James Keating

The most common untapped potential we see in CS & AM Teams @ B2B Software companies Mid-Market+... is how to maximise the value of long-tail customers / unmanaged tiers. With a bit of extra love these customers can frequently add several NRR% points to a company's growth - because they are: 🎯 resilient due to diverse range of vertical, geo's and business models 🎯 rarely using the full range of available products 🎯 not maximising the value of the ones they already use 🎯 likely to never have had a business discussion with an AM or CS Rep 🎯 the MOST likely to be churning due to entirely preventable reasons 🎯 the MOST likely to have been poorly onboarded and activated But there are a combination of factors that actually make it tricky for Mid Market and Enterprise Companies to cater for these lower segments (efficiently): 🔺 It's tricky to deliver dynamic, cross-system insight on each account 🔺 the CS & AM Team rarely have the capacity to address every one 🔺 or the account isn't spending enough to warrant attention (ouch!) 🔺 It can be hard to predict the impact LT initiatives will realise 🔺 responsibility lies across both product and the CS/AM team When I was at Nexmo (now Vonage) in the early days, accounts like Airbnb and (Line) LY Corporation were in these cohorts and graduated to spend millions of dollars EACH month on our APIs. 😱 And today, we talk to other market leaders (Public, Series C+ Orgs) and not one we've spoken to is truly nailing this... In the age of efficient growth, it's vital companies rectify this and get closer to these customers. With Median NRR in Public Saas at 108% the potential is meaningful. ❗ While Saas category saturation means its highly likely that one of your competitors is currently cherry-picking your high-potential long-tail customers and is actively helping them move off your product...

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Wasting your time on personas and accounts who can't buy or are window shopping is holding you back from hitting target... 😥 A bloated pipeline means you aren't focusing all your time and energy on in market accounts. The best way to analyse this is to go back through your pipeline to figure out: ✅ Does this account align to our ICP? ✅ Is this a persona that can buy or can significantly influence a purchase? ✅ What's the compelling reason they would buy my product right now? ✅ What impact would we have on their process if we came in now? ✅ Do I have clearly defined and meaningful next steps? If you can't answer these questions, the chances are your deal isn't real 😰

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Buyers are having to make tough decisions… I had chat with Palmer Houchins, VP, Head of Marketing at G2, who summarised the main sticking points buyers are facing as below: - Looking to do more with less and having to consolidate tech, and therefore sometimes having to accept that a platform is less good at something than having the best in class solution for every problem.   - They are seeing a lot of competition. It’s hard for buyers to see the wood for the trees, how do providers differentiate and which one is right for them?   - They are facing increasing compliance, legal and budgetary hurdles to jump, and therefore more people are involved in the purchasing making decisions. To get more of Palmer’s thoughts on how buying behaviour is changing, take a listen to the full pod! Link in the comments 👇

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A few eye popping numbers from Stripe's Billing report that's hot off the press: 43% of businesses don't know how much revenue they’ve lost due to involuntary churn or payment failure. Yet 72% say fighting churn remains a top priority for subscription businesses, and 73% plan to introduce more creative billing models this year to retain customers. More than 300,000 businesses—including OpenAI, Figma, and Nasdaq—use our revenue and finance automation products to accept payments globally. And industry leaders like AMC+ are ahead of the curve, AMC+ turned to Stripe to reduce churn, decrease failed payments, and create a recurring billing solution for its streaming services. (Fun side note: Check out AMC+’s Stripe billboard, complete with some epic Walking Dead Zombies, which says it best, “AMC+ makes subscriptions, a no brainer with Stripe”. :)

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More partners = more revenue? Not exactly It’s tempting to sign new partners when existing ones aren't delivering as expected. I often see companies pushing their teams to bring in more partnerships - but that’s not always the solution The real issue usually isn’t the number of partners you have, but how effectively they’re activated A partner with a signed agreement doesn’t mean anything until they are fully engaged, enabled, and in sync with your goals Before chasing new logos, dive into your current partnerships. What’s working well, what isn’t, and where are the gaps? Build a strong activation strategy, make sure you have the resources to support your partners, and foster meaningful collaboration. Once you’ve nailed that, go ahead and scale your partner base Because it’s not about having the most partners - it’s about having the right partners doing the right things Feeling overloaded with partners but not seeing results? Let’s talk I'll be discussing this on tonights webinar too! 🔥 #Revenue #Businessgrowth #Partnerships #TechStackSummit

