I've been in awe of Hubspot's success for years now (full disclosure - CloudRevenuePartners is a Hubspot user and Gold Partner),
- serious, serious growth for years now - in less than 10 years - 2018 $513m revenue
- 60,000+ customers
- selling SaaS (new definition of SaaS further down this blog) to the SMB!!!! I've been told hundreds of times from VC's "it's impossible to make a business selling SaaS to the SMB"
- a massive following including 10's of thousands at their annual Inbound conference
As much as I've been in awe of Hubspots phenomenal performance mainly from their "MIT math" approach to sales execution - very well described in the book by Mark Roberge, Hubspot's CRO from day 1 to over $100m, titled "The Sales Acceleration Formula".
It became much more apparent to me what their "secret sauce" is, three times over the past few years,
1st, When I first started working with Hubspot I couldn't get over how much effort and resources they put into helping their customers and partners become successful with their SaaS app, from on-boarding (they were tenacious) to post sales support, to education, thought leadership and content - all designed to help achieve success. Geeezzz, I was only paying $300 per month - what were they thinking?
2nd, When I first attended their Inbound conference. OMG, tons of people, hundreds of breakout sessions, all breakout sessions on "how to be successful" - next to 0 on the software, a dozen "big name" keynotes, everyone was smiling and laughing, standing room only at all sessions, huge lines to get food, masses of people wearing Hubspot garb etc. I was thinking "Did Hubspot create a cult?"
3rd, When I read Dharmesh Shah's (Founder and CTO at Hubspot) blog titled "Secret to SaaS Success: Recognize That You're Not Selling Software". OMG - he completely nailed it. SaaS is not Software as a Service, it's Success as a Service!!! Brilliant!!! I urge you to read his blog. I'm paraphrasing, but he discusses how a SaaS company has no choice but to "kill themselves over making their customers and partners successful from day one" or else they'll just stop paying vs the old world is selling perpetual licenses - get the po and their cash and hope they're successful - if not - oh well!!
Ok, is Dharmesh's blog a revelation to me? - honestly no, it just so happens I've been in the "recurring revenue/subscription business" for a long time now - so I get it. But this was one of those big reminder "light bulb" moments for me and I immediately started thinking about "all businesses" that are getting into the recurring revenue/subscription cloud business - any XaaS. Do they "get it?". Most especially do the cloud vendor's and disti's that are selling through the channel get it? I've been preaching to the channel-centric vendors and dist's for years that they must help their partners be successful from a business model perspective - help them make a solid business from the cloud. Nine times out of ten they would tell me "that's not my job". Sorry, but today is different - yes it is your job. Signing up partners to sell your XaaS is easy (and meaningless). Getting them to sell your XaaS and make their end customers successful will take a lot of work from you - and no it's not technical training or sales bootcamps - it's working with the owners to help them build a cloud business.
Dear Cloud Vendor's and Dist's, What's your partner "Cloud Business Success Program" look like?
