RevOps Growth Approaches

I‘ve spent many years in the Channel Redesigned Channel Programs for IBM, Lucent & Avaya. Moved partners from transaction to profit by selling ‘solutions.’Today, with the same goal, we’re building ‘productized service portfolios.’   Since 2005, we‘ve expanded our client list: Amelia, CloudCoCo Plc, Deutsche Telekom, Ingram Micro, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions, NTT, O2 (Telefónica UK), Oracle, Xerox...   In 2024, we’re expanding our programs: EMEA Copilot Readiness, WW Onboarding Acceleration, Sales Journey Assessments (Secret Shopping), Portfolio Management/Packaged Offer Development, Telco Maximize GTM Workshops, CloudAscent Acceleration...   While looking at 2024, I started to think..   What to do - if I was a Channel Director today?   1. Customer Insight Know to whom, what, where & why my partners are selling. Use these insights to monitor maturity & therefore investments. Add critical updates to Partner Program & cleanup DBs for unmanaged partners. Drive Customer Insight Milestone Attainment for coop access 2. Skilling & Resourcing Most IT companies have skill & resource gaps, particularly at presales & deployment. Add value with GTM Business & technical training. Improve knowledge of & success in Marketplaces. Where it makes sense, make #P2P plays 3. White Space Want partners to sell more? Show them the business case. Analyse their portfolios-capabilities & ambitions. Identify opportunities for growth: upsell, packetized services, bundles, co-sell, skilling, IP… manage improvements through a Development Plan 4. Walk Don’t Talk Customer Experience. Jay McBain said it best while at Forrester: ‘There‘s a clear correlation between superior customer experience & revenue growth.‘ Understand what it‘s like to buy hardware, software & services from partners & help them improve where they can offer better CX. What experience do we want to offer? Is it helping to close - not abandon - the buying process? What is the Benchmark & the Improvement Plan for corrections 5. GTM Advisory Create a Business Academy for learning through best practice key product-sales & marketing motions for growth   6. Create Offer Development Guidance for Compliancy Regulations Many companies will face new compliancy regulations: CSF, CIP, or for any company selling into the EU – NIS2. These are continuous multifaceted compliancy regulations with expensive risk for noncompliance. Ensuring the People-Process-Legal & Technical compliancy for customers is a big value add for CEOs if done correctly – & a significant potential loss of reputation, revenue & maybe even the customer themselves if done incorrectly. I’d put in the planning time to do this right & provide the guidance.   7.  Leads Now that we know where we’re targeting, what we’re selling & are sure we can close, find clever ways to fill the pipeline – eg. using propensity data against customer lists with tools such as Microsoft CloudAscent & others What would You do if You were a Channel Director today? #channel

Evolution of Enterprise Software 💡 The world of enterprise software is in the midst of an extraordinary transformation. To explore this revolution, Jacco van der Kooij has created a chart tracing its journey—from the rise of servers and virtualization to the dawn of AI-agent marketplaces. You’ll see three key trends emerge that are poised to shape the future of Go-To-Market (GTM): 1️⃣ Sustainable SaaS 2️⃣ AI-Led GTM 3️⃣ Consumption-Based Pricing Winning by Design has developed the term PPX—a shorthand for consumption-based pricing models like Pay Per Action, Pay Per Use, and Pay Per Outcome. It simplifies the shift we’re witnessing from SaaS → PPX. The next chapter in GTM belongs to autonomous GTM systems—AI-powered systems designed for durable growth from the outset. They’re fueled by PPX-based business models that accelerate customer adoption, much like subscription models transformed SaaS a decade ago. Durable growth now hinges on GTM efficiency and robust GRR/NRR. Here’s what that means: 👉 SaaS Scaleups and Grownups will evolve into Sustainable SaaS Scaleups and Grownups, powered by AI. Success is not guaranteed—some will thrive, others won’t. 👉 Startups can choose between Sustainable SaaS or PPX pricing strategies and select their GTM motion: 🔹 Product-Led Growth (low touch) 🔹 AI-Led Growth (mid touch) 🔹 Human-Led Growth (high touch) This AI-powered evolution will democratize GTM, enabling companies worldwide to compete with today’s SaaS giants. Startups must show up with innovation to win over buyers, who increasingly value trusted brands. Source: Jacco van der Kooij - https://t.ly/6xJi7 #Innovation #Startups #Scaleups #Fintech #Marketing #Growth #Sales #GTM #SaaS #Subscription #PLG #AI 

