From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue

312 Pages·2016·2.86 MB·English

by  Aaron Ross

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for From Impossible To Inevitable
Preface. Systematizing Success
Lessons from the World's Fastest-Growing Companies
Part I: Nail A Niche
Chapter 1: “Niche” Doesn't Mean Small
Are You Sure You're Ready to Grow Faster?
How to Know If You've Nailed A Niche
Achieve World Domination One Niche at a Time
The Arc of Attention
Chapter 2: Signs of Slogging
Are You a Nice-to-Have?
Big Companies Suffer, Too
Case Study: Where Aaron Went Wrong
Your Current Strength Can Be a Future Weakness
Chapter 3: How to Nail It
Where Can You Be a Big Fish in a Small Pond?
Work through the Niche Matrix
Case Study: How Avanoo Nailed It
Jason's 20-Interview Rule
Chapter 4: Your Pitch
If You Were a Radio Station, Would Anyone Tune In?
Elevator Pitches Are Always Frustrating
They Don't Care about “You”: Three Simple Questions
Part II: Create Predictable Pipeline
Chapter 5: Seeds—Customer Success
How to Grow Seeds Predictably
Case Study: How Gild Dropped Monthly Churn from 4 to 1
Case Study: Customer Service Excellence at Topcon
Chapter 6: Nets—Inbound Marketing
The Forcing Function Your Marketing Leader Needs: A “Lead
Commit”
Corporate Marketing versus Demand Generation
Case Study: Zenefits from $1 Million to $100 Million in Two Years
Inbound Marketing: A Four-Point Primer
Heroic Marketing: When You Have No Money and Little Time
Chapter 7: Spears—Outbound Prospecting
Where Outbound Works Best—and Where It Fails
Outbound Lessons Learned Since Predictable Revenue Was
Published
Case Study: Zenefits' Outbound Lessons
Case Study: Outbound's Role in Acquia's $100 Million Trajectory
Case Study: From Zero to $10 Million with Outbound at GuideSpark
Case Study: How Tapstream Started from Scratch
Chapter 8: What Executives Miss
Pipeline Creation Rate: Your #1 Leading Metric
The 15/85 Rule: Early Adopters and Mainstream Buyers
Why You're Underestimating Customer Lifetime Value
Part III: Make Sales Scalable
Chapter 9: Learn from Our Mistakes
Growth Creates More Problems Than It Solves—But They Are
Better Problems
Jason's Top 12 Mistakes in Building Sales Teams
Advice from the VP Sales behind LinkedIn and EchoSign
Chapter 10: Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier
Why Salespeople Shouldn't Prospect
Case Study: How Clio Restructured Sales in Three Months
Can You Be Too Small, or Too Big, to Specialize?
Specialization: Two Common Objections
Specialization Snapshot at Acquia
Chapter 11: Sales Leaders
The #1 Mis-Hire is the VP/Head of Sales
The Right VP Sales for Your Stage
Jason's 10 Favorite Interview Questions
Chapter 12: Hiring Best Practices for Sales
Simple Hiring Tricks
When Doing Something New, Start with Two
The $100 Million HubSpot Sales Machine: Recruiting and Coaching
Essentials
Case Study: How to Cut Down on Wasted Interviewing
Chapter 13: Scaling the Sales Team
If You're Churning More Than 10% of Your Salespeople, They
Aren't the Problem
Case Study: Scaling Sales from 2 to 350 Reps at Zenefits
Jason's Advice To CEOs: Put Nonsales Leaders on Variable Comp
Plans, Too
Truth Equals Money
Pipeline Deficit Disorder
Are Your Enterprise Deals Taking Forever?
Five Key Sales Metrics (with a Twist)
Chapter 14: For Startups Only
Every Tech Company Should Offer Services
What Jason Invests In, and Do You Need to Raise Money to Scale?
What the Headcount of a 100-Person SaaS Company Looks Like
Part IV: Double Your Deal-size
Chapter 15: Deal Size Math
What Jason Learned: You Need 50 Million Users to Make Freemium
Work
Small Deals Get You Started, Big Deals Drive Growth
Chapter 16: Not Too Big, Not Too Small
When You Can't Turn Small Deals into Big Ones
If You Have Customers of All Sizes
Chapter 17: Going Upmarket
If You Don't Want Salespeople …
