Alex Kracov

I meet and talk with 5-10 of the greatest GTM minds on the planet every week. CRO’s, VPs of Sales, CMO’s. 100% agree that getting outbound right is one of the hardest parts of their business, why? 1. Recruiting is hard again The same voices that sold tech sales as an easy path to 6 figures are now the voices saying the BDR role is dead. They sold a bill of goods to people who didn’t understand how hard this role is, are surprised these people who chose a path because it was sold as “easy” aren’t performing, and now have ulterior motives to pivot to a new message. Hard jobs are hard to recruit for. 2. Lack of Leadership 2020 through mid 2022 we had a bunch of capital bloat and talent bloat enter the market. Just like we have overvalued “zombie” companies we have overvalued “zombie” leaders who don’t know how to coach good habits for this type of market. Outbound was easy from 2014ish to summer 2022. 8 years is a long time, most of the voices we hear only know those times or only know what type of sales motion. 3. Absolute statements muddy the waters I've been around the block enough to click on their profile and see their track record. 99.9% of folks make these statements only sold transactional commodity technology, sold to GTM teams, or in most cases – only both. What works depends on multiple factors: ASP, buyer persona, and complexity of your sales process/customer’s buying process. Depending on what you sell – sometimes you are going to need to pick up the phone or send a note to get someone’s attention. That will NEVER change. 4. Generational consideration for career pathing is key BDR is still hands down the best route to market for future AE’s. You have to learn to prospect and get meetings before you can run a meeting, qualify, and manage a deal. No argument from me on CAC math – thousands of products require veracious qualification, deal management, and creating customer consensus. You can not run those types of deals and prospect. If any Voice had EVER done that type of role or ran a team that did, they wouldn’t say what they are. For BDRs to stick around for more than 14 months, you need steps in the BDR path where comp, responsibility and role grow over time. 5. Results are tanking Point 1&2. You are the equivalent of a fire fighter that starts a fire then takes the glory when you put it out. I absolutely loved the movie Backdraft – but stop it. These are the ideas of “not famous” GTM people. People who spend all day serving their customer and developing their people – not posting on this platform. They don’t care about clicks, followers, or impressions. They care about revenue and earnings. Outbound is hard. It (almost) always has been. Ya’ll need to block the noise and focus on what works for your business and try everything. Even the hard stuff. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

280

32 Comments

I love data. Especially people data. It helps answer those lingering..."is it just me...or?" late night questions. The OpenView SaaS Benchmark Survey is one of those annual ones I always read and reference with the founders I work with. That's why I'm so excited that High Alpha is partnering with OpenView, Paddle and Kyle Poyar to launch the 2024 annual SaaS Benchmark Survey. And guess what -- it's live! If you want early-access to the report, be sure to participate and we'll be back in November to share insights. Link to survey below. https://lnkd.in/ey9FAgYV #SaaSBenchmarks

18

2 Comments

There are so many vendors, and so much noise in the market right now. It's hard to tell what anyone does, harder to figure out who’s delivering value, and impossible to differentiate one from the next. I’ve been talking to a lot of VCs lately, and they all feel it in their portfolio companies - even good companies w/happy customers, great products, and strong net retention - just can’t get the market to believe (or pay attention to) to the success they are delivering for customers. It’s a huge problem - everyone is struggling to generate pipeline and opportunities, and struggling to win new business when they do get conversations. So what are we (as a market) doing about this noise problem? YELLING LOUDER (and more often) More emails. More calls.  Emails informed by intent data.  Emails informed by AI w/intent data context.  aiSDRs. Auto-dialers, AI-driven video at scale. Inbox creation/rotation/warming.  Signal-based emails. Microcampaigns. “Quick question”.  “Are you the right person?” “Q4 Priorities at %%Company_Name%%” You can have the most advanced technical outbound setup in the world w/Clay linked up to Unify linked up to HeyReach w AI Layers and Human Layers and waterfall enrichment, and all this (pretty damn) impressive/clever tooling, and could have downloaded the entire brains of Brendan Short and Mark Kosoglow and then trained an AI on them on how to set this ^ all up... But… the gains are only incremental at best, b/c the bigger problem is the channels (ie email, LinkedIn inbox, soon to be phone) are just bombed out. My inbox certainly is a mess - but interestingly enough - I’ve gotten so good at scanning/deleting an email about lead generation services that’s clearly AI-generated in about .35 seconds - that ironically I don’t actually get that many well thought out human emails. So what’s my prediction for what works for cold outbound in 2025? Well nothing really - again the channels are bombed out and anything that does work won’t be a silver bullet and will only be a small incremental improvement.  But if there is one thing that might sort of work in 2025… I think it’s a return to manually written, well-thought out outreach. And a whole bunch of dials :) Long-term I think we need to rethink the underlying problem of trust and attention in B2B though - there’s a whole lot of energy being wasted.

