Metrics that Measure Up

Customer Success and Quarterly Business Reviews - with Guy Nirpaz, Founder and CEO Totango

Customer Success has been growing in importance across the B2B SaaS landscape for over 10 years. Guy Nirpaz recognized this trend early on and founded Totango in 2010 to deliver a SaaS platform to empower Customer Success (CS) professionals to focus the company around the customer. Guy stated our conversation with his belief that Customer Success is a company strategy - not just a department.  If you want a customer to renew and expand their relationship, every interaction with the custome...

The Autonomous Revolution - with Bill Davidow

We apologize for the sound quality on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up. Bill was not able to participate on our traditional digital channel medium and instead we relied upon the traditional "analog phone line". This traditional approach created a little "reverberation and noise".   Bill shares so many great insights developed over his 37 years of being a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and his multiple best selling books in this conversation, we decided to go ahead and publish...

Data Wrangling in the Cloud - with Adam Wilson, CEO Trifacta

One of the great aspects of the Cloud software delivery model is the generation of insightful data generated by users and the purported ease of using the data to better inform  decision-making. At the same time, the amount of data being generated in the Cloud makes the job of normalizing, analyzing, and determining what data is truly informative and predictive versus just adding noise and complexity to the system. Adam Wilson, CEO at Trifacta was purchased by Alteryx after this podcast was...

Data Wrangling in the Cloud - with Adam Wilson, CEO Trifecta

One of the great aspects of the Cloud software delivery model is the generation of insightful data generated by users and the purported ease of using the data to better inform  decision-making. At the same time, the amount of data being generated in the Cloud makes the job of normalizing, analyzing, and determining what data is truly informative and predictive versus just adding noise and complexity to the system. Adam Wilson, CEO at Trifecta who was purchased by Alteryx after this podcast...

Usage Based Pricing & Sales Compensation Models - with Rachel Parrinello, The Alexander Group

Usage-Based Pricing is trending across the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.  This pricing model is not new and is also known as Consumption pricing as the cost of the service or product increases as the "consumption" of the product increases. Saas has traditionally become known for the use of subscription pricing, which often associates an annual subscription cost for each user of the product.  In this scenario, the cost would only increase as additional users were assigned a "seat" and were th...

Metrics that Matter in Strategic Acquisitions - with Lowell Ricklefs

B2B SaaS founders envision their entrepreneurial journey including a liquidity event such as an IPO, a financial acquisition, or a strategic acquisition from an industry leader. Lowell Ricklefs has deep operating experience leading tech companies and has experienced acquisitions on both the buyer and the seller side multiple times. During these processes, Lowell often wondered why banks were required to sell a SaaS company. Lowell identified an opportunity for enhanced sell-side assistance...

Revenue Operations enables Revenue Intelligence - with Andy Byrne, CEO and Co-Founder Clari

Andy Byrne is the founder and CEO of Clari, an enterprise artificial intelligence B2B SaaS platform that enables companies to build more pipeline, accelerate revenue growth and increase revenue predictability. Andy has a long-term relationship with machine learning from his previous company  Clearwell Systems (acquired by Symantec), and that experience was the foundation of his vision for Clari.  Andy identified that machine learning had not previously been used to help sales teams close de...

Benchmarking in B2B SaaS - Beyond the Numbers with Scott Sutton, VP RevOps ZoomInfo

Benchmarks go far beyond the “numbers” and “metrics” Benchmarking is a discipline that enables organizations to identify processes and best practices that companies inside and outside of your industry to become best in class in a specific discipline. Scott Sutton is the VP, Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo and shares his experiences in building the Revenue Operations function. Scott’s initial career experience was in the automotive industry and provided a solid foundation for his transition...

The Rise of B2B SaaS Communities with Sam Jacobs, Founder and CEO of Pavilion

Sam Jacobs first created the foundation for Pavilion - formerly the Revenue Collective in 2016. The vision was to address these two trends: 1) the average tenure of executives at B2B start-ups was shrinking - about 17 months for revenue leaders; 2) The job of being a B2B executive continues to grow in complexity and difficulty. Sam was experiencing this phenomenon in his career and wanted to create a platform and community to share best practices and assist members in realizing the potential...

