OpenView Weekly: 5/5/18

OV | Weekly – May 5, 2018

Hi Friend of OpenView,

It’s the one you’ve been waiting for! The 2018 SaaS Benchmarks Survey is live. You can gain early access to the full results by taking the survey here.

Also up this week – field notes from RSA, tips to retain your superstar salesperson, how to drive sales close rates and much more.

Happy reading! And happy Spring, (finally).

The 2018 SaaS Benchmarks Survey is live!

It’s that time of year again (and no, we don’t mean Cinco de Mayo). The 2018 SaaS Benchmarks Survey is live! We launched our biggest-ever SaaS benchmarks survey last year covering everything from CAC payback to sales and marketing spend, burn, retention and more.

A few highlights from last year:

• You have a 0.1% chance of reaching $100M in 5 years
• The fastest growing SaaS companies see 109% net dollar retention…
• …while slower growers see only see 90%

This year, we’ve partnered with firms including Point Nine Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, High Alpha, Foundry, Boldstart and others to make sure the 2018 dataset is more robust, and therefore even more informative than ever.

You can take the survey here. By doing so, you’ll get early access to the results.

Field Notes from RSA: Like Christmas for CISOs

We sent our own Executive Network Director, Casey Renner, into the field at RSA to find out what CISO are really after. Her two biggest takeaways? Trust and AI! Hear from the GM of IBM Security, Cisco’s CISO, the former CISO at Salesforce and others on why they think RSA is just like Christmas…or some version of their high school prom.

Read Casey’s RSA takeaways here.

Learn how to navigate the biggest factors driving sales close rates.

Only 13% of leads convert to opportunities and just 6% of opportunities convert to actual deals. While no company wins 100% of the deals it works on, the fewer deals your sales team closes, the more attention is paid to that elusive ‘close rate.’

So what’s actually driving close rates? And how do you navigate those objections? Find out in the full article here.

🎧BUILD Podcast: Demystifying Account-Based Marketing

Jon Russo, Account-Based Marketing expert, discusses how companies can align strategic marketing initiatives with sales and account management strategies to maximize ROI.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end to hear what we having coming for Season 2 (hint: it’s pretty good if we do say so ourselves 😁)

Listen to the final episode of BUILD Season 1 here.

Here’s what else we’re reading 📖

• Top Tips to Retain Your Superstar Salesperson
• Why it’s Time to Embrace Radical Experimentation
• To Drive Operational Excellence, Ask These Three Questions
• How does your marketing stack up? Take the quiz here.

Here’s what else you need to know this week:

Join OpenView at SaaStock on Tour in New York City June 20. Use our discount OPEN-VIEW-20 for 20% off tickets. See you there!

🚨Webinar Alert: Join OpenView, LinkedIn and Intercom for a webinar on how to drive business results through customer success and support. You can register here.

Boston-based Cogito is hiring an HR Business Partner. You can learn more and apply here. View all open positions across our portfolio here.

That’s it for now. See you back here next week! In the meantime, say 👋on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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