discusses how to navigate customer segmentation and identifies when to turn down clients. Rob delves into effective pricing strategies that promote upselling and expansion, highlighting the need for a frictionless initial experience. Additionally, he talks about the right ways to implement and onboard partner programs, and the crucial elements of successful change management in e-commerce.

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ANECDOTE

Salsify Founding

Rob Gonzalez co-founded Salsify in 2012 after a prior venture in mobile payments failed.
His experience at Endeca, a search engine for e-commerce, prepared him for SaaS.

INSIGHT

Startup Readiness

While startup success statistically increases with age/experience, relevant experience matters more.
Gonzalez believes his experience at Endeca was crucial for Salsify's scaling.

INSIGHT

SaaS Evolution

SaaS companies have evolved from simply putting existing software categories in the cloud ("X in the cloud") to leveraging multi-tenancy.
This allows for connecting data and workflows across companies for greater effectiveness.

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Rob Gonzalez is the Co-Founder & CMO @ Salsify, empowering brand manufacturers to deliver the product experiences consumers demand at every point in their buying journey. To date, Salsify has raised over $250M in funding from the likes of Venrock, Underscore, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners & Greenspring to name a few. As for Rob, prior to founding Salsify, he was the first-ever product manager at Cambridge Semantics and before that was a Senior Product Manager @ Endeca helping grow the company to it's $Bn exit.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

How Rob made his way into the world of SaaS as a product manager and how that led to his founding Salsify over 8 years ago?
How does Rob think about the bundled vs unbundled thesis within SaaS? When is it right for SaaS companies to turn down potential customers? How can they do that the right way? What is the right way to think about customer segmentation? How should startups decide which customer segment to focus on?
How should startups think about implementing partnerships? When is the right time? What is the right way to onboard them? How can they be trained in implementation efficiently? What does great change management look like to Rob? What does Rob believe are the biggest misconceptions around change management?
How does Rob think through pricing today in a way that encourages land and expand? What can you do to make the land as frictionless as possible? What does it take to expand effectively? How does Rob think about usage vs seat-based pricing in SaaS? How should sales and marketing work together on pricing?

Rob's 60 Second SaaStr:

Most challenging element of Rob's role with Salsify?
What would Rob most like to change in the world of SaaS today?
What does Rob know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-398-with-salsify-co-founder-cmo-rob-gonzalez/

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