Companies should carefully examine their internal readiness and adaptability to emerging technological shifts, because transitioning to new digital environments requires more cultural openness than purely technical proficiency. Transitioning effectively to cloud computing demands careful strategy formulation and deliberate changes across the organization. Companies should choose a neutral cloud approach to avoid dependency on specific vendors, adopting solutions like multi-cloud Kubernetes or containerized microservices to maintain flexibility. A clearly structured cloud strategy tailored to business goals ensures that resources align properly, optimizing costs and scalability. Utilizing hyperscale cloud providers—such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud—can significantly boost computational power and global reach. Evaluating the entire technology stack is equally essential to guarantee seamless integration, which ultimately requires reshaping internal operations toward agility and continuous delivery. #CloudComputing #Microservices #Kubernetes #CloudStrategy #DigitalTransformation

The move by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenAI, and Anthropic to deploy their own professional service wings is the most serious structural threat to IT services since the birth of offshore outsourcing. By sending Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs) directly into enterprises, hyperscalers are trying to capture the "control layer" of enterprise operations, threatening to deflate traditional services revenue by 2–3% annually and relegate legacy IT firms to commoditized maintenance roles. To survive this shift, tech service companies must move away from headcount-based models and execute a hybrid strategy of defensive stabilization and aggressive, platform-level counter-moves. Defensive Strategies: Protecting the Castle Hyperscalers have the models, but service companies still own the most critical asset in enterprise tech: deep domain trust and system stickiness. 1. Own the "Last Mile" Bottlenecks (Data and Governance) AI models are useless without clean, accessible data. Hyperscalers want to deploy agents, but they rarely want to do the unglamorous, manual work of cleaning fragmented data siloes or untangling decades-old legacy ERP systems. The Defense: Service firms must establish themselves as the absolute gatekeepers of Enterprise AI Readiness. This means heavily double-downing on data engineering, regulatory compliance (like data-residency laws), and AI safety governance. If a service company controls the data pipeline, the hyperscaler cannot bypass them. 2. Capitalize on Hyperscaler Co-opetition Enterprises are deeply terrified of vendor lock-in. They do not want to hand over their entire proprietary workflow to Microsoft or AWS, only to see their competitive intelligence absorbed into a platform's base model. The Defense: Service companies must market themselves as the neutral, multi-cloud orchestrators. Position your teams as the objective advisors who will integrate the best of OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models (like Meta's Llama) without tying the client to a single hyperscaler ecosystem. Aggressive Strategies: Turning the Tables Defending the current perimeter is not enough. Service companies must radically restructure their talent and business models to beat the tech giants at their own game. 1. Kill "Headcount Arbitrage" and Build the FDE Model The traditional model of billing clients per hour for armies of junior developers is dead. One forward-deployed engineer sitting on top of massive model leverage can replace a dozen traditional developers. The Attack: Service firms must aggressively restructure their workforces into FDE units—highly autonomous, hybrid professionals who are half-consultant, half-full-stack engineer. They must be trained to sit directly with corporate executives, diagnose ambiguous business problems, and write production-grade code on the spot. 2. Shift from Time-and-Materials to Outcome-Based Pricing Hyperscalers are contd in comments... DC* Dinwins

Most teams think scaling on AWS means learning every single service out there. It doesn’t. What actually separates teams that scale smoothly from those that struggle? It’s not about chasing every new tool. It’s about sticking to proven patterns. Here’s what actually matters when you’re planning for serious growth on AWS: 1️⃣ Architect for change, not just for launch.  Rigid blueprints bottleneck teams fast. Modular architectures let you pivot as your business evolves, without scrambling to rebuild everything from scratch. 2️⃣ Make access simple, but secure.  Centralized identity (think AWS SSO) keeps onboarding quick, mistakes low, and audits painless. No one wants to spend weeks untangling permissions every quarter. 3️⃣ Get content to users, fast and safe.  Pick the right distribution approach (CloudFront Signed URLs, S3 Pre-Signed URLs) and your apps feel responsive, not risky. Get it wrong, and you’re either slow or exposed. 4️⃣ Users don’t wait for cold starts.  Provisioned Concurrency for Lambda reduces those annoying lags, especially during busy times. Nobody wants their app experience ruined because the backend was asleep. 5️⃣ Public S3 buckets are a ticking time bomb.  Keep them private. Errors here are expensive, public, and totally preventable. 6️⃣ Cost tuning isn’t just for finance.  Dial in your Lambda power profiles or tweak autoscaling. At scale, tiny savings add up to huge wins. It’s how you keep your operation agile, secure, and cost-effective while scaling - no matter what industry you’re in. Where’s your scaling head at for next year? If you’re looking for real-world AWS strategies that work, let’s connect. #AWS #CloudArchitecture #Scalability #CloudSecurity

