Lars Martinsson

Every enterprise org you'll sell to has 2 procurement tracks. The FAST track <$100K ACV> The SLOW track. For some companies, like Amazon, the line's drawn at $80K. Fast tracks have far fewer people who need to approve and close 30-50% faster. Don't get greedy. Keep your first logo enterprise wins in the fast track. Win it, make the business case, grow it. LFG 👏

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#CustomerSuccess is hard. It is even harder when the CEO & Leadership do not prioritize it. So if you are in customer success or making the change. Be sure to be at/join a company where leadership values #CS and not only talks about how they value it, but SHOW how they value it. With what initiatives they prioritize. What they invest it. What they do. That's all. *** 🛎️ If you enjoy my content, follow me for more ♻️ Repost to share with your network #csm #accountmanagement #leadership #saas #cs #revsetter

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Loads of interesting conversations and updates in the world of AI last week! 🗞 In case you haven't had time to go over everything, here are some AI updates from last week: 🧊 Snowflake unveils Arctic: The Snowflake AI Research Team launched Snowflake Arctic, an enterprise-grade Large Language Model (LLM). It offers remarkable SQL generation, coding, and instruction-following capabilities at significantly reduced costs. 💻 Nvidia acquires Run:ai: Nvidia's purchase of AI optimization firm Run:ai for $700 million aims to boost its AI platform, offering superior management of AI workloads. 🍏 Apple's French AI acquisition: Apple brings the Paris-based startup Datakalab on board. Datakalab specializes in embedded AI systems and algorithm compression. 🚙 Autonomous driving improvements: MIM4D is boosting autonomous driving technology by capturing detailed spatial and temporal information from multi-view videos. 🎤 Drake uses AI Tupac and Snoop Dogg vocals: Drake dropped a track on his social media titled 'Taylor Made Freestyle'. The song features AI vocals from Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg on a stopgap between diss records as he awaits Kendrick Lamar's response to his latest release ‘Push Ups’ 🔊 Siri overhaul?: Amidst scrutiny over Siri's performance, calls for a major overhaul or a fresh start for Apple's voice assistant are growing louder. ✍️ Anthropic Prompt Library: The Anthropic Prompt Library offers a new way of completing a wide range of tasks, making AI more accessible. 🤝 OpenELM by Apple: Apple has launched OpenELM, a series of eight open-source LLMs. These models are designed to operate efficiently on-device for a variety of text generation tasks. 🎥 Adobe's AI Video Tools - Adobe integrates AI into Premiere Pro, introducing capabilities like shot extension and text-to-video to boost video production efficiency. Thoughts?

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SugarCRM acquiring sales-i feeds a big need around "growth ops." CRM has always had a "growth management" problem. What I mean is that for the past three decades or more, CRM has been focused on pre-sale motions, new logo acquisition processes, and very little time was spent on the actual "relationship" when it came to revenue optimization. Sure, there's lots of great customer support and even now more subscription model support - but actually optimizing the revenue between a company and a customer was scant at best. And in a lot of B2B industries - especially manufacturing and distribution - there is less a focus on new business, and more a focus on optimizing the relationships with customers in a symbiotic way. In short - how can we sell more (and more often) but in a way that benefits the customer rather than us simply "pushing more product down their throats?" CRM historically tracks a lot of things - calls with prospects/customers, meetings held, products offered...which can tell us some valuable things about the demand experience and buying cycles. But CRM has often lacked the deeper ERP and product catalog/CPQ integration that enables sales teams in B2B industries to actually optimize the revenue of every deal. The SFA system was simply more of a "put your info in so I can get my commission" tool for far too long. So, when I saw that my alma mater SugarCRM was buying sales-i, I took notice. SugarCRM has been making more and more of a play in manufacturing, and has had a relationship with sales-i for at least a year - racking up a couple dozen shared customers and linking their go-to-market channel in the process. But this acquisition will surely bring the technologies even more seamlessly together. Sales-i brings to Sugar the ability to both integrate with virtually any ERP system (free of charge!) and thus providing more accurate and deeper insights into products purchased, used, and the payment/billing information needed to create more successful upsell, cross-sell and retention engagements. This is not small potatoes. First, being able to better integrate with nearly any ERP system boosts SugarCRM's general value prop for all of its customers. But the revenue intelligence angle - allowing manufacturers to truly optimize every customer relationship and discover new paths to growth inside the existing customer base, is something on every B2B manufacturers' priority list right now. We are in the age of the retention/growth economy - and the combined Sugar/sales-i technology is built for just that purpose. As with all acquisitions and subsequent integrations...time will tell how well SugarCRM can execute on this combined vision; will it be able to dominate in a manufacturing vertical? The good news is it has already done a lot of the groundwork integrating to two systems over the past year, so they have a good head start. #SugarCRM #CRM #M&A #revops #SaaS #MFR

