How SaaScend CEO Craig Jordan grew SaaScend to $3.1M revenue with a 37 person team in 2021.

uh great to meet you uh yes so since then we are outsourced rev Ops consultancy really advising on the tech stack and today everyone stop early processes between sales and marketing strategies you name it I'm really talking about the different tools that go into that Tech stack and how you leverage them and when to possibly invest in them based on your Revenue channels and growth because it really breaks down into people process and data and a lot of these platforms are the tools that you're going to be able to put into Tech stack to help them run more efficiently and it's really how you're leveraging them integrating them and implementing them into your Tech stack so really focusing first with kind of the 155 million ARR you're really building the foundation at this stage you're really kind of going through standardizing the process you're building some metrics they can actually measure the success of your sales team really getting those first customers and really ramping up from there so then you're taking all the data from a data provider identifying the ICP constantly going and fine-tuning different tiers of that ICP as well understanding who are your true buyers and lyrics to that messaging is really resonating with that core ICP 105 to 10 million you're starting to really look at sales efficiency what are the tools and processes that can really reduce the amount of admin and let your individual sales reps run more deal Cycles individually so that you can do more with less you have five reps running 40 deal Cycles versus 10 reps winning 20 deal Cycles because they're not trudging through the mud there's a lot of processes that are flow include data and automated then building your marketing engine really starting to have that in and starting realized what's resonating within the different marketing channels and then optimizing that lead flow so I'll dive through all these as we keep going through them and then later going through 10 to 100 million you're looking at different tools of sales enablement revenue intelligence deal rooms you name it they're helping your sales teams sell bigger deals and faster's closed Cycles uh really advancing that pipeline as well because you're looking at the last space we saw was mqls the sqls you're really looking at that clean handoff of lead routing and that tight tight funnel so sales doesn't hate marketing marketing doesn't hate sales and that only a certain level of qualified leads that have a certain level of Engagement are actually getting through that funnel and they're having a successful First Call and then technology do not invest in technology unless you've already built out the strategy and the use case around it so a lot of times you're talking to all the peers here at these conferences they're saying this platform is amazing you have to have this platform well based on their stage it may be fantastic for them but might be overkill for you and then looking to make sure that you're kind of running that lean Tech stack and there's not dead weight within the tech stack so this is really on the Journey of that first part we're really looking at the emerging so really it's coming down into building that CRM building that sales funnel that sales processing and really the tip of the spear is all data as we know so really feeding that data and building out that customer uh ICP and who you're going to be targeting and then fine-tuning that through many trials and errors as you're growing um really that's what focus on time time is the only thing especially with a lean team how you maximize your time to drive Revenue how you growing your deal volume and making sure that you're getting larger and larger within each account increasing your win rates so really understanding closed lock closed loss close one reasons and getting those analytics to understand how you have a higher win rate and make a repeatable process for your top reps and new reps coming in and then accelerating that funnel how do you get that sales cycle down from 60 to 45 to 30 days when possible depending on the size of the deal now investing your CRM it's it's your go-to it's your Battleground it's everything that you're doing that's what every little tools and data is going to flow to that's where you're going to live within a go to market operation and so having that build out clean having data processes around that so that the entire team knows how to run the functions run through this and to be able to move things through different stages of the deal cycle that's going to be your first piece defining those processes within your own sales process for your company your buyers that's going to be the key to be able to have that predictability within your pipeline and that when you're bringing on new employees you can be measuring almost like Noah's Ark two by two bring on two reps one's really scaling up the other one is is it people or process you're able to figure out who's the best culture fit within that role in your organization because you have that process to find and then really identifying your Tam and being able to find those prospects that you want to get in front of leveraging the data provider and feeding that clean into your CRM so here it's instilling those good behaviors it's not having that messy CRM not having to ask about data because you're in strategic conversations at your sales manager meetings talking about individual deals of why you want why you lost curating the messaging towards different markets not going and saying hey what's going on with this going on with that because the data infrastructure is clean