79

23 Comments

The old rules for scaling subscription SaaS: - Charge based on seats - Charge more for premium features - Pay reps on first year bookings - Hand customers off to CSMs post-close - Get customers to commit upfront The new rules for scaling outcome-as-a-service products: 1. Charge based on units of work 2. Don’t put gates in the way of adoption 3. Pay reps on adoption (estimated/actual) 4. Every team plays a role in customer success 5. Invest in becoming predictable Moving from selling *access* to selling *work delivered* isn't a simple pricing change you can just announce in a press release. It's a business model evolution that looks a lot like the shift from on-prem to SaaS in the first place. — 🎁 For more check out Growth Unhinged, my free newsletter that’s sent to 58,624 readers every Wednesday: https://lnkd.in/exTbjKaM #ai #saas #monetization

815

82 Comments

GTM tooling is one of the fastest growing verticals in B2B right now. Ton of fluff out there, but there are handful of tools that are * genuinely * exciting. Shortlist of companies we're (actively) test driving: 1. Attention Live sales call recaps, tactical action items, and seamless integrations. Anis Bennaceur + co are building something special. S/o to Dan Jaeck for the flag. 2. Default All-in-one lead routing, scheduling, and automated pipeline workflows. Big ups to Nico F. and Stan Rymkiewicz - building a behemoth of a platform. 3. Unify Warm outbound done right based on live intent signals. IMO the next major untapped B2B growth channel. Watch this space cc Austin Hughes 🤝. 4. 11x.ai AI SDR agents on autopilot. Haven't personally tried it yet but love the concept + impressed with early growth. Excited to test drive it soon - big opp here. 5. Pipeline LinkedIn will increasingly become the go-to GTM and BD channel in the next 12 months. Sudarshan Sridharan and his team are shipping at an insane pace. 6. Seam From a people lens, retaining top performers in a GTM motion is critical. Big fan of what Jacob Honig + Sean Taylor are building. Very happy customer here. 7. Cabal We swear by Cabal for monthly GTM updates and investor emails. Great UI, easy to segment and build referral lists. Brian M. and co are getting a lot right.

134

26 Comments

Folks put time on my calendar frequently, but I sometimes get the sense they're unsure what to talk to me about. To have a high quality convo with your CRO, here's the mindset👇 Two years into my role scaling up GTM as a CRO, I would describe my #1 job as debugging. I'm always keen to talk to folks at any level with creative ideas and a vision for where the business needs to go and how we can unblock more revenue. Here are some prompts to get you started on a great convo with your CRO: - What's your POV on where your team needs to go over the next 2-3 years? - What skills does the team need to develop and what metrics will they move? - What hidden opportunities exist in the business that could be captured with small operational changes (to process, packaging, cadence etc)? - If I asked you to 2x, 5x, 10x your business in 12 months, how would you do it? There is value in the perspective from every seat. Don't be afraid to bring forward your ideas and excitement -- it's exactly what we want to hear.

273

11 Comments

Fyi: Funding / IPO / Equity of “Founders”: For the St. Louis Region and Beyond, #EcoNetworkSystem for #Founders, #StartUps, #Entrepreneurs, #Innovators, #SMB’s and Others. All of content: “SaaS founders — if and when you IPO, how much of the company will you own? Many folks throw around a couple key checkpoints. The first one is founding teams should try to hold on to 51% of equity after the Series A raise. That’s a fine goal (although many great companies don’t have that and still go on to wonderful outcomes). But how about at the end of the journey? Disclaimer: this is not Carta data and it's only 34 companies. But I still find the info collected by Jason M. Lemkin at SaaStr fascinating. Standout points: 1. The average ownership across the entire founding team at IPO was 22%.     2. The "first founder" (usually the CEO) had significantly more equity in companies with 2 co-founders (often about 2:1 ratio). Now - there are significant outliers here. The founding teams at Atlassian, Klaviyo, and ZoomInfo all IPO'd with majority ownership. Atlassian at 75.4% is an outrageous mark, kudos to them! If you remove the three high outliers, the key benchmarks look like: • 75th percentile ownership across the founders: 22.3% • 50th percentile: 17.1% • 25th percentile: 14.4% Does that feel like too much? Too little? The range is gigantic, from 75% down to 2%. And it’s definitely possible that founders across the board took some money off the table with secondary sales, etc over the lifetime of the company. Seems like every path to IPO is distinct enough that comparison is just an academic exercise. And hey, 2% of billions is still a lottery-level outcome. Here's to this damn IPO market opening back up soon, for everyone's sake 🙏 #founders #startups #dilution #fundraising #IPO -------------------- 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 Some of these companies may have more co-founders than listed who aren’t large enough shareholders to show up in the S-1 cap table.  For purposes of thinking about equity ratios, the focus was on identifying folks with >= 5% ownership or who were named officers or directors. Stock option grants may not be fully included in these numbers which would push ownership numbers a little higher. Data from Jason Lemkin & SaaStr | Chart by Peter Walker _____ #StartLouis Where “StartUps” Start. Ed Schneider ——- For the St. Louis Region and Beyond, #EcoNetworkSystem for #Founders, #StartUps, #Entrepreneurs, #Innovators, #SMB’s and Others. _____ (O:081024-0219p-(147) -(R:0319p). _____