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🎯Customization at Scale Generative AI is transforming the way enterprise software products are tailored to customer needs. By analyzing extensive datasets, AI can suggest product customizations and enhancements that are likely to succeed, predicting market demand before any coding begins. This insight enables product teams to create fine-tuned software solutions that resonate with end-users, providing them with exactly what they need, when they need it. However, preparing for this change is key. It will alter your work processes and your team's dynamics. You must adapt your thinking to new possibilities, reconsider your approach to data, and its uses. This shift may cause confusion within your teams, so ensure you have effective communication in place and provide room for exploration and adaptation to new work methods. #GenerativeAI #ProductLeadership #EnterpriseSoftware #Innovation

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Questions: 1. Are your GTM ambitions matched by the performance of your sellers? 2. How do you bring speed, scale and efficiency while also reducing costs? 3. Is it time to re-write the old playbook?

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A poorly executed #customersuccess strategy will kill your #NRR for years to come. I've seen it first-hand too many times over the years. Here is how you deliver a well-executed CS strategy to drive great NRR and ultimately, business growth: 🛣️ 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 & 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 The first step in any customer success strategy is understanding the full & dynamic revenue & customer journey. This means not just knowing what your customers do, but why they do it. How and why did they buy your services? How do they move through their journey with you (rarely ina straight line!)? By understanding their motivations, you can better anticipate their needs and deliver solutions that truly add value. And don't forget, the old-school customer journey is not the standard anymore, you need to use the full, dynamic revenue & customer journey to get the full picture. This stretches from pre-sale to post-sale and allows for the customer to move in and out of journey phases/stages dynamically. 📈 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 Customer success is not a reactive function. It's about being proactive, anticipating customer needs, and addressing them before they become issues. You have to ensure that your strategy is aligned around, and fosters, a proactive CS culture and process that allows your team to execute effectively. This not only improves customer satisfaction, but also reduces churn, and creates more expansion opportunities. Both key factors in improving NRR. 📊 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚-𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 In the #SaaS & #CS world, we have access to a wealth of data. By leveraging this data, we can make informed decisions that drive customer success. This could be anything from identifying usage patterns to predict churn, to understanding which features drive the most value for customers and beyond. And it needs to go beyond telemetry, usage etc. Also capture, track and understand customer goals and other qualitative data points. One problem is that this data is often siloed or hard to access, so make sure you have systems (like RevSetter) that can bridge that gap and allows CSMs to effectively action the data & insights. 🤝 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫-𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 Customer success should not be the responsibility of a single department. It should be ingrained in the company culture. When everyone in the organization understands the value of customer success, it becomes a strategic priority that drives business growth. This is why the dynamic revenue & customer journey, the engagement focus, and the proactive mindset are so important. When those are present - and a strategic & customer-centric approach is adopted by the CEO & leadership - the sky is the limit. Leverage these four building blocks and your CS strategy and execution will thank you for it ✅ *** 🛎️ If you enjoy my content, follow me for more ♻️ Repost to share with your network