set up and you're not wasting on Sales Management meetings on that and really it's just efficiency I if you want to scale you want to do more with less you're not being able to get waves of funding coming in you're able to really scale and do more with that Nimble team that you have second you're going to start implementing more of a marketing automation could be a marketing Hub power dot you name it um maybe you get sales enablement tool like an Outreach or a sales Loft get a Contracting tool that could be probably either one of these stages manually doing proposals brings human error into it and slows down the deal cycle um and then really going into kind of lead routing so you're bringing in a lingita chili pipe or whatever it may be to be automated that lead routing from marketing mql is qualified to the sqls and getting on a call very very quickly there's not a bunch of follow-up and queues needed it's all automated and then down to a visible getting first touch last touch and basic attribution going so you're understanding what activity is more of this less of that and where you're spending your time and efforts to actually drive Revenue so investing the tools that maximize the sales time really it's looking at where can we be more efficient always and forever it's if anybody's who here is in sales right now okay we got one two so three but really when you're looking at this it's when you're done with 10 hours of calls the last thing you want to be doing is manual data entry and how to get all that in there so your team knows everything that's happened so if there's other things that can be automated along the process to help you alleviate that amount of admin time that's really really focusing on on leveraging these tools and the data so thirty percent of the time sales people are actually selling so there's all these other ancillary areas of where they're charging through the mud to be able to get this data in move deals a long cycle and they're not actually selling so the goal of leveraging these Tech stack these data flows these automations these Integrations between your entire Tech stack playing harmoniously is to be able to have more time selling be able to run more deal Cycles at once with each individual rep and that you actually have AES that are earning very very good money and don't want to leave you because they're able to close a lot more deals because they're not charging through the mud with a lot of these administrative tasks that is where it's about contract management sales engagement calendar booking lead routing and forecast visualization your leadership needs to know that you are not please don't bloat pipeline that's what I call it it's make sure there's Real Deals coming through we know exactly the percentage of when they're going to hit the timing of it things happen sales Cycles get delayed it's fine but having that action building that reliability of the predictable pipeline closing allows your leadership to make strategic decisions based on their expected booked revenue and so that's really this forecast visualization comes in and basically you're building a marketing engine for the first time you're doing email nurture campaigns you're putting out content you're a little bit lower on the ad spend really from this five to ten but you're really starting to ramp up that funnel of brand awareness and bringing in companies through the marketing funnel where it was a little bit more hand-to-hand combat in the sales from the one to five and then a little testimony on what they've done with the marketing Automation and how they're able to get analytics so that when they're spending marketing dollars they know hey we spent this on this this Avenue but the return was not great let's take the next budget and put it into this area where we got a much higher return so you're running marketing analytics on making sure you're getting the best out of your uh your ad dollars marketing dollars in your marketing spend and constantly running those analytics within your marketing team and your spend and here it's lead flow so you have a very tight funnel as I mentioned on that marketing mql that level of Engagement making sure it's going through the funnel for marketing to sales and that you're automating the lead routing process straight to the AES are eventually taking that true sales call of someone that is ready to evaluate and or buy looking at this it's really how do you go in on analytics of the closed loss reasons close one reasons and really understand how can we get our win rate how can we make sure that we're winning more percentage of deals if you're winning one out of nine versus one out of four it's a whole different ball game on the frustration within the team on how many at-bats that marketing is bringing in versus what's actually closing down the funnel and so being able to run that where deals are getting um stuck in your life cycle stages of your process is huge to be able to have that insights those analytics and that all comes from these flows automations and data structure now here 10 to 100 million you're really on the ramp you're bringing in maybe potentially Auto dialers if you're running stlr programs you've got sales engagement tools like dually or text line you're maybe running ABM ABM through a sixth sense or other tools got deal rooms that you're running we've enable us or deal Hub and then you're bringing in some customer success as well with a little bit more of a chatbot intercom so you're really kind of having that fully baked go to market function on all three pillars of sales marketing and Cs and bringing those tools in to automate those processes and build out those teams around them and