YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Lemkin

lines on the record: 158
first: 2024-02-18
most recent: 2024-02-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you for all the time, Lady. I'm a super fan. It's great to be here and let me know anything I can do to support you or your community going forward.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, put yourself in your shoes. Would you answer this? Would you do this? But I would say half the stuff gets open to red. So I know that's a rambly answer, but we talked about sales. You can reach anybody in the world via email. It's magical.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Email pitch, I will read 100% of them. Like track it, put it in MixMax, put it in HubSpot, put it. You will see I will open that email if the title's good. It doesn't mean I can respond. I'm sorry, I know Lindny can't respond, but realize it is going to be read. If you need a favor, like a help, if you ask the question super discreetly, like Jason, here's the LinkedIn, I'm Lenny. I'm trying to hire this person. I'm at four million AR doubling. Should I hire her? There's a chance I'll look at that LinkedIn I can tell you. Or if it's one question, but if it's an hour or coffee it isn't going to work. But it is going to get red. Do that by email. Do it even by LinkedIn.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In general, just go to this kooky URL saster sa.com. That's a way to access a lot of what we're talking about. If they want to reach me to be transparent, I get a lot of impound like I'm sure you do. It is be honest, guys. It is hard to process the amount of inbound that folks get, right? But I'll give you an insider tip. I do see almost all of it. So if you want to reach me, if you just want like an hour of my time randomly, I'm sorry, honestly, I'm sorry. I don't have that hour of time. Okay. But if you want to interact lightly, I mean, I'm on Twitter all most days at Jason LK. I'm on LinkedIn a lot. Just search for me, Jason Lemkin. LinkedIn's pretty cool. I have 260,000 followers. We have a really good conversations. And I will tell you if you have a question, like you really need some help in your business or you want to do a pitch. If you send me the world's best...”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't go to the so find my role in general is people wonder should I go to events? Is it worth my time? It's a waste of time. I know you thought about it. And the irony is, even though we produce events, I used to think that. I didn't want to do events. I just wanted to do meetups, right? I just wanted, I was shy. I just wanted to do meetups. But then I learned over time that the best events bring the best vendors, the best executives, the best everything together. So pick the one or two best events in your industry. And even if you're antisocial, try to go to one or two a year, go long. It pays off. It pays off. But don't maybe don't bother with the rest, even if they're ski slopes or they're fun, that the subscale just doesn't work for meeting and marketing to people. It just doesn't work.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I know you don't do traditional events, but you do do meetups in your community. And I know they're worth it. I know they're worth it. Bringing your customers together, bringing your community together. And we talked about this offline before we started. Second tier, third tier events, I do not think are worth it because they do not attract the best people. It's just a fact. We don't. Most people, it turns out from our founders are our core ICP. They go to two events a year on average, two events a year. And they'll do other steak dinners. So if you go to one of the two that they're at, you just might bump into Jeff Lawson or Eric Juan or whoever the next one. They might be there. That might be one of their two, but they don't go to number three through 10.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fall six or eight million dollars behind. That's what happened in March 2020. We were the first major event to be canceled by COVID in March 2020. The first one. RSA happened for security of the week before, then we got canceled. So we lost $10 million in one day. And it took a long time to dig out of that hole, Letty, especially since we monetized like nothing. It took a long time”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lenny's little free meetup caught zero, right? And then the What a Cloudflare's Office cost zero, and the one at Hilton B maybe costs $200. But then it costs $1,000 per person at scale, right? Even more like Moscone, like in San Francisco, probably Moscow, you're approaching $2,000 per person because you have to buy about $15 to $20 million of hotel nights to do an event in Moscone, right? So I don't know if that's, I mean, it's a side topic, lending side podcast of people that care, but this diseconomies of scale, but there are a handful of public companies that do like Con Lions, Money 2020, Shop Talk, a few others that are at Sastras scale, and they cobble together these very profitable public companies, but they all got to do at least 20 to 30 million because you've got to get over a 10. And it's intimidating to get over a $10 million net, right? And so what it means is we have to spend like $14 to 16 months each year planning for SASTR annual because it's not that fun if you”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Million revenue, okay, and we lost two million. Everyone lost 2 million. Every single one lost 2 million. As you can see in the financial state, even zoom in at scale just announced how much money they lose at Zoomtopia. So it's a terrible business. It has, what I like to say is it has diseconomies of scale.