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Try this on when thinking about AI sales productivity software: Define the space as those automating internal and external activity. External - virtual SDRs, schedulers, chatbots. Anything effectively used by customers in place of interacting with sellers. Internal - Forecasting, activity tracking, account planning. Anything used by the seller in place of interacting with internal people and systems. External might make sense if you have a low ADS, high volume business where you need to get your cost of sales down at scale, and customers want a fast, consistent experience. Internal might make sense on more complex enterprise motions where you want to get your sellers back out to customers. What are the risks in crossing them up? Make sure external tools don't de-personalize your customer experience in enterprise, and make sure internal tools don't over-engineer governance if you have low variance in productivity. I'm not sure how this idea will hold up, but it occurred to me while looking at the crowded landscape of tools in the space. Not everything will be worth it for everyone, and we all need spend discipline.

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RevOps reports, guides and best practices - you want it, and we got it over at RevOps Co-op. 💪🏻 I was browsing the various RevOps reports we have, and they are absolute 🔥 so had to share here. I mean, just take a peek at a few we have available 👇🏻 The 2024 State of RevOps Report from Openprise 3 Ways Your GTM Tech Stack Can Help You Survive the "SaaS-Acre" from Nue.io A B2B Guide on Ramp Pricing from Cacheflow RevOps Roadmapping Starter KIt from Go Nimbly The RevOps Expert's CRM Migration Checklist from Syncari and Carabiner Group The Impact of an Economic Downturn on the SaaS Industry from Everstage RevOps Trends Report from Scratchpad You can find 'em all here → https://lnkd.in/gT5YAfyR #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #mops #marketingoperations #marketingops

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Has #customersuccess became exhausted? #revenueoperations as a partner has seen this function also take the brunt of the lean and mean spirit ▶️ Accounts per #CSM are up for high touch and medium touch motions ▶️ ARR loads are also higher ▶️ They have the least attention from RevOps ▶️ Sometimes will have to just use the software that sales uses ▶️ An increasing weighting of their incentives towards NRR So where do we go from here? I think it's time to bring the voice of the customer back into the room What would your customers say and how would they want to be supported? ▶️ In addition to NRR, let's also talk about GRR ▶️ Let's make customer value maps or journeys a thing again. A fulfilled customer that's growing themselves will also grow with you ▶️ Customer wellness metrics should start to push back against NRR as the sole weighting criteria ▶️ Reexamine who owns the upsell and cross sell. Who has the in-house training and skill set to execute this? ▶️ Invest not only in knowledge bases, but actual training and coaching My two cents 👋 More musings on the Substack (link in profile)

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Snowflake open-sourced the world's best Enterprise AI model last week. 🚀 The week before it was the highest-benchmarked embeddings model. Normally massive announcements like this are saved for big conferences... but ours is happening in FIVE weeks! Sridhar Ramaswamy what are you cooking?! 👀 Join us June 3-6 in San Fran 🤯 🔽 #data #ai #technology #innovation

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The one metric that I keep hearing markops and revops folks still struggling with to automate - Meeting outcomes. What happened to the qualified lead, and the meeting that was booked with them? I keep hearing this on a regular basis in different forums, and have come across several truly ingenious workarounds. (Gong + Make dot com based on meeting duration, to update the CRM and the likes). This is a solved problem for RevenueHero customers. Fully automated. And sales people willingly press 1 button from time to time, right within Slack, or their calendars, and no one has to ask them to. Here is how it happens - 🤝 Forms, email campaigns, follow up links, are all connected to RevenueHero to book meetings. 🔗 RevenueHero's CRM integration, instantly logs the meeting activity against the contact/lead in the CRM the moment the meeting is booked, and assigns the meeting to the sales rep based on a credit system. ⏱ The moment the scheduled time of the meeting elapses, RevenueHero updates the activity status to completed. (Cancellations and reschedules are automatically updated). Here comes the important part. 💰 A notification is instantly triggered to the owner of the meeting, confirming if the meeting did complete. If it did, no action necessary. If it didn't, they click a single button to confirm the no-show. And sales folks click that button EVERY SINGLE TIME there is a no-show. Why? Because they're credited that meeting back when it actually is a no-show. And all of this data is pushed right back to your CRMs. So at the end of the month, quarter and year, you always have the latest meeting outcome information right within your CRM. Your ops teams need to focus on processes and data to enable clinical GTM execution for your company. Not wrangling together tools for simple admin tasks. Want to learn more about the kind of data RevenueHero helps unearth and automate for your ops folks? Check out the link to the event we recently held, and register. We'll send you the recording and a give away with all the neat dashboard metrics RevenueHero enables. #MakeBuyingSimple

