The end of a golden age

The golden age of SaaS can be marked by three factors:

1. Persistently low interest rates

2. Salesforce, the first BIG cloud company

3. Predictable Revenue, the book that popularized the role of the SDR

A few weeks ago, Sam Jacobs (Founder & CEO at Pavilion) shared the Biggest Problem in GTM: Lack of a Unified Operating Model.

He claims we’re moving out of the golden age and into a fundamental phase shift.

Excess capital meant it was okay for companies to focus on new business without much attention to retention. 

Closed-won = recurring revenue…right?

Think again.

The golden age of SaaS was marked by the phrase: growth at all costs. Playbooks were focused on the pre-sale funnel and were sales and marketing dominant.

This new era of the ecosystem will be marked by the phrase: efficient growth. It will require companies to equally value all parts of the customer lifecycle (pre-sale and post-sale), and adjust their operating models to balance resources across all go to market teams—sales, marketing, and success.

Keep reading to see the bowtie model Sam Jacobs and Kathleen Booth (SVP of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion) recommend in this new era.

Goodbye funnel, hello bowtie

The golden age of free-flowing capital is over for SaaS. Now companies need to drive efficient growth.

So, how do they do that?

Sam Jacobs put it like this,

How do you drive aligned, efficient growth? You have a unified operating model that doesn’t end at the moment a customer makes a purchase.

Unlike the funnel, the bowtie seeks to align the full go to market team (marketing, sales, and success) by examining both the pre-sale and post-sale lifecycle.

This is an important revelation because according to Pavilion’s data, 46% of companies lack a well-defined and documented journey that is understood by the full go to market team.

That means 46% of companies haven’t mapped the full customer lifecycle, they’re not tracking it, and the data is not cross-functionally available.

As you’re building your 2024 strategy, keep this in mind—efficient growth will be the result of aligned GTM teams. The most effective companies will have a common data layer and mission to unite, rather than silo, each team to deliver customer outcomes.

Listen to the full session to hear more stats that point to this new era of SaaS.

New partner-led growth research from GTM Partners

GTM Partners just published new research on the state of partner-led growth.

See where you match up to the rest of the industry.

Here are two cool stats to get you started:

⭐ 66% of companies claim to use a Partner-Led Growth strategy as one of their GTM Motions.

⭐ 82% of companies report a significant slowdown in their sales velocity. While partner-influenced opportunities have a 99% high win rate and partner-sourced opportunities have a 46% higher win rate.

Check it out here.

Stuff you don’t want to miss!

• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is Nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

• Nov 29, 2 PM EST —WTF is a System Integrator?— Join Omair Rana, Former Microsoft Director of Partner Strategy, and Scott Pollack, CEO at Firneo, and get ready to demystify System Integrators (SIs) and their pivotal role in the tech world. Register here.

• Nov 30, 1 PM - 4 PM EST —The CRO Playbook : How to fix sales in 2024— The old sales playbooks don’t work. Join GTM Partners for their Leadership Summit. CROs, CEOs, and sales leaders will unite to define how to fix sales in time for 2024 SKO. Register here.

What got you here won’t get you there

Send this to someone who’s recognizing the shift in SaaS, but doesn’t know what to do about it.