How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Authors: Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
In my week three reflection I talked about Part I of my chosen book. This week I am reflecting on Part II: Creating Predictable Pipeline.
Creating predictable pipeline is the ultimate goal because if you can control where and how you are generating revenue, you control you financial growth/success. Here is how Ross and Lemkin say to do it:
- Seeds – Customer Success;
- Nets – Marketing;
- Spears – Outbound Prospecting;
- What Executives Miss.
“The Painful Truth: Overnight success is a fairy tale. You’re not going to be “Discovered” with a viral video, post or product that makes all your lead generation problems magically disappear.”
Of these four sections, #2 stood out the most to me because ever business needs marketing, but not every business knows how to do it.
Chapter Six – Nets-Marketing
If a company is struggling with marketing, Ross and Lemkin informs readers that inbound marketing works for every. “The idea is creating marketing that customers love or learn from, inspiring them to want more from you, eventually buying your stuff.”
To put it more plainly for those that are still unsure about what inbound marketing is, here is how Wikipedia defines inbound marketing: Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and branding.
With that being said, be careful. I have seen some terrible inbound marketing. Doing it just to say you did it is almost as bad as not doing it at all. In my profession (membership organization) we have chapters. Each chapter has their own social media platforms because they are interacting with their service areas (a specific city, county or state). Not all chapters are equipped with members that are social media gurus. The other issue is, not all chapters have the resources (revenue) to hire someone to manage their online presence (social media accounts).
Those challenges are the same challenges that small or start up businesses may face. For a business, it’s worth the investment.
Marketing success requires a team. There is a really great graph on page 68 of the book that depicts what your Revenue Team (for marketing) should look like.
This team is headed by a “Revenue Lead”.
Under that lead is a VP of Marketing and a VP of Sales.
Under each VP is a manager – Marketing and Sales.
After this the structure begins to show more clear separation.
On the marketing side there is a Senior Designer.
On the sales side there are Ads (Account Executives).
Each side has an outbound team:
Marketing – Demand Gen Marketers
Sales – Outbound SDRs (Sale Development Rep)
Last, each side has an inbound team:
Marketing – Content & Social Media Marketing
Sales – Inbound SDRs
Without marketing, a business relies only on word of mouth. That is not a sustainable model and your business will never cross the gap.