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    Sales by @ttunguz

    Venture Capitalist at Theory

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    Sales

    2024

    AI Advantage for Startups : Changing the Workflow through Services

    September 23

    The New Software GTM Playbook

    September 11

    What Has Your GPU Done For You Today?

    August 23

    Things that Used to be Impossible, but are Now Really Hard

    August 15

    Agentic Systems' Sales Cycles

    July 22

    Extreme PMF : Sustaining Success with Scale

    April 12

    AI in the Hands of Software Buyers

    March 29

    Selling AI : Category Creation of a Different Flavor

    March 26

    The 10x Salesperson

    January 12

    2023

    Purchasing Patterns in Software : Positivity Punctuating Q3

    November 10

    Artisanal Emails

    September 26

    Avoiding the PLG Trap : Office Hours with Oliver Jay

    September 25

    How Should You Staff Your Startup in 2023

    May 17

    Every Customer is a Design Partner - Leading Your Sales Motion with Sales Engineering

    May 2

    The Typical Startup Saw a 24% Increase in Sales Cycle in 2023

    March 28

    Predicting Cloud Growth Rates for 2023

    February 3

    When AI Favors the Incumbents

    February 2

    Microsoft as a Mirror - What We Can Expect for SaaS in 2023

    January 24

    2022

    PLG & Profitability : More Product Doesn't Necessarily Mean Greater Profits

    December 7

    Cutting R&D to Grow GTM Spend : Is it Happening Across Software Companies?

    November 2

    Sales Efficiency through Covid : Reading the Tea Leaves for Startups

    October 30

    Grey Skies in Cloud Earnings

    October 28

    Pipeline Supply Shocks in SaaS Sales

    September 23

    Systematizing Go-To-Market Hiring

    September 8

    200% NDR: What Does it Take to Achieve this Stellar Milestone?

    September 2

    Pipeline Analysis Playbook

    August 18

    How to Structure a Startup Sales Team for Optimal Land & Expand

    August 15

    The Health of Cloud Spending in Mid-2022

    July 26

    How to Structure Your Sales Compensation Plan to Deliberately Undersell

    July 25

    How Important is Your Software to Your Customer? It's Time to Find Out.

    July 22

    A Masterclass in Sales Development from Lars Nilsson at Snowflake

    July 14

    Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy

    July 11

    The Sales Sandwich

    February 18

    Why You Should Expect Your VP Product to Sign Up for a Lead Quota

    January 28

    2021

    The Need for Two Types of Payback Period Calculations

    November 7

    What is the Product the Customer Buys Before They Buy Yours?

    September 14

    How Selling Has Changed Post-COVID, and How it Will Change Again Afterwards

    March 14

    The Most Effective Tools and Techniques for Selling Today - Office Hours with Jim Benton

    February 18

    A Common and Critical Mistake When Forecasting Next Year's Bookings

    February 1

    2020

    Do You Lose Sales Opportunities Because of Sales Execution or Product Insufficiency?

    December 16

    The Three Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Startup's Head of Sales

    December 15

    Building a Product-Led Growth Machine: Office Hours with GC Lionetti

    December 7

    More Activity Means More Business. Don't Overthink It.

    November 16

    How Many Technologies Can a Company Adopt at Once?

    October 29

    A Quick Diagnostic to Determine if Your Sales & Marketing Teams are Aligned

    August 31

    Why Startups Should Establish Qualifying Signals for Sales Teams Early On

    August 24

    Top 10 Learnings from the Redpoint 2020 GTM Survey

    June 25

    What is the Structure of the Typical SaaS Company as it Scales?

    June 21

    How Should You Structure Sales Teams for Optimal Performance?

    June 18

    How Predictive is SDR/BDR Quota Attainment of AE Quota Attainment?

    June 17

    SaaS Office Hours Go to Market Survey Edition & Which Metric Should Your SDR/BDR Team Use?

    June 16

    Notes from Office Hours with Hollie Wegman

    June 12

    Benchmarking Sales Prospecting Volumes, Deal Terms, and Meetings in the Coronavirus Era

    April 29

    Six Startup Disciplines for Challenging Times

    March 20

    One of the Most Frequent Errors in Sales Planning and Forecasting

    February 17

    Simpson's Paradox in Measuring Net Dollar Retention Rate

    February 3

    What is a Best in Class Payback Period for a Software Company in 2020?

    January 20

    B2B vs B2C: How Should Your Sales Team Be Allocated to Maximize Success?