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Fellow RevOps professionals, what's your opinion on measuring RevOps success? 📈 Love to hear from you as to what's proven to be successful 👍 and what perhaps hasn't been 👎

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How to win enterprise deals: • Jamal Reimer: 3 big reasons why executives will respond to your outreach → https://buff.ly/3UWN8NV • Ian Koniak: Prospecting into large strategic accounts → https://buff.ly/3JYKTDB • Nate Nasralla: An exec assistant taught me one of my favorite practices → https://buff.ly/3UYCqq0 • Mike Fiascone: When is the right time to get to the executive sponsor? → https://buff.ly/3wz9OKG • Brandon Fluharty 🐝: Here’s the harsh truth about enterprise sales → https://buff.ly/3V1MD5j • Patrick Trümpi: How do you get C-level to call you back? → https://buff.ly/3K0Uxp5. • Salman Mohiuddin: uncovered an $8M pain on a discovery call  → https://buff.ly/4bxSbK2 • Todd Busler: A friend who made $3M+ in enterprise sales over the last 5 years. → https://buff.ly/4bgRbKJ • Gavin Kowalski: My biggest deal, $21m, took 18 months → https://buff.ly/4bgRaXb • Troy Munson: This is the most important thing for enterprise sellers. → https://buff.ly/3JXd8m2 • Ricky Pearl: Enterprise sellers are not "sellers"  → https://buff.ly/4bgRbdH • Monica Stewart: Most of your customers have global teams. How many of them are you working with? → https://buff.ly/3wy2mzA • Leslie Venetz: Technique that helped me close millions in revenue with Fortune 250 logos. → https://buff.ly/3UZvHfH • Tanveer Mostafa: I believe in total and complete transparency with prospects. → https://buff.ly/3UYhUFY • Rohit S.: The Power of Patience in Enterprise Sales → https://buff.ly/3K0gJQ9 • Steve Richard: Building a business value assessment (BVA) isn’t just a task. → https://buff.ly/4bgRc1f • Martin Roth: Struggling to close your first enterprise deal? → https://buff.ly/4bgRchL • Griffin Reilly: Who are your "5 P's"? → https://buff.ly/4bGbUYd • Jeff Hoffman: When THREE is NOT the Magic Number → https://buff.ly/3yk2Nhs • Jen Allen-Knuth: Buyers know the phrase, "no budget", will get us to leave them alone → https://buff.ly/4dD6dvU • Alexander Kohler: You only have a limited number of chances to make an impression → https://buff.ly/4bgRcON • Gorkem Cetin: Selling to enterprises is challenging. → https://buff.ly/4dDMn3C • Paul “PJ” Jackson: What sets apart the closers from the rest in enterprise deals? → https://buff.ly/3UZvMA1 • Florin Tatulea: Your product alone is never going to close enterprise deals. → https://buff.ly/3K5V2y0 • Paul Reilly: How do you manage these big, complex deals? → https://buff.ly/3V0Jr9K • Andy Paul: It’s not the message. It’s the messenger. → https://buff.ly/3wy2hvM • Johannes Stich: Less time spent in meetings = less chance to f%&$ it up. → https://buff.ly/3UXfQ1c • Sean O'Shaughnessey: The Top 3 Things You Need To Do To Close Large Enterprise Deals → https://buff.ly/4dGOsvs 📭 Get the best sales advice from LinkedIn by subscribing to the SalesDaily Newsletter at https://lnkd.in/enw73jf8

