Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending July 9, 2021

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Beyond Customer Satisfaction Surveys or Net Promoter Scores is this idea of a Customer Engagement Score. This is a useful tool for managing a companies customer base and making segment decisions easy, therefore enabling different priorities and engagement strategies - and being able to measure the impact of those strategies over time. Get started reading this article.
2. SECURITY: As of the writing of this week's newsletter over 1,500 businesses have been affected by a ransomware attack on IT firm Kaseya. This is even bigger than last year's SolarWinds breach if you didn't notice. So time to revisit this (again)- Security should be an integral part of your dev cycle: Know your weak spots and how to recover well - if it is not obvious yet - firewalls and perimeter protection are Old School. Founder Institute discusses 6 points of vulnerability in your tech stack that I bet are a bit leaky and here are 5 steps to get started.
3. CX: According to this Zendesk report, 65% of enterprise companies are investing more in Customer Experience technology this year. Investing in customers is a pretty obvious payoff, but what to prioritize is the trick.
4. USP: If done right a unique selling proposition (USP) can be leveraged to build your brand, differentiate your business, and attract your ideal customers - so check this article on how to create a compelling unique selling proposition.
5. CAP TABLE: Last week I referenced alternatives to Venture Capital and dilution - this week let's focus on dilution from a cap table perspective. Take a read of this article from Heavybit that discusses Cap Table management in relation to growth and also how to manage that Option Pool.
6. GROWTH MARKETING: If you're responsible for growth/marketing we've hit the motherlode! Dan Siepen has put together a comprehensive list of resources and the lists are updated often, so make sure you bookmark this page.
7. PROSPECTING: This is part 1 of a Workshop via HeavyBit - focused on helping early-stage startups build predictable prospecting pipelines and repeatable closing processes and Part 1 comes complete with a full worksheet for you to make a copy of.
8. DUNNING - er: Now that I've discovered this weird-ass name for involuntary churn (aka bad payments), I'm a little obsessed. According to Baremetrics, SaaS and subscription businesses lose around 9% of their MRR due to failed payments on average. So take a read of my new discovery this week - a report documenting the art of mastering Credit Card failures - this is an easily addressable problem that's kinda big - according to Profitwell's study - 20-40% of churn is credit card failures.
9. SDR SALES: Chorus.ai has built a great report of what high-performing outbound sales teams are doing to close deals (this is an analysis of over five million sales calls!). You can add in the kind of business you are (SMB, Mid, Enterprise) on this page to see how you measure up. Key nuggets: An SDR dials, on average, 106 people to schedule just one meeting and the typical win rate of a sales qualified lead (SQL) is 19%.
10. CASE STUDY: Contrary to traditional startup lore, not every founder is a domain or industry expert. Here are 6 lessons from founders who (successfully) founded a startup in a space they are not an expert in.

POD OF THE WEEK: This is complementary to #7 above - Predictable Pipelines for building your sales stack, processes, and prospecting.