Scale your SaaS - with Matt Wolach, founder of Xsellus and "Scale your SaaS" podcast

Summary

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Metrics that Measure Up – “Scale your SaaS” with Matt Wolach (April 26, 2023)

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Ray Rike welcomes Matt Wolach, B2B sales coach at Xsellus, founder of "Scale Your SaaS" podcast, and CEO of the SaaS tool Ringbot. The conversation dives into Matt’s podcasting journey, best practices for sales and customer acquisition in early-stage B2B SaaS, and the shifting landscape of SaaS sales models, including the role of product-led growth (PLG). Through practical examples and lively discussion, listeners get an inside look at what it really takes to scale a SaaS company from $0M to $100M ARR and beyond.

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1. Lessons Learned as a SaaS Podcast Host

[01:18–06:19]

The Evolution of “Scale Your SaaS”

• Matt started his podcast as “Sastry in the Making” but rebranded to “Scale Your SaaS” for simplicity and clearer messaging.
• He initially launched the podcast to generate awareness for his SaaS sales coaching but found the greatest value in learning from his guests’ experiences.

Key Themes from SaaS Leaders

• Founders who succeed deeply understand their market. They talk to dozens of potential customers—often 40 or 50—before building the product.

  • Quote:

    “One of the biggest ones... people say the reason that they were successful is that they were able to connect with their audience. In fact, they went out and learned all about their market before trying to go out and sell to them.”
    — Matt Wolach, [03:10]

• Persistence is vital. Balancing customer feedback with one’s own vision is a recurring challenge.

  • Quote:

    “We have to kind of understand what we're hearing, but also, how do we take that information and balance it versus the market?… Is this a problem? More than anything, is this… do they have a challenge? Don't let them tell you what the way to fix the challenge is. But is it a challenge?”
    — Matt Wolach, [05:16]

The Power of Podcasting for SaaS Brands

• Podcasts are the new blogs—vital for building awareness and engagement.

  • Quote:

    “Podcasts today are like blogs were five to seven years ago. It's one of the best awareness and engagement builders that you can see.”
    — Ray Rike, [05:43]

• Podcasting creates partnerships, expands network reach, and ultimately becomes a channel for deal flow and ecosystem building.

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2. Early-Stage SaaS Sales: Challenges and Best Practices

[07:18–17:33]

Top Challenges for SaaS Companies ($1M to $5M ARR)

• Lead Generation:

  • Most early-stage founders over-rely on one or two channels (often cold email).

  • Diversifying across 3–5 channels is critical to maintain a steady pipeline.

  • There are at least 18 different methods for generating SaaS leads; most companies are only aware of a handful.

  • Quote:

    “If you only have one or two channels, if that stops working, then you're out of luck… There are 18 different ways to generate leads within the SaaS world.”
    — Matt Wolach, [07:47–08:25]

  • Commonly missed lead sources:

    • A systematic referral process (automated asks, timed requests, affiliate options)
    • Influencer and affiliate programs (often under-marketed)
    • Quote:

      “Do you have a set process… maybe a month after somebody starts with your SaaS company, do you have an automated email that goes out instantly... Automate it and set it up so it automatically happens…”
      — Matt Wolach, [09:19]

• Closing and Conversion:

  • Many companies generate leads but falter at closing due to awkward demos or poor sales processes.
  • It’s more efficient to first fix the closing process before funneling more leads.
  • Case Study:
    • A client improved their close rate from 26% to 87% by focusing on the demo and closing process.
    • Quote:

      “If you fix marketing, you get a bunch of leads coming in, but then you have a very bad demo and closing process, then you just wasted a lot of time… Fix your demo. Get that right, and then let's fill the funnel.”
      — Matt Wolach, [11:11]

• Key Metrics Most Overlooked:

  • Lead-form to demo-completed ratio is often untracked; many companies lose over half of qualified leads at this step through drop-off.
  • Companies tracking this can push conversion from 42% industry average to 70–90%.
  • Quote:

    “One of the least tracked ratios and yet one of the most important ratios within a sales process… for people who do not track this number, it's about 42% is about the average...”
    — Matt Wolach, [13:17–14:27]

• LTV:CAC Ratio:

  • A critical benchmark for customer acquisition effectiveness; best-in-class SaaS aim for 4–6:1, above which companies should aggressively invest in marketing, below which they must refine process or reduce costs.
  • Quote:

    “A really good balance is somewhere four or five to one… If you're above that, put more money in. If you're below that, fix your closing process or fix your costs.”
    — Matt Wolach, [16:00]

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3. The Evolution of SaaS Customer Acquisition & The Role of Sales

[17:33–26:13]

The Product-Led Growth (PLG) Paradigm

• PLG is attractive but is not realistic for all SaaS, especially if price point is above ~$100/month.

