Career
As executives there are certain things we are expected to know -- in our heads -- about our jobs and our functions. Sometimes I call this "the 3:00 AM test" because someone should be able to wake you up at 3:00 AM in the middle of
BI
In continuing my tradition of offering predictions every year, let's start with a review of my hits and misses on my 2017 predictions. 1. The United States will see a level of divisiveness and social discord not seen since the 1960s. HIT. 2. Social media companies finally step
Leadership
In every executive team there are going to be times when people don't agree on certain important strategic or operational decisions. Some examples: * Should we split SDRs inbound vs outbound? * Should we map SCs to reps or pool them? * How should we split upsell vs new business focus
Forecasting
In this post we'll examine how we to use pipeline conversion rates as early indicators of your business performance. I call such indicators triangulation forecasts because they help the CEO and CFO get data points, in addition to the official VP of Sales forecast, that help triangulate where
Demandgen
This post builds on my prior post, Win Rates, Close Rates, and Milestone vs. Flow Analysis. In it, I will take the ideas in that post, expand on them a bit, and then apply them to difficult problem of ensuring you have enough marketing demand generation budget to hit your
Marketing
Hey, what's your win rate? It's another seemingly simple question. But, like most SaaS metrics, when you dig deeper you find it's not. In this post we'll take a look at how to calculate win rates and use win rates to introduce
Marketing
I remember one time reading a win/loss report that went something like this. Host Huh? What! We spend a few hundred dollars to get a lead, maybe a few thousand to get it converted to a sales opportunity, we give it to our sales team and then they "
Management
At many enterprise software companies product management (PM) ends up defaulting into a role that I can’t stand: The Roadmap Guys*. Like a restaurant with one item on the menu, the company defaults into ordering one thing from product management: a roadmap pitch. * “The VP of PM is in
Management
Just a quick post to highlight the fact that last week I was the featured guest on Episode 142 of the Official SaaStr podcast produced by the SaaStr organization run by Jason Lemkin and interviewed by a delightful young Englishman named Harry Stebbings (who also runs his own podcast entitled
Sales
Can you solution sell without selling solutions? Sure. But you have to know the difference between the two.
Career
Most managers, save for true sycophants, want to challenge their boss. Few managers want to be puppet yes-people to the boss. They've worked hard to get where they are. They bring years of wisdom and experience. They want to push and challenge. But many don't know
Boards
As someone who has assembled many startup board decks over the years, I thought I'd offer some advice to executives who contribute slides to board decks that should make it easier for the point-person to assemble, improve the deck's appearance, and avoid any painful and/or