# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 26, 2020 Published: 26 June 2020 Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-june-26-2020 ## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK Customer Loyalty - it’s actually an amalgam of metrics - Net Promoter Score (shout out to [Ask Nicely](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#)), CSAT (shoutout to [Thematic](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#)), Churn Rate, and MRR. Profitwell describes a five-step process to [develop a customer loyalty program here](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 2. MARKETING So how do you measure up as a business? Get started [here with the 9 marketing disciplines of great SaaS companies](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#), created by the former CMO of Zendesk and Slack, then complete the [Marketing Scorecard Spreadsheet here](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#), scoring each on a 1 to 10 scale. A deeper explainer is [on this post](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 3. EXPANSION and RETENTION Acquiring customers Isn’t enough, expansion and retention are growth practices any good SaaS company needs to get a grip on. They are both [deeply related](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) so in this deep dive let's get started with benchmarking. Here is [what good expansion looks like](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) and here is what [good retention goals should be benchmarked against](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) and [how to optimize them](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 4. SECURITY The ever-increasing adoption of cloud-based software creates more exposure to bad actors looking to exploit vulnerabilities. Tech companies should be continually concerned about the security of the software being built. [OWASP](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) can help you out here - it’s a foundation working to improve the security of software and maintains a [Top 10 list of the most critical security risks to web applications](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 5. PITCH If you are looking to raise capital, burn this into memory: [You have 2-4 slides tops to grab the attention of an investor.](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) Use those slides wisely and don’t go beyond 12-15 TOTAL. Oh and also do [these 4 things](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) as a business to be VC friendly. Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 6. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES It’s a weird open secret that a lot of B2B SaaS businesses generate a significant amount of revenue from implementation and deployment projects, [often captured as revenue from Professional Services](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#), due to deployment and configuration complexity. So what are the revenue benchmarks for a SaaS Business to captured revenue through professional services? On average it [caps out at 11%](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) of all annual revenue with Enterprise focused businesses but even at the lower end of town it’s still 5% of revenues with SMB focused businesses. Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 7. SALES The Series A funding round is a stamp of approval, product-market-fit is evident and the capital is expected to be spent on growth. PointNine Capital has a great article on [how to build a sales engine at Series A](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 8. BUILD or BUY I’m constantly in a debate (mainly with myself) of whether to build or integrate with an existing app/service to solve a problem in my business or introduce a new feature on behalf of a customer/feature request. So (like me), you should [read this article to get a better grip](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) on assessing the pros and cons of either a build or buy strategy. Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 9. ED-TECH Not often referenced in this newsletter - but the sector has [become a hotspot](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) and a lifeline in eduction during the COVID-19 pandemic. So how impactful are the technologies to learning pedagogies outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom? McKinsey have [an extensive report here](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) TL;DR - it depends on who, how, where and what - there are gaps. Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## 10. WEBSITE GrowthInsider have released a great and [comprehensive list of the biggest mistakes made on websites](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#) and to flip that in a more positive light, [here are some ways you can supercharge your website (using research)](https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit#). Link: https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns/ui/campaigns/9004219/edit# ## POD OF THE WEEK I love good growth stories and I also love DataDog (I'm a customer). So check out how they got to [over a half BILLION in revenue with their product led go-to-market strategy](https://openviewpartners.com/blog/datadog-go-to-market-strategy). Link: https://openviewpartners.com/blog/datadog-go-to-market-strategy