Metrics are key when it comes to scaling your SaaS company. With SaaS company revenues growing rapidly year to year, tracking the right metrics will identify potential sales issues ahead of time and are an essential asset to employee performance. Without the right metrics in hand, SaaS companies run the risk of falling into the daunting 92% failure rate in the first three years of business.
Which SaaS metrics are the most important to track to ensure that your business and employees are on the right track?
There’s no better person to learn from than someone who stumbled upon the secret sauce the hard way– by launching a company without identifying key metrics first.
In this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with software founder and investor, Matt Wolach, to uncover the exact formula for attracting and closing SaaS deals at scale.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Matt:
Matt Wolach is the founder and CEO of multiple SaaS businesses, which he has successfully sold after producing 63% demo close rates with his companies generating more than 300 inbound leads per month. He’s grown his companies at a fast enough rate to win 5 straight Inc. 5000 words for the fastest growing company. Today, he spends his time running a few SaaS companies as well as helping other SaaS founders implement his proven process throughout their own companies.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:05
It's time once again for evolved sales live. Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher. According to Gartner, Software as a Service has grown approximately 500% Since 2015, is expected to keep growing from nearly $172 billion today to over $720 billion by 2028. No wonder so many startups are popping up in the sector every quarter. Unfortunately, the success rate for these startups is brutal, with estimated 92% of sass companies failing within three years despite growth and funding. So, what makes the difference? According to today's guests, one of the key factors is to be found in measuring the right metrics. For more than a dozen years now, Matt Wallach has been helping SAS companies improve their processes and accelerate their growth dramatically. His expertise in this area comes to him firsthand as the founder and CEO of multiple bootstrapped SaaS businesses, which successfully grew and sold for TEDx multiples and above. Along the way, he led his business development teams to a 63% demo close rate built lead engines that generated more than 300 inbound leads per month, and grew his company fast enough to win five straight Inc 5000 awards for fastest growing company. Matt still runs a couple of sass companies today, but spends most of his time helping other SAS founders and leaders implement the proven processes he's perfected in his own companies. Matt, we are excited to have you on the show today.
Matt Wolach 1:29
Thanks, Jonathan. I'm glad to be here. That was an awesome intro. Well done.
Jonathan Fischer 1:33
Thank you, sir. Well, we we really love to have fellow travelers we work in this space. So if you would share with our guests, just briefly, what keeps you busy every day with your consulting work?
Matt Wolach 1:45
Every day, well, one of the things I love is working with my customers, my clients, I have clients around the world who are building SaaS businesses trying to get their dream exit. And one of the things that I really love is each one of them, I have their goal on my wall. And I walked by that every day. And it reminds me of what I need to do to help them get to their goals. And when I have a client who initially comes to me struggling, and I can feel the pain, and I just hear it in their voice, and then, you know, they get started and I show them the right processes, the right formulas for scaling, and I show them how simple it can be once you understand the right way to do it. And then they go off, they do it and they have that success. And they send me a note or they give me a call and they're cheering and celebrating. That's everything I live for. It's just so so cool, Jonathan,
Jonathan Fischer 2:28
that sounds like really rewarding work. Well, our topic today Matt is about metrics. That doesn't sound overly sexy. But we all know that in this space, it is all about the numbers. And according to you, an awful lot of founders are getting this wrong. First of all, what do you think the main reason is why SaaS leaders and founders are missing the boat when it comes to metrics?