3

1 Comment

🚨 GTM, RevOps, and Automation/No-Code Agencies: Read this if you’re looking for your secret weapon. I know a Chief of Staff and ex-investor who’s looking to work with agencies part-time—and she’s a force multiplier. Here’s the breakdown: • 4+ years investing across multiple funds, working with countless startups. • Deep GTM, planning, enablement, and RevOps expertise from the trenches of venture-backed companies. • A next-level understanding of what your clients need to scale and succeed. If you’re ready to level up with someone who knows how to align strategy, execution, and client success, DM me, and I’ll connect you. Let’s get you the strategic muscle to scale smarter.

18

1 Comment

As a B2B SaaS VC 👩‍💻 and a huge data nerd 🤓, fewer things bring me more joy than a truly statistically significant analysis (600+ companies surveyed) of B2B SaaS metrics across early stage companies. Great work by our team at Emergence Capital! See comments for full report, and please let us know how we can make this better in the future!

269

15 Comments

Would you hire a recently fired VP of Sales to lead the GTM strategy for your $500K start-up, especially if that candidate had absolutely no industry experience? Likely not, right? Well, LinkSquares did. And I bet they were happy with that decision! So, what's the story? How (and why) did Steve Travaglini (Pavilion 2023 CRO of the year) get fired from one VP of Sales role, after scaling sales from $0-$7M, only to lead growth at LinkSquares from $500K to $50M in ARR over the ensuing 5 years? In the clip below he talks about what he learned in the early days of their rapid growth and what he would change going forward. You can hear the entire episode for yourself on today's episode of The GOATS of Growth podcast, but if he were one of my candidates, here is how I would summarize his attributes: --Gritty --Resilient --Adaptable --Resourceful --Optimistic --Humble And, most importantly, a STRONG bias towards action which was, in opinion, the bedrock for their strong sales culture. Steve, I had been looking forward to interviewing you for a long time and I'm happy I finally got the chance. Thanks for being such a great guest! Please follow Steve to watch as he builds his own startup, Winrate, in public. Listen to the full episode here: https://buff.ly/3Cjhr6Q

116

8 Comments

What does your sales conversion rate look like at your accounting firm? 🤔 Too many firm leaders talk about "crushing it" and "doing great" but not enough data to really know how well you're stacking up. This is why I loved having Patrick Dichter come on the Jetpack Workflow "Growing Your Firm" podcast to talk about ACTUAL NUMBERS. Here's his data ... 10 discovery calls ⏩ 4 proposal call ⏩ 2 clients Early on, he realized he had a repeatable process and was able to double revenue within 12 months of acquiring his first firm. In the interview, we talked about his sales process, pricing, how he built more inbound acquisition (all his clients come from inbound) and much more. Take a look at the comments for the full interview 👇 #JetpackWorkflow #GrowingYourFirm #accounting #sales

2

How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”

1,131

65 Comments

The transition from founder led sales -> a repeatable GTM motion is hard... Extremely hard. There are so many things to consider to mitigate risk and get as many repetitions on closed loop feedback as quickly as possible. -> what profile of a rep should I hire -> how to assess the right talent -> SDR or AE or growth hacker type or both -> what channels should we be testing -> what does good look like? What does great look like? -> how do I know if we’re making progress? And so much more… We’re discussing all this live next Tuesday at Kiln. If you’re in Utah, come check it out: https://lnkd.in/eQ9dyJK4

41

6 Comments

To scale from $1M to $10M ARR, you need to turn your ad hoc GTM efforts into a well-oiled machine. This means creating repeatable processes across your entire GTM - from lead gen to sales to customer success. The good news for technical founders is that they're experts at solving complex engineering challenges with precision, efficiency, and structure. At this stage of startup growth, they need to apply that same systems-oriented mindset to GTM - which, for B2B startups, can be approached more as a science than an art. More in the May edition of B2BaCEO: https://lnkd.in/emsvFN9q