• PLG works best for low-cost, high-velocity products or as add-ons once brand momentum is established.

  • Quote:

    “Product led growth can work. There's a lot of factors at play... if your price point is over a hundred bucks a month, it's going to be really, really hard… I have people come to me like, yeah, we want to do plg. I'm like... that's about a thousand a month. I'm like, not happening.”
    — Matt Wolach, [18:10]

• At scale (>$20M ARR), PLG companies may actually spend more on sales and marketing than traditional sales-led peers due to the challenges of late-stage conversion and retention.

  • Quote:

    “At about $20 million ARR and above… product led growth companies actually had more sales and marketing investment than a sales led because the conversion, the retention, it took more effort at that stage…”
    — Ray Rike, [20:04]

The Future of SaaS Sales Roles

• The classic "sales" role is evolving—Matt advocates for product experts or customer advocates, not traditional salespeople, especially as buyers seek value and expertise over a sales push.

  • Quote:

    “We would never mention the word sales. We would always talk about… one of our experts… customer advocate... We're always focused on how can we help them.”
    — Matt Wolach, [21:38]

• As PLG and self-serve models grow, salespeople will become more like "customer/product Sherpas" focused on helping customers derive maximum value from the product.

Discounting & Value Conversation

• Over-discounting is a trap for early-stage companies—train your buyers to expect discounts and they’ll never value you at full price.
• Price too low and buyers won’t perceive value; price slightly below the established competitor but emphasize value and support.
  • Analogy:
    Choosing a cheap $4.99 meal when the stakes are high (like repairing a relationship) signals lack of seriousness or value—similarly, prospects bypass cheap SaaS for high-stakes problems.
  • Quote:

    “If you're too low, they won't even look at you. They'll think that you're not going to solve the problems that we have… You absolutely took yourself out of play by trying to undercut.”
    — Matt Wolach, [24:50]

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4. Building a Personal Brand & Final Advice

[26:13–30:18]

• Build Your Personal Brand:

  • Everyone in SaaS—founders, execs, and even reps—should prioritize building their personal brand “because people buy from people.”
  • Quote:

    “Building your personal brand actually can have a big impact. And this doesn't just apply to the founders or the big execs. This applies to everybody.”
    — Matt Wolach, [26:28]

• Getting Started with a Personal Brand:

  • Share what you know, where your market lives (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), and focus on helping, not selling.
  • Practical example: Matt gave away a spreadsheet tool on LinkedIn, resulting in 1.3M+ views.

• On Learning and Career:

  • Early-career professionals should “take the job”—all experiences compound and contribute to growth.
  • Quote:

    “Whatever you're doing, soak it up and know that it's going to be great and valuable for you in the future.”
    — Matt Wolach, [29:49]

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5. Notable Recommendations & Resources

[28:56–29:37]

• Must-follow CEO: Russell Brunson, ClickFunnels – exemplary at merging personal and company branding.
• Essential Tool: Slack – indispensable for remote SaaS teams.
• Early Career Advice: Take jobs even if they seem beneath you; every role provides valuable experience for SaaS founders and leaders.

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Memorable Quotes

• “People buy from people. Build your personal brand and it'll make you very strong.” — Matt Wolach, [26:28]
• “The people who are helping the most are selling the most.” — Matt Wolach, [22:24]
• “Podcasts today are like blogs were five to seven years ago. It's one of the best awareness and engagement builders…” — Ray Rike, [05:43]

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Suggested Timestamps for Important Segments

• Podcasting and founder lessons: [01:18–06:19]
• Lead generation, referral processes, and closing: [07:18–14:00]
• Key sales metrics and LTV:CAC: [15:27–17:33]
• Product Led Growth challenges: [17:33–20:42]
• The future of SaaS sales roles: [20:42–22:47]
• Discounting and price-value perceptions: [22:47–26:13]
• Building a personal brand: [26:13–30:18]