Matt Wolach 2:48
I think the number one thing is they just don't know. They're not quite sure so many people when I talk to software founders is I just hear, I don't know, so many times. And I'm first of all, I'm glad that they're admitting that a lot of times we think, Oh, this is all you have to do. You have to do this, you do this. And that's how I was when I got started. And guess what I failed, I realized, oops, that doesn't work. Let me try this, oh, that doesn't work. And then eventually you start realizing, Oh, I don't know what to do next. I don't know what steps to take. And it's really kind of painful. And so I think the reason that most people aren't tracking the right things is they just don't know, most people just think, Oh, we just need our MRR to grow. Let's keep doing that. We need more leads, let's push that and make it happen. But there's many more nuances to it and a lot of things that are happening underneath those high level metrics that are super important and can actually dictate how successful you are and what next steps you take even so I think that the answer the question is, a lot of people just don't know what to track and how important it is to track it. Yeah, for sure. One of the main things do you think that the pull them and you mentioned a couple so they are looking at leads? What are some of the other numbers that are distracting them that they think they should be measuring? Well, I mean, everybody's always not everybody. I think most people who are starting a software are thinking about their long term exit. So they're always thinking about their valuation. And you know what that's going to be? And for me, I think that that's, that's, that's too far sighted, right? Let's focus right now on what can we fixed today? What can we work on right now, that's going to lead to better results here better results here. And eventually, your valuation improves from it, you get a big exit, it's great, but that's down the road. So what can we do right now to make that happen? And I think that once you once you get a focus on that, and once you understand what to track and how to track it, and then what to do to fix it. It just makes it more easier to kind of say, Okay, this is what I need to do. This is the next thing this is next thing I always talk about. Don't do the right thing at the wrong time. Too many times we hear oh, I heard about this amazing company had this exit, they just did this, I'm gonna start that. Well, guess what? That company's worth $3 billion, and you're worth like $8. So it's not the right thing for you. You need to make sure you're doing the right thing at the right time, not the right thing at the wrong time. And once we have an understanding of what that next right thing is, then we can implement that, put it in place and make it happen.
Jonathan Fischer 5:04
It makes a lot of sense, you hear a lot about modeling on success. But it is, it's easy to forget that the right move today is not going to be the same move, that's going to be right tomorrow. It does change as you scale and grow. And there are different strategies that work at different levels in terms of your revenues, and markets as you expand. So without further ado, let's move into your expertise in the area. Then, Matt, I mean, you mentioned earlier that you've done it wrong, you've done it right. What are the key metrics that SAS founders and business development leaders should have their eye on to get to the next level?
Matt Wolach 5:37
Sure. So one of the ones that I look at right away that almost nobody is tracking, is something that is kind of under the radar a little bit, but super, super important and can lead to a lot of extra revenue. If you start tracking and start implementing the right things to solve it. We know we need leads. So everybody's out there trying to generate leads, and they're making it happen. They're driving leads, whether they're paid, or they're putting a lot of effort into making leads happen. And then the leads come in, and we're not quite sure what to do once we get those leads. And so the big metric that a lot of people are missing is a lead to call metric. It's one of the leads you're getting, how many are you actually getting into a call. And this is for those who are, you know, working a process that has a call process versus an automated process trying to get in? But how many leads? What percentage of leads you're getting, are actually getting on to a call with you or your sales team? And the crazy thing is, you think that even for inbound even for inbound leads, let's say people go to your website, and they say yes, demo requests, I want a demo, they fill out their information. It's so surprising to people that once they track that number, how low it is, because we would think, Oh, man, if people are requesting a demo, of course, they're going to demo. And I always ask them, hey, what percentage of your of your demo requests actually ever get into a demo? And they always say, oh, it's probably like almost all of them, right? No, it's not. If you say probably to me like that. I know you're not tracking it. And I know that you say almost all of them, you've definitely not tracking it. The average in the SaaS world is between 40 and 45%. These are people who said, I want a demo, the average for inbound SQL to actually ever talk to somebody is 40 to 45%. That's not good. It's also the average. That means there's a lot of companies that are lower than that.
Jonathan Fischer 7:30
It's frustrating. Yeah, right. They've raised their hand, they said they're interested and not even half are ending up in an actual call with you. Yet what's happening there.
