Metrics that Measure Up

STOP if you do not think that the concept of "Kind Folks Finish First" is applicable in corporate America!Sam Jacobs, the founder, and CEO of Pavilion realized that getting fired for the third time was the catalyst for finally understanding that pursuing his real passion "to help others" was the key to finding both success and fulfillment.Sam credits a shift in "mindset" as foundational to creating a company and a passion that enable him to find happiness and success. The Power of Failure are the first four words in Chapter 1 of Sam's best-selling book - Kind Folks Finish First. As Sam's CEO shared that his services were no longer needed, he realized that believing you are a failure, you are a failure. Rather, if you think about failure as learning, experience, and wisdom your path to success will become much easier. Why is it so hard to stop being a "victim of your situation" versus the master of your destiny? The common emotion is "fear" because they are afraid. Often this mindset provides the motivation to identify why what you experience is unfair and not due to your own decisions and actions. Admitting to yourself that you are responsible for your experiences and outcomes can be liberating and the foundation for real growth.What do you stand for was the opening to Chapter 3. Sam highlighted that this was not a question he asked himself, it was a question that his coach forced Sam to answer for himself. Being in New York City, Sam felt that "making money" was his primary goal and motivation. Sam's coach said is that where you find energy, and after a few week's Sam realized he stood for "helping people to cared about to meet their professional goals". This clarifying moment was the catalyst for the "what and how" of building Pavilion.Getting by Giving, was a central theme throughout the book and is also a key Pavilion value. Sam said being very selective in investors and employees who share that mindset and value is key to ensuring the culture of a company lives by those values. Being able to focus on the long-term goals and building the culture, means you might sacrifice growth rates to build a long-term, durable growth company that uses its values to guide its journey.Every crisis is an opportunity, another key phrase Sam shared in the book. Sam's primary advice is that you must look outside of yourself. The instinct in a difficult environment is to focus on yourself - but in times of challenges focus first on your "customer's" challenges and situation and allow that to be your guide for decision-making. With that mindset and focus, the investment you make in your customers now will provide returns over time that cannot be measured with a short-term orientation focused on "your needs" versus "your customer's needs".Sam's transformation which started once he realized "his true calling to help others" is an inspirational story and message for anyone looking for happiness and success in their professional life.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nick Franklin is the Founder and CEO of ChartMogul, a leading SaaS Metrics Reporting, and Subscription Analytics Platform. Nick worked for five years at ZenDesk, where he led both Europe and then Asia-Pacific before founding ChartMogul eight years ago.With 2,500 B2B SaaS companies as customers, Nick's insights around how companies use metrics to inform decision-making are unmatched. Nick's perspective is that during the earliest days of a B2B SaaS company's evolution, the importance of being able to track metrics begins. An example early on is how pricing and packaging impact customer acquisition and growth. Another example Nick highlighted is if a founder is considering raising external funds, having a grasp on the key financial performance metrics is critical to gaining investor confidence.Nick highlighted the importance of providing access to company performance metrics to all employees is critical to creating a metrics-centric culture. When I asked Nick "why companies do not provide performance metrics transparency to their employees?", Nick shared that many of their customers simply say they prefer to keep company financial information "on a need-to-know basis". Nick could not explain why that is beyond history and an old-fashioned mentality.Nick responded that they wanted to ensure that even the earliest-stage companies could develop a metrics culture, and use ChartMogul as that infrastructure. That is why ChartMogul provides a free version of its platform to companies with less than $10,000 MRR. Over fifty percent of their customers are paying customers up to $100M ARR. Some companies decide to use a metrics and subscription analytics platform in preparation for an impending financing event, which begged the question of what are the top metrics investors want to see a founder truly understand. Nick highlighted early customer retention, revenue and product engagement growth, and eventually dollar-based customer retention and expansion.Double clicking on the "engagement" measurement, what are the common metrics to measure? How many users, how many times do they log into/use the