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For SaaS founders, execs, and emerging leaders, this episode is a goldmine of actionable insights and hard-earned wisdom on scaling, selling, and staying ahead in today’s evolving SaaS landscape.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, I'm Ray Reich, founder and CEO of RevOps Squared and your host of the Metrics that Measure up podcast. We talk to a wide variety of B2B SaaS and Cloud Thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed decisions. Now, on to today's show. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics that Measure up podcast. Today we are joined by Matt Wallach, B2B sales coach at Axcelis, the host of Scale youe SaaS podcast. And Matt's also the CEO of a SaaS company that helps marketing agencies grow. It's called Ringbot. We'll be covering three main topics with Matt during today's episode. One, his lessons learned as a podcast creator and host. Second, best practices for sales in early stage B2B SaaS companies. And third, the evolution of customer acquisition in SaaS is the role of sales diminishing. Hey, Matt, take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest on the metrics@majorup podcast.

[B]

Hey, thanks, Ray. Appreciate that introduction. That was really nice. I'm super glad to be here. We were just kind of chatting before we started the show, and we have connected with each other for quite a while, a year or two, and our schedules just haven't aligned. So this film is. That recording of this episode has been a long time coming, but I'm super glad to do it. Really excited to share a lot of this stuff.

[A]

Well, you were one of my inspirations when I started our podcast about two years ago. Right. And I kind of looked at those great SaaS podcasts, and so I tried to listen and learn from you. And I think you've done 251 episodes of scale youl SaaS podcast now. Is that correct?

[B]

Yeah. So we used to call it Sastry in the making, which I came up with. And it was supposed to be like a play on history in the making, but it was supposed to supposed to talk about stories of people in SaaS and how they've built their company, but it turned out that nobody could really pronounce it the way I wanted to pronounce it, and everybody didn't get it. It was long to write, so we changed the. We rebranded it. Now it's called scale your SaaS, and we're intently focused on helping people grow their SaaS company.

[A]

Well, my favorite part of doing a podcast is to learn from every one of my guests who's so damn much smarter than me. So here's My question to you, are there any common themes that you found from SaaS founders and the industry thought letters in your podcast, like the top two or three themes that you found early stage SaaS companies facing?

[B]

Yeah, so the first thing, that's a great point, and that's something that I actually recognize as well. I started the podcast so that I could get the word out about my coaching. I had been in SaaS for a while, I'd run SaaS companies, had some exits, and then I'm like, well, let me help other people do it. But I didn't know how to share the word about coaching. So I started the podcast as one of the ways to get in front of people so they could learn about that. And the goal was, of course, let's generate some leads, let's get some interest out there, some awareness. But actually what happened was I ended up learning a lot. These were great people I was talking to and I was hearing their story and what they're focused on and cool things that they're working on. And I ended up learning all sorts of things that I use in my own business, I use to share with my clients. And so that's been really important. I'm glad you brought that up. But also you mentioned, you know, what are some of these things people are talking about? What are the themes? And one of the biggest ones, Ray, is people say the reason that they were successful is that they were able to connect with their audience. In fact, they went out and learned all about their market before trying to go out and sell to them. So they would have conversations, they would have discussions, they would ask questions, and they would really try to dive into the mind of their ideal customer to learn what is important to them, what do they care about? What are they striving for, what keeps them up at night? And that's what helped them get to success faster because they knew their customer intimately.

[A]

It's interesting you say that because a lot of the successful entrepreneurs we have on our show, they said we met with 40, 50, up to 70 different companies before they even started developing their product to see if the quote, unquote, it would hunt. Right?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And that's that. Those are the numbers that I hear as well. Somewhere around 50, give or take, is what I'd recommend. I have clients who come to me, they're like, well, we haven't really found product market fit yet. I'm like, how many conversations have you had with perfect fit customers before you started going out? Like, oh, like two or three. I'm like, okay, you need to 10x that at least.

[A]

Yeah. You know, the other thing I've heard pretty consistently, I'd like to see if you hear it, is just how important kind of persistence, a thick skin, being able to take input from the naysayers, but not. Not pursue your vision. Because so many people say, well, there's an issue here and an issue there. Do you hear a lot of the same from your guest?

[B]

Yeah, it's kind of a funny balance, isn't it? We have to kind of understand what we're hearing, but also, how do we take that information and balance it versus the market? Of course, they don't know what the potential of your product could be. In fact, it might be revolutionary, it might be innovative, it might be something totally new. And they don't realize that that's a thing that could solve any problems. So you have to take in that information without letting it affect you too much and get totally away from your vision of what you're trying to solve, because it could be something totally new that they've never heard of before. And so we need to make sure that. Is this a problem? More than anything, is this. Do they have a challenge? Don't let them tell you what the way to fix the challenge is. But is it a challenge? And then you can figure out, based on your knowledge and background, and can we fix it this way?