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Our next Centrik Q&A Drop-In session is in 1 hour 👏 The brief: you bring the questions 🙋‍♀️ and Hannah and I'll do our best to answer them 🤓 Everyone's welcome 🤗 Details in the comments below 👇 please feel free to share with anyone who might be interested. This is community in action 🤜💥🤛 We're in this together 🫶 #makingadifference #inthistogether #patientcenteredcare #healthcare #fhir #generalpractice #primarycare Webtools

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Join us next Wednesday 8th May at 3pm BST where Niki will take us through   our three-step approach for campaign growth: 1. ✅ Resolve issues with ad delivery that could be limiting your campaigns 2. 🆕 Replenish your campaigns with new features, formats, and elements to test 3. 📈 Review your reporting and analysis approach for optimal value and minimal wastage. https://bit.ly/49Scbpu

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Deal approvals in HubSpot are a clear sign that HubSpot is moving further upmarket. In small organisations, managing deal approvals is straightforward, often handled via email or instant message by a handful of sales reps and their manager or CEO. However, as companies grow, the complexity increases with different levels of authority and approval needed. --- In larger organisations, deal approvals can become intricate, with team leads approving small discounts, sales directors larger ones, and VPs even more significant discounts. This complexity scales with the size of the sales team, making the process cumbersome as the team grows. For the first time, HubSpot has introduced a deal approval feature, simplifying this process significantly. Previously, achieving the same result required tasks and custom solutions, but now it’s streamlined into a point-and-click feature. --- TLDR: HubSpot’s new deal approval feature brings efficiency to large sales teams, making the approval process easier and more manageable as organisations scale. It’s a testament to HubSpot’s capability to grow with your business needs. #SalesManagement #DealApprovals #HubSpot #SalesTeam #SeekEvolution P.S. While deal approvals were possible before, HubSpot’s new feature makes it effortless. HubSpot can always meet your needs, now with even greater efficiency.

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Tomorrow is the summer edition of SaaStock Local London and we've a great entrepreneur sharing his story of how he orchestrated an exit (to Zuora). If your building a SaaS with a view to a future exit (most folks except Basecamp), Or your currently thinking about M&A Then this is the inside story from a great founder, James Henderson, who got a fantastic outcome. The content will not be recorded, so you have to be there to get the insights such as: Why selling was right for James and Zephr - How do you plan an exit - What forces did James consider before he sold - How he managed his team and board through the process - What happens when you make a deal and sell All these questions and you get to ask your own. So make sure you're there if you're serious about building a SaaS company to sale. Around 17 tickets remaining. Link in the comments. #exits #M&A #founders #saas #london #CEO #saastocklocallondon

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𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘆 𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲. Most companies focus heavily on customer acquisition. But 80% of recurring revenue actually comes from existing customers. Are you doing enough to retain your existing customers? If not, you could be losing out on a major source of revenue. Join us this Thursday at 4 PM, Blonia Bistro in Krakow for a hands-on session with 🚁Roee Hartuv from Winning by Design , where we’ll discuss: • 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Why shifting focus from acquisition to retention can significantly boost your profitability. • 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆: Learn how to identify and mitigate customer churn before it’s too late. • 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: A proven structure for balancing acquisition and retention, designed to help you maximize the lifetime value of each customer.    💡 Why focus on retention?: It costs far less to keep a customer than to win a new one. Customers who stay longer tend to spend more, increasing their lifetime value. A focus on retention leads to more sustainable, predictable growth. 🗓 Event Details: Date: Thursday, 4 PM Location: Krakow, Blonia Bistro If you’re ready to turn customer retention into your greatest growth lever, this is the event for you. Let’s build a strategy that focuses on keeping your customers engaged and happy—leading to long-term, recurring revenue. Register here: https://lnkd.in/dWaGkKyx #revops #b2bmarketing #revenueoperations  