platform on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, and then almost always there is a product-specific "North Star Metric" such as messages, API calls, documents sent, etc...During our discussion on "engagement", I asked Nick what the aha moment, often referred to as the "activation point" is for ChartMogul. He shared that integrating into a subscription management platform is the first activation point, but more importantly the "high-value activation point" is when the user gains insight or perspective on a metric that was not previously available, understood, or even considered as a critical business metric.If you are evaluating how best to capture, calculate, publish and use metrics to inform your B2B SaaS journey and decisions, this conversation with Nick is a great listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Revenue Operations - the buzz has continued in 2022 but how to introduce and then maximize the return on investment is still a work in process.Cliff Simon, the Chief Revenue Officer at Carabiner Group, an early leader in Revenue Operations stopped by to share his insights into how to maximize the return on RevOps.First, we discussed if Revenue Operations is viewed and delivering as a Strategic function or being relegated to tactical activities such as data management, revenue technology administration, integration, and report development. Cliff shared that Revenue Operations MUST be a strategic, data-driven organization that surfaces and highlights opportunities for increased revenue growth in partnership with the C-Suite.One large risk, despite the best intentions, RevOps often gets so overwhelmed with daily, reactive activities that they forget to take the time to step back and take a more holistic, strategic approach to the insights they are gaining from the data, metrics and process improvement opportunities they see every day. One reality is that RevOps as a profession has grown so quickly, as highlighted by the increase from 5,600 to 17,000 RevOps titles on LinkedIn today, and the 30K+ open positions being promoted online today. This increase in demand for RevOps professionals has led to the current lack of experienced Revenue Operations leaders who understand the strategic impact of Revenue Operations.How is a strategic Revenue Operations function be measured to show the return on investment? Though it is hard to benchmark the impact RevOps has on financial performance metrics, RevOps should be responsible to surface the insights, metrics, and benchmarks for internal revenue performance metrics to the executive team, including highlighting the opportunities for increasing revenue growth and revenue efficiency. One recent research program highlighted that companies with a centralized Revenue Operations function grow 30% faster than those without the function.Today's reality is that the majority of Revenue Operations departments are still primarily focused on tactical activities, and only at $50M ARR and above do companies have the resources and capacity to have a Revenue Operations leader is truly strategic. However, companies should invest early in a RevOps function, and that includes having Sales Ops and Marketing Ops as roles that report into a broader Revenue Operations organization.Another topic Cliff highlighted is that RevOps owns the process to "document" the processes that underly and support the entire Revenue lifecycle. This supports the growth of the company, and as new leaders and resources enter the organization, they can quickly under the "current state" of revenue-generating processes and the associated performance (in the form of metrics) to better inform their decisions on how to evolve the organization and accelerate revenue performance.What metrics should RevOps be measuring: 1) Revenue Growth; 2) Sales Cycle Time; 3) Win Rate; 4) Pipeline Generation Metrics; 5) Net Dollar Retention (including churn)If you are a SaaS CEO, CFO, CRO, or Revenue Operations leader, this conversation with Cliff Simon provides some great knowledge nuggets on increasing the impact that Revenue Operations can make in your company.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As a Chief Revenue Officer, Toni has had a front-row view on scaling revenue engines, and one major challenge he faced was that too much time was spent on financial planning and budgets, versus how to best make money.The first question we discussed was the difference between FP&A and Revenue Operations. Toni's perspective is that Revenue Operations is much closer to the revenue generating process, and thus has a deeper insight into how revenue is generated, and as such should be a key part of the revenue planning process.Next, we discussed how being involved in the revenue planning process makes RevOps a more strategic partner to the executive team. RevOps top three responsibilities are data, process, and tools but only the start. The trick is to take the insights from the aforementioned three responsibilities and becoming the primary purveyor of insights into how the revenue engine is performing on an end-to-end basis.Potential strategic activities starts with