SaaS Backwards - Reverse Engineering SaaS Success

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How many good sales emails have you gotten?

Personally, I can count them on one hand.

Most of us can sniff out a sales email in a split second--the headline is cheesy, it’s about them, and it’s completely irrelevant. Obviously, sellers haven’t done their homework.

That’s the opportunity we discussed in my interview with Lavender AI’s Jen Allen-Knuth and Will Aitken at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco. Their tool helps sellers write better emails—or as Aitken says, “stop them from writing such bad ones.”

Using AI to comb through millions of sales emails, Lavender has solid data on what works and what doesn’t to coach your sales team before they hit send, giving them the best opportunity for engagement.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

1. The best structure for sales emails that you’re probably not doing.
2. Why emails under 50 words and boring subject lines get the best replies.
3. The most overlooked thing by sellers. (Hint: it’s about them and not about you).

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

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Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

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People just don’t pick up the phone like they used to, and as a result, outbound call response rates are few and far between.

A rep that makes 100 calls a day may only get a handful of connects. It’s such a grueling and inefficient process that many companies have abandoned the phone altogether.

The problem is that sales ultimately is based on having valuable conversations. And if you’re not having them, your pipeline will suffer.

So, what if you could improve the connection rate and have more conversations?

That’s what Orum’s VP of Sales Colin Specter talked to us about live at the Ascent Conference in San Francisco.

Their product claims to be the most efficient way to generate human-to-human conversations on the phone by using AI to drive more live conversations and bring back the buzz of a sales floor—even when reps are virtual.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• The importance of product-market fit to scale.
• The addition of long-term demand generation after succeeding with short-term sales KPIs.
• The importance of finding the champion that will do the hard selling internally for you. 

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

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Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

Why can a person with an iPhone in their bedroom with no budget create videos that get millions of views, while B2B companies that hire professionals can’t seem to get a fraction of that engagement?

That’s the problem Michael Hoffman set out to solve with his company Gather Voices.

Traditional agency production processes are expensive, slow, and don't scale well, which hinders B2B companies from creating video content for various channels like social media and websites.

When you look at consumer videos, it’s the funny, interesting, and fantastic stories that go viral—and it has little to do with the production value.

Hoffman proposes that B2B companies think differently about their brand and how they produce more “authentic” video content and find what resonates. 

Key Takeaways from this episode:

• To scale video production efficiently, companies should prioritize capturing genuine stories from customers, employees, and partners, avoiding overproduction, and focusing on delivering authentic content that resonates with their audience.
• How to tap into user-generated content by actively encouraging users to share their experiences through video.
• Hoffman’s perspective on when, how, and why to take investment and the importance of finding investors who share your vision.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, fractional CMO Andrew Bolis shares how owning a pipeline number and being responsible for specific revenue-related targets not only helps sales and marketing teams work towards common goals, but also provides leverage in conversations with the CFO. 

Other Key Insights from this episode include: 

• Bringing in the right fractional CMO for your situation.
• Working with agencies to fill in skill gaps and drive faster results.
• Justifying marketing expenses with the C-suite.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

You’ve probably heard the criticisms of B2B marketing—it’s boring and lacks creativity.

And besides, it’s way too expensive to produce ads like B2C companies.

In this episode, Melissa Rosenthal, Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp shares her approach to creating remarkable content without breaking the bank. 

Coming from B2C powerhouses like Buzzfeed and Cheddar, Rosenthal immediately saw the blue-ocean opportunity in B2B to differentiate. So, she built an in-house creative agency at ClickUp by investing in the right people and equipment to produce Madison Avenue quality content at a fraction of the cost.  

As a result, they’ve taken on the gorillas in its crowded space, growing from 60 to over 1000 employees in under three years. 

Key takeaways from this episode:

• The portfolio approach to creative that enables ClickUp to create hundreds of pieces of content cost-effectively instead of betting the farm on a singular campaign.
• Why you should treat your entire content strategy as an evergreen campaign
• Why securing leadership buy-in from the beginning is crucial in fostering a culture of creativity.

Check out some of ClickUp’s Youtube ads here:

• Before ClickUp
• Super Bowl Ad 2022 
• Jira Gets Fired
• Evolution of GPT

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

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Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

Working at Google’s mapping team, Steve Benson thought that field salespeople needed a lot more functionality to adequately plan their routes.