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Have you planned your RevOps strategy? Having seen this coming, we have been quietly building our RevOps community over the last 12 months are are now fully primed to embed and offer our guidance, who for many, will see this as a huge challenge. Gartner states that by 2025, 75% of the highest-growth companies in the world will employ a Revenue Operations (RevOps) strategy 👀 But even the best #RevOps pros today deal with messy data, misalignment, and tech challenges. For high-growth companies, ensuring successful company-wide rollouts is crucial to aligning teams, modernizing the tech stack, and protecting revenue from disruptions. Join Tessa Whittaker and Mollie Bodensteiner on September 10 to dive into how RevOps leaders can: - Modernise GTM processes and tech, and what that means for your revenue strategy - Tackle prioritization across GTM—how do you start, and what’s your approach? - Learn from the ZoomInfo Copilot rollout—what RevOps teams need to get it right, from planning to overcoming challenges Register here! ➡ https://lnkd.in/dvC7hjRf Courtesy of RevGenius

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Excellent report from Paul Fifield at Episode 1 Ventures and brilliant reading for Founders and senior leader too. Some of my take aways: Myths Debunked: The report reveals that the need for £1M in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to secure a Series A is a myth. Deals can happen at £500k in ARR or even pre-revenue if the company shows rapid traction, has a compelling team, and addresses a large, defensible market Importance of Competitor Landscape: Contrary to common practice, the competitor landscape is crucial. The competition slide, often underemphasised, is essential as VCs place significant importance on understanding the competitive environment. Graduation Rate: The report highlights that the graduation rate from Seed to Series A is only 19%, indicating that most seed-funded companies struggle to progress to Series A, with many running out of cash. Timescales: Fundraising norms have shifted back to more rigorous due diligence and longer timelines (4-6 months) after the 2020-2022 bubble. Growth is King Despite a focus on efficiency, growth remains paramount. VCs generally seek a minimum of 2x to 3x growth rates. Slower growth can be detrimental, even if a startup has reached significant revenue milestones like £1M in ARR. Here's a link to more resources:

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💡 SaaStr #CMO Brunch Highlights: Key Insights for SaaS Leaders💡 Thank you Carilu Dietrich for putting together such an incredible lineup of marketing leaders at today’s CMO Brunch🙏🏻 Here’s a summary of my key takeaways from each session. 1. The State of the SaaS Market: Benchmarks for Planning Ray Rike CEO of Benchmarkit kicked off the brunch discussing the Net New CAC Ratio (cost of acquiring a new customer relative to their revenue in the first year). “If your ratio is below 1.0, you’re overspending.” A healthy range of 0.75 to 1.25 ensures scalable, profitable growth into 2024. This ratio is key for planning marketing investments in 2025. 2. CMO’s Guide to Nailing the Board Meeting Chandar Pattabhiram and Stacey Epstein highlighted the need to focus on business outcomes. “Board members don’t care about top-of-funnel metrics; they care about ARR and CAC.” Aligning marketing spend with measurable results builds trust and drives faster budget approvals. 3. GTM: How to Align with Your CRO and Drive Pipeline Sydney Sloan, Lisa Horner and Claire Darling stressed that organizations with sales-marketing alignment generate 208% more revenue. “There should be no daylight between marketing and sales.” Transparent communication and shared pipeline goals are critical for success. 4. Changes in the Marketing Landscape: AI, Social Search, and Content AI dominated this session led by Diego Lomanto Kady S. Katrina Wong, with 30-50% higher conversion rates reported by CMOs who leverage AI for personalization. AI-driven content creation and real-time customer insights are now essential tools to transform engagement strategies for 2024. 5. FY25 Strategies for Growth Robin Daniels shared some key discussion topics that should top of mind for CMOs to better approach FY25. These 3 are actually the ones that matter most imo: - Brand Marketing: “Companies that invest in brand during tough times emerge stronger.” - Customer Marketing: Retention and advocacy are central. “Customers are your best marketers!” - People: Motivated, aligned teams are critical to executing growth strategies. The #SaaStrAnnual2024 CMO Brunch offered invaluable insights for driving growth and efficiency in 2024. From mastering AI-driven personalization to aligning with sales, these takeaways are essential for any marketing leader. Let’s connect to discuss how these strategies can shape your #SaaSMarketing plan! #MarketingLeadership #GrowthStrategy #SaaStrAnnual

