MarketStar Blog | Articles (9)

Key Takeaways: 

• If there is one SaaS metric you should monitor carefully, then it is your churn rate. The lower the percentage, the better 

• However, the churn rate does not give you the full picture and health of your business 

• To understand the impact of churn on your revenue, Net Retention Rate (NRR) and Gross Retention Rate (GRR) are more effective markers 

• Choosing between the two metrics can be tricky as the metric you employ can help determine the health of your business

Almost every profitable enterprise relies on its customer base to succeed. 

Customer success is, even more, a critical consideration for businesses that provide solutions through a SaaS model. 

Customer success is an important component of every department: marketing, sales, onboarding, support, hiring, or operations. The goal is to deliver value to the customers. 

Therefore, the question that arises is: How do you measure it? 

Few critical metrics for customer success provide valuable insights into the many factors that determine your customer’s success. These metrics help businesses understand and explain how and why a customer uses their solution, how many customers they are retaining, and the value of both retained customers and those lost to attrition. 

For many organizations, the answer to these questions lies in using several methods or metrics. At the same time, these metrics are not static and can keep changing through the customer life cycle. 

Why are Customer Success Metrics So Critical?

The metrics for customer success come into the picture because of customer churn. And less than ideal customer service is one of the most dominant reasons why customer churn occurs. 

According to one study, 65% of customers have switched to a different brand because of poor customer experience. So even if you have the most competitive product in the industry, a mediocre experience will lead you to lose customers. 

A crucial reason for reducing your churn rate is the reality of just focusing on new customer acquisitions.

While the success rate of selling to a new customer stands at a mere 5-20%, your success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%! This is because your current customers are already happy using your product or service. They trust your business, which is so important if businesses want to remain relevant in the current competitive landscape. 

New customers, on the other hand, need to be convinced why they should spend money on your product. 

Existing customers will be the key to your business success. 

Consequently, you can significantly reduce churn if you know what your current customer base is experiencing and what you can do to alleviate some of their pain points. 

The 2 Key Metrics to Measure the Efficacy of Your Customer Success

Program: NRR & GRR

Broadly speaking, there are two metrics that can help you measure the amount of revenue you have retained or revenue that you did not lose to churn. 

These customer success metrics are – Net Retention Rate (NRR) and Gross Retention Rate (GRR). 

What is Net Retention Rate in SaaS? 

Net Retention Rate is a SaaS-based metric that helps businesses calculate the percentage of revenue they have retained from existing customers over a period of time.

This can be monthly or yearly and can include upgrades, downgrades, cross-sells, and cancellations.

In simple terms, your NRR helps you understand how many of your existing customers are actually staying loyal and extending their subscriptions.

NRR, also known as Net Dollar Retention, helps you understand whether the service you are providing has the quality of engaging new customers and meeting their needs. It’s a key metric that can help uphold a company’s financial performance and comes in handy when evaluating the quality of customer success.

Calculating Net Retention Rate 

You first add your Churn MRR and Expansion MRR and subtract them from Contraction MRR.

Further, subtract the result from starting MRR. Now, divide the result by starting MRR and then go on to multiply it by 100 to get your Net Retention Rate.

NRR = (Starting MRR – Contraction MRR – Churn MRR + Expansion MRR)/ Starting MRR x 100 

Here’s what this means: 

• MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue or the amount of recurring revenue a company predicts to earn each month

• New MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue from new customers

• Contraction MRR: These are your downgrades or lost MRR from existing customers 

• Churned MRR – These are your lost MRR from canceled customers 

• Expansion MRR- These are your upgrades or MRR from existing customers 

Improving Net Retention Rate 

To begin with, you can encourage your users to upgrade their trial accounts to paid accounts using modals.

A modal is a rectangular UI element that is commonly used in SaaS businesses to notify users of something important.

Modals are effective as they grab the customer’s attention as they normally take up most of the user interface. Contextual in-app messaging is another great way to help increase your NRR.

What is Gross Retention Rate in SaaS? 

Your Gross Retention Rate is the ability of your business to retain its existing customers.

When you retain your customers, you retain revenue. So, GRR is the percentage of customers that a business is able to retain at the existing price point.

