Metrics that Measure Up

Conversational Intelligence (CI) is a technology that materially enhances the effectiveness of every B2B Sales professional.CI has quickly become a "must-have" component in the B2B sales tech stack and has become a feature in most Sales Engagement Platforms...WHAT is the future of Conversational Intelligence?Our host, Ray Rike, recently spoke with Amit Bendov, Founder and CEO of Gong.io, to discuss the vision and future of Gong and the Revenue Reality.Amit's premise was "is there a better way to get market feedback" from every communication channel into the CRM without requiring manual data input.What was the initial catalyst for Gong and CI? Amit's previous company hit a wall and had revenue growth challenges for two consecutive quarters. After scouring every record he could in the CRM platform and speaking with the leaders across sales and marketing, he quickly realized there was no single version of the truth!Recently, Gong introduced the vision of "Revenue Reality" which is the mission to help companies understand the reality of their market and their market interactions. Unlocking the power of this insight is behind the next phase of Gong's evolution.Conversational Intelligence goes far beyond "recording conversations". The higher order of value is to gain additional insights into what the conversations are foreshadowing and then surfacing those insights without human intervention.Seventy percent of Gong customers have expanded the use beyond sales and into the post-sales organizations, including Customer Success and Product Management. These insights allow the product team to be "served up" the most relevant comments and insights from customer interactions with any other function. Leveraging conversational intelligence dramatically increases the product team's ability to benefit from direct feedback from the customer, without listening to a 30-60 minute conversation, and to identify common themes and trends across multiple customers and even buyers in the prospecting phase of the buyer's journey.One of the most intriguing parts of the Gong ecosystem is Gong Labs which surfaces insights from millions of interactions across thousands of companies. One example of a finding was that multi-threading the sales process across multiple individuals, including having a C-Level executive from your company in the process, DOUBLES the win rate. Additional information that Gong serves up that comes from their proprietary data is the number of questions that a salesperson asks during an introductory or discovery that predicts the highest probability to become a customer. Another interesting insight is that the more time spent on speaking while presenting a "PowerPoint" has an inverse correlation to win rates.One final insight is that during a discovery call, the close rate dramatically increases when NO slides were used, and the prospect engagement level rises. When using slides/presentations, the salesperson spends 25% more time speaking and asks 21% fewer questions!"Accept the Losses" is a comment Amit made in a recent LinkedIn post. The story behind this comment is that you can invest far too much time in understanding the primary reason you lose a deal and even identify false positives in the analysis. The primary goal behind this comment is to "simplify" the value proposition and reduce the number of variables that can lead to a loss. For example, Gong focuses on why their solution is BETTER, but it is not the low-cost solution - thus, knowing they will lose a few deals due to price is an acceptable revenue reality.Amit Bendov is a true leader in the B2B SaaS industry, and our conversation surfaces many great insights and ideas to accelerate revenue growth and gain revenue reality!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B Cloud revenue is projected to grow from $300B+ in 2020 to over $800B by 2025. Some estimates highlight the industry will require 300,000 additional B2B Sales professionals to achieve this level of growth.If the above is even directionally correct, being able to train sales professionals is key to continued industry growth.Paul Fifield is the founder and CEO of the Sales Impact Academy. His vision to create the Sales Impact Academy is built upon his frustration in growing and leading revenue teams. Paul says that most B2B SaaS leaders are forced to "make it up" as they go because there is no great source of advice, education, and training for B2B Sales professionals.The first class Paul developed was a  basic "how to build a predictable and scalable revenue function". This was the catalyst for Paul to identify the lack of repeatable models would negatively affect the industry's continued growth.Sales Impact Academy is a "universal best practice" approach to sales training.  