revenue planning, which starts with how to generate revenue efficiently. Next, RevOps should be the "mission control" through regular meetings with the commercial (revenue) leaders, and discuss the insights from the dashboards and reports they are providing. Key to the value of these discussions is how to overcome the issues that the data is surfacing.One of the opportunities in today's business culture is becoming data-driven without becoming data overwhelmed. Revenue Operations should take the lead on determining how the data, reports, and dashboards they are creating inform the decisions on how to increase the probability of making the number and even forecasting how the current "data" predicts the revenue future.How can a company ensure that Revenue Operations does not become so reactive to the daily requests, that they cannot carve out the time to be strategic partners to the CRO? First, RevOps leaders should ensure there are good "outcome goals" for how the data and reports will be used, and prioritize time to analyze the data in the context of "how does this data and metrics inform our future revenue outcomes".What are the top "5" metrics that a RevOps leader should own? First, the mindset needs to be that they own the revenue number along with the CRO. Second, CAC Payback Period by cohort including regional, customer segments, and even product level in larger companies. Third, Customer Lifetime Value is a great metric, but since it is so multi-variate in nature, it must be broken down into the input metrics (variables) to isolate which leading indicators are impacting CLTV - a classic outcome metric.If you are a Revenue Operations professional or a senior executive evaluating how to increase the business impact of RevOps, this conversation with Toni is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig Rosenberg has worked with hundreds, if not thousands of B2B SaaS companies as the co-founder of TOPO, Distinguished analyst at Gartner, and now as Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners.Across Craig's roles, he was able to take an expensive view across each stage of a SaaS company's growth including strategy, people, process, technology, tactics, and over time METRICS!Craig highlighted that the best companies in the world were/are "metrics" driven, and as Craig started to work with larger, enterprise-class companies beyond SaaS being "metrics and data" driven was even more critical to decision-making."End to End" Customer Journey is an often discussed subject, but what is it really? Craig's perspective is most customer journey mapping is too generic and needs to be very focused on how the customer buys starting with using third-party internet activity to marketing interactions to Sales Development to Sales and then ending at "Closed-Won". Going beyond Closed-Won to include customer engagement, retention, and expansion,Going beyond mapping and understanding the entire customer journey including acquisition, retention, and expansion, companies need to "SEGMENT" the metrics by customer cohort, such as SMB vs Mid-Market vs Enterprise. Another view should be based upon "HOW" the prospect/customer came into the customer lifecycle process, such as lead source and/or lead channel.When I asked "who" in a company should map the customer lifecycle, Craig's response was quite pragmatic: "whoever is best at mapping the customer lifecycle in your company". Craig added that Revenue Operations is a perfect organization to take the lead on customer journey mapping, and building a "coalition" across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. An important caveat is that without the support and involvement of the CEO it becomes less significant and strategic.Another topic we discussed, was if a company should involve customers in the "journey mapping" process. Craig said of course, but you only need to include a few customers in the process as talking with more than 10 customers will provide diminishing returns.Next, I asked Craig about what metrics are priorities to measure the efficiency of the customer lifecycle across acquisition, retention, and expansion. Craig started with the Four Vital Signs Framework to track in a SaaS company:- Growth- Efficiency- Churn- BurnNext, we discussed if any of the Vital Signs are more important at each stage of a company's evolution. Craig's first recommendation was to instrument and begin capturing metrics for all four vital signs early in the journey. Certain metrics like churn/Customer Retention will become more important as a company grows beyond the first and second renewal cycles, but identifying and instrumenting for metrics should begin earlier than most companies believe are required.No matter what stage of growth your SaaS company is currently in, this discussion with Craig Rosenberg provides many interesting, insightful perspectives on the importance and priority of metrics across the customer lifecycle.