Sales Development meets Demand Generation and Enablement- with Kyle Coleman, VP Revenue Growth and Enablement at Clari

Are you involved, responsible for, or dependant on Sales Development and pipeline growth for a B2B SaaS or Cloud company? If you answer yes to any of the above, this is an excellent conversation to gain new insights and hear innovative approaches to maximize pipeline development. Kyle Coleman is the Vice President, Revenue Growth and Enablement at Clari. This role includes sales development, sales enablement, and demand generation at Clari. This integrated approach to pipeline development ...

Crossing the Chasm with Geoffrey Moore, Author

Have you read Crossing the Chasm - the Go-to-Market bible for high tech leaders for over 30 years? Crossing the Chasm, written by Geoffrey Moore, was first published in 1991 introduced the Technology Lifecycle Adoption Framework. The basic concept of Crossing the Chasm is that there are five stages in the Technology Lifecycle Adoption curve, and each stage has a specific "buyer profile" at each stage of adoption: Stages of the Product Lifecycle Adoption Curve: Innovators - Get excited ab...

Conversational Intelligence delivers Revenue Reality - with Amit Bendov, CEO and Co-Founder, GONG

Conversational Intelligence (CI) is a technology that materially enhances the effectiveness of every B2B Sales professional. CI has quickly become a "must-have" component in the B2B sales tech stack and has become a feature in most Sales Engagement Platforms...WHAT is the future of Conversational Intelligence? Our host, Ray Rike, recently spoke with Amit Bendov, Founder and CEO of Gong.io, to discuss the vision and future of Gong and the Revenue Reality. Amit's premise was "is there a bet...

Training the Modern B2B Sales Professional with Paul Fifield, Founder and CEO of Sales Impact Academy

B2B Cloud revenue is projected to grow from $300B+ in 2020 to over $800B by 2025. Some estimates highlight the industry will require 300,000 additional B2B Sales professionals to achieve this level of growth. If the above is even directionally correct, being able to train sales professionals is key to continued industry growth. Paul Fifield is the founder and CEO of the Sales Impact Academy. His vision to create the Sales Impact Academy is built upon his frustration in growing and leading ...

MOVE: A Go-To-Market Strategy with Sangram Vajre, Founder Terminus and Flip My Funnel Podcast

Sangram Vajre, Founder and Chief Evangelist at Terminus and host of the Flip my Funnel Forecast, joined our host Ray Rike to discuss his MOVE Go-To-Market framework. Sangram ran marketing at Pardot, an early marketing automation vendor for salespeople, which Salesforce ultimately acquired and co-founded Terminus seven years ago.  Terminus is a true pioneer in providing a platform for Account-Based Marketing programs, which in today's B2B SaaS world represents about 44% of total marketing i...

Modern B2B Marketing Strategies, Measurements and Sales Alignment - with Matt Heinz, The Sales Pipeline Podcast

Matt Heinz is the founder and CEO of Heinz Marketing and the host of the Sales Pipeline Podcast. Matt's primary goal is to help modern marketers to implement predictable and scalable, revenue-centric marketing programs. Matt has seen the alignment between marketing and sales for top-of-the-funnel pipeline development significantly improve over the last few years.  In addition, he is seeing marketing leaders are more data-driven, especially regarding buyer intent has improved materially.  L...

Pipeline Signals = Prospecting Intelligence - with Jamie Shanks, Founder and CEO Sales for Life

Jamie Shanks helped to shape Social Selling through his company, Sales for Life.  After certifying 250,000+  sales professionals on the strategies and techniques that led to Digital Selling competencies across hundreds of companies, Jamie has identified some common trends in what led to the most successful pipeline development. In 2020, B2B Sales quickly transformed into Digital Selling. Social Selling has evolved to "selling" and become a part of the digital selling motion. Social Selling ...