[A]

Well, like many very successful entrepreneurs, we're going to pivot early. So here we are, two podcasters talking to each other, right? And I was talking to Patrick Campbell the other day, and Patrick Campbell, you know, the founder of ProfitWell, recently acquired by Paddle, and he did a great job of building a media brand and meeting assets within a SaaS company. So I believe that podcasts today are like blogs were five to seven years ago. It's one of the best awareness and engagement builders that you can see. Do you believe that more and more B2B SaaS companies are going to be launching podcasts in the next couple years?

[B]

Yeah, they should. I think they're kind of already starting, Ray. I think we're seeing it, aren't we? Like, it's. It's something that's really valuable. I have a feeling that we're going to do it for my SaaS company. It's just such a way to connect with people in your industry, whether it's ideal customers who come on the show. But also, I've made a ton of partnerships out of a lot of the people who've come up. So my show targets SaaS founders SaaS leaders, those types. And so people who want to get in front of them, they request. In fact, I never have to go out and ask people, hey, do you want to come on the show? It's fortunate, I'm fortunate that people just asked me at this point. My early days, I definitely had to beg people, but, but now we just get requests because they want to get in front of that audience. And so it's such a great way to connect and make partnerships. As a SaaS company, you can find other people who are targeting your audience, bring them on, and then of course, if they have a different offer to your market than what you have, it's a great partnership you can form. Send some leads back and forth, take care of each other, make sure that you're, you're recommending each other and both of you can grow.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's some incredible brand awareness and engagement builder. But we're going to pivot one more time back to what you were talking about earlier is all these early stage SaaS companies that you've helped to scale. They've interviewed the founders. What are the top three common challenges? I know it's hard to narrow it to three that you see early stage SaaS companies, I'm kind of talking around that 1 million ARR. So they hopefully got product market fit, but they're trying to get to five common challenges are facing that.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think the most obvious one would be lead generation. I mean, everybody's struggling with lead, everybody wants more leads, right? Who's going to say, like, no, we're good, we're okay on leads, we're fine, right? Like, everybody wants more leads. But a lot of in that specific range, in that really early stage, they're really struggling and they haven't figured out quite how the machine should work to be that lead generation machine. And one of the things I say, I ask them, okay, what are you doing? We're like, well, we're doing cold email. I'm like, that's great. What else? And a lot of people are really focused around one or two marketing channels. And what I always say is, hey, marketing, it ebbs and flows. And one thing might work one day and then not work the next day. If you only have one or two channels, if that stops working, then you're out of luck. And so what I highly Recommend is get 3,4,5 great marketing channels that you can optimize and continue to work on improving. That way, if one or two goes out of the line or off the grid and you still have 2, 3, 4 other channels feeding your pipeline, filling you up. So it's really important to do that. Now one of the neat things that's interesting, Ray, is there are 18 different ways to generate leads within the SaaS world. A lot of people are like, what, 18 completely different methods for generating SaaS leads. Most people only are aware of about five or six. And so we really need to explore what some of those others are. And that's what we do with my clients. Like, well, let's see what else we can do. Let's add some more leads. That's number one.

[A]

Now let's double click on those 18. Right. What are two or three that are the most commonly missed but pretty effective?

[B]

Well, I mean, what's commonly missed is a referral process. Now a lot of people are like, yeah, we want referrals, right? Well, great. But do you have a set process of exactly what's going to happen exactly when, as in, okay, maybe a month after somebody starts with your SaaS company, do you have an automated email that goes out instantly? Right. Then do you have a text that goes to them? Do you have a way that you can automate that such that if they say, yes, I'm loving it, like you ask them a question, hey, are you loving the product? Yeah. Okay, great. Boom. Automatic reply. Great. Would you mind filling out a review right here? Would you mind referring people? Would you like to sign up as a referral affiliate? Whatever you want to do, automate it and set it up so it automatically happens instead of just ho hum, maybe some people will send referrals our way. That's not a referral process. So having a process is the biggest piece of that. There are a few others as well, like influencers. Sometimes influencers can be very, very valuable and many others. But it's funny how many different options there are that a lot of people just aren't aware of.