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“$10 million to turn the lights on. Now, I'm being a little expansive in what I mean by turn the lights on, but this is what it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you about $1,000 per attendee in the Bay Area or Las Vegas to have a mass scale of it. Not smaller, not one day in Grand Ballroom B, but a multi-day event, right? The AV is 1.5 million. The food and beverage is 1.5 million. The tenting is $800,000. I can keep going. So once you get to like 20, 30, 40 million in revenue, quietly, there's public companies out there. They actually become, they have software like margins at that scale. But before that, it's brutal, right? And when I started doing these events, I interviewed the head of it back before March 2020 when tech companies did their own events. They've pretty much given up, which is an interesting side topic. Big ones, like big, not small ones, but big ones. Biden review, the head of events at everyone, right? At Twilio and Marquetto and da. And they all be like, well, how'd the event go? They'd all be the same. Well, we brought in about 1.5 million.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Room C. We don't like to go to Venzima. But it turns out your customers don't care. They want to be together and talk about your app, right? And then if you do community like you do, you could probably charge a couple hundred dollars for tickets and get some sponsors and bring in some revenue, right? But then after Hilton Ballroom B, it costs like $2 million to turn the lights on. And Saster Annual. So our Europa then in London's in early June, June 4th to 5th, please come if you want. That costs $2 million to turn the lights on in London. To turn the lights on in the Bay Area for 12,000 people in September in the Bay Area, which is the most expensive place, right? It's $10 million to turn the lights on.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you graduate, and then you'll do like a meetup, and like you'll do it at someone's office, some tech company, they'll give it to you for free. They have an extra office. That costs nothing, right? And then you're like, well, that one, well, we got 100, 200 people came to Lenny's thing at DigitalOcean. And then you say, you know, I'm going to do an event. And then you rent like a theater, a disuse. And these theaters are actually kind of cheap because they're darker in the day. There's not a lot going on and a lot of like, not movie theaters, but like, you know, music. So those are cheap. But then you're like, well, there's only one stage and it smells like beer. So like then the next year you do a hotel. And hotel's pretty expensive. It's like half a million, eight hundred thousand. And I hated hotels. But you know what I learned from business model? It's turnkey, Lenny. So your marketing manager can call up the Hilton in any city. And in two weeks, spool up some mediocre AV, some mediocre chicken wings, and drinks. Okay. And you and I don't like to go to the Hilton that much, the ball.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Steak though, yeah. Well, no, but steak does work. I mean, I'm not a big steak guy, it could be any, just something nice where they want to go. It's just where they want to go. Your customers will sell your prospects for you. Your customers will do the selling for bring them together. When you do it really small, it's cheap because how much does that back room cost at the steakhouse, right?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's taken on a life of its own. There's a lot of learnings, I think I didn't intend to do mass scale events. I intended to just do meetups because I had a community like you do meetups. So it was not, it was absolutely an accident. The learnings are it's extremely expensive. And it has this weird curve. Okay, that's this weird curve where, and this is more, because I think actually all founders, all startups should be doing events for their own customers, at least steak dinners. You should get your customers. If you get your customers and prospects together, you sell more. Get your customers and prospects. It does not need to be a million dollar or $10 million event. It can be Roots Chris's. It can be whatever. Does not even be a fan. Just get them together.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And 3,000 people came, including the evening. And so we just kept going. So we get about 10 to 12,000 people together a year. What that means is change. It's no longer novel. I'm not the only person producing B2B content anymore. I'm not the only founder that sold their company like in the old days. There's plenty of much more successful founders and better. I certainly don't, I don't do very many podcasts because I'm not a tenth, a hundredth as good as you. I do like one a quarter, for example. But the events have become this meeting place for founders that have hit scale, that are somewhere between one million and 20 million, and especially folks that aren't in Silicon Valley, especially folks that aren't sitting in Hayes Valley or wherever, that don't have a community. And that surprised me in the beginning how many international folks would fly all the way to the Bay Area. I remember this founder came from Perth, Australia for the first estimate. I'm like, thanks for coming, but this is a lot of work. He's like, I didn't come for you. I came because there's no one like me in Perth.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any business, no matter how weird it is that's at scale, like the best one in it, like it's always interesting, I think, for case studies, right? The best way to pick anything, the best cup maker, whoever it is, whoever makes the best, like this is not an interesting business, the Starbucks cup on his own, but the best person, I pretty much guarantee you there's a good story there, right? Saster is a community as well like you have. We started this really early in 2011, 2012 for B2B founders back when that seemed like a weird thing to do. Now it doesn't seem so weird. So we built a lot of content and we started doing events and meetups. I never did a meetup. You do a lot of meetups, but when I did meetups, I never actually even been to one. So I did meetups in 2012 and 2013. But like a thousand people came to the meetups. Like that will make sense to you today. But a decade ago for B2B, it was pretty, like people were like, why are all these people here? We thought there were six of us that cared about B2B. So then we did a big event. We did a one-day SAS January 2020.