Making B2B Sales Compensation and Culture Transparent - with Ryan Walsh, Founder and CEO RepVue

Compensation is one of the more personal aspects of evaluating any new job.  Trying to understand a company's culture and specifically, the organization within the company you are evaluating is almost impossible. Ryan Walsh, the founder, and CEO of RepVue may have figured out exactly how to provide transparency in both compensation and culture in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry. Ryan possesses a very rare trait, a B2B SaaS sales leader who progressed his career from sales rep to Chief Reve...

Scaling to $100M ARR - B2B Cloud Benchmarks with Mary D'Onofrio, Partner Bessemer Ventures

Imagine having access to the metrics and benchmarks over an entire decade for 200+ B2B Cloud and SaaS private companies as they scaled from $0 to $100M ARR. That is precisely the data Mary D'Onofrio, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has access to as the Growth Stage investing partner since 2018.  Mary published her findings in the Scaling to $100M ARR report and joined us to share the insights from her research. Mary also maintains the BVP Emerging  Cloud 100 Index,  is the autho...

The Power of Benchmarks - with Lauren Kelley, Founder and CEO OPEX Engine (Episode 2)

The Power of Benchmarks - with Lauren Kelley, Founder and CEO OPEX Engine (Episode 1)

Benchmarks - a concept for only the most mature and advanced company or a foundational metrics component for any company seeking to make data-driven, metrics-informed decisions? Lauren Kelley is the founder and CEO of OPEX Engine,  a leader in capturing and publishing B2B Technology company benchmarks.  Lauren's background includes being the revenue leader for an early B2B platform leader, and prior to that as an economist for the US Department of Commerce. Immediately prior to recording t...

The B2B SaaS VP Sales Journey - with Brendon Cassidy, Founder and CEO CoSell

The B2B Cloud industry is projected to grow from $350B in 2021 to $800B+ in 2025.  This will mean a lot of new companies and the need for many more VP Sales to lead the revenue team. Brendon Cassidy has been part of early-stage B2B enterprise sales organizations as the VP Sales for companies including LinkedIn, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), Talkdesk, and then as a founding advisor to Gong.  Now Brendon is the co-founder and co-CEO at CoSell.io. Based upon Brendon's tenure and success at le...

Revenue Strategy - What, Why and How to Measure the Impact with Jeremey Donovan, SVP Revenue Strategy at SalesLoft

Jeremey Donovan is the epitome of the phrase "Always Be Learning". Jeremey started his career as a semiconductor engineer, transitioned to be an analyst covering the industry, then transitioned to product development, then to product management, product marketing, and finally to sales.  To say he is a continuous learner is an understatement! Most recently, Jeremey started his pursuit as a Masters of Data Science while serving in the role of Senior Vice President of Revenue Strategy at Sale...

Marketing Metrics that Matter to C-Level Executives - with Dan McGaw

Metrics that Matter to the Modern B2B Marketer - with Chris Walker, Founder and CEO Refine Labs

Chris Walker, Founder and CEO of Refine Labs, Host of Demand Gen Live, and a Top LinkedIn Influencer is a B2B Marketing contrarian - that is a primary reason I have been a fan of Chris's for a long time. Chris was a B2B marketing practitioner for 8 years, and his experience told him B2B marketing organizations were executing marketing programs the wrong way!  The market had changed, the buyers had changed and the buying process had changed...yet marketing programs were the same, using the s...

Strategic Finance in B2B SaaS - with Bijan Moallemi, Mosaic CEO

Holding key financial leadership roles at Qualcomm and Palantir Technologies by itself positions Bijan Moallemi, Founder and CEO of Mosaic Tech as a uniquely qualified finance leader. Factor in his innovative use of technology and automation to enable more efficient hyper-growth and his desire to make this level of automation available to anyone trying to implement a strategic finance function in the B2B Cloud industry, Bijan is a market visionary. His story starts with the challenges he f...

Customer Success and its Business Impact - with Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight

Being the CEO of a B2B SaaS company that creates a new market category, grows the company to >$100M ARR, and then purchased for over $1B by a top tier Private Equity firm may be the ultimate goal of many entrepreneurs - but for Nick Mehta and Gainsight, it is just the beginning. Nick Mehta, joined Gainsight as CEO in 2013.  Back then, Gainsight had just changed its name, launched its first user conference, and initiated the strategy to build a new market category for B2B SaaS - Customer Suc...