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you ever looked at all of the reports, dashboards, and data presented across your company and felt overwhelmed and under-informed?Today's data-driven world far too often results in a lot of data but not better decision-making or company performance.Scott Stouffer founded his first company in 1993 and has lived the reality of how Go-to-Market Strategy is not a one-time thing, but a series of iterations over time. Scott compares today's need to continuously evolve your GTM strategy much as Agile did for software development. Basically an "Agile Go-to-Market" model.The above reduces the amount of investment wasted on strategies and tactics that never provide the required return. By definition, the majority of companies will not nail the Go-to-Market motion on the first try. Examples include identifying the top Ideal Customer Profile, creating the perfect messaging and positioning strategy, or even the best sales motion to engage, interest and acquire new customers.One key to successfully using an "agile" GTM model is to limit the number of new variables you introduce at any given time. One example Scott provided was an experiment that uses "new messaging" as the only new variable and measures how that performs as measured by activity to conversation to meeting to opportunities.A key to identifying which GTM motion is working is to ensure you instrument and measure the performance metrics that provide real market feedback on the efficacy of your GTM tactic(s). This applies not only when you first enter a market with a new product, but when you enter a new market with an existing product that was successful in a different market. The next topic we covered was the "DEFINING" moment in the podcast (11:40 in the podcast). Scott started with an analogy on how a cholesterol measurement of 50 is meaningless without context, but if you know the measurement was 45 six months ago AND the appropriate benchmark for the patient is 20-35 there is CONTEXT to the measurement (metric) and requires attention.Scott's point on "Go-To-Market Metrics Require Context" was defined by using one if not all of the following variables: 1. Time - how is the metric trending over time 2. Plan - how is the metric performing against the plan 3. Causality - what variable(s) impacts the metric 4. Significance - How does this impact our business 5. External Industry Benchmarks - how do I compare to the external marketAnother topic we discussed was WHEN and HOW to instrument your Go-To-Market systems to capture and then use the GTM metrics to inform decisions. Scott suggested that when a company moves beyond "Founder Led Growth" into Sales Led Growth is the time to instrument GTM metrics. One caveat was metrics become more instructive once Product Market Fit is established, and it is appropriate to scale Marketing and Sales investment.Growth efficiency, a trending topic in 2022 becomes more important once Product Market Fit is achieved and the investment in Marketing and Sales continues to increase..even in $1M - $5M ARR companies.If you are looking for ways to increase Go-to-Market efficiency and increase the value of metrics in decision-making, this conversation with Scott is amazingly informative for first-time founders and the most experienced GTM leaders.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Binch has led revenue teams at highly successful B2B SaaS category creators, including Marketo and Pendo.Having real-life, applied experience and success at scaling high-growth companies, while also having broad insights into several Battery Ventures portfolio companies provides Bill with a unique perspective on how Chief Revenue Officers use metrics to inform their journey.Bill's journey over 29 years has informed how his use of metrics to lead a revenue team has evolved, alongside the advancement of revenue technology options. Though Sales has always been the ultimate function to be measured by metrics (quota achievement), today's CRO can have much better insight into the "signals" or "leading indicators" that directly impact quota achievement.Today's Sales leaders are reviewing and asking deep conversations about pipeline trends, which sources are delivering the most, and highest quality leads that result in Closed-Won revenue. But what metrics does Bill think are most important for each stage of a B2B SaaS company's growth:$𝟬 - $𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗔𝗥𝗥:- Customer logo count which provides Sales team confidence and future customer confidence- Average Contract Value- Average Sales Cycle> $ 𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗔𝗥𝗥- Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures how much ARR a current customer delivers year over year. Example if $50K ARR this year and $60K ARR next year = 120% NRR- Predictive metrics that forecast future revenue performance including Pipeline Performance and Quota CapacityHow does Bill define the CRO's responsibility? Bill's perspective is the word "REVENUE" defines the CRO's responsiblity to including: 1) New Revenue; 2) Expansion Revenue; 3) Retention Revenue. Bill does not believe that the CRO should include the Marketing function.Bill firmly believes that Sales and Marketing should co-own the qualified pipeline goal, not just leads, Marketing Qualified Leads, or