For the last ten months, RevSure was in stealth mode. We worked with a dozen advisors and design partners to build a product from the ground up. And then the D-day arrived: SaaStr. We are unaware of any other company coming out of stealth to launch their product at SaaStr. We did, and we did it with style!
"Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success."
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our intention to launch at SaaStr was two-fold and very bold.
- Drive awareness that RevSure has arrived to finally solve the “full-funnel visibility problem” across Marketing, SDR/BDR, and Sales and bring with it the sales pipeline-readiness platform. As our advisor, Dave Kellogg, likes to call it, “Make the whole funnel work for you!”
- Ensure the right ICPs had the first-hand experience of our product - live at the booth - assisted by our team. See it to believe it!
Revenue is a sexy word right now. Every other app provider wants to be associated with it because it acts like a lead magnet and drives footfalls to the booth and traffic to the website. And hence “revenue intelligence” as a phrase is widely misused. We wanted to change that by giving people the chance to see the product in action to judge us for our claim of being an “AI-driven revenue intelligence platform.” We were not surprised by the great response we saw at the booth leading to multiple follow-up meetings.
Given that this was our first event as a company, we made a few silly mistakes within the first hour at SaaStr on booth management. Thankfully we had great support from the SaaStr team and our advisors to recoup and stand firm quickly.
We learned first-hand how CROs, CMOs, Sales, and RevOps leaders struggle with funnel visibility and how they currently handle it. The website visitors to Leads to MQL to SQL to closure is broken.
Here’s the thing: the funnel metrics all by themselves make no sense. It is only when you can piece them together that meaningful insights come out. Thankfully we learned this early in stealth to build for it.
And when we finally unraveled the product to experts in the ecosystem and prospects for the first time, it was lovely to have them look at our product and relate to it. We had the following descriptions of our product from people who saw it for the first time:
Google Analytics but for the Whole funnel!
Oh! You are Clari for Marketing!
This is like Anaplan for the Pipeline!
It’s nearly a quarter of a century since Salesforce was founded (shocking realization? We had the same reaction). And it is astounding that you still can’t walk into a sales-marketing meeting with a full-funnel view and be able to do the following and more:
- Clear the opacity around lead to stage-1 in pipe conversions, dissecting down to the detail by lead source, campaign source, et al. The ability to do cohort analysis on the funnel out-of-the-box does not exist.
- The ability to connect lead scores to its pipe potential is non-existent. Not all leads are created equal, and you should measure them as such.
- Breaking down the funnel by stage-to-stage conversion both at the lead level and being able to follow it up further at the opp-level and connect it all into one cohesive revenue stream still happens on a dozen excel or google sheets.
It’s 2022, and come MBR/QBR/Board meetings, GTM functions, Finance teams, and RevOps still go into standstill mode every single time - stopping all that they are doing at the moment - “to match the numbers” between each of their functions on the presentation being published out to the internal leadership or the board!
If you wanted to do an honest pulse check, we would encourage you to drop a survey to your GTM, Finance, and Ops teams to answer for how many hours they each spend on every MBR or board meeting. You would be shocked to learn the administrative juggling that happens to get a PPT out.
This is not a people problem.
This is an application problem.
The truth is Marketing, Growth, and Demand Generation teams need a “Clari” that can provide better predictability and visibility into how their efforts are turning into “pipeline” and “revenue.” They need to know what campaigns, channels, segments, content, and activities are the most effective in driving qualified opportunities and revenue. What are the best next actions to get them there?
The quality of the early-stage pipeline matters even more now. Improving Demo to Deal/POC conversion and BDR effectiveness is top of mind for the sales leadership. Active ICP refinement (by segment, region, size, persona) and prioritization still seem like an art, not backed by enough data and actionable recommendations.
Pipeline health has always been and is more so even now a determinant in meeting revenue targets. It is not about analyzing the pipeline once the pipeline has been generated but about creating and developing the right pipeline mix (coverage and quality) in the first place. Deal velocities and progression are vital concerns. Although deals might not be dropping, there are more checkpoints and diligence in how customers operate.
The list goes on.
There has to be a better way of doing all of this and doing it out-of-the-box so your teams continue to do what they do best: strategize. No leader wants their team to spend hundreds of company hours putting up a deck every time and have the integrity of the data questioned rather than making decisions out of the data!
Hence our deeply rooted passion for what we built at RevSure. We solved all of this and more. Well, someone had to. So we did.
As for SaaStr, the event kept us on our feet for three straight days. We said hello to our numb legs only on the fourth day😅—a good problem to have. Running into multiple interesting people and the issues they are solving at after-parties was fun.
It’s incredible how the world has shifted fast in the last few years. All companies are driven by delivering revenue to shareholders now more than ever. Revenue is the ultimate goal. At RevSure, we are glad to be solving for it.
While everyone out there seems to be looking at the flooding river and wondering how to get to the other end of the shore, we are looking back at the iceberg to tell you well in advance if the river is going to flood or drought. Probably that’s the best analogy to help illustrate how every customer dollar in your bank was destined “to be or not to be” right when you were pursuing the lead as a visitor.
The butterfly effect in GTM is real.
Until the next SaaStr, may all your funnel metrics be green and your revenue compounding!
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