All Things SaaS

With a focus on product marketing, M&A integration, revenue ops and demand generation

Category: Uncategorized

  • The two metrics that matter for marketing investments

    In this era, when money is no longer cheap and every enterprise SaaS company is watching their burn/spend very carefully, there are two metrics matter the most, when justifying making a marketing investment.  The two metrics that matter the most are a) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)?  Any big marketing investment…

  • Pricing Matters

    It is a new fiscal year for many of you and you may be considering tweaking your pricing models this year.  Having done a few SaaS enterprise pricing engagements in the past, here are seven considerations, as you revisit pricing. These seven considerations are valid irrespective of your pricing model – whether it is per…

  • Build, buy or partner, and the rule of 40

    There are various ways to look at build vs. buy vs partnering decisions for new products.  Each comes with its own pros and cons. The most conventional wisdom on pros and cons is: There is also another filter when you evaluate build/buy/partner. Build and buy must be accretive to your business, while partnering can be…

  • When should you revisit and revise your go-to-market (GTM)?

    Last week a client asked me when a Go-to-market plan should be revisited.  My response was that in any of the following events, GTM plans should be revisited. I recommend looking at your GTM once a year to decide if you need to make some tweaks to align with your planned products/segmentation/target geos/ channel/pricing etc.…

  • Product Marketing in Enterprise SaaS vs. PLG organizations

    There are significant differences in the role of product marketing (PMM) in an enterprise SaaS company (where sales is driven by traditional models of SDRs, inside and outside sales) and a Product-led-growth (PLG) company, where the product is typically offered as a freemium model and growth is driven by increased adoption and conversion of free…

  • Win Loss Analysis – some thoughts

    A few of you have recently reached out to me regarding win-loss analysis. I had written multiple posts on it a while back, but wanted to revisit a few points. Why is it essential? If you don’t have a formal win-loss program, I recommend getting started as soon as possible.  If you have one, consider…

  • Industry marketing: best practices for a messaging matrix

    In my last blog post I shared how to create the most important element for industry-specific messaging for your product – a use case framework.  Once you have developed this foundational framework, here are the key elements you need to pull together to complete the industry specific message for your product Think of industry guide…

  • Use Case framework: The most important step in creating industry messaging

    As you create your industry specific messages for your horizontal product, one of the first activities you need to undertake is to develop a use case framework for the target industries.  Once you have defined the use cases, creating the rest of industry messaging becomes easier.  Following is the three-step process I have used to…

  • A framework for developing your second half demand generation plan

      You are probably in the middle of developing your demand generation plan for the second half of the year.  Your sales targets for the second half are growing at a faster clip than your demand gen budgets. How do you squeeze more efficiencies and effectiveness out of your demand gen budget to drive your…

  • What role did luck play in your career?

    If I look at my career, 50% was luck and the other 50% was hard work. I was lucky to have joined some great companies with nurturing work cultures and amazing colleagues. I was also very lucky to have multiple very good mentors who gave me the opportunities I would not have had access to…

  • The age old question – is it marketing or sales that primarily generates our pipeline?

    It takes a village. Attribution for leads is an age-old problem.  But I have a proven solution. When I became the CMO of one of my previous companies, I immediately knew I had a problem. The marketing team used last touch attribution for sales leads i.e., the lead source in the CRM system was attributed…

  • Win-Loss Analysis – Revisited

      In the last few weeks, I have spoken to at least three ex-colleagues who wanted some insights into the win-loss analysis work I have done in the past for clients.  They were all looking to significantly enhance the win-loss analysis program within their product marketing organizations.  Here is the summary of thoughts I shared…