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𝗣𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰: 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗦 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 After an inspiring two days at Gainsight Pulse 2024, I'm amazed at but not surprise by the rapid pace of innovation happening in the Customer Success space. This wasn't just about new tactics or efficiencies - the content pushed us to entirely reimagine how we drive value, empowerment, and human potential in CS. A few themes resonated deeply: 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿 AI was easily one of the hottest topics at Pulse. The AI roadmap session by Shantan Reddy spotlighted Gainsight's vision for an AI-enabled knowledge layer and intelligent assistants to automate workflows and surface insights. IBM's Janine Sneed and her team showcased how generative AI can power meeting assistants to prep for meetings, automate notes, action items, follow-ups, and more. The consistent refrain: This AI transformation will be human-first, not human-free. As the Kobiton team outlined, the power will come from human-AI collaboration where we leverage technology to augment our strategic abilities. 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆𝘀 The most effective organizations mapped out intelligent, hyper-personalized journeys tailored to specific roles, industries, and desired outcomes. Rather than generic messaging, they used predictive intelligence to construct self-guided experiences attuned to each user's current context. Autonomous journeys meet people where they are. 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗧𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 To truly transform, organizations must move beyond incremental CS changes to holistic transformations. They redesigned entire engagement models, created centralized workflow engines, and made CS a catalyst for broader organizational changes around customer obsession. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 Transformations aren't just about datasets and impressive technology - they are about leading and inspiring people to be open to change and to use their skills to transform together. Kate Peter and Nikki Bishop did a fantastic job of detailing how implementing a human-first culture drives both employee and customer satisfaction, leading to collaboration and business excellence. The challenge for many organizations is achieving the clean datasets needed for these transformations. If you've navigated this journey, I'd love to connect. Reflecting on Pulse 2024, I'm excited about the immense opportunities we as an industry have at this time to shape the future of Customer Success. We're in the midst of a CS renaissance, catalyzed by the convergence of human ingenuity and AI. I'm leaning into this era of collaboration, eager to harness the transformative potential of technologies like generative AI while cultivating extraordinary relationships with our customers. #Gainsightpulse2024 #AI #HumanFirst #CustomerSuccess #Leadership

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This is absolutely crazy: Our Managed AI solution called #Snowflake #Cortex is now generally available - and we're still a month away from Snowflake Summit! But let's talk about Cortex first - what can it do? For example forecasting data points like shop floor sales in a handful lines of sql code. No need to build a fancy time series algorithm, no need to hire someone with a maths PhD. Or find outliers, or not obvious correlations in a data set - stuff that most companies could/should do when the board asks them to "also do some AI things". And those ML functions are only half of it! Then there are the LLM functions that can summarise, detect sentiment, complete a prompt and more. Every conversation I've had so far with companies looking at this, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. I've heard "Literally what we've been searching for!" three times in the last two weeks. There will be a few Webinars leading up to the summit, which is usually the time when the really **big** announcements happen... And we had the revolutionary Arctic LLM a couple weeks ago, Cortex in GA now.... Sridhar, what do you have you planned?

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🚀 The honeymoon phase for generative AI is officially over, and the journey from pilot to scale is filled with hard truths. McKinsey's latest article lays out seven of those "hard truths" for CIOs. One critical takeaway: "Create teams that can build value, not just models." At Multiverse, we see this need firsthand. The true potential of AI lies in its application across the business, not just within the IT department. By upskilling leaders and teams, we ensure they can harness AI to drive real business outcomes and create lasting impact. 🔗 Full article linked in the comments. #AI #DigitalTransformation #Upskilling #Multiverse #GenerativeAI #Leadership #Tech

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