Blue Horizon’s reading list is a curated collection of articles for SaaS founders and management teams. We are entrepreneurs and operators who have lived through the process of founding and scaling software companies. Here are the articles and resources we found useful this week.
What Is Revenue Operations? Plus Answers To Other RevOps Questions
InsightSquared Blog
Revenue operations is a methodology that drives cross-functional collaboration in order to close gaps in the customer experience and maximize revenue for the business. It aligns the organization by combining the functions of sales, marketing, and customer success into a single team that drives strategy based on revenue impact…according to Gartner, by 2025, 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy a revenue operations (RevOps) model.
Beyond Alignment – Marketing & Sales Collaborating Through Content Automation
Marianne Hewitt on Synthesis Technology
Most organizations take an informal approach to alignment. They do not have governance or a framework to get to alignment and therefore it is a catch as catch can idea. Getting to true collaboration will require more rigor and structure.
The Synthesis/Fuse Survey identified that 75% of investment marketers are not satisfied with the data that fuels their content marketing process. A joint initiative (and to include the Analytics and IT teams) could be to identify short and long-term improvements to data collection and management.
The 10 Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned as a Founder-CEO (and VC)
Jason Lemkin, SaaStr
Slow down big decisions, speed up the rest.
Wait and find a truly great co-founder.
Make your first customers wildly successful.
Don’t worry as much about the competition. They
A great team is a family.
Time is the ally of the committed…
Defining the Gray Area Between Stretch-Fit and Bad-Fit Customers
Marc Sultzer, ChurnZero
When assessing a customer’s fit, defining what’s a reasonable stretch versus a fundamental mismatch is murky territory. Conflating or wrongly defining these groups has long-lasting consequences including increased customer churn, reputational damage, and cross-functional animosity.
For subscription businesses, selling to a bad-fit customer damages your revenue and your reputation. Bad-fit customers are more likely to leave early and never upgrade or renew. They become your “squeaky wheel” customers who are never happy, eating up all your support and training resources. A heavy focus on them can deliver a below average customer experience to your best and happiest customers who you inadvertently neglect by only giving an ear to the loudest voices in the room.
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