So, in 2012 founded Badger Maps and set out to build a tool where field sales teams could not only build routes, but also visualize their customers on a map on their mobile device that automatically connected with their CRM. 

To ensure product/market fit, Benson personally talked to hundreds of field salespeople to ensure that this was a problem worth paying for and not just a nice-to-have. 

Key takeaways from this episode: 

• When and what skills/background to look for when hiring the first salesperson. 
• The importance of founder involvement in early product management. 
• Debt vs. equity financing and how Badger Maps used debt most effectively.
• The role that thought leadership content played in building their reputation. 

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

When Susan Peich joined Monitaur AI as their head of marketing earlier this year, the power (and dangers) of AI was still mostly talk amongst data scientists.

How quickly things change.

With the rise of ChatGPT in recent months, AI's power (and danger) are now at the forefront causing companies to scramble to figure out how to handle its governance.

That’s where Monitaur.ai comes in. They help companies in highly regulated environments such as insurance, healthcare and financial to not only leverage the potential of AI and ML but also to mitigate risks.

In this episode, Peich talks with host Ken Lempit about what companies should be thinking about today with AI Governance including: 

• What investments in AI and ML are right for the business
• What are responsible and ethical uses of AI and ML and developing governance models
• Generating supervised inputs and outputs to generate evidence-based reports for compliance.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

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Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

If we’re being honest, there's a big difference between the imagined buyer's journey that marketers invent and what’s happening in reality.

But then, we’ve always made those assumptions because it’s nearly impossible to track.

Or is it?

That’s what Molly St. Louis, Head of Marketing at DealTale talks about in this episode - applying AI to track the previously un-trackable journey. 

DealTale is a SaaS that leverages causal machine learning methods to track buyers while they’re still anonymous (by IP address) and then backfill their information later when they fill out a form—even when it’s months (or years) later so they can see what is transpiring and then replicate it in future campaigns.

With their innovative ChatGPT-like interface, campaign analytics become accessible to all marketers, not just those in large companies with data analysts.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

• The importance of understanding causality for mapping customer journeys. 
• How AI can go deep on attribution, customer journey mapping and causality. 
• Remember that marketing is fun, and not to worry about always “getting it right.”

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, Matt Trifiro, CEO of Vapor.io, joins host Ken Lempit to discuss the insidious tyranny of artificial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how to fight back against their oppressive hold on SaaS marketing.

Long gone are the days when early adopters of advertising platforms could easily dominate their market niche, as the law of diminishing returns has caught up with all forms of marketing, leaving SaaS marketers struggling to find innovative ways to attract and retain customers.

But with CFOs and CEOs demanding increased results on yesterday’s KPIs, how can SaaS marketers break free from the shackles of convention and embrace experimentation and agility?

Find out in this enlightening conversation, where Trifiro and Lempit explore topics such as:

• Establishing a culture that’s tolerant of experimentation and agility by constantly testing and iterating.
• How investing in customer retention is the real determination of lifetime value.
• Why you should always be asking, “what could I be doing with that money?” Is there a better way to spend it than on 10 BDRs or $100K tools?

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup 

Send us Fan Mail

Despite building a great product and amassing close to 1000 customers, LiquidPlanner struggled to continue on the same growth trajectory. 

Customers expected broader capabilities. Competitors had more money. And as access to capital tightened, the board decided to look for a partner.

They found Tempo, a complimentary business that will help deliver better portfolio management capabilities as well as its connectivity to Atlassian’s Jira–something their customers are looking forward to. 

Even though the acquisition happened a few weeks ago, the focus is squarely on delivering better portfolio management capabilities and confidence to project teams than anyone else in the market.

In this episode, LiquidPlanner CEO Ted Hawksford talks about the salesmanship involved with internal stakeholders–and while it’s not the 10X valuation that most startups hope for, it’s the best outcome for everyone involved.

Key takeaways:

1. The challenges and concerns that arise when the two development teams are asked to work together before the deal is consummated. 
2. Communications with customers about an impending acquisition and providing assurances about the future of product development.
3. The importance of having clean books before entering an acquisition and preparing for every detail to be scrutinized.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

---

Stalled pipeline? Lost deals? Diagnose your GTM gaps with a free, actionable checkup. 

🔗 Get your free SaaS GTM Checkup