GTM Gambles That Paid Off (That You Can Steal)
The GTM Newsletter
“No gamble, no future.”
Inspired by one of our recent Podcast episodes where Martin Gontovnikas outlined his big gamble to make sure Auth0’s pipeline didn’t plateau.
I asked other revenue leaders to share different GTM experiments that they had recently run successfully.
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Hopefully their experience will help de-risk trying your own version of what they pulled off at your company.
Let’s get into it.
GTM Gambles That Paid Off (That You Can Steal)
The first successful roll of the dice goes to Lydia Winn, Sales Director at GoGuardian.
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“GoGuardian experimented with giving people multi-year discounts that they could pay annually (so you get 3 year pricing but don't have to pay a lump sum up front).
We decided to run it for three reasons:
Our channel partners always asked for more flexible "financing" options (but formal "financing" had to go through a third-party and added too many steps to our high-velocity sales motion). About 70% of our customers bought through partners, so we took this seriously.
We knew our competition didn't do it, so it would make us stand out (and we did not have the lowest-cost solution).
Our investors cared most about committed ARR, and we could count a three-year agreement, even one paid annually, as 3 years of CARR
We structured it VERY informally--I started pitching it ad hoc, and then slapped together an agreement in a google doc that still makes my attorney husband CRINGE when the first buyer requested it.
Once I got signatures on the contract, I took it to sales ops to process. Since they wanted to recognize the revenue by EOM, they were forced to figure it out in SFDC.
Within the first 6 months, it drove $300,000 in CARR in one territory.
By 12 months, it was well over $1,000,000. We soon expanded the motion to include delayed invoicing (sometimes as long as a 6 month delay if the contract was signed, as our buyers usually get funds their funds/budgets all at once).
What worked was it matched how our buyers invest in solutions--for the long term, but without much flexibility in funding year-over-year. There's often no "general budget" to pull from when selling to SLED (state,local, education market).
What didn't work was all the teeth gnashing I caused on the opps side. It would have been great to get buy-in beforehand, but I was more than a little impatient.”
Warning: there is a credit risk to this strategy and a chance that customers may default in the future/that ARR will not be realized. I wouldn’t advise you try this if you’re selling primarily to start-ups.
That being said, in this environment, getting as creative as you can with terms will help you pull people across the line.
📈 How To Take Action/Learnings:
Get full buy-in from finance and operations for this experiment (save yourself headaches down the road).
Map our how your buyers typically make purchases: when, how, why?
Test out discounted, multi-year contracts without enforcing that the customer pays everything up front.
Personally, I would work with finance to create a risk-adjusted model for reporting this type of CARR.
Spinning the roulette wheel next is Andy Mowat, former VP at CultureAmp, now CEO at Gated.
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“At Culture Amp, we had tons of lead flow given our brand and content engine but we saw ways to work leads more aggressively.
We separated all MQLs into 2 buckets a) contact us (we worked these as fast as we could to ensure rapid follow up). b) other non time critical leads
For the non-time-critical leads, we implemented AI-driven scoring with Madkudu (disclaimer: Andy invested in this company after implementing)
We used this score which updated rapidly based on actual data from success (we regressed to pipeline as that was where we aligned sales and marketing as the key goal for top of funnel) to determine which leads to route to our outbound SDR teams.
We pushed the bar for what to route to sales teams down to give them more leads to work (still holding back the lower scoring ones) and get these leads to a person rather than a low-performing marketing email nurture
We used madkudu to tell the reps exactly why we were passing them a lead (no more black box)
The reps were empowered with a number of community assets. It enabled them to get initial touch points by engaging in our community which was a powerful accelerant to pipeline.
More on “The Power of Community in SaaS”.
📈 How To Take Action/Learnings:
Separate MQLs into 1. contact us 2. non time critical leads.
Non time critical leads get lead scored using AI, they are then routed accordingly based on priority to the right SDR.
Lower the score bar for what gets passed to the sales team so you get an actual person handling them vs. a low-performing marketing nurture (arm them with ‘why’ the lead was passed to them).
Arms your reps with community assets for initial touch point.
👀 More for your eyeballs:
This is a MAD (Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data) landscape in more ways than one….click on the image below for the interactive version built by FirstMark Capital.
👂 More for your eardrums:
Dave Kennet and his team at Replayz have analyzed thousands of discovery/demo sales calls + in this episode he shares exactly what the best of the best do. Dave has been a friend/mentor for a long time and he’s one of the most tactical sales leaders out there. Give it a listen below.
🚀 Start-ups to watch:
Worklyfe is improving performance and retention by motivating employees with things they actually care about. No more lame gift cards and swag. No more stressing about the next monthly spiff. Support your employees in their goals as they help you reach yours. It’s a win-win.
Oh and they happen to be throwing a Future of Sales Summit in Fiji 👀
🔥Hottest GTM job of the week:
Enterprise Account Executive at Spekit, more details here.
See more top GTM jobs here.
Hanging out together on a Monday?
Wow, I thought we were more just Friday pals…things must be getting pretty serious.
I had a busy week last week running around SF meeting our founders/investors and, of course, my wi-fi didn’t work on the way home when I wanted to bang this out.
Well, that just means you’ll get a double dose of GTM this week.
Thanks for rocking with us until the end. If you’re finding this valuable, please share it out with a friend/colleague.
Have a strong start to your week.
Barker✌️