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- When it comes to building out the revenue function of your SaaS business, so you can drive growth, there are a lot of words that gets thrown around. There is your go-to-market machine, there's sales, there's marketing, there's now product-led growth which I'm not even gonna touch in this video, that's for another video. There's customer success, there's renewals, there's upsells, there's cross-sells, there's so many of these things. And then there's your sales methodology. Sales methodology is actually how deals get done. Now, given all these terms, it can get really confusing really fast. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the one framework that you can embrace, that you can use that pulls these concepts together into this one blank piece of paper. And we'll actually help you understand what fits where and what to prioritize. And when you actually embrace this framework, which is what I did, it'll help you grow your SaaS business faster and really nail your sales methodology. Intro. (upbeat music) What's up, everybody, welcome to Unstoppable. I'm TK, and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. If you are new to the channel, welcome. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon because I drop a video like this with actionable strategies to grow your SaaS business three times a week, every week with the TK energy. If you are already part of our community, if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching program, welcome back. Seriously awesome to see you over here. All right, so I remember when I was building out ToutApp, ToutApp was my last SaaS business. I've had 15 years of experience building SaaS businesses. ToutApp was backed by Andreessen Horowitz. We were going through this transition. We're going from being just a self service driven business which is now called product-led growth. We were going from a self-service business to a sale- driven business. The reason we were doing this transition was because by being a sales-driven business, we were able to grow faster, we were able to get bigger deals, we were able to lock in customers, we were able to drive more upsells and cross-sells. Basically it was the right strategy for our market to grow faster. But in that moment, in that moment as I was making that transition it was really scary because as an engineering founder, I knew how to do product-led growth. I knew how to instrument the products and more people would just convert. But what I didn't know was how to establish a sales process. How to establish a sales methodology, how to think about marketing and sales and all these different pieces. Thankfully, someone gave me this book called "The Ultimate Sales Machine." It's by Chet Holmes, amazing book, highly recommend, a link to it below. And this was one of the books that really changed how I learned about sales and marketing and how I got some of these concepts that I teach on this channel today that helped drive success not just for ToutApp, but we use some of these principles at Marketo where I helped run a two-year transformation, which led to a $4.75 billion exit to Adobe and all the SaaS businesses I've been part of and that I coach now, a lot of these foundational things came together from books like this. And the reason, the reason I do this channel was so that you don't have to sift through hundreds of pages of this. You can just get the principles so you can apply them faster and avoid some of the mistakes that I made as I was going through it. Super excited to dig into this framework around how to really establish a go-to-market machine and your sales methodology, go to smash that like button and let's dig right into it. First principle is just to understand how all these different concepts fit together, all right? So for size businesses, it's pretty straightforward. You don't need to over-complicate it. There's essentially this kind of hourglass funnel that we have. And hourglass funnel essentially fits into three parts. First, you have marketing, then you have sales and then you have success. And all three of these are important because SaaS businesses are recurring revenue businesses. So customers aren't successful, they won't renew. If they don't renew, you'll have a leaky bucket. If you have a leaky bucket, then nothing will matter. So the first thing that you really wanna be digging into is how do you actually get leads? Now, a lot of people will tell you like, oh, the funnel's gone, it's irrelevant, people will come. Don't believe them. A lead is just as important than anything else. Leads are important. If you don't have leads, you don't know that people are finding out about you. So the biggest thing really from marketing is hoard the leads, hoard the accounts if you're doing account-based marketing. That's the first thing that you wanna be focused on. How do we drive awareness? How do we make sure people are raising their hands saying "Hey, I wanna talk to you guys. I want to learn more about you guys." Whether it's a trial or a lead magnet or a manifesto, leads are super important. So marketing function is where it all starts. Once you do that, the next piece of thing that becomes important are opportunities. Opportunities are where someone has talked to you and they have said, hey there's this a real problem that we need solved and you happen to be able to solve that problem. That is an opportunity to solve the problem for them. It is a real opportunity. Opportunities are not where someone just signed up for your ebook. That's not an opportunity, that's more of a lead. So you start to see the difference. Opportunities are where you've talked to them, you've done a discovery call and I'll talk more about this and where they're like, okay, cool, there's something here and we should talk more. And then actually it doesn't end because you have a SaaS business, the most successful SaaS businesses have dollar retention rates greater than a hundred percent which means that each customer spends more money with you year after year. So what it becomes super important is after you have an opportunity where they convert to