SellingSherpa

B2B Sales Best Practices

Metrics That Measure Up (Podcast Summary)

State of the Cloud 2023 – Top Five Predictions with Janelle Teng, Bessemer Venture Partners (Episode #2)

State of the Cloud 2023 – with Janelle Teng, Bessemer Venture Partners (Episode #1)

  • (lookback at public cloud investment performance and venture capital fundraising)
  • Key metrics:
    • ARR growth
    • CAC payback
    • CLTV:CAC
    • Retention
    • Efficiency score
      • For early stage < $30M ARR = (net new ARR) / (net burn); best-in-class > 1.5
      • For later stage, > $30M ARR, use Rule of 40 = ARR growth + FCF margin; target > 40
  • There is an open question around whether to include stock-based compensation (SBC) in FCF margin

Event-Led Growth in B2B SaaS – wit Julius Solaris, Founder and CEO Boldpush

  • Events are typically the first to go during economic downturns but not in 2023
  • The pendulum is swinging aggressively back to in-person events
  • Events are a strong content creation driver for businesses
  • Big events spark satellite micro-events that allow people to connect with their true peers
  • Vendor booths at virtual events don’t work
  • At very large events, chat should either be turned off or tightly moderated
  • Sponsors, do not pitch yourself in event chat threads

Full Funnel Conversion Optimization – With Guy Yalif, Founder and CEO – Intellimize

  • Key performance metrics B2B marketers should track
    • Leads or pipeline generated
    • Cost per MQL (and ultimately MQL-to-opp and own-to-closed-won)
    • Share of voice
  • Attribution is a waste of time; just measure “Marketing-influenced revenue” and CAC

No Forms – No Spam – No Cold Calls – with Latane’ Conant, CMO 6Sense

  • IICP = in-market ideal customer profile (i.e. prospects showing intent to purchase)
  • Include situational data in your ICP: growing; doing M&A; just raised funding
  • 6QA SLA
    • 24 hrs to work a 6QA
    • We expect x personalized touches of y types per contact
    • Must reach out to at least 3 personas per account
  • Even if someone raises their hand for a demo, I still believe reps should reach out to two additional contacts in the account
  • Key metrics Latane’ tracks: (each by segment)
    • win rate
    • sales cycle
    • ASP
    • Ideal profile web traffic and conversion
  • Market to a new vertical to warm it up before hiring a sales team to go after the new segment
  • Enterprise customers love analyst content; mid-market customers love how-to guides; VSB customers want to know how to get started.

Building a Media Asset Inside a B2B SaaS Company with Patrick Campbell, Founder & CEO of ProfitWell (Paddle)

  • As products have become easier to build, they have become harder to (efficiently) market since every channel swamped by competitors vying for attention
  • Success is not millions of viewers of your webinar; it is 500 of your target buyers attending, esp. multiple times
  • Benchmark content does well because it reduces anxiety
  • Benchmarks are only needed on an episodic basis so hard to charge for benchmark-only products

Product Analytics and Metrics that Matter with Todd Olson, Founder & CEO, Pendo

  • “Requiring a human being to teach you how to use a product is a bug, not a feature.”
  • Top 3 CPO metrics (also see Pendo’s 10 KPI Ebook)
    • 2nd-week retention (% of users who sign up and come back the 2nd week)
    • PLG conversion funnel
    • Product engagement score (PES) = (a) breadth of feature usage (b) stickiness – ratio of weekly active use to monthly active use (c) growth – ratio of new & recovered users to lost users
  • CEO level metrics
    • ARR per employee
    • Net retention
    • Revenue Growth
    • Rule of 40 – The sweet spot is 30% to 40% growth and 0% to 10% EBITDA margin

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