By identifying, packaging and training upon proven best practices, the industry will leverage the collective experience and knowledge of those who have gone before.Paul and the Sales Impact Academy approaches sales training with a fundamental belief that the basic process of selling, even in the Cloud, has not materially changed.Sales Management, Sales Leadership, Sales, Prospecting, Marketing, and Customer Success are the six primary curriculum categories across 15 core personas. Revenue Operations will be the next function to be added to the course curriculum.The courses are built primarily for people already "in the job" versus trying to prepare themselves to enter a new job/professional. The goal is to have an immediate impact on job performance Thus, the curriculum is primarily focused on helping people already in the job improve immediately. This requires an educational approach that is "easy for the individual" to take the class, which includes smaller, micro-learning segments that never exceed over 2 hours per week.Every class that Sales Impact Academy delivers is live with a subject matter expert versus self-directed videos. Being able to create a learning program at the scale requires reaching millions of people. This will require a significant improvement in existing digital learning approaches and supporting materials to empower leaders to embed the learning in their local organizations.When asked about "certification," Paul said this is a critical component of their vision to allow every company to be comfortable with the quality and impact of the Sales Impact Academy courses.When asked about ROI, Paul highlighted that the primary ingredient to ensuring a positive return on training is an integrated "feedback loop" embedded in every student's experience. One exciting aspect of the Sales Impact Academy is that there is no ONE WAY to achieve success. By having multiple subject matter experts deliver their approach from experiences leading to success, no ONE single approach will be trained. Each student will have an opportunity to choose the curriculum and approach that works best for them.Paul highlighted that he is now very focused on the "pedagogy" of their curriculum or their teaching approach. Learning design is key to delivering the optimal training program framework, coupled with subject matter experts to deliver the courses.If you are responsible for scaling your B2B SaaS Go-To-Market, revenue-producing teams and increasing productivity is key to achieving your goals next year and beyond, learning more from Paul and the Sales Impact Academy is a great place to learn a new, innovative approach that your employees will appreciate and your investors will love once they see the results! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sangram Vajre, Founder and Chief Evangelist at Terminus and host of the Flip my Funnel Forecast, joined our host Ray Rike to discuss his MOVE Go-To-Market framework.Sangram ran marketing at Pardot, an early marketing automation vendor for salespeople, which Salesforce ultimately acquired and co-founded Terminus seven years ago. Terminus is a true pioneer in providing a platform for Account-Based Marketing programs, which in today's B2B SaaS world represents about 44% of total marketing investment in customer acquisition programs.The first thing Sangram shared was that marketing and sales need to SHARE the same "REVENUE" number. Marketing's ultimate value must be measured by "Sales". If the two executives do not share the same number, Go-To-Market challenges are soon to follow.What exactly is a "Chief Evangelist"? Guy Kawasaki, Apple's early Chief Evangelist, said, "evangelism in a tech company is the purest form of sales"! A chief evangelist is the representative of the market on behalf of the practitioners. Sangram has been doing this for over seven years in the world of Account-Based Marketing.Next, we move to Sangram's Go-To-Market framework, which also happens to be the name of his latest book - "MOVE". MOVE focuses on four primary questions every company must ask as they "move" through each growth phase. Those four questions are:1 - Who should we market to?2 - What do we need to do to operate more effectively3 - When can we scale our business4 - Where can we grow the most These four questions relate directly to the MOVE acronym:M - MarketO - OperationsV - VelocityE - ExpansionMcKinsey says the primary reason companies fail as they begin to scale above $10M is the lack of evolving the Go-To-Market strategy and tactics.The four primary "Go-To-Market" strategy questions do not change at each growth stage, but the answers and resultant approach must change to maneuver through each stage of the growth journey successfully.Another framework MOVE includes the 3P framework:P - Problem Market FitP - Product Market FitP - Platform Market FitEach stage of the 3Ps does not directly correlate with company size (revenue). Sangram shared that some companies can hit $10M and even $20M before they move from Problem-Market Fit to Product-Market Fit. Similar to the concepts in "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore, the issue is when a company attempts to move the one phase of the #ps to the next phase - a classic chasm crossing challenge.Sangram is a wealth of information. More importantly, he has invested most of his career in learning, understanding, and now sharing his experiences and insights in an easy-to-understand yet robust Go-To-Market framework called MOVE.This conversation is a great listen for every B2B tech founder, CEO, and Go-To-Market executive regardless of which stage of growth your company is in to help cross the chasm to the next phase of the growth journey.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jamie Shanks helped to shape Social Selling through his company, Sales for Life.  After certifying 250,000+  sales professionals on the strategies and techniques that led to Digital Selling competencies across hundreds of companies, Jamie has identified some common trends in what led to the most successful pipeline development.In 2020, B2B Sales quickly transformed into Digital Selling. Social Selling has evolved to "selling" and become a part of the digital selling motion. Social Selling efficacy can be measured by pipeline growth, close rates, and sales cycle time for sales, self-directed pipeline. The skills and competencies to be an effective B2B Sales professional have become muddled over the last 10 years, as a new generation has invested more time into learning how to use the tools to become "digital sellers" and have not received the traditional sales training to prospect, discover and qualify high probability prospects who will become paying customers.Even with all of the data and signals being provided to modern B2B Sellers, often they do not understand when and how to "use the information" to increase their prospecting efficiency.  