Most organizations have started planning marketing budgets for 2019 by now. The focus of this post is to review five items that you should consider in next year’s plan. I have been involved in enterprise software marketing for over 20 years and am amazed at how things have changed. To begin, I would like to share two stories that illustrate how software marketing and sales have changed in 2018.
Recurring Revenue Calendarization & Release Timing
This posts focuses on when is the best time of the year to release new versions of your products/services. A technique I have used over the years involves analyzing the number of customers and amounts of revenue that renew each month. This can apply to traditional software maintenance renewals or annual subscriptions for SaaS solutions.
Bessemer Ventures’ State of the Cloud 2018
Excellent preso by Bessemer inclung a discussion about their AARG metric. The metric discounts a company’s ARR multiple using its growth rate as a weight to help bring buoyant multiples back down to Earth.
M&A: Lessons in Cultural Integration
This post focuses on the challenges of integrating company cultures after an acquisition. M&A failure rates are estimated to be anywhere from 50%-80%. This article from Lakeview Capital does a pretty good job of summarizing the major causes of merger failure including inadequate due diligence, lack of low level management involvement, and recognizing culture synergies/differences. I have been involved in several acquisitions having led three deals and led eight divestitures. I would like to share three stories of how my employers successfully dealt with some aspects of cultural integration.
Todd R. Hill
Todd Hill was an account executive with QRS Corporation. He passed away September 11, 2001 when the Towers fell. Todd was staying on the 17th floor of the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center when terrorists hijacked and crashed two planes into the towers.
AI Listened to 100,000 Sales Calls – What Do You Think It Learned?
Gong.io analyzed 1,000,000 sales calls between B2B salespeople and buyers and came up with some fascinating results.
Mary Meeker Internet Trends: 2002 vs 2018
Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins is the undisputed leader in using big data to describe and analyze the major trends in the tech industry. She and KPCB have published a renowned annual research report since 2001. Take a look at her analysis from 2002 and her 2018 report. The differences and trends are fascinating.
Value Equations & Proof Points: How Are Yours?
How effective are your firm’s value equations and proof points?
Customer Churn – What & Why
Understanding customer churn is important for product managers, product marketers, and sales management. Simply put, customer churn is the percentage of customers that decide not to renew their subscriptions or term contract agreements. I came across an article recently entitled 43 ways to calculate SaaS churn (and why you should just keep it simple). While they did not lay out all 43 formulas it was still an interesting piece. I have always been a numbers guy – I find that facts can help you better understand a situation and minimize the effects of anecdotes on key decisions. In this post I am going to talk about churn analysis and why, at the end of the day, numbers cannot tell the whole story.
Another Installment of “Is the Bubble About to Burst?”
I came across two interesting articles today in my daily reading, both focus on how venture capital and private equity may be hurting our economy. As the stock market continues to climb to new record highs and GDP continues strong growth (4.2% revised upward for the second quarter) I think more and more about a bubble and that bubble bursting. In my career I have been through a number of economic slowdowns and recessions. In the 1980’s it was the recession in the auto industry, in the early 1990’s it was the recession after Gulf War I, then the dotcom boom and bust of 2000, and the great financial crisis of 2008.