Customer Success and it's Business Impact - with Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight

Being the CEO of a B2B SaaS company that creates a new market category, grows the company to >$100M ARR, and then purchased for over $1B by a top tier Private Equity firm may be the ultimate goal of many entrepreneurs - but for Nick Mehta and Gainsight, it is just the beginning. Nick Mehta, joined Gainsight as CEO in 2013.  Back then, Gainsight had just changed its name, launched its first user conference, and initiated the strategy to build a new market category for B2B SaaS - Customer Suc...

Micro Private Equity - New Path to B2B SaaS Liquidity + Growth -Akeel Jabber, Horizen Capital

B2B SaaS founders continue to find new financing options to both grow their business and/or be rewarded for their sweat equity investment. Akeel Jabber's journey from petroleum engineer, to gym founder, to real estate investor and now "micro private equity" investor has one common thread - entrepreneurship focused on how to generate cash flow Akeel's first area of focus to generate returns +  cash flow was investing in the stock market.  He quickly identified that the large institutional i...

Stakeholder Capitalism + ESG - Uncovering Hidden Enterprise Value with Renee Cullinan

Renee Cullinan, founder of "Stop Meeting Like This"  is pivoting her highly successful career as a high tech executive and then founder of a pioneering consulting company that focused on how to increased company productivity and employee satisfaction by eliminating the wasted time associated with internal meetings and email overload. In this episode of Metrics that Measure Up, we focus on both the metrics associated with increased employee productivity and then on the increasing importance ...

RevOps as the Revenue Architect - with Jeff Ignacio, The Revenue Architect Podcast

Revenue Operations is positioned to be the revenue architect across the customer journey.  That is a bold statement and the perspective of one of the leading revenue operations thought leaders, Jeff Ignacio. Revenue Operations hit an "inflection point" in 2021.  Jeff believes the rapid growth of B2B SaaS companies has highlighted the incongruency that customers are experiencing due to the "drops" in internal hand-offs between marketing, sales, and customer success. Jeff believes Revenue Op...

Product-Led Growth and B2B Sales - Best of Both Worlds - with Tim Geisenheimer, CEO at Correlated

Product-Led Growth (PLG) and B2B Sales - how do they co-exist in the evolving world of Go-To-Market strategy in B2B SaaS? On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Tim Geisenheimer, Founder and CEO of Correlated.   Tim's first experience was leading a sales team in a PLG company where he experienced the change in how customers first experience a product.  PLG requires the sales team to truly understand "HOW" customers are using the product, and adjust their sa...

Leaders of Growth in B2B SaaS - with Arthur Nobel, Knight Capital

Leaders of Growth - a phrase that could refer to many B2B SaaS companies and executives. Today, we speak with Arthur Nobel, principal at Knight Capital and author of Leaders of Growth. Leaders of Growth is the result of 47 interviews with B2B SaaS operating executives and investors.  Brand name B2B SaaS executives including Mark Roberge, Matt Chappell, Katie Christian, Nathan Latka, Wes Bush, Patrick Campbell plus 42 more B2B SaaS executives with hands-on experience in scaling companies be...

Make it, Don't Fake it! - Sabrina Horn, Founder Horn Group

Make it, Don't Fake It is a mantra that has long lived in the entrepreneur start-up culture in the B2B tech industry! Sabrina Horn is not only a pioneer in the B2B Tech public relations space, she is one of the most networked executives in the B2B tech industry. After only 4 years in the corporate world, Sabrina took the plunge to found The Horn Group, with a specific goal to help B2B tech companies exploit the impending business transformation created by the personal computer.  Her first ...

RevOps - as a canary in the coal mine - with Jordan Henderson, ringDNA

Jordan Henderson is a lawyer by education, who transitioned into a B2B tech career that has spanned sales operations, customer sales, sales management, and ultimately revenue operations.  This well-rounded career journey led Jordan to a career in Revenue Operations. RevOps can be the "canary in the coal mine" for a B2B SaaS company.  Revenue Operations are problem solvers.  Being able to monitor the day-to-day "Go-to-Market" operations provides a unique opportunity to be an early warning fa...