[A]

That's interesting. I was talking to a gentleman named Scott Lease the other day and he's a pretty big influencer on LinkedIn from a sales following. He's like affiliate programs. You'd be amazed at how many B2B SaaS companies have great affiliate programs that no one knows about because they don't market it to all the thought leaders out here on LinkedIn. So to me, that's another big one, right?

[B]

Oh, absolutely. That's one of the biggest drivers of leads for my own SaaS company affiliates. And we have a lot of great ones. And it's really important to be able to have that operation Operations set up and dialed in so that people are referring business to you. It's great.

[A]

So everyone's saying, yeah, pipeline, it's always number one or number two. And a lot of people say, if you have great pipeline, it covers up a lot of other ills and issues that you have. Second one, beyond pipeline, what's another common challenge you're seeing?

[B]

Well, the next one, obviously, is the next step in the process is once you have leads, can you close them? And we see this trouble a lot. In fact, the other problem is there's a lot of companies that have great marketing. They've put a lot of effort and money and time into their marketing. They've got these different channels it's feeding them. And then once the leads get in, it just feels awkward, it feels weird. They're not taken care of within that sales process. The closing process is terrible. The demos are awful. And the emotion of that prospect goes from, wow, I'm super excited about this. I feel like I need this solution to, ugh, what else is out there? Because this is not what I want. And it's really sad because if you put a lot of marketing effort in, if you put a lot of money into marketing, and then you just don't have that right closing process, like, you just wasted all of that time and money. It's just a mess. And so one thing we focus on is actually we do something in reverse in terms of if somebody says, hey, we need help, we want to fix it in the right order. And the right order is actually fix your sales and closing process first. Fix your demo. Get that right, because if you fix marketing, you get a bunch of leads coming in, but then you have a very bad demo and closing process, then you just wasted a lot of time. So first let's fix the closing process. Let's get that right, and then let's fill the funnel. One of my clients, Paul, is a great example of this. They were at 26% close rate. It's not horrible, but they weren't happy with it. And so they came in and said, hey, we need some leads. I said, wait, wait, wait. Based on what I'm hearing, there's some things missing within your closing process that we need to tighten up. We put some formulas in place. They're now at 87% on their close rate. They're closing almost nine out of every ten of their demos. And once that happens, now it's, let's fill the funnel, let's just crush marketing. And they are absolutely murdering it now.

[A]

Yeah. Another thing I was listening to another one of your podcasts and you mentioned a very important metric, because we are the metrics that measure a podcast. And it was lead form, kind of a contact us demo request to demo completed. It's something as a metric that so many companies don't pay attention to. And it's like a black hole. Some, some people just go into it, right?

[B]

It's crazy, Ray, how many people are missing us. It's a really, really important part of your entire conversion journey. And we look at different steps along the journey of how much you're converting at each step. And that's one of the best ways for me to identify where are the leaks in your process and what do we need to fix first? And I was literally just talking to somebody today who was coming to me to work with me and I always ask them, okay, so how many leads are you generating a month? They're like, well, we don't know. I'm like, wait, you don't know? I was kind of like, okay, well I've heard that before, but it's really rare. How do you not know? Like, well, we have demos, we know how many demos we have. I'm like, that's great. It's good to know your demo count. But if you don't know the number of people who are requesting demos, raising their hand, saying I want more information, or at least replying to your, your cold emails, if you don't know that number, then you can't tell what's your lead to demo ratio, which is one of the least tracked ratios and yet one of the most important ratios within a sales process, whether it's SaaS or otherwise. It means how many leads are you generating that are interested? We don't need to worry about Those high level MQLs yet to just kind of watch a video. But the people who are actually interested and want to talk to somebody, how many of those are there versus the ones who actually attend a demo? And that's the important part. Attend the demo, not just book the demo. But we need them to actually show up and go through the process. Process. And so, so many times we have leads who say, I'm interested, they even submit a form, but we don't have the right process to capture them and we don't get them, you know, into a demo quick enough. And then once we book them, we don't do a good job and make sure they show up. So we get no shows. There's a lot of fall off. And actually, Ray, it's pretty interesting across the SaaS world, for people who do not track this number, it's about 42% is about the average of leads who say, I'm interested, I want to talk to somebody who actually end up talking to somebody. Which is crazy. Less than half of the leads who opted in and said, I want to talk actually ever get talked to. The companies who start tracking this, they get to 70%. Even the good ones get to 80% or more than 90% in terms of their lead to demo ratio. Look at how many more qualified leads you can talk to and close if you have the right process to do it.