Matt Wolach 7:39
So great thing. What happens there is, first of all, we're not getting to them quickly enough. If you wait, you know, everybody's like, Oh, we get to them within 24 hours, guess what they've already moved on. If there's putting in a lead with you online, they probably found two or three or five other systems as well, that they're also throwing leads into, which means if they call them before, and you have two or three or five, other ones calling them before you do, they're going to be over? No, I'm not talking, I've already talked to others, I'm gonna figure out one of them. They're going to work, I don't need to talk to more. So they're kind of past that. So the biggest thing is speed. And everybody talks about speed to lead. When that lead comes in, get to them fast. So we had and I learned this kind of through experience, I wish somebody would have just told me, but I'm like, Hey, why don't how about we get to them within a couple hours. So we started to make things happen. So to put some processes to make it happen, we saw improvement. And then we're like, Well, if we can do that, let's get it to an hour. And so we got it down to an hour. So if people submitted a lead, we were contacting them within an hour. I then saw some stats about this is way back in like 2010 or 2011 or something, Jonathan, but I saw some stats around, the faster you get to in the better. So we put in get to them within 15 minutes, we saw an increase in our conversions. But actually the data recently that's come out is if you can get to them within five minutes, if you can get to that lead within five minutes and respond to them. And by Respond, please don't just email them saying hey, we got this now call them if you can call them it's the best chance of success for your lead. Not just in connecting with them not just getting the call but actually converting with them drifted a study. Everyone knows drift drift does all the like chat stuff. drifted a study, if you can get to your leads, within five minutes, you have a 900% chance increase of converting them. That's converting Wow. Okay, so speedily. Now, most people don't track it. Most people don't realize how important it is. And so if they're not tracking it, it's just kind of happens. Most SaaS companies right now a lead comes in what happens? Well, they just kind of distribute it to their sales reps. Well guess what those sales reps are usually selling and they're on a demo already, or they're talking to somebody else or they're doing something different. And they also haven't been coached on how important it is to get to that lead. So one of the things I say is you're running a Wrong process. If you're sending your leads right to your sales reps, start prioritizing get someone, usually an admin person, we call this an LDR lead development rep, who is ultimately responsible for getting that lead right away. So it comes in, they call them right away, they get them booked onto one of the reps, calendars. lead comes in, boom book, bolt right away, bang, bang, bang, that's all they do nice. And then they don't give up, they keep following up day after day after day, until that lead books, that is the type of effort that you need to get to an 80%, which is considered excellent or a 90% plus, which is considered world class speed to lead lead conversion ratio. That's a long winded answer. But I hope that helps.
Jonathan Fischer 10:43
I mean, that's tremendous 900%. One of our attendees said 900%, increase speed to lead indeed, that is very true. So you've mentioned one way to do that. Now, are there? Are there other approaches that can work this lead development angle that you just shared? Makes a lot of sense to me. But can can technology help fill that gap? Like, can you text them? Does that count? Like, how does that? How does that interact with this whole piece?
Matt Wolach 11:08
Yeah, by the way, texting is far under utilized. This is one of the reasons why I bought a texting company. I knew that this was underutilized. But it was the next big thing and it's blowing up. People were realizing the email open rates are going down. Right, it was 28%, a few years back, then it was 24, then 22 Now is 21%. So if you send an email out to 1000 people, 800 of them are not ever going to see that email that's pretty disconcerting. And so texting, instead of 21%, for email, texting has a 98% open rate. So you said the exact right thing, Jonathan, yes, you can use technology, you can do an auto response with texting, which looks real looks like a real person is sending that connect with them quicker, I still would recommend that you have a call. But the texting at least would be able to get you to that lead really, really quickly. Not to mention, you can also put a widget on your website.
Our company does that lots of do it, whether it's a chat widget or a text widget where people can just go on to the website. And that can be your initial lead. Hey, I've had a question about this, or I was interested in this or I wanted to go over the pricing. That's a lead. And if you can have a an auto response or a human response, you can get a lot of stuff converted from that. Yeah, that makes so much sense.
Jonathan Fischer 12:22
Hey, a brief pause reminder, our live audience, this is going to be your opportunity to ask the expert. So when we get to the bottom of this half hour, we are going to have some q&a at the end. So go ahead and start sending your your questions for our expert Matt Wallach into the chat section. And we will get to those here after we finished the initial conversation.
So Matt, speed to lead was one of these and measuring how we're moving from an lead to an actual call. What are some of the other key metrics that make all the difference?