Unlike NRR, your GRR does not take into account revenue earned from expansion, upsells, and cross-sells. But it does include any downgrades or cancellations of subscriptions. Your Gross Retention Rate simply tells you how happy your existing customers are. It is a stability indicator of any SaaS-based business model.

• Calculating Gross Retention Rate  

GRR is the rate of existing customers retained during a given period.

To calculate GRR, subtract your MRR at the beginning of the period from your downgraded MRR during the period.

Further, subtract your downgraded MRR with your contraction MRR. Now, divide the result by the MRR at the beginning of the period. GRR = (MRR start – Churn – Contraction) / MRR 

• Improving Gross Retention Rate 

An excellent method to boost your GRR is by giving your customers the opportunity to speak out about their concerns.

This can be done through surveys which will enable you to determine customer experience. The onboarding process plays a critical role here, ensure you have a solid onboarding process in place to retain more customers, and consequently revenue.

What Should You Focus On – NRR or GRR? 

The debate over whether to pick NRR or GRR is tricky.

Net Retention Rate might look like the better alternative as it takes into account two revenue streams – upsells and renewals.

However, Gross Retention Rate has a small advantage over NRR in the fact that it measures the long-term health of any SaaS business. Keep in mind the below tips when deciding: 

• NRR is a good metric for customer success when you are considering growth. It’s what you need to focus on finding the perfect product-market fit to attain a high GRR. A high GRR is only possible when your customers find your product useful and continue their business with you. 

• Remember that when it comes to funding opportunities, your prospective investors will closely scrutinize your GRR. Between two businesses with high NRR, investors are more likely to place their bets on the business that has a higher GRR. 

• NRR and MRR go hand-in-hand. So as you continue to chase growth and scale new heights, ensure that you are seeking a better market fit for your product. 

• Regardless of whether NRR or GRR is the priority, track both metrics carefully. Make use of a holistic subscription billing solution to capture insights from the payment process for strategic decision-making. Such solutions can help you gather relevant data about your business’s expansion, contraction, and churned revenue. 

• A good way of determining whether you are on the right path with your customer success metric is to determine the quality of NRR and GRR. While the standard benchmark varies across sectors, the closer your GRR is to 100%, the better the health of your company. Similarly, if your NRR is anywhere above 100%, your business is growing rapidly.

Wrapping Up 

Retaining existing customers should be at the top of the to-do list of any SaaS company.

GRR and NRR are not just calculations to measure dollar value. These metrics of customer success are crucial as they show you your customer’s journey and their success with your product/service.

Optimizing your NRR and GRR makes a world of difference when you are going for funding. To give your company the best chance of securing success, such customer success metrics should be explored and improved upon.

Looking to make customers your best growth engine? Reach out to us. 

Key Insights 

As the future grows digital, the smartphone is increasingly becoming the device of choice.

Key Takeaways:

• To gain loyal and long-term customers, you need to design a journey map that provides a superb experience

• Providing an incredible journey can turn someone who was casually browsing your website into an advocate who offers valuable referrals

• Journey mapping via pipeline management enables your customers to experience what it’s like to interact with your company

• Pipeline velocity refers to the speed with which leads move through the sales pipeline

Knowing what’s on your customer’s mind can be tricky and challenging. When you think you’ve accounted for their needs, their requirements change, and new buying trends emerge.

Ever wondered why a customer spends hours on your website researching your product/service to close the tab? Why does it take so many steps to get from point A to point B when it should ideally take just one?

Well, the problem could be in your customer journey mapping – you probably don’t have a clear understanding of your prospect’s journey to purchasing your product/service.

What is Prospect Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping or prospect journey mapping is a visual representation of how potential customers perceive your brand and how they interact with your product/service. It helps them gain insight into the challenges they’re facing.

The journey mapping aims to understand the needs and resolve pain points at all touchpoints (an instance where your prospect can form an opinion of your company) across the customer lifecycle.

How Prospect Journey Mapping Helps Drive Pipeline Velocity?

Prospect journey mapping enables you to get in your customers’ shoes and experience what it feels like to engage with your brand.

It helps you understand the good and the bad your brand offers, while the insights you gain help personalize the customer experience.

Before we explore the benefits of customer journey mapping and how it helps drive pipeline velocity, let’s find out what pipeline velocity is. 

What is Pipeline Velocity?

Pipeline velocity is the speed at which qualified leads move through a sales pipeline and eventually become customers.