[A]

And if you add on top of that, our benchmarking research says that an inbound lead, that hand raiser will close at 2 to 2.5 times higher rate than someone that you actually generated from outbound activity.

[B]

Do you find the same thing I do? I do. It depends sometimes on the industry and sometimes on the market and the product. But yes, I've seen that across the board as well.

[A]

Okay, so I threw a metric at you because you talked about it. Is there another metric in that 1 million to 5 million that you really like to kind of evaluate the efficacy of their customer acquisition motion?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I love LTV to cac. I think it's a super important metric anywhere. It's really hard, really, really early. Because ltv, by the way, is your lifetime value and CAC is your customer acquisition cost. And what that means is how much is a customer going to be worth to you across their entire lifetime of working with you versus how much did it cost you to acquire them? How much did it cost you? Just how much you spend on that sales and marketing effort to actually get them as a customer. Now, LTV to CAC, we want that to be at least three to one. Meaning if you put a dollar into your marketing machine, you better get at least $3 back out of it. If it's less than that, it's not a good business because you're also spending on many other things outside of your sales and marketing. That means you're not going to make money. More than that is really good. What people find sometimes though is they get imbalanced. I have a client who is at 29 to 1 and you start to say, wow, that's great. So you put $1 into your marketing machine, you get 29 out. That's amazing. And yes, it is for a short term. That's awesome. But what it also means though is you're not growing fast enough. It means that if it's that good, then we need to feed more money into your marketing. We need to just start hammering because if it's that big on your lifetime value to the customer acquisition cost, put more marketing into it. A really good balance is somewhere four or five to one. If you're in four or five to one, maybe six to one, that's good. If you're above that, put more money in. If you're below that, fix your closing process or fix your costs that you're spending on it.

[A]

Very line. With our benchmarking from six months ago, 4.2 is the median for LTV to CAC and 75th percentile is at 5.1. So very much in line. So now there's a new trend out there. Everyone's talking about product led growth, right? We did some additional benchmarking about six months ago and 52% of B2B SaaS companies said they had some level of product led growth. Maybe it was a new product or an add on product that they were doing a freemium model, et cetera. So my question is, are you seeing that in a lot of your new customers and does that introduce some new challenges from that initial customer acquisition motion?

[B]

Yes. So for me, product led growth, which I think for a lot of founders is kind of the dream, right? Hey, I created this product. I don't really want to have to talk to people or try and sell them on, on, on the phone or zoom. I'd rather they just go sign up online. Right, well, great. Of course, yeah, that's the dream. The problem is it's not reality for a lot of them. Product led growth can work. There's a lot of factors at play. The problem is we've seen some of these success stories, the slacks, the asanas maybe, which still is having some struggle, but obviously we've seen success stories. Dropbox would probably be one of the good ones. And we're like, oh well, we were just going to do that. The problem is it's not as easy as it looks. First of all, your price point, if your price point is over a hundred bucks a month, it's going to be really, really hard. Under a hundred bucks a month, it gets a lot easier. And under 50 bucks, I don't recommend much sales process at all. So you're going to spend a lot of money on people or effort with not a lot of return. But I have people come to me like, yeah, we want to do plg. I'm like, okay, what's your price point? They're like, that's about A thousand a month. I'm like, not happening. People aren't just clicking around the web spending $10,000, $12,000 a year from just clicking on what they see. So you have to understand first price point. Secondly, I've had a lot of people who've come to me after they've tried a product led growth strategy and realized it's really difficult to get off the ground. I think it's much easier once you have some traction, once you have some momentum, once you have a following and an awareness out there. Because then you can say like you said, hey, we've got a new feature or a new product line that you can add on or you can develop or you have some affiliates who are feeding into that to help the product grow. So in certain scenarios I think it works. But in general, when people think, oh, I'm going to create this software and just everybody's just going to come and buy it rarely ever happens.

[A]

Yeah, another misperception. Some additional research we did. Most people think, oh, if I have a PLG as our primary customer acquisition motion, my sales cost will go down. Sales and marketing specifically. And what's interesting is that is true in the early stages of growth, but at about $20 million ARR and above. Do you know that product led growth companies actually had more sales and marketing investment than a sales led because the conversion, the retention, it took more effort at that stage of the company's growth. I was shocked by that.

[B]

Matt, that's super interesting. I haven't heard that Ray, but that is amazing information.