Is your Cloud and Digital strategy ready for the next evolution? As business leaders strive to maximise ROI from their cloud and digital transformation efforts, a pivotal challenge has emerged: integrating Gen AI into existing strategies. But this is more than a challenge, it’s a unique opportunity to elevate your organisation. Yet, many businesses are hitting roadblocks in their cloud journey, including: 1. Data Management Challenges: As the volume of data grows, organisations struggle to manage and analyse it effectively, limiting their ability to extract actionable insights. 2. Regulatory Complexities: Banking and financial services face regulations such as DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act), which emphasise the need for robust risk management and resilience planning. 3. Cloud Concentration Risk: Over reliance on a single cloud provider can create vulnerabilities such as potential compliance challenges or increased exposure to systemic risks across providers. 4. High Investment Costs: Initial cloud adoption demands significant financial and time commitments. However, the stakes are high, with cloud computing projected to generate a staggering $3 trillion in EBITDA by 2030. In a digital landscape where Gen AI is a game changer, the cost of inaction is steep. Organisations slow to adapt risk being outpaced by more agile competitors. How can businesses stay ahead of the curve? 1. Integrate Gen AI into Cloud Strategies: Assess current cloud initiatives to identify how Gen AI can add value. Focus on both immediate and future use cases for a sustainable strategy. Studies show that businesses that effectively integrate AI see higher productivity gains and enhanced decision making. 2. Prioritise High Value Applications: Target use cases where Gen AI can deliver the highest ROI. The scalable nature of cloud technology allows businesses to continuously adopt new features and innovations, driving better outcomes in customer support, predictive analytics and personalised services. 3. Enhance Data Governance: Establish robust data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, security and compliance. This enables organisations to leverage AI driven insights while adhering to evolving regulatory requirements like DORA, which emphasises operational resilience. 4. Adopt a Multi-Cloud Strategy: Mitigate cloud concentration risk by diversifying cloud providers, reducing dependency on a single provider and optimising performance. A multi-cloud approach ensures greater flexibility and resilience, especially for meeting regulatory expectations and handling data sovereignty requirements. By aligning cloud and digital transformation efforts with Gen AI, businesses can not only avoid falling behind but also unlock new avenues for growth and innovation. In this era of digital acceleration, embracing change isn’t optional, it’s essential. Thoughts? #Banking #AssetManagement #DigitalTransformation #GenerativeAI