Customer-In Revenue Operations - with Alison Elworthy, EVP Revenue Operations - HubSpot

Marketing Operations to Sales Operations to a VP, Customer Success.  This carer path serves as an amazing foundation for a Revenue Operations executive. This is exactly the career path that Alison Elworthy, EVP of Revenue Operations at HubSpot. Alison's experience as a customer success executive was an eye-opening experience for a career-long operations professional who had not previously invested time interacting with customers. Alison's experience working with HubSpot customers led HubSp...

Product-Led Growth - Evolution or Revolution - with Wes Bush, ProductLed

On this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Wes Bush, founder and CEO  of ProductLed. Wes's journey to founding ProductLed and becoming a leading voice on Product-Led Growth started when he was responsible for demand generation for B2B SaaS companies.  Specifically, when he led demand generation at Vidyard, they launched a new product that allowed them to evolve from "hosting videos" to providing a self-service tool that allowed end-users to quickly film, edit an...

Product Analytics + Product Led Growth = A Partnership for Success - with Ken Fine, CEO Heap Analytics

Product Analytics + Product Led Growth are critical partners for success. Ken Fine, CEO of Heap Analytics recently joined me on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast to discuss the inextricable linkage between these two concepts. PLG currently exists in a continuum of maturity, with some companies managing the entire customer lifecycle using a product-led motion, while the majority still using a traditional sales led motion Ken believes the dominant Go-To-Market model in the future will be ...

Product Lead Growth Metrics and Benchmarks - with Sam Richard, OpenView Partners

Sam Crowell Richard is responsible for growth across the OpenView Partners portfolio. OpenView Partners is a leader in advocating Product Led Growth strategies across their portfolio, which includes leading PLG companies including Calendly. Sam has invested in her career preparing for a growth role in a PLG focused venture capital firm, including learning the secrets of digital marketing in a digital agency, and then for 5+ years at an early stage, PLG company, Dispatch, ultimately acquired...

Product Led Growth Metrics and Benchmarks - with Sam Richard, OpenView Partners

Sam Crowell Richard is responsible for growth across the OpenView Partners portfolio. OpenView Partners is a leader in advocating Product Led Growth strategies across their portfolio, which includes leading PLG companies including Calendly. Sam has invested in her career preparing for a growth role in a PLG focused venture capital firm, including learning the secrets of digital marketing in a digital agency, and then for 5+ years at an early stage, PLG company, Dispatch, ultimately acquired...

B2B SaaS Metrics Evolution and Usage - with Clayton Whitfield, Founder SaaSOptics

Clayton Whitfield founded SaaSOptics to provide B2B SaaS founders and operators a platform that made it easier to capture, calculate and make better metrics informed decisions. Clayton shared that the core metrics that form the foundation of B2B SaaS company value have not evolved significantly over the 12 years since he founded SaaSOptics, but the understanding and comfort with the metrics have evolved.  Clayton also highlighted that because there are no "standards" governing body in the i...

Usage-Based Pricing in B2B SaaS - Trendy Topic or Strategic Value Lever - with Adam Howatson, CEO LogiSense

Usage-Based Pricing is all the rage across multiple B2B SaaS news outlets.  Subscription-based pricing has been the standard pricing model for over 20 years, which has provided B2B SaaS companies more predictable revenue growth over time versus the famous end of quarter "hockey stick" of perpetual licensing software companies. However, companies such as Twilio, Snowflake and DataDog have been using "Usage-Based" pricing to achieve Net Dollar Retention Rates of 130% - 150% and associated En...

B2B SaaS Metrics with the Master - Dave Kellogg @kellblog

B2B SaaS Metrics are talked about in board meetings, investor diligence, executive team meetings, and recently across every corner of the internet from industry influencers and thought leaders. As the host of the Metrics that Measure Up, I was thrilled that I could speak with Dave Kellogg, one of my long-term follows, and a master of all things B2B SaaS metrics. Dave is a multiple-time, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer of B2B Software and SaaS companies, and a highly sought after advisor, b...