[A]

Okay, this is the hot take moment of the of the podcast. I was having dinner last night with Jeremy Donovan. I don't know if you know Jeremy. Jeremy was the SVP of revenue strategy at Salesloft. Now he's the head of revenue strategy at Insight Partners. A $97 billion with private equity and VC. And I shared a belief and I said I think in two to five years that the B2B sales role in SaaS will change dramatically and it's going to be less about prospecting, negotiation and closing and more about being like a customer and product sherpa where they're going to need to understand the product and how to get the most value out of it and how it aligns to the top business priorities within their customers. Especially in a PLG motion, if there is some type of low end freemium or free trial, they don't want to talk to a salesperson, they want to talk to a product expert. What do you say about that hot take?

[B]

Well I mean, for me, I've always tried to make my salespeople, not salespeople, quote, unquote, in terms of they don't even have sales in their title. We would never mention the word sales. We would always talk about. You're gonna talk with one of our experts. We've used the word advocates also. This is our customer advocate for a sales role. And so we're always focused on how can we help them. Right. How can we help this person solve what they're trying to solve now, in many cases, their problem, if we've done our marketing right and we've gotten our funnel set up right, their problem is something our system solves. And so we've got it set up right. But we don't ever want people to think we're here to sell you. Because the worst type of salespeople are people who are purely focused on sales. We should be focused on helping. How can we help somebody? How can we get them to overcome these challenges and solve their problems? Now what I found is the people who are helping the most are selling the most. So maybe I'm hoping that your vision of this happening, that you have this premonition, Ray, that this is going to happen because people are actually going to listen to people like you and me and start doing the right stuff.

[A]

Well, what's interesting, I saw someone showed me this big pricing database and it was from hundreds of SaaS companies. And they looked at companies that had the same price of a solution like 20 to 50k or 50 to 100k. Matt, this is where I'm so concerned about how we've trained SalesPeople the last five years. The discount ranges, same exact product category, same value. Right. Let's say is a $500,000 contract, 80% to 20%. And I'm like, wow, how can you have that varied of price realization and similar product category and similar value the deal? And to me, it's like we haven't taught a lot of salespeople that you, you really need to make sure you're delivering value, not just closing deals at 80%. I was shocked. Matt, do you see it a lot in younger companies where discount is such a key lever in closing deals?

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, that's one of the things, especially early stage companies who are trying to kind of overtake some of the more entrenched competitors. They're, they're wanting to use price as one of the strategies and I always try and caution them from that because if you teach your market price, price, price make sure you're focused and you get the smallest price. Here's the problem. Let's say you do sell them and let's say they're your customers, but you've already taught them to switch to the lowest cost competitor so somebody new comes along with a lower price than yours because maybe along the way you started increasing their price like you should. Now they're going to switch. You've already taught them to churn. You told them, I want you to churn. Instead of. You told them that we are focused on helping. We have a great team and we have a product that will continually get better and always meet your needs. We're always listening to what you're saying. We're going to always get to where you have to be. That feels a lot better than, hey, just choose the lowest price. And the companies who are doing that are struggling, as opposed to the companies who price correctly get to where their market is. Now, I'm not saying you have to be at the same thing as the person who's been around for five or 10 years because they already, they already have that brand awareness. But get too close. If they're at, let's say, 100%, get to 80, 85% of their cost. So you still have a little bit of an advantage. It still looks good, but it doesn't look crazy. If you're like 20%. I have people like, oh, yeah, we're charging 4,000 a year. I'm like, that's great. Where's the competition? They're like, they're at 30,000. I'm like, okay, here's the problem. Let me ask you this. So let's say you and your spouse, or, you know, let's say you have a girlfriend, you've been having some trouble and it's not going great and things are a little bit rocky, but you want to prove that it's going to be okay and you want to show how much you care about this relationship because there's been a lot of problems. And so you decide, I'm going to take you out to dinner. And you look, you've got a couple places you found, and one place you get the $4.99 meal. And for $4.99, you get the burger, you get the fries, you get a drink that comes with it. It's amazing. Or there's the hundred dollar meal and everything's all a cart. You get the steak, but you have to pay extra for the sides. You have to pay extra for the salad. Now I ask you things are rocking. You've got problems. Are you even going to look at the 4.99 combo meal? No. With problems, if you have something that's a real challenge you need to solve, you don't even factor that in. You know, you need something that is going to solve your problems. And that's the same with the prospects. If you're too low, they won't even look at you. They'll think that you're not going to solve the problems that we have. They're going to go right to the higher price. And so you absolutely took yourself out of play by trying to undercut.