becoming a customer, you also have cross or upsells where they are buying more. And most importantly, you also have renewals. And the customers success team is essentially responsible for all of these. And this whole thing together is essentially your go-to market machine, all right? So I know a lot of words get thrown around but I wanted to draw this as principle number one, just so you can understand. Doesn't have to be that complicated, it's really this simple. It's like, look marketing generates the leads, drives awareness, maybe it's account-based marketing, maybe it's traditional marketing, doesn't matter, but they're essentially getting awareness into the market into what you're doing. Great marketing is when more people know about you today than they did yesterday. It's as simple as that. As that starts to happen, sales actually engages with them and turns those leads into real opportunities. Opportunities are when you've had a conversation and they acknowledge that they have a problem that you have a solution for. And maybe they'll buy, maybe they won't. Then once you sell them, then you get into customer success, just as important. If you're hiring a VP of sales, VP of success is just as important to hire. That's when you drive the cross-sell and upsells and you also drive renewals and there's money involved in all of these. So that is a principle number one, your go-to-market machine. You really need to nail that and understand where this all fits. Now, sales methodology, let's talk about that. The sales methodology is where the magic really happens. And I didn't know enough about this when I was first starting out and it was almost to a detriment, but fortunately I had some people that taught me otherwise. There's three key pieces that goes into your sales methodology. The first one is, what is your pricing strategy? How do you actually price your platform? How do you communicate the price? Is it a value-based pricing? I did an entire episode on value-based pricing models. You can check that out here, you don't have to go yet, I'll link to it below. The second piece is your sales deck. How do you actually run your sales conversations and communicate what the problem is? Why is it important? How is it that you're gonna solve that problem? Why should they believe you? Now, a lot of times what ends up happening is, in my SaaS go-to-market coaching program, we help you develop a manifesto. A manifesto is about six to nine slides. It turns into a lead magnet but it also turns into your sales deck. So a lot of times your sales deck comes from your manifesto when you work with us. But you need something like that where it's a sales deck that clearly articulates what is the problem, what are the risks and how do you actually do it. If you wanna learn more about manifestos, I did a video on that as well, I'll link to it below, you can check it out later. So pricing, sales deck and the other thing that you need is an actual sales process, right? Now, there's no answers to this and there's lots of different rules around this. There's solution selling, there's customer-centric selling, there's challenger selling. Those are all different sales methodologies. Personally, I like challenger selling. That's kind of what my programs are built on, that my businesses have been built on. It's where we go in and say, hey, here's a big change that's happening, you got to do something about it. I challenge and I teach them on it. And then we say, hey, do you want like... Are you interested in talking more? Now your sales process breaks down into some pieces, like you might do a discovery call, you might do a demo, you might do a stakeholder call, a stakeholder review. You might do a strategy session. There's lots of different pieces to this and that's really what pulls together your sales methodology. These three these three big buckets over here. Now it's very easy to just say we have sales and very easy to just say, we're going to hire salespeople but unless you really nail down your sales methodology, none of this will work. It's just same with marketing, right? In the marketing side, we talk about creating your ICP, your manifesto and Broadway Show. I won't go into the details of this, I'll talk about this in future episodes. If you haven't subscribed, be sure to subscribe. So that's the strategy piece and then there's a whole bunch of execution. Same with sales, getting on phone calls with customers is the execution, but your sales strategy, sales methodology is what really defines how you're gonna run those calls, what are you going to say to them, what you're gonna show them and how are you gonna engage, and that's super important for you to lay it out. And so you'll want to make sure you have a clear articulation of your pricing strategy, a link to that video below, your sales deck, that's essentially your manifesto, a link to that video below, and also your sales process. What sales process are you gonna follow. A link to that book, challenger sale. Now, that's only half of it, believe it or not, right? You've got marketing, you got sales, I wanna talk about success, but before I go to principle number three, principle number one is knowing what does this whole thing looks like. Principle number two is this is zooming on sales, sales methodology because this is the glue that really makes revenue happen. Otherwise you'll just have a bunch of leads, it won't matter, right? Now, before I go into set principle number three, let me just pause your first second. If you start to see the power in this you starting to see the power on how you really wanna nail down your sales strategy and sales methodology. Just like how you wanna nail down your marketing strategy. And when you do, everything's gonna move a lot faster. You're able to grow a lot faster and you're purposeful about these things. Can I just get a yes in the comments below. Also, smash our like button for the YouTube algorithm. It really likes it when you do that. I really like it, our team really likes, means the world to us. We really wanna just hear from you. So hit yes in the comments below, smash our like button. And if you have questions, you