The Benefits:

• Journey mapping helps you understand the role of different touchpoints and see how all customer interactions influence each other.

• By mapping out the prospect journey, you can understand what is interesting to your customers about your brand and what is turning them away. 

• It helps identify roadblocks to reduce customer pain points and improve user experience.

• Mapping out the customer’s journey helps you understand the channels they visit and what they’re trying to do at each touchpoint.

• Journey mapping helps you improve your customer retention rate. According to American Express, 33% of customers switch brands after just one poor experience.

Components in a Prospect Journey Map

A prospect journey map compiles your customer’s experience with your brand and combines the information into a map.

By understanding this relationship between your customers and your brand, you can build your touchpoints for the most effective journey mapping process.

The Purchase Process: This element defines the path/stages you intend for your customers to take to reach a specific goal. Using this path, you can start listing your stages in the right order.

Customer Actions: This component details what your potential customers do at each stage of the purchase process and explores the different ways they might reach their goals.

Adding Emotions: Your customers are looking for solutions to solve a problem. Adding a range of emotions to the journey map can help improve their opinion about your brand and turn them into brand advocates.

Pain Points: Adding pain points to the journey map helps identify the exact stage where your customers are facing issues and work out solutions.

How to Create a Prospect Journey Map

Before you start creating the journey map, you need to ask a few questions yourself – Why are you creating a map in the first place? What experience will it offer? Who is it about?

Based on these questions, you may want to create a buyer persona.

The next step is to interview prospects for direct feedback. A few good questions are:

• How did you hear about us?

• What attracted you to our website?

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how easy was it for you to navigate our website?

Based on the feedback and research, find out where your customers can interact with you on your website; list all the touchpoints your prospects are and should be using.

Determine all the elements your journey map needs to include and identify your resources and the ones you need.

Once you have designed your map, take the customer journey yourself first – this ensures that you are providing a valuable experience.

Finally, you can make the appropriate changes to your map to achieve goals.

5 Best Practices for Customer Journey Mapping

• Set a clear goal for the journey map to improve the customer buying experience.

• Turn customer pain points into business terms that your customer success team can understand and act upon.

• Create customer journey maps for different buyer personas based on demographics and psychographic.

• Update the journey map every time your product/service offers changes. Even a small tweak, like removing an additional field in the form, can significantly impact your customer journey.

• Make the prospect journey map accessible to cross-functional teams, as they are not effective in a silo.

Delight your Customers at Every Stage

Building an effective prospect journey map can help your brand create strong relationships with them. Once you understand their experience with your business, you can provide great delight at every stage of their journey.

Whether you’re optimizing your existing customer journey or exploring a new business opportunity to serve their unrecognized needs, start mapping the future of customer success in your business with the help of experts.

Bonus Takeaway:

Mapping customer journeys can be difficult for the marketing team, especially if they don’t know how and where to start.

So, here’s a handy worksheet designed to help savvy marketers chart their customers’ buying journeys to enhance their overall buying experience.

Print it out, pin it on your desk, and share it with other departments to ensure that everyone is consistently working towards attaining your customer experience vision.

Key Takeaways

• Brands must implement a seamless buying experience to make their customers come back, even during an economic crisis

• Repeat purchases are the ideal way to keep your business healthy and running during an economic downturn 

• Customers who are happy with your product/services tend to refer their friends to your brand

• Retaining your existing customers will help you grow your business amidst the challenges other companies are experiencing

Economic downturns or recessions can significantly impact customer behavior and your organization's approach to retaining customers.

As a CS leader, you must keep your team productive, motivated, and efficient during challenging economic times to retain your customers.

Customer success has never been more vital than it is right now, but instead of concentrating on KPIs and analytics, it’s crucial to pay attention to the customer.

By focusing on customer outcomes, an organization's current goal should be to make their customers’ lives easier while they use the product or service. Hopefully, the customer will benefit from this and continue doing business with you through challenging times.

This article will discuss why customer retention should become your number one focus and how to retain customers in an economic downturn.

The 5 Effective Strategies for Fostering a Loyal Customer Base

Even when things are going well with the global economy, retaining customers is difficult and building a loyal customer base is an ongoing effort. Making client retention marketing a priority requires hard work, even in the best times. 

However, when a recession occurs, things become even more difficult. 