I've founded and exited 2 Salesforce ISV companies. Here is what I would do differently if I was starting a new company in the ecosystem: 1. Conduct Thorough Customer Interviews and Market Research It’s essential to ensure you are solving a problem that customers are not only interested in but are willing to pay for. Engaging potential customers early, before launch, can help gauge their commitment—don't be afraid to ask them to commit financially even before you release the product. A simple MVP should help you understand if the problem you’re solving has enough market demand. In my experience, many ISVs fall into the trap of developing a "cool" product without first determining if a real market exists for it. Conduct competitive analysis and understand the landscape to ensure your solution offers distinct, differentiated value. 2. Evaluate Your Platform Strategy with an Open Mind While both of my previous ventures were built natively on Salesforce, it's important to recognize that native isn't always the optimal choice. There are distinct advantages to building within Salesforce—ease of integration, familiarity for users, and leveraging the Salesforce infrastructure—but flexibility can often be limited. Consider adopting a composite app model, integrating your solution with external platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or others. This approach can provide greater scalability, computing power, AI capabilities, and richer integrations with third-party apps. The key takeaway here is to choose the best platform strategy based on your specific product's needs. 3. Build a Clear Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Reach Your First 100 Customers Getting your first 10 customers is often about hustle and unscalable tactics—leveraging personal networks, one-on-one outreach, and early adopter programs. However, once you've broken through this initial barrier, scaling requires a more deliberate and repeatable process. It’s crucial to develop a robust GTM strategy with clearly defined sales and marketing processes. Focus on channels that work for your target market—whether that’s inbound marketing, outbound sales, partner-driven leads, events, or other initiatives. Avoid spreading yourself too thin. Instead, double down on the channels that show traction until you reach at least 100 customers. 4. Focus on Customers, Not Competitors, Even if Salesforce Enters Your Market While it’s easy to get caught up worrying about Salesforce launching a competing product, the reality is that there’s plenty of room in the ecosystem for multiple players. The Salesforce ecosystem is vast, and even with competition, there’s significant opportunity to build substantial businesses—$10 million or even $100 million in revenue is achievable with the right product and focus. Understand where Salesforce is investing and how that affects your market, but don't let it dictate your strategy. #salesforce #appexchange #isv

Growing today needs more than regular marketing tactics. It’s about working in sync, being open to change, and focusing on what customers need. Here’s how SaaS companies can grow: 1. Deepen Customer Connections - Expand Product Use: Offer more value to current customers. Try adding related products or services that fit their needs. This can grow accounts and keep customers longer. - Empower Local Teams: Give teams in different regions more control. Local teams know their markets best and can act fast to meet specific needs. 2. Set a Clear, Shared Focus - Align Across Teams: Reaching new markets means everyone—marketing, product, and sales—must work together toward shared goals. - Hire Specialized Roles: Bring in roles like product marketers to help make sure messages fit new customer types. 3. Make Customer Experience (CX) a Priority - Invest in CX: A lot of growth can come from keeping current customers happy. Focus on customer experience to build lasting relationships. - Create a Smooth Journey: Break down walls between customer support, marketing, and sales so customers have a smooth experience. - Show Constant Value: Keep showing customers why your product helps them. It makes renewals and upselling easier. 4. Be Consistent in Messaging - Use Known Categories: Position your product within an understood category to make it easy for customers to "get it." - Consistency Over Perfection: Being consistent builds trust more than aiming for perfect wording. Stay clear and steady in your message. 5. Use AI to Boost Efficiency - AI for Sales: AI can help create more engaging emails and other messages, doubling meeting rates without needing more people. - Better Analytics with AI: AI tools give richer insights, going beyond basic tracking to help make better choices. - AI Helpers for Routine Tasks: AI can learn user habits and handle basic tasks, freeing up teams to focus on big goals. 6. Invest in Community - Build Community: Growing a community around your brand builds loyalty. Events and tailored programs help guide leads through the funnel. - Shift from Low-Impact Tactics: Some old methods don’t work as well anymore. Focus on community and direct interactions for better results. 7. Prioritize Team Development and Scalability - Upskill Your Team: Keep learning. It helps employees stay up to date on tools and new ways of doing things. - Focus on What Scales: Invest in programs that can grow with you without overstretching resources. 8. Stay Flexible with Market Needs - Adapt Fast: Adopt new tools and rethink old methods as the market changes. Flexibility helps manage shifting conversion rates and behaviors. - Use Data for Decisions: Lean on analytics to guide your actions and match what’s happening in the market. For SaaS growth, stay flexible, build strong customer connections, and focus on a smooth, valuable experience. What strategies are helping your SaaS company grow? #SaaSMarketing #B2BMarketing #DemandGen