other Marketing centric objectives that do not directly impact the pipeline. The "intersection" of Marketing and Sales is PIPELINE. Far too often in board meetings, Bill sees Marketing and Sales present data, metrics, and reports that have little to no direct correlation and definitely no causation.What are the "pipeline metrics" Bill thinks are most important? Bill likes "Pipeline Coverage Ratio" which calculates how much qualified pipeline is required to achieve $X in revenue. Bill also introduced his pipeline "MOJO" dashboard which includes a dashboard that tracks daily pipeline trends including:1. Deals created2. Deals lost3. Deals expanded4. Deals decreased5. Deals pulled forward6. Deals pushed backBill shared that since the CRO should own all revenue inputs, including acquisition, retention and expansion they should also be responsible for the Customer Success function. However, once a company scales to greater than $50M - $100M the role of the Chief Customer Officer should report directly to the CEO and not the CRO.I also asked Bill if the CRO should own revenue efficiency metrics, such as CAC Payback Period or Customer Lifetime Value? Bill's perspective is that the CRO should be aware of how their performance metrics impact company level metrics that the CFO should own, including CAC Payback Period, Customer Lifetime Value and Rule o 40 (as examples).Lastly, I asked Bill what are the core metrics that the CRO should report to the board. They include: 1) ARR Growth - trend over 5 quarters; 2) ACV - 5 Qtr trend; 3) Average Sales Cycle - 5 Qtr trend; 4) New vs expansion split - 5 Qtr trend; 5) Average Revenue Per Account - 5 Qtr trends; 6) Logo adds - 5 Qtr trend; 7) Segmented based metrics as a company scalesBill's experience as the CRO that led growth at two incredibly successful and market creating SaaS companies and now as an Operating Partner at Battery Ventures makes this a must listen conSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's hard to imagine being a key part of three industry-defining product categories, which is exactly what Bruce Cleveland has experienced in his Silicon Valley software career.  First, Bruce was an early executive leader at Oracle (first 100+ employees) as they re-defined relational databases, then on to Apple where he led the object-oriented engineering division, next he led the business development and alliances team at Siebel Systems before he took over products as they defined Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and then again at C3.ai in defining Enterprise AI. Three of those experiences resulted in IPOs.  Bruce then became a VC, first at InterWest Partners where he invested in early-stage B2B SaaS startups such as Marketo (acquired by Adobe), and then he started Wildcat Venture Partners with two other people, again focused on early-stage startups such as Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce).  Based uponthe above experiences, Bruce wanted to create an easy-to-understand and prescriptive framework to help entrepreneurs move through each stage of a start-up's journey. The result was the Traction Gap Framework.  The different stages of the Traction Gap Framework include:  Minimum Viable Category (MVC): Does the market segment already exist or is there an opportunity to create and lead a new product category - creating your own category (e.g., Gainsight) presents more risk but the returns are much higher.  Initial Product Release (IPR): The first version of the product beyond prototypes and wireframes that serves as the feedback mechanism to refine and evolve the product to present to multiple new customers.  Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The product state that is required to acquire several new customers and provide tangible value while using early customers feedback to prioritize feature/function refinement and enhancement  Minimum Viable Repeatability (MVR): This is the point where external investors (VCs) are most interested in investing in an early-stage SaaS/Cloud company and become seriously interested as the initial referenceable customers are in place, and the ability to leverage the learnings from early customers can now be used to rinse and repeat the customer acquisition process  Minimum Viable Traction(MVT): This is after a company has “crossed the chasm” and is ready to materially scale a business to $20M - $50M while establishing market leadership.  I asked Bruce about the secrets to creating a new product category.  Bruce highlighted that not everyone wants to be the spokesperson leading the creation of a new category. He used the example of Marketo, where the founders decided that Jon Miller, a co-founder, would be positioned as "the father of marketing automation" while the other co-founder and CEO, Phil Fernandez chose to primarily focus on leading strategy and operations.  Bruce coined the term "Market Engineering" to help frame the content in his book. The basic concept is developing the positioning and messaging of the company to a few innovative and provocative concepts that everyone can easily understand and clearly differentiates the company from others. Steve Jobs at Apple is a great example of a category creator. Bruce shared the four pillars the Traction Gap Framework including: 1) Team; 2) Product; 3) Revenue; 4) Systems.  