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Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM THE 2016 SAASTR CONFERENCE +
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Page 1: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

TOP INSIGHTS FROM THE 2016 SAASTRCONFERENCE

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Page 2: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 2

I had the pleasure of attending the SaaStr Annual 2016 Conference in San Francisco earlier this month and wanted to share some of the insights I gathered from that event with you here. The findings below are arranged by functional area with attribution. I tried to compress the content as much as possible, but there was A TON of great information at the conference so would highly recommend spending the time to read through.

SAASTR RECAP

Rene Miller

Business Operations & Strategy

Socrata

Page 3: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

SALES AND MARKETING

Page 4: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 4

Segmentation by type of sale (new business, upsell, cross-sell, expansion), type of GTM (field sales, inside sales, or internet sales), and lead source (website, event, email) is key to S&M efficiency and scale. The best sales and marketing leaders understand and have communicated these different funnels that they're measuring to the company and proactively experiment on new ways to improve those funnels.

Bill Binch, SVP of Sales, Marketo

Page 5: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 5

Enterprise deals are sold at mid-market price point when a mid-market rep is running the deal. Netsuite won a $400,000 dollar deal but their competitor bid the deal at $80 million; value was undoubtedly left on the table.

Zach Nelson, CEO, Netsuite

Page 6: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 6

Pipeline can be a red herring if used inappropriately.

Dave Berman, President, Zoom Video

Page 7: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 7

Top-tier investors put pressure on sales management to make sure they have good sales training, sales enablement, and sales operations programs. These are truly what make a sales team capable of scaling beyond a few dozen people.

Bill Binch, SVP of Sales, Marketo

Page 8: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 8

Facial and voice analytics will provide an order of magnitude impact on increasing sales productivity in the next 5 years.

Dave Berman, President, Zoom Video

Page 9: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Page 10: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 10

NetSuite has an entire BI team dedicated to quantifying customer churn and lifetime value.

Zach Nelson, CEO, Netsuite

Page 11: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 11

Product usage is undoubtedly the best indicator of upcoming churn. Marketo has a “save team” that would engage deeply with a customer to get them back on track if they were at risk.

Bill Binch, SVP of Sales, Marketo

Page 12: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 12

It’s crucial to measure and report on up-sell (more usage of the same product), cross-sell (usage of a new product), and expansion (selling to another group of buyers at the same customer) separately.

April Oman, Head of Customer Success, Betterworks

Page 13: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

PRODUCT & ENGINEERING

Page 14: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 14

New Relic has a team specifically dedicated to the “first minute experience” of their product. They found that optimizing the very first part of the onboarding process had a huge impact on increasing success engagement and success. It also had a big impact on building their brand.Different types of growth require dramatically different skill sets. This is succinctly captured in McKinsey’s “Three Horizons” concept.

Lew Cirne, CEO, New Relic

Page 15: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

PARTNERS & ECOSYSTEM

Page 16: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 16

A vibrant partner ecosystem (specifically around implementation partners) is a key ingredient to a company becoming hugely successful. Salesforce, Atlassian, and Box attribute ecosystems to their rapid growth.

Neeracha TaychakhoonavudhSVP of Partner ProgramsSalesforce

Page 17: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

OPERATIONS

Page 18: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 18

Always consider how you can set the foundation now for the new level of growth you’ll experience in a few months.

Lew Cirne, CEO, New Relic

Page 19: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 19

The three things that lead to longevity of companies are vision of the company, financial management, and quality of the employees.

Efficiently running a distributed-office company is paramount to growth beyond 300 employees. It’s easier to hire 500 people across 10 offices than it is to hire 500 people across 1 or 2.

Zach Nelson, CEO, Netsuite

Page 20: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 20

The nature of the relationship between sales complexity and CAC is exponential. Decreasing sales complexity (i.e., going from high touch field sales to high touch inside sales) will exponentially improve the CAC if revenue goals can be met with lower cost GTM.

Another way to think about SaaS unit economics is a sales person as the unit of growth rather than a customer as a unit of growth.

David Skok, Investor, Matrix Partners

Page 21: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

MARKETS

Page 22: Top Insights from SaaStr by Leading Enterprise Software Experts

Proprietary and Confidential ©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 22

Over-capitalized companies have a lot to prove. There are many dynamics here, but companies that have prioritized growth at all costs will either be forced to take significant dilution or cut costs dramatically if they don’t have a viable plan to get cheap capital.

Lew Cirne, CEO, New Relic


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