People make fewer purchases, spend less, and forget some of their preferred brands to conserve money. You might think, “How can I hope to retain my customers in the current climate?” 

Fortunately, many strategies are still available to help create a solid consumer base, even during a downturn. A few of them are presented below. 

1. Put Customer Experience First

According to PWC, only 49% of consumers believe that businesses offer good customer service options, while 73% think customer service experience pre-purchase is a crucial determinant of their purchase decision. 

This indicates that you can quickly establish a loyal customer base if you can set yourself apart from your rivals in terms of customer service. 

Providing a positive and personalized customer experience, especially during a recession, is everything when it comes to running a successful business. 

You must ensure that you provide quality products and services, deliver them on time, and respond quickly to customer inquiries and complaints. By doing so, you will be able to keep your customers happy and coming back for more.  

To ensure that you are providing the best possible customer experience, it is essential to strive for improvement constantly. This means continually evaluating your procedures and removing inefficiencies where necessary. And removing inefficiencies that are affecting the CSAT score, NPS, or LTV.  

It is also important to listen to your customers and consider their feedback. By doing all of this, you can be sure that you are providing the best possible customer experience and running a successful business.

2. Be Flexible 

Be flexible with your customers.  

If they can’t pay their bill on time, offer them a payment plan. If they’re unhappy with a purchase, offer them a refund or exchange. 

Being flexible with your customers shows that you’re willing to work with them to ensure they’re satisfied. This can help build long-term loyalty, and trust and boost sales from existing customers. 

Customers feel appreciated when companies are ready to look out for them in times of need. Offer discounts and incentives when possible. When people spend less money on goods and services, they start looking for ways to save money elsewhere. 

Offering discounts or incentives may result in increased sales at times when your company cannot afford to lose money from sales volume alone. 

3. Have a Community-Oriented Perspective

During times of global disruption, people seek a community to belong to and connect with.  

Start developing meaningful connections with your existing customers to strengthen the relationship. Once you build a customer community, it will continue working for your business, even when you are not trying hard.  

Building trusting relationships with your customers will cost you nothing, and the payoff is immeasurable. Make direct contact with your clients and express gratitude, making them feel they are being seen and heard.   

Creating a community around your company, however, can be tricky.  

You can use community-building platforms and social media to build the community and offer loyalty programs or referral discounts to grow your business. 

4. Be Compassionate

In the same way that individuals seek out the community during a turbulent time, they also seek a little compassion and recognition. This can be accomplished through personalization – personalizing your approach for each customer can make them feel valued. 

When done well, personalized customer service may increase retention, foster customer loyalty and trust, reduce churn rates, and support the maintenance of a solid client base. 

According to HubSpot, personalized CTAs outperform non-personalized CTAs by more than 200%, and most customers are more likely to continue with a business that provides a personalized experience. 

Valuing your clients is a successful business strategy, especially when they are concerned about their expenses. You do not want your customers to stop doing business with you because they feel you don’t care about them. 

5. Add Value to Your Product/Service

The easiest way to retain customers is by bringing value to your customers. Be proactive with the value propositions the business has to offer. 

You can add value to your business with a single offer, but adding value as part of a series is much more effective. Here are some examples: 

1) Add a bonus product or service at the same price point and let customers know about it. This can be a free report, video or guide, or even an additional product at the same price.

It helps create loyalty by giving customers something extra for free, showing that you’re willing to go above and beyond for them. 

2) Improve customer service by walking them through processes that may not have been explained well before (or at all!) so that people know what’s expected of them when using your product or service.  

This can be done in person or via email – just ensure that customers know what’s happening behind the scenes! 

3) You should also improve the quality and performance of your products/services to help retain loyal customers who may not expect much from you but appreciate quality when delivered consistently. 

To Summarize

Driving customer loyalty in a challenging economic climate is key to increasing your business growth, and convenience is the key to gaining trust and loyalty from your customers in these times.

The above-mentioned strategies can help you achieve what you want and unlock huge benefits during a recession.

Outsourcing certain functions, such as sales pipeline management or customer support, can also help your organization take better care of your customers and become a boon for cost-conscious companies.

Using outsourcing as an intelligent business strategy can improve retention and position the organization to meet the challenges imposed by a recession favorably. 