17

Special feature post in The GTM Newsletter today: Kyle Poyar broke down 10 “PLG plays” that every company should implement - even if they’re *NOT PLG*. Kyle consistently shares exceptional content around PLG, growth and pricing. It was a ton of fun collaborating and seeing his breakdown. The first point is an interactive demo on the website. The fourth point is to leverage product data to drive customer outcomes. This fourth point I found particularly interesting. The CRM is the "source of truth" for go-to-market teams, but often lacks product analytics to provide customer behavior understanding from in-product activities without human or sales rep involvement. But in reality, even non-PLG companies can use this data to assess customer health and tailor sales conversations. I'll drop the link to the details on these 10, including examples and screenshots 👇 -- The GTM Newsletter is a weekly newsletter by GTMfund's media brand, GTMnow, that goes out to over 50k revenue leaders who are scaling their companies and careers. If you aren't already subscribed, you can do so through the Substack post in the comments.

29

5 Comments

We have bootstrapped Exit Five to $1M revenue. V1 of Exit Five: Paid Community V2 of Exit Five (now in progress): Community, Content, Events We're evolving from a community to media company. Instead of one product line, we'll have three. Starting with our first event in September. And there's some trends we're riding: 1. More companies are wanting to move money from Google + Meta and spend it with niche communities and influencers (we're doing that for B2B marketing). 2. We've built a small but powerful brand over the last two years; people from the community and various roles in marketing reach out weekly asking if there are opportunities to work together. I think we can build a great team of 3-10 people over the next few years. 3. Remote first. And we can do this all remotely - we run the business with Slack, Looms, and the occasional meeting. We'll eventually get to the point where in-person time is important, maybe once a quarter. But I've been really happy with how much we can get done with Slack and working asynchronously - on our own time, while balancing a healthy life with family, friends, fitness, etc. 4. Information overload. There's more content than ever. People don't need more content right? Another podcast? More webinars? Another newsletter? A focused media business like Exit Five gives people in this niche the ability to shrink their focus - instead of trying to keep up with 20 websites to grow your career you can pick one. As one member said on a call this week: "It's like LinkedIn on steroids but better because people aren't trying to drive engagement on here. They are commenting & posting because they genuinely want to help or get help with their marketing problems." Follow Exit Five if you're interested in working with us as a teammate, contractor, sponsor, or partner. Here's the business plan I drew up btw:

193

39 Comments

The one thing that can truly level up your business? Building a referral system. Referrals aren’t just leads, they’re warm, qualified connections that come with built-in trust from someone who already believes in your work. When done right, a referral system can create a steady, scalable revenue stream. You can ramp it up, slow it down, or even let it work on autopilot. So why spend time chasing cold leads when you could have referrals working for you? Have you built your referral system yet? Let’s talk about how to make it happen. #Advance #BusinessLeaders #Referrals #Entrepreneur #BusinessGrowth

10

12 Comments

Any successful CRO program uses revenue impact as a guiding light. It has to. Or your business ends up chasing $5,000 ROI opportunities when you could be honing in on $500K+ ROI opportunities.  Businesses are often so concerned with driving top-line revenue growth that they don’t tie a monetary value to their A/B tests. But you can’t place value on a winning test if you don’t factor in the time or money it takes to find it. Sizing the potential revenue impact of any A/B test is the only way to discern between actual winners and tests that are simply a waste of your time and resources.  Even in 2024, rarely are eCommerce businesses asking themselves if the ROI on a test is worth it. But your business should be! It’s time to stop treating CRO like a democracy in which your business implements the idea that gets the most votes – and instead, start approaching CRO with real data and consideration for ROI.  #CRO #ecommerce

15

3 Comments

Winning early GTM via founder led sales is an essential step in building a consequential start up. 🎯 But, while there are countless conferences focused on scaling GTM once you've hit a couple million in revenue, to date there hasn't been a conference focused on FOUNDER LED SALES and nailing the earliest days of GTM. 👀 😅 That ends now. 🙌 Pear VC has helped 100+ founders learn how to sell, how to build their 0-to-1 sales engine, how to get from $0 ARR to $1M ARR -- and now we're introducing the first ever GTM CONFERENCE for EARLY STAGE FOUNDERS. ⭐ "Zero to $1M: Winning Early GTM" will be held in San Francisco, CA this September 5th! ⭐ If you're at the idea 💡, pre-seed 🌰 , or seed stage 🌱 , this is the GTM conference for YOU. Come hear from Pear veterans, industry leaders, and successful repeat founders like Sanjit Biswas (Samsara and Cisco Meraki Co-founder and CEO), and leave with actionable guidance to supercharge your startup’s revenue from day 1. ​ ➡ APPLY NOW! Space is limited, and the early application deadline is July 15th. Pepe Agell and I will review applications on a rolling basis. 🚀 CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU THERE! 🚀 #earlystageGTM #zeroto1M #founderledsales

39

5 Comments