Tuesday, October 19

Topic

• Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing

Objective

• To discuss how you can drive hockey-stick growth at software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and, in so doing, illuminate the black box of SaaS sales and marketing

Readings

• Brian Martin, Chief Revenue Officer, Litmus (McIntire ’96) will be guest lecturing this class session. Research him and Litmus via LinkedIn and the Internet in advance of class.
• SaaS and the Rule of 40: Keys to the Critical Value Creation Metric (Roche and Tandon 2021)

Discussion Questions

1. Suppose that Grammarly, which has primarily grown its business as a business-to-consumer (B2C) app, is moving into the business-to-business (B2B) sector, selling enterprise plans to companies. If Grammarly hired you to grow its enterprise business, what would your plan be? How would you think about growth?
2. Suppose you’re in a hiring role for a SaaS company and ready to hire your first sales rep. What characteristics would you look for in job candidates? What questions would you ask in the interview process?
3. Now suppose you’re looking to hire a sales leader. What responsibilities will be in this person’s job description? What characteristics would you look for in job candidates?

Assignments Due

• Hubspot Case Reflection
  
• Answers to today’s discussion questions
  • After signing into Blackboard, submit your answers to this folder

References

Roche, Paul and Sid Tandon (2021), “SaaS and the Rule of 40: Keys to the Critical Value Creation Metric,” McKinsey & Company, (August), 1–6.