An example is the level of investment in "intent data", without providing sellers the ability to interpret and understand the context of what the information is telling the seller.  What pipeline signals should be added into the "account intelligence" to better understand "how" and "why" the target company will buy?  Human capital (people) migration is a  leading indicator as to where a company will allocate investment dollars. Being able to have insights into the members of a buying team, their relationships with competitors, and especially the members' previous relationships with people in your company are critical factors in increasing "prospect intelligence".Seller utilization of pipeline signals information, such as "intent data" is the key to the success of the business impact of digital signals.   Sellers who figure out how to use "pipeline signal information" is limited to a small percentage of the seller population.  The organizations that do the best job of educating, training, and facilitating the effective adoption of digital pipeline signals will be the winners in 2022 and beyond.Jamie Shanks is not only a pioneer in using digital techniques to increase B2B sales efficacy, he is a true visionary who identifies trends and opportunities to increase the return on investment of B2B Sales professionals before the crowd!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt Heinz is the founder and CEO of Heinz Marketing and the host of the Sales Pipeline Podcast.Matt's primary goal is to help modern marketers to implement predictable and scalable, revenue-centric marketing programs.Matt has seen the alignment between marketing and sales for top-of-the-funnel pipeline development significantly improve over the last few years.  In addition, he is seeing marketing leaders are more data-driven, especially regarding buyer intent has improved materially.  Lastly, he sees marketing being much more focused on the "account" versus the "lead" which reflects the increased use of buying committees.When we discussed the increased complexity of aligning marketing, sales, and customer success, Matt shared that alignment to the buyer journey, and across these three functions is not yet optimal.  Culture is a key part of the issue and goes far beyond sharing common objectives. "Hitting the number" needs to be a shared passion that makes each team member in marketing and sales share a common language and feel they each own the revenue goals.What percentage of Chief Marketing Officers believe they own the new ARR and pipeline dollar goals - less than 20% from Matt's experience. Though he sees more marketing leaders discuss the need to focus on revenue and pipeline, the actions and departmental measurements do not reflect this is yet their "North Star".Leading marketers are removing the use of "gated forms" to drive leads and have moved to the open web to identify potential customers in the market (3-4% of companies are in market at any given time) and engage at the point of interest.  Unfortunately, vanity metrics such as white paper downloads, web visitors, and even leads still dominate the dashboards and reports a CMO highlights at executive team meetings and marketing department meetings.Forms are often used to ensure companies can "track" activity. However, not gating content can accelerate and increase velocity in the middle of the funnel by removing friction at the top of the funnel.  Educating, mobilizing, and creating a sense of urgency are core tenets of modern B2B marketing.Matt highlighted, just because you cannot measure it, does not mean it is not important.  Modern marketing channels and techniques such as social media posts, podcasts, and YouTube video presence cannot always be attributed to a lead or deal closed, but are still critical channels for the modern B2B marketer.Matt is a journalist by education and fell into marketing.  Matt started his marketing agency by writing blogs, newsletters, and articles.  His goal to "tell stories" was a core component of his journalism training.  Podcasts were another channel to tell stories, and showcase authors, influencers, analysts, and marketing executives.  Matt has found that the "Sales Pipeline Podcast" provides both an opportunity to educate, while developing relationships with the podcast guests who often became customers.When asked where marketers should focus their understanding of the impact they are delivering, Matt said the CRM is an ideal place to measure impact versus in the Marketing Automation system.  What this really says is focus more on the "outcome metrics" in the sales system versus the input metrics in the marketing automation system.Matt also said moving towards focusing on the marketing cost per "output unit" like pipeline dollars created or new ARR closed is a good step towards more effective and efficient marketing programs.  Any modern B2B marketer or revenue leader will greatly benefit from listening to this conversation with Matt Heinz!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Compensation is one of the more personal aspects of evaluating any new job.  