Recent data from KeyBanc & Sapphire's 2024 SaaS Survey reveals that 50% of SaaS companies are increasing their focus on 🛒marketplaces while continuing to prioritize tech #partnerships and system integrators (SIs) in their enterprise GTM strategies. This survey of over 100 private (VC/PE-backed) SaaS offers a glimpse into the GTM strategies of a diverse mix of software firms, primarily in the $10M-$50M ARR range, spanning horizontal and vertical applications. Here is Key Insights 🤝 Channel Contribution to New ARR Channels contribute 15% of new ARR: While traditional field sales remains the dominant GTM strategy, driving 60% of new ARR, channels and partnerships add a valuable 15%. This highlights that channels are an important complementary route to market, though not the primary driver. Despite industry buzz around self-serve and PLG models, these account for only 7% of new ARR, reinforcing that enterprise SaaS success still heavily relies on direct sales, with channels supporting the broader GTM mix. Partnership Adoption as Indirect Sales Channels 🛠️ 65% Use Tech Partnerships Tech partnerships are commonly leveraged with large tech firms (e.g., cloud providers) for co-selling, co-marketing, and product integration, enabling SaaS companies to reach enterprise customers within a broader ecosystem. However, 56% of respondents are decreasing their focus on tech partnerships, suggesting some are re-evaluating ROI due to factors like complexity, cost, or challenges in achieving direct referral or resale benefits. 🧰 52% Use System Integrators (SIs) SIs play a crucial role in implementation, integration, and customization, making them invaluable for SaaS providers targeting large enterprises with complex needs. Priority shifts are balanced, with 52% increasing and 48% decreasing focus on SIs, indicating selective investment based on target customer profiles. 🛍️ 38% Use Marketplaces Although marketplaces are still an emerging channel, they are gaining traction, with 50% of respondents increasing their focus here. This trend reflects growing interest in reaching customers who prefer the ease of cloud marketplaces and the ability to leverage cloud commitments for purchasing SaaS products. 📊 Evolving Distribution Model in Enterprise Software The data reveals a continuous evolution in enterprise software distribution. While tech partnerships continue to form the backbone of indirect GTM strategies, cloud marketplaces are emerging as a critical complement. This shift suggests a "both/and" future, where companies leverage both tech partnerships, marketplaces and SIs for comprehensive market reach. Dave Wilner, Operating Partner at Sapphire Ventures, highlights that SaaS startups look to position themselves as part of the 'opinionated, modern stack' for enterprises adopting #cloud technologies." 💡 Stay ahead in Cloud GTM. Follow me for actionable insights and share this with your network. Partner Insight

🚨 If your SaaS isn’t scalable, it WILL break. First, performance slows. Then, systems crash. Finally, customers leave. Every new user should be an opportunity, not a risk. But if your architecture isn’t built for scale, it won’t keep up. Here’s how to prevent that: 1. Microservices = Scale What You Need Instead of one giant app, break it down into independent services. Why does this matter? 🔹 You can deploy updates faster. 🔹 No single point of failure. 🔹 You only scale what needs scaling. 💡 Example: Netflix switched from a monolith to microservices, enabling it to handle millions of users without downtime. 2. Cloud-Native = More Users Without Slowing Down Users don’t care about your servers. They care about speed. Cloud-native helps: 🔹 Auto-scale up or down based on demand. 🔹 Distribute load across multiple data centers. 🔹 Deploy globally to reduce latency. 💡 Example: Zoom scaled to 300M+ daily users during COVID by leveraging AWS auto-scaling. 3. Multi-Tenant = More Growth, Less Complexity Managing separate infrastructure for every customer is inefficient. Multi-tenancy solves this. How? 🔹 It shares infrastructure while keeping data separate. 🔹 Lowers costs and improves efficiency. 🔹 Scales without adding unnecessary complexity. 💡 Example: Slack’s multi-tenancy architecture enables it to support millions of organizations without performance issues. 4. Database Scaling = Faster Queries, No Bottlenecks Your database will be the first thing to slow down. Plan ahead. Here’s what helps: 🔹 Sharding distributes load across multiple databases. 🔹 Replication balances read-heavy traffic. 🔹 Caching (Redis, Memcached) reduces database load. 💡 Example: Twitter uses sharding & replication to handle billions of queries per second. 5. Automate Everything = Scale Without Firefighting Scaling manually is a disaster waiting to happen. Automation prevents that. How? 🔹 CI/CD pipelines ensure fast, safe deployments. 🔹 IaC (Terraform) scales infrastructure at the push of a button. 🔹 Monitoring (Datadog, Prometheus) detects issues before users notice them. 💡 Example: Airbnb automates deployments with Kubernetes + Terraform, ensuring global scalability without downtime. Scalability isn’t optional. Build it from day one. Because if you wait, your users will complain. Scale before you NEED to. What’s your top scaling tip? Comment below ⬇️