Matt Wolach 12:51
I think another one, especially if you're going to try and have a company that's sustainable and able to grow and, and live off itself is a metric called CAC, payback and CAC would be your CAC, your customer acquisition cost. And that's figuring out how much does it cost you to acquire a customer. So a lot of people know that ratio, but just to kind of make sure that everybody has a good feel for you basically take all of the expenses in your sales and marketing, add it all up and then divided by how many customers you got that month. So if you spent $20,000 that month, and you acquired 20 customers, then you got you spent $1,000 at your $1,000 CAC, so that CAC number is really important, but more important than that, I think is your CAC payback period. Your CAC payback refers to how long does it take for that customer to pay you and continue to pay you over time before you've recouped what you spent to get them. So again, in our model, if we spent $1,000 to get each customer, how long does it take. So if each customer is paying $100 A month takes 10 months, which customers paying $50 A month takes 20 months, that's not as good. That's what pays $1,000 a month, it takes one month so you can see it. It's definitely different now, what's the benchmarks? Ideally, if you're a company who's wanting to grow and scale, you need it to be under 12 months and probably under nine months would be even better. To get that CAC payback. To many times I see companies that are in the 15 to 20 to 25. I saw 28 once was taking 28 months to get recouped for the money you're spending to get a customer now, guess what? It's a lot of talk. If you really want to look at your valuation, an investor is going to look at and say there's no way like this isn't gonna work. So your CAC payback, you've got to make sure that you are getting better at one of two things. Now, most of the time when people look at a high CAC payback of above 12 months, they're scared. What they say is we need to cut our costs. We need to cut our costs if we're spending so much per customer then we need to cut Got our costs so that we can not spend as much and recoup it quicker? Well, guess what, the other thing you do is just sell better. If you sold better. If you sold 40 customers with that 20,000 Instead of just 20, it'd be a lot better. And that's, that's where I come in, I say, Hey, here's how you do that. Here's how you can be more efficient. Here's how you can get more deals done, here's how you can increase your close rate. And it's amazing once you do some of the right things and put in the right metrics and formulas that you start to see those results. So CAC, payback is a very, very important metric for your health of your company. Again, Jonathan, not a lot of people are looking at that number on a month to month basis to identify are we, you know, going too heavy here not enough? And it's something that's pretty scary if you get a little out of balance.
Jonathan Fischer 15:44
Yeah, they're measuring probably the cost of the clicks. But they're not getting the rest of this math. Are they exactly? Why is it just a side question that it's occurring to me? Why do we think we've gotten away from trying to speed up that return? Why are we waiting? multiple years, apparently, to get a clear ROI? On acquisition?
Matt Wolach 16:02
Think it's a couple of things. One, most people just haven't grasped how much they're actually spending for each of their customers. And they just say, hey, we did do some ads, let's do some ads here. Let's do this. Let's hire this person. Let's do this. And let's do this. And, yeah, we got some customers, that's great. But they're not, they're not really looking at the actual metrics and say, Whoa, we actually gotten way out of balance. And we're spending way too much. We're not closing enough based on what we're spending. And maybe we need to look at different channels, maybe in this channel. And that's why I definitely, highly recommend, do your metrics based on lead source based on channels, because you might have some that are great, but you might have some you're like, ooh, isn't working so well. It's a great way to understand where you're focused. And that's, that's primarily what it is, is just people don't look at numbers like this. And then they kind of keep spending and keep spending, they realize how come we're not going anywhere. How can we keep spinning our wheels? It's not happening. It's this?
Jonathan Fischer 16:52
Yeah. Well, maybe they're trying to get some front end sales looking good and get some more investor money. Right?
Matt Wolach 16:58
Of course, exactly. That's definitely a strategy is you want to get out and get some some market share. But at some point, you got to make the company viable.