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you will find that by being totally committed, going 110%, and also finding a way to be kind, that will endure across your whole career. So I know it's, right? Because I think I'm good but not always kind. It's how I challenge myself all the time. Be kinder in that conversation. And the big epiphany we already talked about it, the big epiphany, it shouldn't have taken me this long to realize that anytime an employee fails, it's your fault, be kind. You hired them. They never knew what they were getting themselves into. If the job's too hard, if they lack the skills If there's not enough budget, if there's not enough people, if it requires too many hours of work, you should have known that, not them. Be kind. Be kind to every single person on your team that doesn't work out. That's not just putting together an email spreadsheet and sending it out. Try. Try harder, be there for them. Be kind.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It because it was good for his own career, right? And that was so mad. But I like broke the relationship forever, right? That's just one random example. And I just think there's so much advice to Firefast and to be relentless and do all these things, right? But you've interviewed so many people, Lenny, right? I mean, so many great leaders. I haven't done what you've done, but I've talked to almost all the top CEOs in SaaS, okay? They're kind. It doesn't mean that they're soft. They're not soft. Okay, they make tough decisions every day, but they are kind. And so in this world where everyone feels like they're getting ripped off or they're not paid enough or I want, you know, founder pay for founder work, this motto really, it's troubling. Everyone has founder pay for founder. You want me to work more than 30 hours, Lenny? I need 30% of the company. I need founder pay for founder work. It's like you.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's be kind When I reflect on my career mistakes, I don't think I'm mean. I actually think I care more than most people on the planet. I like to think I've helped a lot of people. But it's not taking the time to be kind at times and not taking time to be kind when things don't work out, not taking time to be kind when you leave a situation, not taking time to be kind, when maybe someone's done the wrong thing, right? Not taking time to be kind to a customer that leaves, right? I remember in the early days of Adobe Sign of EchoSign, we had a top tech customer and I killed myself to close this customer, right? Famous, huge, huge tech company today. And then our champion changed, right? Champion changed a big issue in software product and came in and brought in DocuSign instead of us. And man, I was just so mad. I just tore into this guy. This guy had actually had dinner at my house, right? And he did it. He actually never, he just.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I probably use this 50% of the time of the iPad So that is it. The other ones are a difference to me. Yeah, it's Android. Yeah.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, the reason it's cool is this has changed the way I do productivity, one plus. It's the OnePlus, One Plus. Yeah, it's the first one that's the same form factor, same weight, same. So there's really no loss, right? And I just, well, you know, I can use my normal phone here like I'm using. It's got a little funky, but it's the same. And then to be able to do content, to be able to check, to be able to do full email, full counting, full everything like an iPad.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's not, is it as good as a clip team, right? No. But literally in 50 seconds, what's interesting is it can do something I don't have time to. I could never make YouTube clips. I could never make Instagram shorts. I could never make. It just would never happen, right? It would never happen. And the fact that one product enables you to do something at a minimum viable quality you can do before, like I'm a super fan. It's pretty interesting. So that's my favorite. And my other one is this one. This is the Fully Fund that's finally as good as a normal phone. See, there's the terminal list that I've got”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My two aren't really amazing, but I'll answer them. The one I love this Opus Clip app for making clips from video. I know you have a whole team, so you probably don't need it. But I produce a lot. I mean, a lot of us who content marketing, right? Whoever does it. We produce a lot of content. I don't have enough time to do this. So the only AI tool that I found helpful so far is OpusClip, which takes all of the incredible amount of YouTube content we have, force ranks it, and turns it into 50%.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I answered it, but I'll bring it up again in case you do it again what do you want to do your first 14 days to head a product or head of sales? What do you want to do your first 14 days? It's not a technical 30 day plan. You don't have to do 28 slides. It's what I call a Colombo question. Not that I really watch Colombo, but Colombo is this old detective on TV who I don't know if you ever, he would ask these dumb questions, right? And then the murderer would thought Columbo was so dumb. But by the end of the episode, it would always incriminate himself because of the question. So when I interview, I always do Colombo questions. They're never tough ones, right? They're always nice. I don't know if I'm nice. I'm honest, but the interviews. But then I would, so Letty, what would you do your first 14 days as VPU product here? And they don't want to visit customers. Don't hire them for either all sales or products. Just don't hire them.