Altus client, Docusign, has been on a tear. The latest validation of their momentum was the investment reported by TechFlash that came from the VC arm of the National Association of Realtors. Docusign was one of Altus Alliance’s first Sales Process Optimization (SPO) clients a couple years ago. The results of that engagement have led to several other SPO engagements with their venture investors.
Archive for November, 2009
Docusign garners National Association of Realtors investment
Friday, November 27th, 2009Ten Laws for SaaS Sales & Marketing Success
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Altus partner Dave Chase collaborated with Matt Heinz to produce a complement to the oft-cited Bessemer Top 10 Laws for being “SaaS-y” that was recently updated (see link below). The introduction is pasted below. For the entire article, go to Sandhill.com’s site that has the full Ten Laws for SaaS Sales & Marketing Success.
Last week, Byron Deeter and his colleagues at Bessemer Venture Partners wrote a terrific piece entitled “Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Cloud Computing and SaaS. “ The article laid out why it is critical for SaaS-based businesses to abandon many of the long-held tenets of historic software business models and adhere to a new set of laws. Where Deeter did a nice job of laying out “why” managing a Cloud/SaaS software business must be done differently, we have created a set of ten laws to explain “how” to succeed at SaaS Sales and Marketing.
Our SaaS Sales and Marketing Laws are based on success stories that span many sectors – from higher education to online advertising to HR solutions to energy efficiency to vertical markets, such as the dental industry. Our experience implementing these ten laws at dozens of companies has been a consistent 50 percent-or-greater reduction of customer acquisition costs combined with a dramatic increase in revenues.
One great example of the laws in action involved a SaaS company that had an expensive field sales model. Over the course of six months, the field sales force was replaced by an inside sales team and a structured sales process was put in place. The result: A 16-fold increase in Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenues. The combination of lowering costs and increasing revenues led the company to achieving its first profits. It went from a $400,000-per month loss to its current status as one of the high fliers of the Seattle tech scene with a very bright future.
As Mark Leslie of Veritas fame stated in his seminal “Sales Learning Curve” paper in the Harvard Business Review, the risk for technology startups has shifted from technology execution to go-to-market strategy. Sales and Marketing is one of the pivotal aspects of go-to-market strategies. Leslie’s Sales Learning Curve principles permeate the philosophy of the laws outlined below and leads to a much lower sales burn than what is typically experienced.
Click to see the full Ten Laws for SaaS Sales & Marketing Success article.
Top 10 Laws for Cloud Computing
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Byron Deeter of Bessemer Ventures has an update to his well-regarded Top Ten Laws for Being “SaaS-y”. Since we launched Altus’ Sales Process Optimization practice a few years ago, we have worked with a couple dozen SaaS clients. It was coincidental to see that Bessemer also has a connection with Mark Leslie who pioneered the Sales Learning Curve concept that permeates all of the Altus practices thanks to Mark graciously spending time with us a handful of years ago.
With SaaS models most of the time the revenue per customer is less than $100,000 per year making it difficult to pencil out a traditional shoe leather sales model. Consequently, we have gained extensive experience with low cost customer acquisition models. Deeter does a great job of laying out the “why”. In a follow-on piece, we’ll address the “how”.
Here’s the opener for Byron’s piece.
At Bessemer Venture Partners we fundamentally believe that the emergence of Cloud Computing – and the three core components of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – is going to completely change the economics of the multi-billion dollar software industry. We have been fortunate to be investors in many of the early Cloud winners (such as Postini, Netli, Trigo, and Cyota), and continue to invest actively behind one of the largest Cloud portfolios in the venture capital industry. Periods of tremendous transformation create tremendous opportunity, and we consider ourselves privileged to be working with many of the great entrepreneurs who are currently creating the next giants of the “software” industry.
When we first published Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y “ on Sandhill.com almost two years ago in conjunction with our annual Cloud/SaaS CEO Summit, we were overwhelmed with the positive response and feedback we received. We have heavily modified many of the best elements that we believe are still relevant, and have added several entirely new concepts for this update publication on Cloud Computing and SaaS.
More Healtchare innovation in the Northwest
Friday, November 6th, 2009One of the reasons Tim Fitzpatrick recently joined Altus Alliance was that we have seen a wave of exciting new companies as well as new opportunities within established companies. In fact, we are seeing a big need from horizontal technology companies seeking to verticalize into healthcare.
That is what Tim did while for Citrix and what Dave Chase did when he started Microsoft’s healthcare business transforming it from the worst-performing vertical for the company to one of its strongest performers.
While most of the companies we are working with are in the Healthcare I.T. arena, innovations aren’t limited to the I.T. side of healthcare. Second Avenue Partners has backed Qliance which is disrupting the health insurance business. Chase profiled Qliance on the Seattle Startup Buzz blog. Given the track record of Nick Hanauer and Pete Higgins, it is a great endorsement of Qliance’s model.