Key Insights 

• In today’s competitive marketplace, companies give much importance to finding, targeting, and acquiring new customers 

• In the process of new customer acquisition, they often tend to overlook the significance of staying connected with existing customers 

• Organizations, across all sectors, should take care of existing customers. Such customers contribute massively to sales, if treated with care 

Acquiring new customers is expensive. Selling to existing customers is a more pocket-friendly approach. 

However, providing superior customer service is also not a guarantee for better sales with 54% of all consumers having higher expectations from brands, according to a Microsoft report. 

While companies tend to give much importance to finding, targeting, and acquiring new customers, they often overlook the significance of staying connected with existing customers. 

But it has never been as vital to sustaining your existing customers. In fact, they contribute massively to sales if treated with care. According to a report by Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit. 

Building relationships with your existing customers is a unique way to increase sales. 

We have listed 7 top-notch strategies for you. If you manage to improve every step of your sales process by even a little, your sale increases by a lot. 

7 Easy-to-Implement Hacks to Boost Sales with Existing Customers 

1. Research Your Market 

Open the door to new, untapped opportunities with market research and analytics. 

It is one of the best strategies to increase sales. By taking a deeper look into the market you serve, you can better understand who your customers are, what they want, and identify their pain points. 

You can collate feedback through surveys, listen to your customers through social media, read trade articles, and mine data from Google Analytics to understand the critical elements. 

2. Understand Customer Behavior 

Selling to existing customers will be impossible without understanding customer behavior, a vital element of your marketing campaign. 

Understand how your customers relate to your products or services. Try answering questions such as: 

• Do they rely on just a single feature or more? 

• Are they having issues with one of your product features? 

This will help you to determine whether you need to provide upgrades in certain areas or not. Another approach is to provide personalized services or training to customers. Using this method will help you to enrich or extend your relationship with your existing customers. 

3. Run Promotions 

An equally effective strategy to boost sales is by rewarding your existing customers.

Promotions that reward old customers will go a long way in improving their loyalty and increase sales numbers significantly.

The frequency of promotions can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. What matters is that it doesn’t stress your business. You must plan for promotions so that they don’t wear you out.

4. Update Your Offering 

As your business grows, your offerings will change. Turn to your existing customers when it comes to deciding what offerings to eliminate and where you can utilize opportunities.

An easy strategy to boost sales is to look at the items that your customer base ignores.

Low sales items also clutter your business. When you strip away such items, your customers can focus on the products and services that they want.

Another factor for you to avoid is offering a large variety of products in each product line.

Such an approach increases the cognitive load that may lead to inertia which interferes with decision-making. All of us have experienced some kind of cognitive overload when it comes to making a purchase decision by scrolling through page after page of offerings on Amazon or eBay. 

5. Upsell and Cross-Sell 

Selling to existing customers will be incomplete without upselling and cross-selling. In fact, cross-selling can increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%, according to McKinsey research.

Your biggest hurdle, which is the initial buy, is over now. You have established trust and your customer has formed a favorable opinion about your business. Now, it’s time to think of the next step.

An upsell takes place when you convince a customer to buy more than they originally planned. On the other hand, cross-selling happens when the customer buys a different product or service. 

6. Tell Your Story 

Visual mechanisms can be your companion to increase sales from existing customers. Visual aids and infographics can help you spur into action.

This type of approach makes messages actionable while subtly convincing existing customers to make more purchases. The idea is to show customers how you plan to solve their problems with your offering.

With visual mechanisms, it becomes easier to encourage a level of urgency in the customer to close up the sale. 

7. After-sales Service 

According to a study conducted by Shep Hyken’s CX consulting firm, 96% of customers will leave a business if they receive bad service.

When it comes to selling more to existing customers, you cannot ignore after-sales service. If you abandon your customers after the sale, they won’t come back in the future. 

Wrapping Up 

It is critical to remember that you are building the customer and not the sale. When you succeed in this, your sales will increase.

Considering the intrinsic role of sales in business growth, you must find effective strategies to increase sales and implement those for boosting sales, increasing customer lifetime value, and better ROI. 

Key Takeaways

It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we do business, sparing no industry or sector. 