Podcasts + MarTech Metrics that Matter - with Ben Shapiro, Host of the MarTech Podcast

Benjamin Shapiro started his internet marketing career at eBay, one of the first, largest and most data-driven marketplaces in the world.  Ben's 7 years at eBay provided him the foundation of being a great digital marketer, including SEO and content marketing. Ben caught the Silicon Valley start-up bug, and spent the next 8 years in marketing leadership at B2C early-stage companies, and then he started the MarTech podcast in 2015. Ben's initial experience with podcasting was "an experiment...

How Positioning impacts B2B Tech Revenue Growth - with Bob Wright, Firebrick

During 2020, over 96% of B2B SaaS companies updated their messaging and positioning to counteract the short and long-term impact of the pandemic. Fortunately, there are experts on how to position your messaging and value propositions, including Bob Wright,  Managing Partner at Firebrick consulting who has helped over 400 B2B tech companies develop and launch new positioning. The first topic we discussed was why an outside consultant is required when the Chief Marketing Officer is well-posi...

Usage Based Pricing + Chief Monetization Officer - with Chris Mele, CEO Software Pricing Partners

Product Led Growth and Usage-Based Pricing are two of the hottest trends in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.  Annual subscription pricing has been a hallmark of the financial model for SaaS companies.  Lately, the move to Usage-Based pricing has attracted investor demand that is pushing Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples up to 15x-25x.  Chris Mele, CEO of Software Pricing Partners discussed the caution around moving too quickly to Usage-Based pricing, and provides advice developed from c...

Measuring the Impact of Sales Enablement - with Elay Cohen, founder and CEO, SalesHood

Imagine being asked by Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce to ensure that every member of your sales organization can effectively deliver and communicate the latest presentation and messaging that he had just developed.  Then after traveling around the world to execute this directive, Marc informs you that the messaging and presentation has been updated, and you need to do it all over again! Our guest, Elay Cohen founder and CEO of SalesHood experienced that exact situation when he ...

Lessons Learned from being a 6x SaaS VP Sales - with Scott Leese

Experience is the best teacher. In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up with Scott Leese we take a deep dive into how experience has informed his career journey. Scott has over twenty years of experience as a six time SaaS VP of Sales, and most amazingly, his average tenure for each role was greater than 3 years in a role that typically experiences a 14-18 month tenure.  Scott shares some of his lessons learned and secrets to his sustained success. First, Scott highlighted how criti...

Global SaaS Start-Up Community Growth - with Alex Theuma, SaaStock

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, we speak with Alex Theuma, the founder and CEO of SaaStock and the SaaS Revolution podcast. Alex started his career as an enterprise sales professional, and identified his passion for SaaS as he started to write a blog on all things SaaS, called SaaScribe.  SaaScribe quickly morphed into a community blog, and enabled Alex to build deep and broad connections across the SaaS ecosystem. Based upon the community of SaaS entrepreneurs that...

Revenue Intelligence + Advanced Sales Math - with Todd Abbott, InsightSquared CEO

In this episode, we discuss the revolutionary concepts of Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math with Todd Abbott, CEO at InsightSquared. Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math are critical competencies to successfully maneuver in todays B2B SaaS reality of compressed sales cycle and the changing customer buying journey. The good news - traditional metrics including lead conversion rates, close rates, pipeline coverage ratio, and sales rep productivity still are helpful to calc...

Getting to WOW - Secrets of Pitching to VCs - with Bill Reichert, Garage Technology Ventures and Pegasus Tech Ventures

If you are contemplating VC funding, this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast is like receiving a master's degree in pitching to VCs from Bill Reichert and his book "Getting to Wow" Key concepts covered include:  Ensure your pitch follows the three C's - Clear - Compelling - Credible CLEAR is removing the complexity Do not fall into the "experts curse" - only you have the depth of expertise on the topic - Ensure anyone can understand what you do in 1-2 sentences - Test your me...