Jonathan Fischer 17:06
Yeah, for sure. Well, let's keep going. These are this is really good stuff. Matt, what's another, let's call it a missing metric that SaaS leaders should be looking at
Matt Wolach 17:14
the last one might be the biggest one. For me. It's the LTV to CAC. And it's something that yes, I think more people know about this more people look at this. But it's again, very, very important. LTV to CAC is your lifetime value, compared to the customer acquisition cost. So again, we looked at that CAC already how much it cost to get each customer. But lifetime value refers to how much is a typical customer going to give you over the course of their life with you, how much are they going to pay at month after month, or year after year, depending on how you're set up over their entire time. Now part of this is balanced based on your churn rate. Because you can't track how long a typical customer is going to be there unless you really have a grasp on your churn rate, how many are leaving, once you calculate how many you're leaving, you can figure out the average customer is with us for 34 months or 42 months or 28 months or whatever it is. Now this number gets better by having a higher lifetime value, which means better revenue per customer. So more wallet share, meaning you're earning more per customer and or a lower churn rate. If you can get your churn rate lower, if you can lower the amount of people who are leaving you, then your LTV goes up and your LTV to CAC gets better. What is the LTV to CAC, the LTV to CAC refers to that ratio of the amount that we're going to make on this customer over time versus the amount we spent to get them. So it's very straightforward, very basic. And I see a lot of companies come to me and they're like one to one meeting, they're only going to ever earn what they spent. Well guess what, that's not a business. If you only earn the amount you spent charity is not going to work. In fact, experts say that you need to be at least three to one, you need to be at least three to one lifetime value to what you spent, because especially what you spent in your CAC is only a small portion. Maybe it's a big portion, but it's only a portion of your total expenditures. There's other things outside of just customer acquisition cost. So you got to be at least three to one to have a viable business. So if you're at a three to one LTV to CAC, great if you're at a four to one, great five to one fantastic meaning you give me $1 I'll give you five, right? And I always ask people, if you're gonna get $5 for every dollar you give how many dollars you want to give a lot.
Yeah, that's it. Now, once you start people like well, great, we'll get it to six, we'll get seven to one eight to one and start getting actually above five, it starts to get a little out of out of balance the other way, which is kind of surprise a lot of people are like, wait, wait, wait, maybe maybe that's not right. So if you think about it, six to 1718 to 110 to one, if you're getting $10 For every dollar that you spend on customer acquisition, then really what we're looking at is you're not spending enough, you have an opportunity now to spend more put more money into marketing, it's working. So you're getting a lot of people you're converting great. They're they're sticking around, put more money into it, you've got an engine, you've got a machine, feed it. And this is a great opportunity where you'd be scaling at that point.
Jonathan Fischer 20:23
Okay, your mixtures too rich, you might bring out. Exactly, exactly. So LTV to CAC big one. Well, that's intriguing. Now I can see this one being especially challenging in this space, because not everyone is, you know, Salesforce and can charge an arm and a leg for their service, right? A lot of times you have to be pretty darn competitive on on what the cost is for your for your offering. What are some of the challenges that you run into? And what are some ways to solve those on this budget?
Matt Wolach 20:51
You're absolutely right. Especially in the early stage, people feel like they they need to be lower class. But actually what we find is that most startups are underpriced. Most startups, they don't believe in themselves enough. They don't think that their product is helpful enough. And so they come in, they want to take market share. And they realize they're not as good as the sales force in their industry. And they say, well, let's go under them. And we find that most people are under priced. But that actually ends up hurting that company in the long haul. First of all, we've seen people increase their prices, and at the same time, their close rate increases. And it's kind of a crazy, philosophical thing, but walk with me here because it actually makes sense. If you let's say, let's do this, and I have clients, they come to me like, I'm like, what do you what are you charging? What's your average customer? And they're like, Oh, it's $97? I'm like, Okay, that's great. What's the competition out there? Like, oh, they're charging like $2,000? We're gonna crush them? Like, hold on. Let me ask you a question. You're having some trouble. The trouble is with your wife or your significant other, your husband, whoever it is, you're having some trouble, there's it's been rocky, things aren't going great, you've got some challenges that you want to solve, you know that you want to take them out to dinner, have a nice dinner out. So we can solve these problems, you want to prove to them, you still love them. And you're still committed and you want to solve it. If you're looking at places to go to dinner, you got two places you found online, one place has a 499 special, you get fries included with it. It's so cool. $4.99, that's great. The other place is $100 per person.
