Phil Rader of SaaScend on the Sales and Marketing Tech Stack for Every B2B SaaS Growth Stage (SaaSOpen 2023 Talk)

Introduction to SaaScend and Rev Ops

Phil Rader

00:00>> Great to meet you. Yes. So saascend, we are an outsource rev ops consultancy. Really advising on the tech stack and today, I want talk about the 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

00:25>> lot of these platforms are the tools that you're going to be able put into that 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.

Stage 1: $1M to $5M ARR - Building the Foundation

Phil Rader

00:37>> So really focusing first, kind of the one to 5,000,000 ARR, you're really building the foundation. At this stage, you're really kinda going through standardizing the process, you're building some metrics that 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 off from a data provider, identifying the ICP, constantly going and fine tuning different tiers of that ICP as well. Understanding

Stage 2: $5M to $10M ARR - Sales Efficiency

Phil Rader

01:03>> who are your true buyers and make sure that messaging is really resonating with that core ICP. And then five to 10,000,000, 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 running 20 deal cycles because they're

Stage 3: $10M to $100M ARR - Scale and Enablement

Phil Rader

01:31>> not trudging through the mud, there's a lot of processes that are flowing through data and automated. Then building your marketing engine, really starting to have that in and starting to realize 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 100,000,000, you're looking at different tools of sales enablement, revenue intelligence, deal rooms, you name it,

01:55>> that are helping your sales team sell bigger deals and faster close cycles. Really advancing that pipeline as well, because you're looking at the last piece we saw was MQLs to SQLs, you're really looking at that clean hand off 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

Technology Investment Principles

Phil Rader

02:20>> 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 say 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

02:42>> 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 process, and really the tip of the spear is all data, as we know. So really feeding that data in and building out that customer ICP and who you're going to be targeting,

Maximizing Time and Win Rates

Phil Rader

03:07>> and then fine tuning that through many trials and errors as you're growing. 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're 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 loss, closed won reasons and getting those analytics to understand how you have a higher win rate

03:32>> 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 sixty to forty five to thirty days when possible, depending on the size of the deal.

CRM as the Go-To-Market Battleground

Phil Rader

03:47>> Now, investing in your CRM, it's your go to, it's your battleground, it's everything that you're doing. That's what every tool and data is gonna 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

04:12>> gonna 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 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 is the best culture fit

04:34>> within that role in your organization because you have that process defined. 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

05:02>> won, 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 sales management meetings on that. And really, it's just efficiency. If you want to scale, 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

05:25>> that you have.

Marketing Automation, Sales Enablement and Lead Routing

Phil Rader

05:27>> Second, you're going to start implementing more of a marketing automation, it could be a marketing hub, Pardot, you name it. Maybe you get sales enablement tool like an outreach or a sales loft, get a contracting tool, that could be at probably either one of these stages. Manually doing proposals brings human error into it and slows down the deal cycle. And then really going into kind of lead routing. So you're bringing in lean into a Chili Piper

05:51>> or whatever it may be, to be automated that lead routing from marketing MQL's qualified to the SQL's 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 Bizible, 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

06:17>> 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. Really when you're looking at this, it's when you're done with ten 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

Salespeople Spend Only 30% of Time Selling

Phil Rader

06:40>> 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 leveraging these tools and the data. So, 30% of the time, salespeople are actually selling. So, there's all these other ancillary areas of where they're trudging through the mud to be able to get this data in, move deals along the cycle, and they're not actually selling. So, the goal of leveraging these tech stack, these

07:07>> data flows, these automations, these integrations between your entire tech stack 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 trudging through the mud with a lot of these administrative tasks.

Forecast Visualization and Predictable Pipeline

Phil Rader

07:34>> That is what 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

08:00>> to make strategic decisions based on their expected booked revenue. So that's really where this forecast visualization comes in.

Building the Marketing Engine

Phil Rader

08:09>> Basically you're building your 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 10, 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,

08:31>> 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 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 ad dollars, marketing dollars in your marketing

08:51>> spend, and constantly running those analytics within your marketing team and your spend.

08:58>> And here, it's lead flow. So you have a very tight funnel, as I mentioned, on that marketing m q l, that level of engagement, making sure it's going through the funnel from marketing to sales, and that you're automating the lead routing process straight to the AEs who are eventually taking that true sales call of someone that is ready to evaluate and or buy.

Win Rate Analytics and Closed Loss Reasons

Phil Rader

09:18>> Looking at this, it's really how do you go in on analytics of the closed loss reasons, closed won reasons, and really understand how can we get our win rate. How can we make sure that we're winning more percentage of deals. 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's bringing in versus what's actually closing down the

09:41>> funnel. And so being able to run that where deals are getting 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 100,000,000, you're really on the ramp. You're bringing in potentially auto dialers if you're running SDR programs. You've got sales engagement tools like Dooly or Textline. You're maybe running ABM through a Sixth

10:08>> Sense or other tools. You've got deal rooms that you're running with an enabler 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 the

10:32>> structure and process built, can do it 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, You're hiring systematically based on these processes that you've put in place and the tools within your tech stack that you're leveraging.

10:51>> Here, it's what will get them to load more deals and providing more greater intelligence. So you just saw EBSA speak, you know, you're looking at revenue intelligence things. What key are indicators of a buyer? What are the relationship things happening? What are the touch points? What are the analytics on deals that have closed won? And what are the analytics on deals that have closed lost? What are the similar trends so we can sit there and understand

11:13>> 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 is 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 channel marketing, you're going through

11:36>> different analytics on that, so you can really hone in on getting the most out of those dollars.

11:44>> And really, it 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

12:07>> of the deal, who is that real sweet spot and then there's outer layers of that sweet spot 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.

Do Not Buy Technology for Its Own Sake

Phil Rader

12:25>> 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

12:47>> 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 it'll 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

13:11>> your existing data to funnel in? If it's not that easy, it's going 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 be in

13:33>> questions from your lender, your investors, your teammates. That's really going be thinking about before you invest in these tools to be able to kick it off and you're 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.

Optimizing the Full Tech Stack at Scale

Phil Rader

13:51>> So, in Optimize, you're really running full embedded integrations between the entire tech stack, 100 plus and you're getting different revenue tableau for full data analytics, you're looking at Clari, looking at all these different revenue intelligence and really getting gritty on it because you have the marketing spend, 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

14:18>> 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 strong client base to protect.

14:30>> 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, accelerate pipeline, and always evaluate before you sit there and buy the next technology.

14:50>> So have all these resources, happy to do this as we really talk about it, 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

15:15>> so that your team can run faster.

Nathan Latka

15:19>> So with that, love to open it up for a little bit of Q and A on this and answer any questions on kind of how these build in the processes of the tech stack.

Q&A: B2B SaaS Focus and ACV Considerations

Nathan Latka

15:41>> So, particularly with that, you're looking at the ACV, right? We focus on mainly B2B SaaS, that is our expertise. So, it is still B2B, it may be per seat, 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 marketing SDRs because it's a quick sales cycle lower buy more than a larger investment into a software, then it really depends on your individual business,

Phil Rader

16:05>> your price point and your customer base.