[A]

I love the analogy there. So we're already coming up into 30 minutes, so let me ask you this question. What haven't I asked you that you think would be really valuable for our listening audience to learn from everything you've seen over the last five, ten years?

[B]

Good question. The biggest thing that I would say is build your personal brand. And we talked about brand awareness, we talked about the company awareness. But one of the things that I've only learned recently, like the last three years, is building your personal brand actually can have a big impact. And this doesn't just apply to the founders or the big execs. This applies to everybody. If you are a rep, if you're out there selling for a company, absolutely. Build your personal brand. First of all, it's going to help your company and people are going to flock to you. People are going to come to you because of the value you're sharing out there, because of your perceived authority within your space. But also, if something happens with this company and you need to go to another one, they're going to already love you. They already know you. They'll already be aware of you. And it's really easy to make that switch. But let's say you are the leader. By the way, those leaders who have great personal brands do very, very well. I mean, look at Elon Musk, Tesla, they have, I think, 29 million followers on Twitter. Tesla does. Elon Musk has 129 million followers. People buy from people. Build your personal brand and it'll make you very strong.

[A]

Not that you're out there teaching people how to be creators and building their personal brand, but where do they start, Matt? Where would you say? Just start here.

[B]

Well, share what you know. And so a lot of people ask me, hey, what do I even share? Well, what are you good at? What do you like? What have you done? What's your experience? Write all these things down and then just start Writing emails about it. Write emails to your list, Write posts on social. Where is your market based? Is your market on LinkedIn? Are they on Twitter? Are they on Facebook? Wherever they are, go, be there. And then just start sharing some of these things that will help them again, focus on helping them. Don't focus on how can I make a buck off of this? And the more you help, the more you'll give. I just did a post on LinkedIn like two weeks ago, and I'm literally giving away a spreadsheet. I gave away a spreadsheet that people can use in their company that helps them track all their metrics and all that the post has right now, I think it's like 1.3 million views, which is a lot on LinkedIn, because I'm like, hey, who wants this spreadsheet? Here you go. And people loved it. And that's the type of thing you can do when you build your brand.

[A]

How long ago did you start building your brand on LinkedIn, Matt?

[B]

Three years.

[A]

That's incredible. Congratulations. Okay, thank you. Well, let's give the listening audience a chance to get to know you a little bit more on a personal basis through three quick questions here at the end. Number one, is there a CEO or a company that you think is a must follow in today's B2B SaaS industry?

[B]

I mean, for me, I work a lot with smaller companies and entrepreneurial leaders. And for me, Russell Brunson, CEO of ClickFunnels, has done a great job of figuring out how to market, how to drive traffic and how to kind of put that personal brand, company, brand together to really scale. So he would be the one, I'd say.

[A]

So Click Funnels. Russell Brunson. Good one. Okay. Second, a different tool. Is there a tool that you recommend to every one of your SaaS customers that's really going to help them with their scaling and efficiency?

[B]

I mean, it sounds cliche to me, but slack. I mean, everybody's remote these days. It feels like my company's remote. I have people all over the country. I have people all over the world, and without slack, it wouldn't work. So slack to me, that's interesting.

[A]

And then the third question. We have a lot of early career aspiring people. They want to be the next Matt Wallach, right? They want to be both a B2B SaaS founder or a real influential thought leader. What advice do you give them right.

[B]

Now, right out of undergrad school, take the job. So a lot of people like, well, I'm not going to do this job because it's too low for me or to this. You know, I've done some low jobs. I worked in a housekeeping department one time and I learned a lot. I still have a lot of experience from that role and from other roles in my early days that I apply every day that I tell my clients now that I use within my SaaS company now. So whatever you're doing, soak it up and know that it's going to be great and valuable for you in the future.

[A]

Well, take the job, learn and then pay it forward.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Love it. Hey Matt, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Metrics of Major Podcast.

[B]

My pleasure, Ray. It's been awesome.

[A]

And to our listening audience, if you're enjoying the conversations and guests we're having, like Matt Wallach and talking about how to scale your early stage SaaS company, it would mean the world to us. Go ahead and subscribe to the Metrics of Measureup podcast on your favorite podcast app. Go ahead and give us that five star rating because that amplifies the distribution so other people can take advantage of our guests and the content we provide. Thank you everyone. Thank you Matt.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you for listening to today's Metrics to Measure up podcast. If you would like to learn more about B2B SaaS metrics and benchmarks, please visit revopsquared.

[B]

Com.