wanna dig more into this, put it in the comments below. We answer every single comment. Also, if you are the founder of a SaaS business and you are building out your go-to-market machine and you want a proven step-by-step process to follow. If you wanna playbook that I've used at ToutApp, where we we went to multiple millions in ARR. A playbook that I've seen used in Marketo, then you should check out my SaaS go-to-market coaching program. I don't just make this stuff up, I've actually used these principles. I put them into play, I've built companies around them. Now our coach founder's on it. So I'll give you more details about it at the end of this video. I'll link to it below, but let's go to principle number three. Okay, principle number three is again, we're building SaaS businesses and SaaS businesses are only valuable if people renew. If people don't renew, then it's not valuable. The greatest SaaS businesses are the ones where they have a greater than a hundred percent dollar retention rate. That's what matters the most. I did an entire video on this you can check it out here, you don't have to go right now, a link to it below. It's about why DRR is super important and how it connects to your pricing. So what you really need to do is make sure that you actually have a proper sales methodology. Make no mistake, successes is just as much selling. Sales methodology expands into success. What that means is you need to watch out for your DRR. What it means is that you actually need to drive cross-sell and upsells and you actually need to have something that you are upselling on. And you also need to make sure you have a plan around renewals. You actually know how you're gonna drive renewals. You can have the conversations and the sales process around that on doing QBRs. That is super important as well. I did one more video about how to think about churn and reducing churning by putting in a customer success discipline. You can check that out here, a link to it below, you don't have to go yet. So I'll put a bunch of videos around this together that pieces together each of the parts on this that I've highlighted but I wanted to give you the overview. So to recap, this is why sales methodology is super important. It's super easy to just do the execution but if you don't have the strategy right, your methodology right, it won't work. And some of the pieces that go into your methodology is things like, what is your sales process? What are the unique calls you're gonna have? What is your sales deck? How do you actually run the renewal process? When you reach out to them, do you do QBRs? What is your cross-sell and upsell strategy? Like what are you going to cross-sell and upsell them on? All those things are super important. And when you lay these things down piece by piece, then your SaaS business is gonna grow faster. Is this easy to do? Nope. Is this pretty straightforward when you lay it out here? Yeah, It feels that way. This seems simple, but it's simple as hard. There are some complexities around this and that's why I kind of lay it out, that's why I create this channel because there's lots of mistakes you can make and we wanna make sure that you make new mistakes, not mistakes us founders have made over the last 15 years. You guys are building on what we learned and that's why we do this. So the big lesson here is you got to have your sales methodology right. When you do, you'll be able to grow your SaaS business faster. And now you know, the three principles you need to know which is number one, understand the whole hourglass funnel. Number two, understand what your sales methodology looks like and number three, your sales expands into success, and that's just as much a sales methodology. So have a sales methodology around success as well. It's not just about solving bugs for the product. So now you know how to actually build out your sales methodology or at leas pull upon the right things. Now, if you are a SaaS founder and you're building out your go-to-market machine, your sales methodology, your success methodology and you want a proven process to follow. You want a playbook to follow. This is why I created my SaaS go-to-market coaching program. Inside of the program, I give you the step-by-step process and the blueprint to follow to build out your SaaS go-to-market machine. It's backed by 15 years of experience that I have in actually building SaaS businesses. Every single SaaS business I've been part of, I was with it for years. I just didn't spend a year there and started just to work there. I literally built these things out. I know the principles, and so now I help coach founders on building these things out. So you want a proven playbook to follow, you want the step-by-step coaching, go to tkkader.com/gtm. We are accepting new applications, super easy. You just go in, you learn all the details, I have some videos in there. You'll be able to apply to join. We'll get on a call. I wanna make sure you're the right fit, and if you are, we'll let you in. We'll get in and we will start working together. It's a coaching program, it's a training program, it's awesome, it's super rewarding. You get to see other CEOs that are in the program as well. It's been a ton of fun building this program out. So go to tkkader.com/gtm to learn more. All right, so that's everything I wanted to talk about today. If you got value from this video, be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. Also, I drop a video like this with actionable strategies three times a week with the TK energy. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon. That way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. Lastly, if you're a part of a Slack channel. If you're part of a WhatsApp group, a mailing list with other founders that would get value from this, please share this video. We wanna spread the word. We wanna build our community and we wanna expand our community. We wanna help more people, mean the world to us. And lastly remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business, but when you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK and I'll see in the next episode. (bright music)