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You remember Maverick was supposed to come out before COVID, right? And Tom Cruise said no. He's like, this is such a good product. We're going to wait years for this thing to come out. I'm like, I'm not going to like this. I mean, cocktail was pretty good, but I'm not going to. But as a product, when I watch this movie three times from a product perspective, and just like software, when something is done that way, no wasted calories, no, like you see everything tied together, that's the kind of software we love, right? It just delights us when it works better than we expected. So those are my two.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm not into the Chris Pratt. I'm not into that goofy superhero movie as he does. And I know people like it, but the terminalist is pretty. It's written by this ex-Navy SEAL that I think tech people don't read everyone, but outside of tech reads this author, but Amazon did this thingalist. And I think the reason it gripped me is like this post, it's like a lot of tech is right now is like We're trying to do the right things, but are we doing the right things? It's just confusing. So this one, this one I couldn't put down the terminalist. That was my favorite show. The other one, you know, the one I liked that I couldn't believe. You want the second one, even though as product people, Maverick, and I'll tell you why, this movie Maverick, okay, you wouldn't think I'd be a Maverick guy, but the quality of this product, here's what was so high.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the one I just want to take a past. I know they're the same. I read more than anybody else in the plan, but I wish I had those two great books that have changed my mind the last 12 months. But hopefully I've added some value. But this one, I think I got to take a mulligan on.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bigger companies. They need someone to inject energy again in many cases. Energy has been lost. And it would be great if product can do it and say, listen, let's do something like even if we're not exactly sure how to get more leads, okay? Even if we're not exactly sure what to do, there's one thing under our control is the code we write and the product we ship. Let's do a three great things this year. Let's just do them not good, great. Let's do three great. And what you will find is the whole company will respond, including sales, including marketing. If we start shipping great thing, few things inspire teams more than when you're shipping great products. So be, if you weren't the leaders the last few years, if you were being forced to weaponize your customer base, somehow be ship three great things this year. That's my challenge. Ship three great things.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think just make this the year of the customer, guys. And I really think that sales has been under so much pressure the last 18 months. Customer success has changed. Product teams have to step up, step up. This is your time to do great things this year as product people. Be the voice of the customer. Be the VP of free. Be the whatever. Be the champion. Stick your neck out. Work harder, folks. Work harder. The funnest part of anything in startups is working hard. But in product, it's extra fun by working harder. You have the more fun conversations. Find the delight in product is making customers happy. It's not worth it otherwise. It's otherwise it's drudgery and it's endless PRDs and Gantt charts and mindless discussions. Make your customers happier this year. You will be happy. This is the year of product. And we all get a pass for whatever bad deeds we did or mediocre deeds we did in 2023. Get back and be the vanguard in your companies. Startups need and.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And your growth versus like let's say 1% converts. I'm just making that up. Going from 1 to 1.1 actually is a big deal at that scalar, 1.2, right? That's okay, but you've got to nurture the 490,000, not spend all the calories just ramming the paid edition through, right? But only it's a fun thing because once you hit a little bit of scale, this is part of your job as founders and product leaders is who's going to be this VP of free? Like it's not growth. I don't think it's the growth team or something. Their focus is they got to hit their goal. Their goal is to get another half million out of the newsletter this year. And that's their bonus aside to it. You think they're going to work on the free ones? No”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But even they, even in the organization I work with that have those structures, that that person is focused on monetizing that tale. Who stands up for the $590,000 other readers of Lenny? Who's their champion?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's okay at service now, and that's okay in certain products, but the products are, the best products invest the engineering cycles to have a free edition, whether that's truly free, whether it's an extended free trial, whether it's a long tail or a medium tail, the amount of all of your product is better if people can actually, if you have a free edition, all of your customers benefit, even your enterprise customers benefit. They all benefit.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen, I'm a big fan of long tails when they work. They don't always work for enterprise products. I'm a big fan of delivering more value than you take out for your customers. And I am a big fan overall of free because, and I know you'll agree with me this. Every founder figures this out at some point, free products are better software. Products that cannot offer a free edition cut corners because they don't have to be good at onboarding. Products that do not have a free edition have human beings that bridge the game.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the 590,000 of them that love Lenny that don't convert, right? If you over monetize them. Then Lenny's empire's community doesn't exist if you over monetize them. But when you bring in a VP of sales for Lenny and a VP of growth and a VP, you can't expect them to care as much about that long tail as you, right?