    January 5

    2019

    How Much Turnover in Your Sales Team Should Your Startup Expect?

    December 12

    Benchmarking Your Sales and Customer Success Teams

    November 21

    The Siren Song of ROI Based Pricing

    September 11

    If You Have Great NDR Retention, Should You Increase Your Marketing Spend?

    September 2

    As Your Sales Team Scales, Focus on Your Middle

    May 30

    How to Develop Best in Class Sales Efficiency

    May 10

    The Four Strategic Questions Facing AI Agencies

    April 14

    Should Your Startup Employ Both Assisted and Unassisted Trials to Acquire Customers?

    February 28

    Top 10 Learnings from the Redpoint Free Trial Survey

    February 6

    2018

    Which is More Important: New Account Growth or Account Expansion?

    December 11

    The Four Stages of Sales Compensation Structures in Early Stage Startups

    November 25

    In Early Markets, Services Can Be a Competitive Advantage

    October 1

    Timing Cashflows of Your Sales Commissions and Your Customers

    July 15

    An Often Forgotten Characteristic About Your Startup's Ideal Customer Profile The Ideal Customer Profile. The perfect customer. Can you describe it for your startup? The more precisely you can describe it, the better. That will simplify disqualification. But articulating the ICP well isn't enough.

    March 25

    Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Deals?

    March 4

    Reorganizing Your SaaS Startup’s Organizational Structure to Optimize the Customer Lifecycle

    January 31

    2017

    The Implication of Secular Increases in SaaS CAC

    November 1

    Monte Carlo Simulations of Inside and Outside Sales Teams in a SaaS Startup

    October 9

    How Much Should A SaaS Startup Invest in Sales & Marketing?

    September 17

    The Challenges of the Platform Go To Market

    September 6

    The Theory and Data Underpinning Sales Commission Plans

    September 4

    Why Cash Conversion Cycle Matters for Your Startup

    August 15

    How to Decide When To Move Upmarket

    August 8

    The Best Book on the Fundamentals of Selling

    July 9

    The "Hiring The Buyer's Role to Sell" Fallacy

    June 1

    Hiring for Bookings Capacity in Sales

    May 16

    My Algorithm is Better than Yours

    April 26

    A Tale of Two Go To Market Strategies

    April 24

    Is There a No Man's Land in SaaS ACVs?

    April 21

    The Four Dimensions of a Demand Generation Portfolio

    April 17

    SMB or Enterprise - Which is the Better Go To Market in SaaS?

    April 13

    Customer Operations - An Idea for Maximizing Efficient Growth in SaaS Companies

    March 29

    The Three Types of SaaS Value Propositions

    March 17

    A Product Manager's Guide to Moving Up Market

    March 7

    Three Strategies for Engendering Negative Net Churn in Your SaaS Startup

    February 23

    The $100M ARR Customer

    January 17

    2016

    When is the Right Time for Your SaaS Startup to Train its Sales People?

    December 12

    How Much to Compensate SaaS Sales Teams for New Sales, Renewals and Expansions

    November 28

    What is the Optimal Contract Length for Your SaaS Startup?

    October 20

    What's the Maximum Rate of Growth for Your SaaS Startup with Paid Customer Acquisition?

    September 19

    Designing a Sales Quota Structure at the Earliest Stages of a SaaS Startup

    September 2

    The Biggest Areas of Underinvestment in SaaS Sales Teams

    August 15

    Fighting and Leveraging Inertia in Sales

    August 4

    Which of the Three Software Budgets Does Your SaaS Startup Target?

    July 24

    The Smallest ACV to Justify an Inside Sales Team at a SaaS Startup

    July 21

    You're in the Business of Selling Promotions

    June 28

    When to Scale Sales for Your SaaS Startup

    June 7

    Comparing Two Ways to Build a SaaS Sales Team

    June 2

    What Average Contract Value is Best for a SaaS Company

    May 24

    The Rising Importance of Reseller Channels in SaaS

    May 5

    The Strategic Shift in Revenue for SaaS Startups as They Scale

    March 9

    The Other Payback Period that Matters in SaaS

    February 12

    With Smart Software, Sell Ironman Not Robocop

    February 3

    2015

    What is the Optimal Quick Ratio for Your SaaS Startup?