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Why CLV is the Missing Metric in Your ICP Strategy What if your GTM strategy had the depth of an iceberg? 🌊❄️ Most SaaS companies focus on win rates when identifying their Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). But here’s the catch: win rates only reveal what’s above the waterline. To truly optimize for profitability and sustainable growth, you need to go deeper—enter Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). CLV considers the entire revenue potential of a customer, not just their likelihood of closing. 💡 Here’s why CLV is a game-changer for ICP analysis: 1. It highlights the most profitable accounts for long-term growth. 2. It ensures resources are spent on high-value customers. 3. It aligns sales and marketing on strategic, predictable revenue goals. Better yet, combining CLV with Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) gives you the CLV/CAC ratio—a powerful metric to uncover and prioritize your highest-value customer segments. It’s time to stop chasing easy wins and start building for efficiency and ROI. Want to learn how -- talk us at AlignICP. Check out our latest blog to dive deeper. 👉 [Read more on the blog! Link in 1st comment below] #GTMstrategy #CLTV #SaaS #ICP #customerlifetimevalue #ABM #accountbasedgtm #revops

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It's coming home. SaaStock's coming home. To Dublin this October. 14-16th. And we're opening our doors to 4500 SaaS Founders, Execs and 600 Investors for the biggest gathering of SaaS decision makers in Europe. It will be the place to have meaningful conversations to take you and your SaaS to the next level. To get hundreds of leads to help with your Q4/Q1 goals. To meet with Investors to help with your next funding round. It's only been 12 months of hurt by October, since the last SaaStock. Don't score an own goal or get sent off by your company for missing out. Book your ticket or space to exhibit today. #saastockeurope #saastock2024 #saasconference #b2b #meetings #connectandthrive

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The Bowtie Standard for Revenue Architecture As a Winning by Design Ambassador, I utilise the the Bowtie every day. This isn't just another framework — it's the basis for how we approach GTM strategies. Key highlights: Extends beyond the classic sales funnel to cover the entire customer journey Integrates acquisition, retention, and expansion into one cohesive model Provides a standardized data structure for measuring GTM performance Why is this important? It creates a common language across all GTM functions Enables data-driven decision making throughout the customer lifecycle Facilitates AI integration in GTM processes The Bowtie model has become the new standard in Revenue Architecture. It's not just about closing deals — it's about creating sustainable, scalable growth. 💡 How could standardizing your GTM approach with the Bowtie model impact your business? Link to a document to download in comments. #RevenueArchitecture #GTM #WinningbyDesign #RevOps 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij Leena Wood Winning by Design

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Running ABM campaigns? Need to track target accounts? You should check out Journeys by InfiniGrow - now on product hunt. A free Chrome extension that's going to transform how you understand and respond to your customer touchpoints. Journeys gives you a complete view of how your most valued accounts are engaging across all your marketing and sales channels - right inside your CRM. And if you are already checking Journeys out why not share the love? Every upvote, comment, and share helps us get this free addon into more hands. #ProductHunt #CustomerJourney #B2BMarketing #SalesEnablement #RevOps

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I'm doing yet another product hunt launch: https://lnkd.in/esHrd4hX CalendarHunter helps you discover hidden meeting scheduling links like Calendly. CalendarHunter can help you find leads on Linkedin, Twitter, and Reddit. The tool is still early stage so any feedback is welcome. #ProductHunt #GrowthHacking

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Stop asking for a meeting in your outbound 🚫 We’ve been observing CTAs across our customers, and here’s the TLDR of what’s working right now: The ‘meeting request’ is by far the lowest performing 📉 The ‘can I send a short video’ is the highest performing 📈 And it just makes sense if you think about it… Stranger says, “Can I have 30 minutes from you?” Hrmm, no thanks. Stranger says, “Can I share a 2 minute video about how we’re helping other folks like you [persona specific job to be done]? Alright, I’m listening... And it doesn’t have to be a video. In general, the CTAs that offer a resource, share a tactic, suggest an intro, etc. are all performing much better than asking for time. Time is incredibly precious, and there are more people than ever asking for it. Start by providing people value, creating interest, presenting something that’s easy to say yes to, or even just respond to. Asking people to look at their calendar is immediately stress-inducing for most; that’s not an easy yes. Earn the right to make the ask. Try to be empathetic to your prospects, think about what you would want to hear, and try to make it feel like a give and not a take. Let people opt-in to the conversation first, then ask for the time. Don’t forget, sales is just as much human psychology as anything else… we'll see how all the AI SDRs do with that 😄 What are you all seeing out there? What CTAs are working best?

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