Hey - Marc here.

Happy Saturday morning Motivated B2B SaaS Founders.

Here's at least one tip to keep in mind as you grow your B2B SaaS company

Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.

In today’s issue, I share some key takeaways from an interview between Nathan Latka, the host of The Top Podcast, and Jimmy Kim, CEO at Sendlane where they talk about how Jimmy and his team grew their marketing automation platform from 2 to 5M in ARR in a few short years.

Now enter the show!:

How Sendlane Started:

Sendlane started in 2015, but Jimmy started fully focusing on it in 2017 when he exited his other 2 companies. In the beginning, it was an internal tool Jimmy used to generate revenue for him and his cofounders businesses. Soon after their friends began to inquire about the platform. That’s when they decided to open Sendlane's doors publicly in 2015.

Challenges

In the beginning Jimmy was doing all of the sales and thought he could bring on a salesperson and they would be able to do at least 50% of the sales he was able to do alone. This didn't happen and revenue did not increase in the way he had hoped. He had to let go of the sales team because the systems weren't in place to make them successful. Essentially there was no repeatable Sales Process in Place.
Redefined his ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) as a result his customer count dropped significantly, but he was able to increase the revenue per customer as he pivoted to to focus on ecommerce customers.

Advice to Other Founders

Don't give up equity too quickly for the sake of cash. If you are going to raise money understand it takes a lot longer to raise where you can borrow money (debt) in 5-7 days without giving up any equity. If you have a plan where you can make the payments plus interest this may be the smarter way or an alternative way to help you grow your SaaS company.

Think Differently - Test, Test, Test

Jimmy is data driven one thing that made a huge difference in their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) was instead of using paid advertising to drive traffic to a demo request page they started driving traffic to actionable content pieces and would let the content convert the user itself - An example would be "The Big Book of Ecommerce Funnels". This lowered Jimmy's CAC and by 3x and has led to more inbound leads for the sales team (one of the factors in helping the salespeople more easily attain their quotas).
After starting over to build the sales team from scratch Jimmy was able to document Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's) for outbound cadences, finding the right prospects to reach out to, developing a repeatable sales process over an 11 month period of time. This took discipline and time but it allowed their next sales person to hit their quota and now they have 7+ reps who are on target to hit or exceed their quotas. Once the foundation was set for the first sales hire to allow Jimmy to continue to grow the revenue of the business only then did he hire a VP of Sales (having a VP of sales come in and create the process is usually a recipe for disaster and does not set them up for success when you are trying to grow fast, you want them to have a foundation that they can build upon when the come in and not be forced to build quickly while re-establishing a foundation at the same time. Jimmy was able to ensure the VP of Sales was set up for success upon entering the business).

Bonus:

1. “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey A Moore. This book signifies the process Jimmy went through from going from 2M to 5M ARR, to introducing V3 of the Sendlane product, letting go of old customers that no longer fit his ICP and welcoming new customers that do.

2. Jimmy's Favourite Online tool (at the time of this interview): OmniGraffle - A digram and funnel mapping tool.

TL:DR

Jimmy was successfully able to define his ICP and create a scalable sales process that works. Only after trial and error the first time around was he able to dial in this process. He went back and did things right by ensuring he had a sales process that worked then brought on a sales person and made sure they could reach their quota before hiring other salespeople or bringing on a VP of Sales. The order of operations is key here. At the same time, his best piece of advice he would tell his younger self is to focus on 1 thing and double down on it, and not to do 3 or 4 things at once. If he has used systems and a sales process to successfully grow his organization, then why can’t you develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that do the same? What are you waiting for?

P.S. Here is a link to the full interview: Sendlane CEO Jimmy Kim: Hits $5m ARR helping eCommerce brands Do email marketing - YouTube

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See you again next week.

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. B2B SaaS Sales SOPs Templates here. (Do it Yourself)

2. 1:1 SOP’s Call (Consultation Call for Guidance)

3. Create your own custom SOP's with our help here. (Done with you Service)

4. Work 1:1 with me to create customized Sales SOP's to remove yourself from the sales process and virtually guarantee that your investment in your next salesperson ensures they will hit their number? (Done for your Service)