Author: David Cummings

Back in February 2012 I was at Startup Riot Atlanta and had a chance to hear Atlanta-based CallRail pitch their phone call tracking, recording, and analytics software. At the time, I didn’t pay too much attention to it as I was heads-down focused on Pardot. Well, fast forward a couple years and CallRail is one of the top bootstrapped startups in Atlanta with well over 5,000 paying customers.

Here are a few notes on CallRail:

• Experienced co-founders with strong technical skills
• Idea came from one of the co-founder’s previous experience running an automative lead generation site and wanting to track how many phone calls each listing generated
• Riding the wave of online and offline advertisers wanting to track inbound calls on a per ad basis so as to measure efficacy and return on investment (think banner ads, pay per click ads, websites, print ads, etc)
• Self-service model whereby everything is done in a browser with limited hand-holding
• Pricing in the $30 – $360/month range plus per phone number and per minute fees
• Strong internal expertise around lead generation and online marketing
• Powered by Twilio’s cloud-based telephony platform

CallRail plays to many of Atlanta’s strengths including cloud-based B2B marketing software and a capital-light business model. If you know anyone looking to implement phone call tracking, point them to CallRail.

What else? What are some other thoughts on CallRail?

Two of the hardest positions to fill are inside sales reps and software engineers. So, when an entrepreneur comes to me and says they want to expand their sales team, I first want to find out if they are doing everything possible to maximize existing productivity. More often than not, they are using a modern CRM, like Salesforce.com, but aren’t taking advantage of so many other good sales tools.

Here are tools to double inside sales rep productivity in a week (disclosure: I’m an investor in the last three):

• InsideSales.com PowerDialer – Queue up and crank through a ton of calls much faster than dialing by hand.
• Google Voice with Google Chrome Extension for Click-to-Call – When not using an automated dialer, dialing should be a simple click of the phone number in the CRM.
• Quality USB Noise Canceling Headset With Microphone (Jabra BIZ 2400 USB headset is recommended) – Always talk hands-free. Always.
• SalesLoft – Quality prospecting starts with quality lists.
• Rivalry – Cultivate a culture of competition with live leaderboards and automated coaching.
• Voxa – Automate email logging, follow-ups, and other tasks to maximize time selling.

Sales rep productivity is a function of data, technology, processes, and, of course, time. Double the productivity by taking advantage of technology to make the reps’ time twice as useful.

What else? What are some other ways to improve the productivity of inside sales reps?

Recently I was talking with an entrepreneur who has been implementing inbound marketing best practices for years but not getting much value. His startup is past the product / market fit stage and now he’s working on building a repeatable customer acquisition machine and needs to fill the top of the marketing funnel (see Lead Generation Drives SaaS Startups). On the inbound marketing front, he’s been writing blog posts, creating white papers, nurturing followers on Twitter, and following search engine optimization recommendations.

After thinking about it for a minute, I commented that implementing inbound marketing best practices is different from building a passionate community. Here are a few thoughts on it:

• Standard content, while keyword rich, often isn’t edgy or strongly opinionated
• Offline interaction and building personal rapport is an important ingredient in cultivating a community
• Audience engagement is readily measured based on number of comments, retweets, and follow-up emails
• Amazing storytellers, like the best programmers, are 10x more effective than their colleagues

So, as part of building a passionate following, think about the cult in culture and figure out what resonates with the people you want engaged. Inbound marketing is about relevant content while a passionate community comes from compelling leadership.

What else? What are some more thoughts on how building a passionate community is different than inbound marketing?

Cold calling isn’t dead. In fact, with so many people texting, emailing, and hanging out on social media, cold calling is even more effective because it is so under used. That said, cold calling isn’t easy. In fact, cold calling is very difficult and emotionally draining (for most people). Here are a few thoughts on cold calling:

• Allocate enough time and resources to be successful (e.g. trying it for a couple hours one afternoon doesn’t qualify as effort – allocate 40 – 80 hours of work to figure out if it’s going to work)
• Read Aaron Ross’s great book Predictable Revenue and learn how to do modern, internet-augment selling
• Build great lists of prospects to call on using a tool like the SalesLoft Prospector
• Pick at least three different job titles and call 500 people with that title (e.g. email marketing manager on LinkedIn)

Cold calling becomes even more effective with a proven methodology like Sandler Sales Training and other sales rep training programs. So, if cold calling isn’t on your radar, add it.

What else? What are some other thoughts on cold calling for fun and profit?

Insight Venture Partners has an excellent PDF up titled Insight’s Periodic Table of SaaS Sales Metrics where they break down seven different sales related categories and provide key metrics. This is super impressive as it was built using data from a number of their portfolio companies, so it’s real information from some of the fastest growing Software-as-a-Service companies in the world. Insight has an impressive track record with investments in companies like ExactTarget, AirWatch, and HootSuite.

Here are the Periodic Table of SaaS Sales Metrics categories with a couple key metrics:

• Business Development Reps (appointment setters)
  – 2 months new BDR ramp time
  – 10 sales qualified leads per week
• Inside Sales Reps
  – 3 months new ISR ramp time
  – $630k-$720k annual recurring revenue annual quota
• Field Sales Reps
  – 6 months new FSR ramp time
  – $800k – $1.3M annual recurring revenue annual quota
• New Business Bookings
  – 6% average commission on up-sell bookings
  – 66% of companies offer a trial before buying
• Retention
  – 2% median renewals commission rate
  – 50% of churn is uncontrollable
• Professional Services
  – 25% is the average professional services fees as percentage of 1st year contract
  – 25% of companies give quota relief for professional services but no commissions
• Account Managers
  – 60% account managers responsible for up-sell annual recurring revenue
  – 30% – 50% average net promoter score

Anyone involved in SaaS should study the table and use it to benchmark against their internal numbers.

What else? What are your thoughts on Insight’s Periodic Table of SaaS Sales Metrics?

Sales and sales teams are one of my favorite topics as I’ve seen the wonders of what an amazing sales leader and sales team can accomplish. According to the Four Stages of a B2B Startup, after achieving product / market fit, it’s time to build a repeatable sales process. Building a repeatable sales process does not mean spending a ton of money on sales and marketing right out of the gate. What it does mean is experimenting with a variety of sales and marketing tactics, including things like 100 Growth Hacks in 100 Days.

A startup is ready to start scaling the sales team when the following two metrics are in place:

• Full burdened cost of sales and marketing expenses for a 90 day period of time is equal to or less than new annual recurring added in that same time period (e.g. spend $50k in sales and marketing salaries, commissions, trade shows, PPC ads, etc and generate at least $50k of new annual recurring revenue)
• Annual recurring revenue generated by a sales rep is at least 3x the fully loaded cost of the sales rep (e.g. if a fully loaded sales rep with salary, commission, and taxes is $80k, the rep should bring in at least $240k in new annual recurring revenue in a calendar year – see The 3x Rule for SaaS Inside Sales Rep Quotas)

Of course, there are a number of other important factors like gross margin, renewal rates, etc. that are play into these recommendations but this is a good start. Much like Startups Should Resist the VP of Sales Temptation, startups should also hold off scaling the sales team until the appropriate metrics are in place.

What else? What are your thoughts on when to start scaling the sales team?