    November 3

    What Quota Attainment Reveals About Your SaaS Startup's Go to Market

    October 28

    Startup Best Practices 19 - Recognizing the Breaking Points of Your Startup's Management Structure

    October 25

    Startup Best Practices 18 - Collaborating with Your Customer During Your Sales Process

    October 11

    The Essential Go To Market Math for Beating Your SaaS Startup's Growth Targets

    October 5

    The Importance of Payback Period for SaaS Startups

    September 21

    Do Vertical SaaS Companies Benefit from Higher Sales Efficiency?

    September 17

    Four Important Data Points about Purchasing Behavior in SaaS

    August 26

    The Number One Objection in the Sales Funnel

    August 18

    When Do SaaS Startups Hire Their First VP of Sales

    August 5

    Startup Best Practices 15 - Start With the Why

    July 12

    The Beauty of Bottoms Up SaaS Businesses

    June 23

    Startup Best Practices 13 - Patience with Unit Economics

    June 14

    The Risk Sales Discounts Impose to Startup Burn Rates

    May 26

    The Innovator's Solution for SaaS Startups - The Flywheel SaaS Company

    April 19

    How Faster Sales Cycles Become a Competitive Advantage

    April 16

    The 5 Key People in a SaaS Sales Process

    March 26

    The Best Book on Building a SaaS Sales Team

    March 24

    Sales Funnel Optimization for SaaS Startups

    March 10

    Challenging Your Customers During Your SaaS Startup's Sales Process

    February 13

    A Single Report to Measure the Health of Your Startup's Sales Team

    February 9

    The Employee Productivity Patterns of Billion Dollar SaaS Companies

    February 5

    The Sales Motions of B2C2B Companies

    January 12

    B2C2B Startups - Why Selling with Internal Influencers is so Powerful

    January 7

    The Sudden Shift in SaaS Product Pricing

    January 5

    2014

    How Much Should Your Startup Spend on Customer Account Expansion?

    November 24

    Why Your SaaS Startup Needs a VP of Customer Success Sooner Than You Might Think

    November 12

    The Marketing Math Behind Scaling a SaaS Salesforce

    June 30

    The Impact of Varying Sales Hiring Strategies on SaaS Startups

    May 28

    A Surprisingly Powerful Mechanism for Growing a SaaS Startup

    May 21

    Quantifying the Cost of a Bad Hire

    April 28

    The Challenges SaaS Businesses Face Communicating their Financial Health

    April 17

    How Fast Must a SaaS Startup Grow to Raise a Series A?

    March 17

    Great SaaS Companies Focus on Behavior Change

    March 5

    The Optimal Average Customer Value for SaaS Startups

    February 3

    The Go-To-Market Challenges of B2D Companies

    January 27

    Why Quotas Aren't the Most Important Number for Startup Sales Teams

    January 13

    The Importance of Seasonality in SaaS Startups

    January 9

    2013

    Startup Best Practices 3 - How to Structure a Sales and Marketing Team

    December 3

    The Three Churn Mitigation Strategies of SaaS Startups

    October 31

    Sales Efficiency Benchmarks for SaaS Startups

    October 10

    What Your Startup’s MRR Figure Is Hiding

    September 27

    You’re Not Finished Selling Until You Change Your Customers Habits

    September 6

    A team of founders who had just made their first their first hire asked me about culture and on boarding. How do they go about managing people? How do they maintain the values of the business?

    August 21

    Framing Your Startup’s Sales Pitch: Focus on Value, Not on Cost

    July 25

    The Three Phases of Startup Sales

    July 17

    Throwing in the Towel on Google’s Go: What Programming Taught Me About Sales

    June 28

    The Most Effective Price Discovery Question for Your Startup

    June 11

    Three Counterintuitive Points about SMB SaaS

    May 6

    Hiring Your Startup’s First Salesperson

    May 3

    The Defining Characteristics of Successful SMB SaaS Startups

    April 17

    Founders, Equip Your Champions

    April 15

    How To Price and Sell Your Startup’s Product

    April 11

    Matching Marketing Tactics to The Sales Funnel

    February 22

    Freemium Businesses Switch the Hunter and Farmer Sales Roles

    February 7

    The product qualified lead (PQL)

    January 15

    To Sell is Human

    January 4

    2012

    The one ideal characteristic of your startup’s first customers

    December 7

    Education sales vs execution sales

    December 4

    Segmenting customer pipelines

    November 20

    The Secret to SMB SaaS Distribution

    September 18

    Choosing market segments on customer profitability

    September 13

    The Freemium Game Plan

    August 21

    Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales

    August 20

    Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales

    August 20