From Impossible to Inevitable

Aaron Ross founded PredictableRevenue.com, a consulting company that helps b2b companies triple sales growth & create self-managing sales teams. Aaron is also the founder of PebbleStorm, which is helping 100 million people "make money through enjoyment" by combining happiness and money.Jason Lemkin is a Managing Director of Storm Ventures. At Storm Ventures, Jason focuses exclusively on early-stage SaaS/enterprise start-ups and helping them scale. He has led and/or sourced Storm’s investments in next-generation SaaS leaders including Talkdesk, Algolia, Pipedrive, Parklet, RainforestQA and Guidespark, as well as his own Storm-backed company, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe). He also serves an Advisory Board Member or investor in other emerging SaaS leaders, including Convertro (acquired by AOL), BetterWorks, AnyPerk, Retention Science, Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, and Greenhouse.io. Jason is an acknowledged thought leader in SaaS through his creation of theSaaStr community for SaaS executives and founders.

• Preface: Systematizing Success xiiiLessons from the World’s Fastest-Growing Companies xiiiPart I Nail a Niche1 “Niche” Doesn’t Mean Small 2Are You Sure You’re Ready to Grow Faster? 2How to Know If You’ve Nailed a Niche 4Achieve World Domination One Niche at a Time 6The Arc of Attention 72 Signs of Slogging 12Are You a Nice-to-Have? 12Big Companies Suffer, Too 15Case Study: Where Aaron Went Wrong 16Your Current Strength Can Be a Future Weakness 213 How to Nail It 23Where Can You Be a Big Fish in a Small Pond? 23Work through the Niche Matrix 25Case Study: How Twilio Nailed a Billion-Dollar Niche by Walking in Its Customers’ Shoes 31The 20-Interview Rule 364 Your Pitch 39If You Were a Radio Station, Would Anyone Tune In? 39Elevator Pitches Are Always Frustrating 41They Don’t Care about “You”: Three Simple Questions 43Part II Create Predictable PipelineIntroduction: Lead Generation Absolves Many Sins 465 Seeds—Customer Success 50How to Grow Seeds Predictably 51Case Study: How Gild Dropped Monthly Churn from 4 to 1 56Case Study: Customer Service Excellence at Topcon 586 Nets—Marketing 61Three Uncommon Approaches of Hypergrowth CMOs 63The Forcing Function Your Marketing Leader Needs: A “Sales Qualified Lead Commit” 70Corporate Marketing versus Demand Generation 71How Inbound Changed in 10 Years Between Scaling Marketo to $100M+ and Founding Engagio 72Heroic Marketing: When You Have No Money and Little Time 767 Spears—Outbound Prospecting 80Where Outbound Works Best—and Where It Fails 83Outbound Lessons Learned Since Predictable Revenue Was Published 85Case Study: Outbound’s Role in Acquia’s $100 Million Trajectory 87Case Study: How Sagemount Triples the Value of a Company in Three Years 89Case Study: How Zuora Drives 60%-Plus of Its Growth by Outbound, Even When Accounts Need Nurturing for Years 97Build an Outbound Program Right the First Time 104Have You Been Too Successful at Inbound? 1108 What Executives Miss 114Pipeline Creation Rate: Your #1 Leading Metric 114The 15/85 Rule: Early Adopters and Mainstream Buyers 116Why You’re Underestimating Customer Lifetime Value 119Part III Make Sales Scalable9 Learn from Our Mistakes 123Growth Creates More Problems Than It Solves—But They Are Better Problems 123Top 12 Mistakes in Building Sales Teams 124Advice from the VP Sales behind LinkedIn and EchoSign 12610 Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier 129Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect 129Case Study: How Clio Restructured Sales in Three Months 132Can You Be Too Small, or Too Big, to Specialize? 134Specialization: Two Common Objections 136Specialization Snapshot at Acquia 13711 Sales Leaders 139The #1 Mis-Hire Is the VP/Head of Sales 139The Right VP Sales for Your Stage 140Ten Favorite Interview Questions 14312 Hiring Best Practices for Sales 146If You’re a Startup: Four Phases of Hiring Your First Sales Team 146Simple Hiring Tricks 149When Doing Something New, Start with Two 150The $100 Million HubSpot Sales Machine: Recruiting and Coaching Essentials 152Case Study: How to Cut Down on Wasted Interviewing 15413 Scaling the Sales Team 157If You’re Churning More Than 10% of Your Salespeople, They Aren’t the Problem 157Three Ways to Cut Churn and Increase Sales Motivation While You Scale 160Advice to CEOs: Put Nonsales Leaders on Variable Comp Plans, Too 164Are Your Enterprise Deals Taking Forever? 166Five Key Sales Metrics (with a Twist) 16814 For Startups Only 171Every Tech Company Should Offer Services 171What Jason Invests In, and Do You Need to Raise Money to Scale? 173What the Headcount of a 100-Person SaaS Company Looks Like 176Part IV Double Your Deal Size15 Deal Size Math 182You Need 50 Million Users to Make Freemium Work 182Small Deals Get You Started, Big Deals Drive Growth 18416 Not Too Big, Not Too Small 188When You Can’t Turn Small Deals into Big Ones 188If You Have Customers of All Sizes 18917 Going Upmarket 194If You Don’t Want Salespeople . . . 194Add Another Top Pricing Tier 196Pricing Is Always a Pain 199Going Fortune 1000 202Part V Do the Time18 Embrace Frustration 209Are You Sure You’re Ready for This? 209Everyone Has a Year of Hell 215Comfort Is the Enemy of Growth 217Motivation: How Aaron Reached Escape Velocity 21919 Success Isn’t a Straight Line 220The Anxiety Economy and Entrepreneur Depression 220Mark Suster’s Question: “Should a Person Learn or Earn?” 224When a Straight Line Isn’t the Shortest Path to Success 228Change Your World, Not the World 230Part VI Embrace Employee Ownership20 A Reality Check 234Dear Executives (From an Employee) 234Dear Employee (From the Executives) 235P.S.: “Dear Senior Executives, Don’t Get Left Behind” (From the CEO and Board) 237Are Your People Renting or Owning? 23821 For Executives: Create Functional Ownership 243A Simple Survey 243“No Surprises” 245Functional Ownership 248Case Study: How a Struggling Team Turned into a Self-Managing Success 255To Turn Things Around 25622 Taking Ownership to the Next Level 259Financial Ownership 259Move People Around 260The Four Types of Employees 262Part VII Define Your Destiny23 Are You Abdicating Your Opportunity? 268Your Opportunity Is Bigger Than You Realize 268How to Expand Your Opportunity at Work 270You Need Some Humdrum Passions 272Your Company Isn’t Your Mommy or Daddy 276Forcing Functions: How to Motivate Yourself to Do Things You Don’t Feel Like Doing 277Sales Is a Life Skill 282Sales Is a Multistep Process 28524 Combining Money and Meaning 289Meaning Gone Wrong 289What’s Your Unique Genius? 291Ignoring Real Life Doesn’t Make It Go Away 295Aaron, How the Hell Do You Juggle 10 Kids and Work? 297A Thank You . . . 303About the Authors 304Index 305