Top 10 in SALES - What to know for Week ending September 6, 2019

In a similar vein to last weeks newsletter. As I spent the latter part of last week in Auckland hosting a Sales Management workshop with the ever-impressive, SaaS sales guru Matt Cameron and the topic is fresh, we’re dedicating this week’s newsletter as a SaaSy Sales-focused special:

SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK - ARPU

Average revenue per user (ARPU) is one of the most important measures needed to understand the quality of revenue SaaS companies generate and how that quality can shift over time. This article and Animal:ARPU chart is really informative to help determine how to validate the right-size of customers.

ENTERPRISE SALES

Moving upmarket into larger organizations is a pretty standard SaaS growth strategy. Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer) is good! But there is a lot to learn and a bunch of time required to be successful in this market segment. It's not easy, but it can be done. Here is a great guide from Outreach on breaking into deals over $100k ARR.

ENRICH SALES

Want to get better at sales (or get someone else better at sales)? Saleshacker have these 4 fundamental tips to put to work as well as top tips on language to use.

SALES COACHING

This is something Matt really hammered home. The best Sales Teams have access to great coaches. Saleshacker cover the fundamentals in this article and Matt Cameron has more to say on it here.

PRICING

From HBR an article on the psychology of pricing (and perceived value).

GROWTH

I hear this complaint a lot: Companies are expected (mainly by investors) to start measuring the right things at the wrong stage. In the SaaS world this is compounded as it is such a metric-heavy industry. Without any metrics though, regardless of stage, it’s hard to measure the things you want to improve. So here is advice for everyone (especially early stage investors): Don’t focus on metrics like MRR too early on (but qualified leads - for sure!). And here is how to measure product-market fit (reposted deck from past weeks).

COMPENSATION

Compensating SaaS Sales Reps is complicated and expensive. This blog post from Kyle Racki of Proposify is a pretty comprehensive guide from how to set quotas and commissions.

SALES ENABLEMENT

What are the best practices for optimizing performance with revenue teams? Sales Hacker have their 5 Do’s and Don’ts for peak results as well as an infographic (BTW 61% of organizations have a dedicated sales enablement person).

SDR RAMP

According to past studies, time to ramp for an SDR averages about 3.2 months. From Saleshacker here are some tips and tricks to make this ramp time as effective and successful as possible.

SECURITY

Yup - I’m still talking about Sales. Being leaky at the seams is something that can become a real anchor in the sales cycle as SaaS companies start selling into larger (more enterprise) customers. Demonstrating that your team, code, and processes are secure is an important part of the enterprise sales process. Openview have a great overview and HeavyBit are committing an entire event to it in November.