Add Another Top Pricing Tier
Pricing Is Always a Pain
Going Fortune 1000
Part V: Do The Time
Chapter 18: Embrace Frustration
Are You Sure You're Ready for This?
Everyone Has a Year of Hell
Comfort Is the Enemy of Growth
Motivation: How Aaron Reached Escape Velocity
Chapter 19: Success Isn't a Straight Line
The Anxiety Economy and Entrepreneur Depression
Mark Suster's Question: “Should a Person Learn or Earn?”
When a Straight Line Isn't the Shortest Path to Success
Change Your World, Not the World
Part VI: Embrace Employee Ownership
Chapter 20: A Reality Check
Dear Executives (From an Employee)
Dear Employee (From the Executives)
P.S.: “Dear Senior Executives, Don't Get Left Behind” (From the
CEO and Board)
Are Your People Renting or Owning?
Chapter 21: For Executives: Create Functional Ownership
A Simple Survey
“No Surprises”
Functional Ownership
Case Study: How a Struggling Team Turned into a Self-Managing
Success
To Turn Things Around
Chapter 22: Taking Ownership to the Next Level
Financial Ownership
Move People Around
The Four Types of Employees
Part VII: Define Your Destiny
Chapter 23: Are You Abdicating Your Opportunity?
Your Opportunity Is Bigger Than You Realize
How to Expand Your Opportunity at Work
You Need Some Humdrum Passions
Your Company Isn't Your Mommy or Daddy
Back to Forcing Functions: How to Motivate Yourself to Do Things
You Don't Feel Like Doing
Sales Is a Life Skill
Sales Is a Multistep Process
Chapter 24: Combining Money and Meaning
Meaning Gone Wrong
What's Your Unique Genius?
Ignoring Real Life Doesn't Make It Go Away
Aaron: How the Hell Do You Juggle 12 Kids and Work?
About The Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1: “Niche” Doesn't Mean Small
Figure 1.1 Arc of Attention
Chapter 2: Signs of Slogging
Figure 2.1 Where is your sweet spot of Target, Pain & Solution?
Figure 2.2 Nailing A Niche is the first step of turning struggle into
success.
Chapter 5: Seeds—Customer Success
Figure 5.1 Customer Success is a beautiful way to fertilize growth.
Figure 5.2 Turn your revenue funnel into an hourglass by tracking how
Customer Success affects revenue.
Chapter 6: Nets—Inbound Marketing
Figure 6.1 What content is loved by your market AND creates
measurable results?
Chapter 7: Spears—Outbound Prospecting
Figure 7.1 Careful targeting is the key to outbound success.
Figure 7.2 Common challenges in systematizing outbound prospecting.
Figure 7.3 Enemy #1: Human Error
Figure 7.4 Modern outbound sales development needs much more than
email and phone scripts.
Chapter 10: Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier
Figure 10.1 Specialize people so they can do fewer things, better.
Figure 10.2 The Four Core sales roles.
Chapter 11: Sales Leaders
Figure 11.1 The type of VP Sales skills you need changes by stage.
Chapter 16: Not Too Big, Not Too Small
Figure 16.1 How much of your revenue comes from which different
customer segments?
Chapter 17: Going Upmarket
Figure 17.1 Going upmarket can increase both Customer Success and
revenue.
Chapter 18: Embrace Frustration
Figure 18.1
Chapter 21: For Executives: Create Functional Ownership
Figure 21.1 Push decisions down to avoid executive bottlenecks and
develop your people
Chapter 22: Taking Ownership to the Next Level
Figure 22.1 The four types of employees (excluding the Toxic/Liar type)
Chapter 23: Are You Abdicating Your Opportunity?
Figure 23.1 Don't let yourself chicken out…go through with it in any
way you can.
Chapter 24: Combining Money and Meaning
Figure 24.1 You have one, even if you don't appreciate or understand it
yet.
Figure 24.2 List out all your interests (you don't need to make it pretty).
FROM
IMPOSSIBLE
TO
INEVITABLE
HOW HYPER-GROWTH COMPANIES CREATE
PREDICTABLE REVENUE
AARON ROSS AND JASON LEMKIN
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Cover Image: Aaron Ross