How to build a growth flywheel

Link Roundups

• The Most Important SaaS Metric of All: Net New Customer Growth (Link)

• Shifting Positioning - Why B2B Tech is Different (Link)

• The average enterprise has 23 vendors in their core GTM tech stack! (Link)

• Is SaaS Math Broken? (Link)

SaaS Weekly Reads

The Top SaaS Reads of Q1 2024

Go-to-market efficiencies were top of mind for readers. From wedge marketing to partnership plays, and writing high-converting email flows, the focus was finding levers to pull to drive scalable pipeline creation.

Here's a review of the most clicked-on articles from the SaaS Weekly roundups!

Ian Ito @ SaaS Weekly [saas]

Growth Reads

1-2-3 – Clay's GTM Creator Playbook

Enabling creators to build community is the recipe for an organic growth flywheel. A great example of this is Clay's GTM motion.

Here's the breakdown.
👉 Creators Program – empowering thought leaders to create better content about Clay through tools and materials (plus it's a lever for UGC to drive awareness).

👉 Experts Program – think of this as a partner program meshed with a premier marketplace, where third-party service providers implement and onboard Clay customers.

👉 Templates Infrastructure – Building a template-hub where Clay users can share pre-built tables, helping new users to see quicker time to value.

Jared Robin @ The Collab [growth]

Reverse Engineering Your Way to $100,000,000+

The legend himself, Jason Lemkin - founder of SaaStr, reveals the secrets to building a $100M business. While there is a ton to unpack in this podcast episode, look out for these rules and how they can apply to your business.

Here are my top three highlights.
👉 $400K Revenue per Employee – Set this as the new minimum to ensure efficiency and profitability.

👉 Multi-Product Strategy – Expand beyond a single offering – your second product should outperform the first.

👉 International Revenue – Target at least 30% of your total revenue from global markets.

Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr [growth]

Marketing & Sales Reads

Your ABM Playbook 🎰

WTF is ABM? It's a topic everyone wants but not many people agree upon.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a cross-collaboration motion between sales and marketing to run highly personalized campaigns.

ABM comes in three flavors.
1️⃣ Strategic – highly bespoke, customized outreach for a small list of individual accounts.

2️⃣ Lite – brings together clusters of five to 15 accounts with similar business challenges or in similar industries.

3️⃣ Programmatic – think of this as ABM at scale, where you're using tech to apply low-touch personalization for a wide target list (e.g., programmatic landing pages).

Kevan Lee @ Kevan Lee [marketing]

We Tested 13 AI Sales Tools – Here’s What You Need to Know About Them

There are multiple levers you can pull to improve sales efficiency. Tools like Lavender for AI-driven email or Crystal for contact data help to streamline the prospecting process.

While I'm not personally using AI to write outbounds (should I?), I am using data orchestration platforms like Clay to streamline the GTM motion.

Joanna Kaminska @ Close [sales]

Lessons From A Founder

Fundraising advice for founders

Nurturing relationships with investors shouldn’t be an afterthought. It’s better to have contacts to call on when the timing is right rather than pitching a raise on your first meeting.

Here are a few pieces of advice from an investor’s point of view.

👉 Prioritize your outreach. Rank potential VCs based on their alignment with your business model and previous investment.

👉 Nurture long-term relationships. Develop relationships through regular, meaningful interactions rather than frequent, superficial meetings.

👉 Communicate regularly. Share selective updates to keep investors informed without sharing too much information.

Liz Christo @ Dear Stage 2 [founder]

Podcasts I'm listening to

• Acquired | Democratizing the Tools of Big Tech with Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji (Link)

• Mostly Metrics | Rippling CFO Adam Swiecicki on Building a Compound Startup and Channeling Ambition (Link)

SaaS Weekly Resources

1) The SaaS Weekly Database: Search Thousands of the Best SaaS Articles and Resources

2) Generative AI Tracker: B2B SaaS Companies Adding GenAI Capabilities

SaaSy Social Posts

Last issue’s most clicked links

• Elevate Your Marketing Dashboard: How to Impress the CEO, CRO, and CFO (Link)

• How Profitable Should SaaS Be? (Link)

• The Trigger Technique: Turn Buyer Stories into Smarter Marketing Campaigns (Link)