Are you even going to look at the 499 drive thru place, you've got problems, you know, you need to solve, you've got to make it happen, you've got to trust that something is going to deliver that you show you care. Same thing in software, if somebody has a problem, and they need to solve that problem, they've got real business cases for this, they're not going to look at the $4.99 cent option, they're going to look at the $100 per plate option to make sure their problem is solved. And this is what happens when you have that little $97 option against $2,000. They're not even going to consider you they're gonna say what's wrong with that system. That's some little teeny rinky dink I need the system that's actually going to help me that's proven to do it. And that's what we do. So if you're that far under price, you need to get closer Yeah, you can beat them a little bit. If they're 2000 get to like 1500 16 1800, you can still underprice them, but at least you're in the ballpark. So it feels like you're similar. And that is really, really critical. Yeah.
Jonathan Fischer 23:26
That makes so much sense. And there is that perception of value that comes with pricing it correctly. But there's also I wonder if that doesn't become almost self fulfilling, like when you're charging enough, maybe some of these, you know, extra Grace required type clients a, it's still worth it to you because there's enough margin there, you can afford to bring in some additional people or spend whatever resources to satisfy some marquee clients, you can do that. And that can only enhance your reputation that does make an actual, a lot of sense out there. I hope some of our listeners today will go out implement, try experimenting with raising price. By the way, let me take that as a segue. How would you recommend these are three really great metrics? How would you recommend our listeners begin to implement differently on your integrating this into their own processes? What's step one?
Matt Wolach 24:11
Step one is knowledge, making sure you understand what you should be tracking. And then step two is how do you track it? How do you make sure I have a sheet that I give to my clients? I don't know, Jonathan, if you want to share that with everybody, I have a sheet I give to my clients that a lot of people use to be able to track everything. And it makes it super, super simple because you just plug in your numbers and then it just shows you where you are. It shows you how you compare to the benchmarks. It shows you a red line if you're if you're low if it shows you a green line if you're in good shape, and it makes it super simple gives you graphs. So that's what my clients do. That's what I use my SaaS teams use that it just makes it really easy to kind of understand on these metrics and others. Are we doing okay or do we actually have to put some effort into something to make it happen?
Jonathan Fischer 24:56
Well, and as you're you're beginning to grapple with these numbers Yeah, that's gonnaAbsolutely raise issues. Okay, so I can see that this is outside the benchmarks, you begin to think creatively and it's not going to be a cookie cutter solution, one business,
Matt Wolach 25:10
it's definitely not. But I think it starts from there. You know, Peter Drucker said of can't, if you're not measuring it, you can't manage it, you've got to know it, you've got to measure it. Now you manage it. But you're right. Sometimes people look at it and say, Okay, we're off, what do we do. And for that, I always recommend, don't try and figure it out yourself. There's so many times I've done that, and I'm like, well, let's just try this Nope, that didn't work. Let's try that, oops, that didn't work. And what happened was, I became less and less confident in my ability to make things happen, and to actually get it done. And so I would kind of be a little bit more worried about each successive step I would take. And I would kind of just kind of dip my toe in the water. And when you're growing a company, dipping your toe in the water is not going to get you anywhere, you got to go full speed ahead, you got a full commitment from the entire team and yourself to make it happen. The only way to do that is if you have confidence to know you're making the right decision. So ask somebody talk to somebody, somebody who's been there before somebody who's done that, get with them and ask them, Hey, what should I be doing? What should I not be doing? Because too many times people are spending time and effort and money on things that are the wrong thing to do. So which way should I go? And when you talk with somebody who's been there, done that, it makes it so much easier. And I can just tell you working with my clients who come to me and they're so just wondering, I have no clue. What am I going to do? Where are we going to go next? And when I just give them an answer, and then they implement it, they're like, their whole persona changes. They're just oh, this is amazing. We're in such better place, their entire mindset is different. They went from Oh, no, we're going to crash to we're going to the moon baby, that's gonna be awesome. So it's pretty cool.
