Shortly after I had just taken the helm at Pilot Software, I came to work one day and found a three-foot long green crowbar on my desk. There was a Post-it note on it that said, “Use it wisely.” It seemed like a very odd thing to find sitting on my desk.
It turned out to be a message from a guy by the name of Paul Volpe, the first sales person I had hired for the company as we transitioned from being a unit of a bigger company to a standalone company based in Silicon Valley. This transition brought about a lot of discussions about how we wanted to run the business.
As the popularity of Software as a Service has grown, so has the discussion around which are the best metrics and KPIs to judge the growth and performance for SaaS business models, which are based not on monthly or yearly sales, as was the case in the on-premise software world, but on recurring subscription revenue.
Many businesses, when they first start out, will sell their product or service to anyone in order to prove product market fit. If you’re successful doing that, you eventually figure out who your best customers are. At that point, you need to get more focused with your offering so you can scale your sales organization.
The payments landscape is changing rapidly. Back in February, I had the opportunity to chat with