Zach Heerwagen’s Post

A post on effectively closing revenue targets as a start up / sales org. In Q4 we set our most aggressive revenue goal to date: grow ARR by $750k. In our first full year operating against meaningful revenue targets, I miscalculated the impact of holiday seasonality thinking it would be less impactful in crypto, and after a strong October things started to slow down quickly, leaving us with a nearly $300k gap to goal as of 11/15, effectively one month to go in the year with holidays. When I led Sales Strategy at DoorDash, we had strong analytics functions and the resources / scale to invest in sizing and calculating efficiency of various sales acceleration tactics. The list looked something like: - Reduce commission (by 5-20%) - Offer temporary inclusion in marketing promos - *Offer short term trials* (30-90 days) - Free tablet / no activation fee - And then 2-3 other things that were close to free we threw at the wall to see if they had impact We measured the acceleration tactics by: 1) Impact to sales - revenue and deal count. 2) cost, measured over a 2 year payback period based on projected churn and revenue. Our churn at DoorDash was excellent, something like 95% 1-year retention, but relative to our business model short term trials were the clear winner. Because they don't degrade long-term revenue they're both meaningful to the customer and don't hurt long term profit potential, which is most meaningful in venture backed businesses. Back to Snag, we closed the gap today, 2-days before we were unlikely to see additional contracts, and with a couple additional deals that should still close! How did we do it? On ~11/15 our BD team started outreach to all active deals with potential of closing prior to EOY, offering 2-month trials through 1/15. This let them to use us into Q1 even if it we were slightly out ahead of their buying timeline. As 12/1 and 12/15 approached, we extended the two month trials by 15 days, letting potential partners know the offer was ending on the final ping. There's a few key principles to keep in mind here: 1. Value the relationship: while this whole post was about discounting to accelerate deals, if you sacrifice the relationship to try to push on timing you're hurting the business long term. 2. Stay flexible: One partner came back to us and said they couldn't realistically start development until 2/1, so we offered a one month free trial and contracted the deal now to start then. It's the same thing and they're thrilled we were flexible to accommodate them. 3. Understand your business: Tactics aren't one size fits all, and in more enterprise deal cycles the concept of discounting at EOQ is equally powerful, just more custom. I'd love to hear what's worked for your team!