Jonathan Fischer 26:45
I love it. Well, just sort of to quickly recap the three metrics you've given us today, Matt, leads to calls. And that's where we got to increase that velocity down to five minutes. If we can. There's the CAC payback. And that's taking that CAC, but then calculating how long until we get an ROI on that expense. How about if 2000 bucks, how long until we've made profit on that 1000. And we need that to be at 12 months or less, preferably more like nine months, and then there's the lifetime value to CAC. That's a really interesting that that probably is the most unique metric that I've personally heard in today's call, where you're comparing that lifetime value of a client to the expense it took you to get there. And you want that to be at least three to one. And but not more than five to one, or you're not growing fast enough. To recap for today.
Matt Wolach 27:38
I'm impressed.
Jonathan Fischer 27:41
Well, super good stuff. Well, I know a lot of our listeners would like to take things further with you, Matt.
Matt Wolach 27:45
Do you want you can go download that SaaS scorecard. So it's something I made in my first SaaS competent and make it really easy to track stuff. I've used it in all my success of companies, I use it still today, a lot of my clients are using it for their companies, you can get it really easily. I made it simple. I just put it online, it's at SAS sales scorecard.com. That's SAS sales. scorecard.com really simple. Go download that it's free, get it and you can actually start tracking stuff yourself. I also have a free training that comes with it. So you can watch the training, it kind of walks you through each cell and what to put in there and how to track it and how you can fix it as well. So definitely go check that out. Otherwise, you can check me out at LinkedIn or at Matt wallach.com. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.
Jonathan Fischer 28:26
All right, well, fantastic. Well, in just a moment, we're gonna get to the q&a. But first, a quick reminder that today's show is sponsored by overpass.com. Are you looking to hire a team of ready to work remote sales professionals fast? Well, there are 1000s of highly qualified sales reps waiting for you on the overpass talent marketplace. Overpass is the world's leading solution for hiring pre vetted talent and makes building an unstoppable Sales Team quick and easy. You can filter by industry and experience, interview, hire and begin your onboarding process in as little as two days. create your free account today@overpass.com.
All right, so we do have a few questions that have come in from our audience, Matt. So let's, let's take a look and see what we've got here. One is actually just sort of a personal question, do you actually work with building sales processes only? Or do you actually work with the teams as well? And I assume that means is there? Is there a recruiting piece this is from
Matt Wolach 29:20
I don't do too much recruiting? Of course, if I have a sales rep come to me and he asks, Hey, I'm looking for something. Here's what I'm kind of thinking about. I have, you know, to hundreds of clients around the world that are running SaaS companies. And so yes, if there's somebody who's interested in they want to find something, I'll make an introduction, but it's not. It's not my main thing. I do work with sales teams in terms of if my client says, Hey, we need you to come in train the team, walk them through what they should be doing, help them understand how they can close more deals so we can get more revenue. Absolutely. I do that all the time.
Jonathan Fischer 29:54
Fantastic. Now here's an interesting question from Dennis. He's wondering do you feel that a bigger issue with SaaS companies in terms of failing or being stressed in their growth is funding or sales, which is pretty cool.
Matt Wolach 30:08
A lot of people ask that question, and I'll defer to one of the really smart finance people out there, Stephanie Sims, and you can find, find her, she's great. She's coming and done some guests coaching with our people. But she says, You know what, you shouldn't be thinking about those differently. Because if you do sales, right, that can be one of your primary sources of funding, you can actually self fund through having great sales. Now, it might not be everything, but at least it can get you some through some rough patches. And one of my friends from a long time ago, always said sales fixes everything. And so if you can figure out the right way to generate a bunch of leads, get them in the door, get them excited, get them converted into demos, and get those demos converted, you're going to do very well. And getting that funding is going to be just kind of a nice to have instead of I need to have it. And so the answer to that would be absolutely fix your sales first. By the way, once you have a sales process, once you show you have a sales machine that you can get a lead, put it through the machine and you can get a sale out the door, that's going to be a lot easier to go get funding Investors love it, when all you need is just a little bit of cash to fuel that machine. Instead of we're not sure what to do, we need you to give us money. So we can try to some things and test some things. Now that's not going to go over very well show them you have a machine and a process. It's working great. You just need a little bit of fuel for it.
Jonathan Fischer 31:24
Love it, love it.