Trying to understand a company's culture and specifically, the organization within the company you are evaluating is almost impossible.Ryan Walsh, the founder, and CEO of RepVue may have figured out exactly how to provide transparency in both compensation and culture in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.Ryan possesses a very rare trait, a B2B SaaS sales leader who progressed his career from sales rep to Chief Revenue Officer over 16 years in the same company!  Next up, enable every B2B Sales rep the ability to gain the insights of an "insider" into the reality of the variable compensation and culture of a potential future employer.Amongst many data points Ryan shared, 67% of sales professionals (N = 3,000+) said if the role within the company was working for them, they would not want to change companies, still the reality is most companies do not meet the expectations of the modern B2B Sales professional.RepVue has over 20,000 participants resulting in 26,500+ ratings on B2B Sales organizations.  When asked what the most important attributes to a sales professional were, the number one answer was 1)  Product-Market Fit.  Compensation was a highly ranked variable behind Product-Market Fit, and very close to "culture". How do you define culture?  In most sales organizations culture is closely correlated to "winning" as measured by achieving quota.  Having uncapped earnings is another critical factor,  and base salary is much less important IF and WHEN existing employees are meeting and exceeding quota.  Knowing if these elements exist is a large part of the RepVue vision.Culture for salespeople is the ability to succeed, be recognized, and make money.  RepVue calculates a company score that is based upon two separate and distinct sets of data.  The first set is comprised of seven categories using a 1-5 score to determine sentiment.  Those seven categories are:-  Base Salary- Incentive structure- Culture and Leadership- Product Market Fit- Professional development and training- Inbound lead flow- Diversity and InclusionRepVue then overlays the weight that salespeople rank as most important in each category.  Simply stated, if a company is doing better in a category that salespeople rate highly, the best your score.  The inverse is also true, meaning that if you score low on a category that is less important, it will not necessarily help your overall score. Scoring low on a highly weighted attribute will hurt your company score. The second section that RepVue uses is based upon the compensation elements of each company's sales organization.  Examples include base salary, on-target earnings, average % quota achievement, deal size and most someone can earn in a specific role.In today's B2B SaaS industry, hiring has become a significant challenge and bottleneck to growth.  As this industry trend evolves, sales professionals have started to encourage companies to understand how their sales organizations stack up against competitors.  One of the interesting data points that RepVue provides is the average contract value, correlated to quota, compensation, and company score. The basis "message" is the ability to message your unique value and competitive advantage in the language that resonates with sales professionals.If you are a B2B Cloud sales professional, sales leader, human capital leader, or talent acquisition professional, Ryan Walsh and RepVue is a name, site, and company you will want to know.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine having access to the metrics and benchmarks over an entire decade for 200+ B2B Cloud and SaaS private companies as they scaled from $0 to $100M ARR.That is precisely the data Mary D'Onofrio, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has access to as the Growth Stage investing partner since 2018.  Mary published her findings in the Scaling to $100M ARR report and joined us to share the insights from her research.Mary also maintains the BVP Emerging  Cloud 100 Index,  is the author of the "10 Laws of Cloud".   Mary was often approached by BVP portfolio companies and by other partners within BVP, asking for stage-appropriate benchmarks for metrics such as growth rate, retention rates, and gross margins, to name just a few. So,  Mary thought, why not analyze the data over the last decade across the entire BVP B2B Cloud portfolio.The first finding was that Committed Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) growth is the main metric to determine the enterprise value of a private B2B Cloud/SaaS company at every stage of growth.  ARR growth captures variables that GAAP revenue alone does not capture.CARR growth is a multivariate metric, as it includes not only ARR growth from new customers but also ARR growth from existing customers. Simply stated,  CARR includes New Customer Acquisition ARR + Existing Customer Retention ARR + Existing Customer Expansion ARR.Net Dollar Retention, the amount of ARR from customers that is available to renew versus the same cohort of customers 12 months prior to the current accounting period. This metric was included as part of the "CARR Growth" benchmark.When looking at the decade long data,  Mary shared the following average enterprise value to revenue multiples (EV:REV)at each stage of growth under the "Know Your Worth" lesson #3< $10M ARR = 31X EV:REV multiple$10M - $50M ARR = 17X EV:REV multiple> $50M ARR = 13-14X EV:REV multipleThe B2B Cloud market and the associated enterprise valuations continue to increase, with the latest data in 2021 showing the following multiples: 2021* = 34x enterprise value to revenue multiple (up from 9x in 2016)*2021 Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report (Top 100 Private Cloud Companies)Across the BVP portfolio, the EV:REV multiple is closer to 20xGrowth Endurance is a metric that BVP has recently introduced. Growth Endurance is defined as the sustained growth year over year and is fairly consistent across all B2B Cloud companies.  