This week’s Workshop Wednesday was with Loren Padelford, CRO of Slice, a $100m+ ARR vertical SaaS platform for independent pizza shops. Loren has been a SaaS SMB+ leader for years, running Shopify Plus and revenue leadership roles at Bill and Podium as well.
He joined us again this week for Workshop Wednesday and we’ll put it up on the pod and more soon, but I wanted to add my personal Top Learnings:
#1. Selling to Small Business Owners is Hard. You Have to Truly, Really Add Value First.
Mass email campaigns haven’t worked for them, no have they for other vertical SaaS SMB leaders I’ve invested in. No business owner has time to read or interest in reacting to cloned email cadences and break-up emails. You have to add real value first, in each interaction. After that, eventually, the business will come.
#2. Enterprise Buyers Have Time To Take Meetings. Small Business Owners Do Not.
It’s not necessarily easier to sell in the enterprise, but large companies have entire groups who look at and evaluate vendors. Owners at SMBs have no one. You cannot run remotely the same playbook.
#3. Small Businesses Want All Their Problems Solved. Not Random Point Solutions.
Slice provides group buying and even pizza boxes to its customers, as well as many other services. Not all these services have the high gross margins of software. But they’re critical to provide a truly operating system and the maximum value for SMBs and owners.
#4. 100% Market Share is Possible in Vertical SaaS. Aim For It.
Andrew Bialacki, CEO of $1B+ ARR Klaviyo, made the same point at SaaStr Annual. In vertical SaaS, if you really provide the leading, complete solution and ERP for that industry — aim for 100% market share. All of it. Build the dominant solution.
#5. In Tougher Times, Your Top Reps Still Often Are Performing. Go Learn Why.
There’s no downturn at Slice or in pizza. But in general, Loren’s advice in tougher times is spend more time with your top 1-2 reps. They usually are still doing 80%-100% as well as they were in easier times. The team will need to rapidly evolve to what they are doing.
#6. The Best Reps Just Work Much, Much Harder. And They Are Truly Curious. That’s Rare.
The top reps just plain work harder — and are curious. They are constantly learning more about the customers, the product, the industry, etc. Most aren’t. They sort of worked for a while in 2019-2021. It doesn’t work today.
#7. You Probably Really Need a VP of Sales — Not a CRO
A great point and one I try to bring up with founders all the time. A little title inflation I am OK with. But a “true” CRO is someone that doesn’t just sell, but owns process, post-sales, etc. etc. Is that really what you need? 9 times out of 10, you just need someone that wants to close. Make that hire. Not someone that wants to be one level … up. Maybe beware the CRO … until you first have a proven VP of Sales in place. And sometimes, that CRO is just a promotion for that successful VP of Sales.
The post 7 Things I Learned from Loren Padelford, CRO of $100m+ ARR Vertical SaaS Leader Slice appeared first on SaaStr.
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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