Bob is asking a question. It's kind of a kind of a maybe a broader scope type of question. But we talked earlier about how you making the right move at the right time. And in our conversation, we mentioned how that changes as you scale. You know, when your your your one or $2 million startup, you know, it's out of seed round, it's very different from when you're, you know, kissing 40 and 50 million. And again, it's gonna be different when you're hopefully getting to the 100 million and beyond. So would you be able to give some characteristics or some of the key ways that you should be prepared to evolve as a founder? And maybe I'm speaking specifically to founders, how would that individual need to grow? Like he or she? How does their mindset shift? What are they looking for in terms of those more strategic founders,
Matt Wolach 32:11
life changes a lot throughout the life of their company. And really the biggest change, Jonathan, is you go from a doer, and a grinder and getting your hands dirty, to now managing and supporting and it's really, it's really kind of funny, and I have a client that's going through this right now. And he talks about how, yeah, I was, you know, it feels like just a couple months ago, I was selling in on sales calls all the time and doing this and doing that and do it. And now it's I'm coaching people I'm training, I'm helping them through their sad times, I'm celebrating with them when they do something great. And it's not me directly doing it's me, helping them guiding overseeing, supporting, managing, directing all of that. And then you also have recruiting and hiring, which is a whole beast of itself. So your role certainly changes over the time. And I think the best leaders are able to change and adapt to those those role changes. It's, it is kind of funny how things shift over time, though, for sure.
Jonathan Fischer 33:18
Another question from Sally, is it possible to try it you mentioned about you know, looking to that big payday, right? Everyone has this, this model, especially in our space, right, of getting to that big payday where somebody is going to come in not just to fund you, but to buy you out? Is it possible to do that too quickly? Have you have other founders that you've known had regrets that they sell too soon? Or are there other negatives to that? You mentioned that earlier that you don't want to be too focused on that maybe unpack a little bit further for us? What are some?
Matt Wolach 33:48
I mean, yeah, yeah, of course, you could sell too soon. I mean, there's probably stories out there where somebody sold that their company for 2 million bucks, and it went on and became a billion dollar company, the problem is, were you going to be able to be the one to get them there. And to get the company there. Like, like I said, founders need to change and evolve. And a lot of times that founder is not the right person to lead the company through those next stages. In fact, I've seen a lot of great companies, and a lot of great founders realize that, hey, I got it to 10 million, I got to 5 million 10,000,020 minute, whatever. But I'm not the person to get it to 100. And we need to bring somebody else in that has that skill set and has that capability to do that. And, and I think the best founders understand that and know that and whether you kind of just take a step back, but retain your shares or you sell it outright, it's totally up to you. I am certainly not going to be the person to advise you the right time to sell. I'm not the expert on that. There are plenty of m&a experts out there that can do that for you. But yeah, I mean, it could happen. I've also heard of the other companies that go the other way that they didn't sell when they should have and their company's worth nothing now and it just once they tried to get to the next step. They weren't able to do it. They weren't able to make that shift as a leader in the company splattered. So it Yes, you can feel like that my personal philosophy I'm not sure this is right, I don't think I'm an expert at this is when you're getting started have that number that you feel is your exit number. And when you get there, start thinking about exiting.
Jonathan Fischer 35:16
And maybe you become a specialist in some of those earlier stages, you can get, you can do it again, as long as you don't have, don't sign the wrong slide, you can go and do it again.
Matt Wolach 35:24
I'm gonna get you to 1020 30 million in revenue. And then after that I'm out of there, and let's do something else.
Jonathan Fischer 35:32
Yeah, I like it. I mean, if with growth rates, like we were just sharing from the research earlier, there's plenty to go around. So it's not a zero sum game at this point. It sounds like
all right, well, yeah, it's been a fantastic conversation, Matt. And I think all of us can tell listeners myself, that you have a lot more insight to share with those that are in this SaaS space. So I'm gonna go and tell you right now, a lot of bundles are awesome. So I'd love to do it.
All right, well, fantastic. Well, on behalf of the whole team here at Overpass, and to our whole audience here again, I'm Jonathan Fisher, thanks for being here for evolve sales live. Go make it a great weekend and a successful week and month and year to come. Take care everybody. Bye bye now.