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we get one pass, but earn it. Earn your price increase. Have the longest free trial possible. Own it. And this VP of free thing, like it's got to be founders working with product because no one else cares about the free. You can't expect the sales team to care about free, can you? You can't expect the marketing team to care about free unless they can immediately monetize them, right? Unless they can ram them into conversion. People abuse their long tail in the last 18 months, but your long tail is Even if they don't convert that much, they're your advocates. I mean, how many people read your newsletter? 500,000 people, right?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What feature did you shoe? If you raised prices 8% less year, did you add 30% more value to your product? In the old days, preseers, the answer usually was yes. People would wait up. They would wait a couple years, right? And whatever product from four years ago was so much better. It really was really had earned $19.95 instead of last year, no one earned their price increases. No one came out with an amazing new edition, an amazing new functionality that earned it. They just sent you an email saying, you know, You're paying more.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Price increases they didn't earn, cut the free trials, hid their free editions. I'm going to give you look, you got to give your team a little stress relief, right? So I'm giving every person I work with, every portfolio, everyone a one-year pass. But the past is in the past. We got to get back to being customer-centric and building businesses that build to 1 billion ARR on their own because they're wonderful businesses that are product-centric, right? That recur. Every time you rip a customer off, you lose that relationship's damaged, isn't it? And a controversial thing I say to the product team, but I think this is the right thing if you're going long everyone raised prices last year, as you know, right? Everyone raised prices. The question I ask folks is did you earn it?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's an unseen credit card charge. But do you want to pay $240 up front? I mean, maybe you do it for a riverside or something used all the time, but some random product you just discovered, you're just going to ounce So, who's going to show the data in the bounce, right? A related point in sales, no one does enough, everyone does these win-loss meetings, but no one talks enough about the deals they lost. Everyone talks about the deals they won. All the lore, the tribal lore in sales is how we won the deal. People should be spending more time talking about deals they lost than deals they won. Right. And same thing for this PLG motion if you make your, yes, I know I give everyone a pass for 2023 Everyone whose growth plummeted and did things they shouldn't.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to annual contracts on a spreadsheet looks great. On a spreadsheet, it looks great. You know what's better? Letting customers pay they want to pay. If it's you or me buying for ourselves, Lenny, you know, we're still going to put it on a credit card, aren't we? If it's our own personal, and we want to pay monthly usually, we don't know, even if we usually want to just try it monthly. Big companies want to pay annually because they have procurement departments. Why force people to go the way they don't want to go? So just start, this is a product audience. Product needs to be the voice of the customer. It's not so much customer success as it used to be. It's not so much sales. You've got to be the voice of the customer together with the founders and push these things. Think about, I would do the longest possible trial that is still customer-centric and understand there's tension. Understand there's tension, right? I say anytime I'm in a board meeting where someone wants or some VC says, let's do annual for an S&B. I'm like, no, show me the money. Show me the evidence that this is better for the customer, right? How many times have you gone to buy it something for yourself? And it's like $19 a month. And that's annoying.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who's got a VP of free? Do you know anybody that has a VP of free? I got a VP of growth. I got a VP of product. But who, if you have this massive freebase, who's your VP of free? I know almost no one that has a VP of free, right? And usually it's some kind of collaboration between product and the CEO, right? They're the VP of free. But even then, you need a VP of free and we don't have one. And so just think, there's no perfect answers, but in a world where we're tightening nooses everywhere on trials, we're tightening nooses everywhere. Be carefully advice you get. Be careful the short-term advice. For example, another related terrible piece of advice VCs give you is switch to annual contracts. This is terrible advice. Terrible advice, Lenny. Terrible advice from people who have never built products and aren't in the field.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, waiting four years to convert. And those are epic companies. Those are epic companies. And these are one of the things that only founders can make these decisions. I wrote this post years ago saying, who's your VP of free?”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tomas Tongas did a whole SASA presentation just on free trials and free trial legs. It was really good. But the one thing you didn't know, which I know just being an old timer, is the reason, one of the reasons we have 14-day trials on the internet is in the old days, the Salesforce sales team, when they were S&B focused wanted to close deals that month. So they forced Salesforce to move from 30 to 40 days. There was no evidence it was better for the customer. There was no evidence that it got usage going or people. They just wanted to close deals the same month. And so that's something to be cautious about these metrics and be cautious that they're, since we're talking to product folks, be cautious that their customer centric. You know, that's a Salesforce, and Salesforce is very enterprise now, but in the old days it pushed it to 14 days so the sales reps could make closed deals faster. What we learned from Slack in Zoom until recently was infinite trials work pretty good. So does Canva Slack and Canva Zoom were over.