Each pillar takes a point of prominence at various stages when traversing the Traction Gap - though TEAM is the common foundation at each stage across the journey  If you are a student of Silicon Valley and the SaaS start-up world, starting or already on your own entrepreneurial journey, this discussion with Bruce Cleveland, who has been there and done that is a must listen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You may have heard the acronym FP&A many times, but always wondered what it stood for?  Financial Planning and Analysis is the function, typically present in more mature companies responsible that is responsible for financial planning, modeling and analysis.Paul has a summarized view of what FP&A professionals are responsible for which is: "FP&A  is responsible to maximize shareholder return by helping businesses to best deploy and allocate future dollars".Where does FP&A start and end, versus the Revenue Operations function?  Well, the answer was clear as mud. Paul shared that each company defines FP&A and RevOps differently,  Some companies have "operations" report to the CFO and some to the Chief Revenue Officer.  The primary answer was "planning and modeling" goes into FP&A, and the rest of operations depends on the culture and competency within a company.Forecasting was another topic that is sometimes responsible for forecasting and others FP&A simply validates the Sales provided forecast, but not to create and share the forecast.  Basically, can FP&A use historical financial data toreview and validate the forecast.I drilled down into how FP&A departments become involved with "SaaS Metrics" in the SaaS industry.  Paul likes to see CFOs as the primary owner of the data that drives SaaS Metrics to ensure that the input data and the enterprise value creating metrics are standardized. Basically, not having the Go-to-Market functions own the SaaS Metrics formula definition, but can collaborate with FP&A in the calculation of the metrics using the "Finance" approved definition and calculation formula.If you are involved in the financial planning, modeling and reporting process in your SaaS company, and already have or are evaluating introducing a FP&A function that will work closely with the GTM operations teams (Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, CS Ops and/or RevOps) this conversation is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How has Customer Success evolved over the past ten years? What better place to start than discussing the latest Customer Success Benchmarking Index with Kellie Capote, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight.Kellie has invested the last five years developing her perspectives on Customer Success at Gainsight in a broad array of Customer Success leadership roles, including becoming the Chief Customer Officer in 2021.What were some of the top findings from the 2022 CS Benchmarking Index? Kellie first highlighted that 41% of companies recently invested in forming a Customer Success Operations function and is currently present in 61% of companies. This highlights the operational rigor and excellence being developed in Customer Success.63% of Customer Success organizations are tracking Net Revenue Retention (NRR), proving that CS is being viewed as a revenue growth engine, not just a churn reduction department. 45% of CS organizations have subscription renewal responsibilities and will continue to grow as CS departments mature.One interesting topic discussed was that only 20% of CS organizations have primary responsibilities for up-sells and cross-sells. Thus how does a CS organization assume responsibility for NRR? Kellie highlighted that even though CS may not own the opportunity management process, 49% of the time, they are responsible for identifying potential up-sell and cross-sell opportunities while also ensuring customer satisfaction and product engagement which will organically impact existing customer expansion ARR. Kellie also highlighted the Customer Success Qualified Lead (SQL) as a sign that CS is actively focused and engaged on existing customer revenue expansion.What tools are the leading CS organizations using to drive customer success? Customer Success plans are used by 63% of companies to facilitate the definition and attainment of customer-specific success. One area of opportunity is to use "customer value measurements," which are a key part of CS plans. The best companies use a "business value framework" during the sales process and then continue to inform how the CS organization engages with customers to continue measuring and reporting the customer value promised and delivered!Whether you are a customer success professional or a SaaS executive investing in Customer Success to drive customer satisfaction, customer value, and increase Net Revenue Retention Rates, this conversion with Kellie is highly informative and instructive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.