Growth rate decay is typically 30% annually for private Cloud companies and 20% for public companies.  Public company's growth endurance is stronger primarily due to the leverage they gain, including pricing power, new products to drive revenue, and enhanced access to talent. Growth Endurace is a heuristic and not a deterministic metric. The second lesson Mary shared in the Scaling to $100M ARR report was "Win by wide Margins".  The effective point is to optimize gross margin to the average of 65% - 70% regardless of ARR. The middle 50% distribution increases in range to  60% - 80%.Next we pivoted to where Customer Success costs should be allocated - COGS or Operating Expenses.  The simple answer is that whatever the percentage of CS time is invested in revenue-centric activities should go to OPEX and the percentage of CS time on support goes to COGS.Another area of "Win by Wide Margins" includes CAC Payback Period.  CAC Payback Period is the measure of time it takes to repay the costs of acquiring a new customer after factoring in Gross Margin.BVP.com/scale is a great resource to learn more about Scaling to $100M ARR and download templates to see how your Cloud company measures up to the benchmarks.'See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lauren Kelley, Founder and CEO of OPEX Engine, shares her expertise in B2B technology benchmarking. She discusses the recent acquisition by Bain & Company, underscoring the growing value of industry benchmarks. Kelley explains how businesses can leverage operational metrics for strategic decision-making, contrasting one-time versus ongoing benchmarking practices. The conversation also highlights the importance of standardized metrics for board communication and the role of meditation in personal growth, offering valuable advice for aspiring B2B SaaS founders.

The B2B Cloud industry is projected to grow from $350B in 2021 to $800B+ in 2025.  This will mean a lot of new companies and the need for many more VP Sales to lead the revenue team.Brendon Cassidy has been part of early-stage B2B enterprise sales organizations as the VP Sales for companies including LinkedIn, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), Talkdesk, and then as a founding advisor to Gong.  Now Brendon is the co-founder and co-CEO at CoSell.io.Based upon Brendon's tenure and success at leading B2B SaaS companies, who better to discuss the journey and keys to success for an early-stage B2B SaaS VP Sales.First, we discussed any common themes or trends that Brendon has identified over his start-up journey experiences.  A very common theme, at up to 80% of companies Brendon has worked with is that companies have a hard time defining the "problem they are solving".  This is critical before you can start to build the messaging the sales team will use to explain who they are, what problem they address, and the benefits of solving the problem.Establishing Product Market Fit requires every company to understand and market validate the problem they are solving and why a company will invest time and money to solve it.Next, we move from what is required to acquire the first few customers to the next one-hundred and beyond.  Brendon recommends that the founder lead the first 5-15 deals as the "sales lead" and then hire 2 salespeople BEFORE they hire the VP Sales.  Hiring the right "FIRST" VP Sales is a common challenge that the majority of start-up CEO's face. In fact, Brendon believes that over 90% of companies do not hire the right VP Sales the first time.  Hiring a "hybrid" VP Sales who manages a small team, but also is responsible for direct sales with their own quota is a mistake that many first-time founders make. Why is the average tenure of a B2B Tech VP Sales only 14-18 months? One factor is the belief that hiring someone from an established, successful company like Salesforce is the best approach.  Unfortunately, 95% of the job of an early stage VP Sales is not an experience gains at an established, larger company.  Secondly, finding a VP Sales that actually has experience and success in growing a company from the very early days to some level of scale is quite rare.  Four potential early-stage B2B Cloud VP Sales profiles that a founder will need to interview:-Been there done that with success- Been there, done that but not successful- Been there done some of that- Big company experience, not done that Defining how much pipeline is required to close "x" deals is one of the first metrics that an early stage VP Sales should measure, understand and act upon.  Input metrics to this will include average contact value, sales cycle time and win rate are critical to determining the required pipeline.Other metrics, such as CAC Payback Period, CAC Ratio, Customer Lifetime Value, etc. are not valuable metrics for early-stage VP Sales, as there is not enough operating history to make these metrics valuable or insightful for decision making.If you are responsible for driving sales in an early stage B2B Cloud company,  are considering hiring your first VP Sales, or have a goal to become a first-time VP Sales in an early-stage start-up, this conversation with Brendon Cassidy 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.