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just be cautious. The last thing I will say is there is another community called Pavilion. I do think it's great pavilion. It does have a lot of networking and stuff for sales and connecting sales with founders. And I am a super fan of what they're doing. That one's worth investing. But be careful about Bob and John's sales courses on the internet. There's just too many.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did almost none of the work, although it's a lot of it's my content. Aaron Ross did it. It's actually really good, and it interviews a lot of top sales leaders and goes through a lot of stuff we did. So I don't usually hype it, but for 15 bucks, I think this, and actually I've never made one dod, I've never even gotten a check for these 100,000 copies, but I do think it's actually, the second edition is pretty good. So I think if you like what we're talking about, the SAS University and the others. I would say I would be very, I just typed my own course, which is free. I don't think I'm shelling something if it's free. The book I don't make a dollar on. I'd be very cautious.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am a voracious reader. If I only wanted to plug myself, and I usually wouldn't, two things that we have, we have something called Sastor University, Saster. It's free. There's a pretty good course on getting learning about sales. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. It just organizes a lot of the stuff we're talking about, and it's free. So I think it's pretty helpful. We actually wrote a book called From Impossible Inevitable that sold about 100,000 copies.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just have the Zoom and they wait. They wait in their inbox for the next step to come, but it doesn't. It rarely comes on its own. That's the number one tip is make sure yourself and you log in in your CRM that you always have a next step after. You don't have to be great at sales as long as you're moving the ball down the field and get it into the red zone and then figure out how to ask for the money. But you don't have to ask for the money until it's in the red zone.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do a demo. A demo is not threatening, right? Whatever the next step is, right? Can we get what's the next step we can get on our books? And listen, and the best salespeople March deals step by step by step by step. And then they put in the time. They've done the demos. They've done the pilot if they need to. They've helped them get going. They've helped them see the value. And then if it takes six steps to say, okay, now we've got five folks at the organization using it. Here's the deal. They love it, right? What can we do, Lenny, to get going? Can we get, can we get a contract sign so we can get going on February 1st? It's just very natural. And founders just end the Zoom.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number one thing they can do, and this is very tactical, at the end of each meeting, because again, both of them are good middlers ahead of product and the founders are good demos. They're good at talking shop. They're good at talking the industry. They're good at talking workflows. Learn. This is the only skill you have to learn. Even if you're not comfortable asking for money, learn to ask for what's the next step, Lenny. This is what all great salespeople have learned to do. Actually, mediocre salespeople are terrible at this. The best salespeople never leave a meeting without a next step. The next step does not have to be a check if that's don't break the relationship, but what's the next meeting? The next meeting might be Lenny. Is there someone else at your company that I could do a demo for? People are lazy. They don't want to do multiple demos. But in 2024, we all have to demo multiple stakeholders. In 2021, it was one stakeholder. Now it's a four stakeholder sale. So if you don't know what to ask at the end of the call, ask who else lenny, is there someone else? I know you're excited to buy our product, but who else is there someone else organization? Can I help you? Can I just.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right? And I would say, and I would let me flip it around. So the magical thing at a high level that it compounds, if you have a self-service model, a PLG model, I actually think the number one most important metric is churn going to this churn, churn, churn, churn. And when I meet any startup like for investing or anything, if the churn is not top decile for a low-end product, I'm always out. It's almost unsolvable. It's almost unsolvable. This three to four percent a month churn rate that a lot of S&B stuff, it's almost unsolvable. You know, I think that's where the energy should go is relentlessly bringing down churn so that 20 years from now, we all have billion dollar air companies. That's what we want.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Revenue. And I just, in fact, I just myself, I just interviewed Matt Mullenwick from WordPress 20 years. He's been doing this. And he said the number one thing he didn't understand at WordPress, at Automatic, was the power of compounding. So when you do these things that are customer hostile, and a lot of us were under stress this last 12 days, hit the numbers, right? This is your job as founders is you got to load balance the fact that the cash has to last and my investors are mad with me, but nothing matters in B2B that it compounds. And some of this dark stuff you talk about on PLG, it anti-compounds.”
2024-02-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source