so really when you have this structure and process built you can do a much better on your hiring cycle make sure that you're not over hiring and then condensing like we see a lot in our ecosystem here's hiring systematically based on these processes that you've put in place and the tools within your Tech stack that you're leveraging here it's what will give them a little more deals and part of adding more greater intelligence so you just saw Ebbs to speak you know you're looking at Revenue intelligence things what are the what are the key indicators of a buyer what what are the relationship things happening what are the touch points what are the analytics on deals that have closed one and what are the analytics on deals that have closed lost what are the similar Trends so we can sit there and understand what we need to be doing differently and what deals we should be focusing on that are more likely to close within this month within this quarter based on your sales cycle and then invest in channels that are working that's constantly doing marketing analytics on where's the marketing spend returning the most revenue and making sure that you're not spending money on Facebook and Google ads that aren't working you're going through different channels marketing you're going through different analytics on that so you can really hone in on getting the most out of those dollars and really comes down to the data so doing an ABM you can be going at the personal level and targeting an individual at a company that's a decision maker or you can be going by the account and ABM is a really big strategy of going after that core core ICP and there's definitely different tiers of that ICP as you define it so as you look through your customer base the length of sales cycle the size of the deal who is that real sweet spot and then there's outer layers of that so it's about that still is a fit for your product or service but you're really honing in on who do you want to be in front of and you're spending the most advertising dollars branding to get in front of those people and then here don't buy technology for the sake of Technology we talked about that a little bit beforehand but really have an entire strategy built around why you are buying the piece of tech how you're going to leverage it the use cases within your company and making sure honestly that if you put a few things together within your existing Tech stack that there's not a one-time use case that you could be doing with the other tools you already have and that's when you're really staying lean mean and focusing on leveraging each tool fully before investing in something that maybe only has a small use case that you don't truly need now it might be a few quarters away so plan for how to be used align it with your processes consider how it integrates so how well does that tool play with the rest of your Tech stack how easy is it to leverage your existing data to funnel in if it's not that easy it's going to be a heavier lift that's a conversation to be had on the power of the tool and the heavier the lift to integrate it into your system and then looking at the business impact based on the cost of the tool what is this going to do to accelerate Revenue what's the payback period on investing in the tool what's the ROI that's always going to be any questions from your lender your investors your teammates that's really going to be thinking about before you invest in these tools to be able to kick it off and you're investing talking about the whole sales and marketing team collectively on how both of them potentially Leverage The Tool or how one function is going to lead into the other so an optimized you're really running full embedded Integrations between an entire Tech stack 100 plus and you're going different Revenue Tableau for full data analytics you're looking at quarry you're looking at all these different Revenue intelligence and really getting gritty on it because you have the marketing span you have the size of Team There's real dollars being spent so everything needs to be fully baked on the analytics that you're getting out of your Tech stack and you're ready for those level of tools most likely you've been getting into the Cs conversation on customer success and customer retention because you have a client a strong client base to protect so so we talked about this let's build the foundation for sales process leverage your data go into sales efficiency build your marketing engine lead routing and then sales enablement accelerated Pipeline and always evaluate before you sit there and buy the next technology so have all these resources happy to do this as we really talk about it's climbing the go to market operations Mountain so there's fully multi-touch attribution on Big Marketing spend that most do not need at this point and it's really kind of trying to systematically go from Peak to Peak and not trying to buy systems that are either ahead of the curve or not being behind where you should be investing a little bit earlier so that your team can run faster so but that's love to open it up for a little bit of q a um on this and answer any questions on kind of how these build in the processes or the text app so particularly with that you're looking at the ACB right we focus on mainly BB SAS that is our expertise so it is still B2B it may be per seats it may be the lower cost so maybe you're going more on the marketing funnel than the sales funnel or maybe you have more s marketing sdrs because it's a quick sales cycle lower by more than a larger investment into a software then it's really depends on your individual business your price point and your customer base anyone else [Applause]