Key Takeaways

• Sales operations are a critical component of any top-performing sales organization, helping the business reach its revenue target 

• A sales ops team is well-poised to help sales teams close more deals while alleviating salespeople of non-selling sales activities 

• Despite its increasingly critical role, many sales leaders struggle with building a sales ops team 

• Certain practices can make the process easier and help organizations bring transparency and clarity to their processes

Like most sectors and departments across industries, sales operations were disrupted and reshaped by the pandemic.

Digital solutions are offering new paths to sales operation strategy where the key is building better connections, both with customers and the workforce.

The increasing importance of utilizing data to drive decision-making has made sales ops more important than ever.

According to the Trends in Sales Ops Report, 75% of the sales ops professionals now have new responsibilities with 64% expecting their role to change.

Despite its increasing scope, sales operations is also an area that many sales leaders struggle with. But done right, sales ops can help companies improve their sales performance and boost revenue growth.

This article attempts to answer this. Deep dive into why sales ops is such a critical piece of your sales puzzle and how to build a stellar sales ops team for success.

Let’s get started.

Why is Sales Ops So Important?

According to a survey, sales ops teams drive up to a 10% increase in sales productivity each year.

Simply put, your sales operations team is responsible for helping sales professionals sell better, hit goals faster, and lead smoother sales processes.

Senior leaders of organizations can leverage their sales operations department to synthesize data about the sales experience to make it more effective.

Here are four more ways how sales ops help organizations boost their performance. 

• Sales operations free up time and energy for organizations as they analyze and streamline internal processes so sales teams are not as distracted or bogged down. If any given task takes more time as it’s being done manually, the sales ops team will research ways to automate that task. The result is that your sales team is better poised to serve customers.

• There’s a clear gap between companies that scale and those that don’t. The answer is the absence of a clear and effective sales operations strategy which could have helped build a repeatable sales process that is codified across the sales team. Smart sales ops leaders help their companies to establish best practices across teams, making results predictable. 

• The sales operations team demystifies the sales process for other departments so data-driven decisions can be made which helps achieve revenue targets. Sales ops professionals make use of CRM data to paint a holistic picture of the customer journey which can help leaders gauge if the pipeline is healthy or not. 

• Your sales operations department will be in a better position to notice risks that heads of sales may miss as they are more focused on closing the deal. With the sales team busy executing the plan, sales ops leaders will dig into data and use those insights to design incentives and create a killer sales ops strategy. 

How Do You Structure Sales Operations for Success?

While sales operations continue to grow as a strategic imperative in a dynamic marketplace, the current structure and roles are not without limitations.

The State of Sales Operations Report by LinkedIn highlights that 36% of sales ops professionals struggle with balancing strategic and operational responsibilities.

The answer lies in having a well-planned sales operations structure in place.

Once established, you have more consistency and control over your sales process while your tasks managers and sales reps have better clarity to complete goals.

Here’s how you can structure your sales operations team. 

1. Determine Operational Scope

Your operational scope for sales ops corresponds to your plan for sales and strategy.

For instance, if online advertising and content marketing are part of your sales plan to generate leads, your sales ops structure will be different.

This is your operational scope. It defines your sales process, core metrics, supportive tasks, and roles.

It’s essentially a top-down approach where you start with a strategy, set up a sales ops structure that incorporates the strategy, and then, implement resources and practices to optimize the system.

2. Define KPIs for Sales Operations

Since sales ops encompasses both strategy and execution, it is important to evaluate how the team is performing relative to its goals. KPIs will help you with that. 

• Average Win Rate: Your sales ops team is working hard to ensure that your sales department closes more deals. You can measure the efficiency of your team by monitoring the average win rate. 

• Average deal size: This is the average dollar amount for every closed deal or contract. It’s an important metric to understand the financial health of the organization and its pipeline. 

• Average Sales Cycle Length: Your sales ops team is hard at work to slash the time it takes a prospect to close after entering your sales pipeline. Monitoring this cycle can make your team more efficient.

• Lead Response Time: Also known as speed to lead, this measures the amount of time it takes for you to follow up on clients after their first contact with your business. 

3. Establish a Sales Process

A sales process will include repeatable steps to get prospects from the awareness stage to the purchase stage. These include various activities such as cold calling, lead qualifications, and hosting a client meeting to present a pitch.

Both sales funnel and sales pipeline can help strengthen this process.

Your funnel represents the lead’s buying journey with your business. The pipeline involves all internal activities you can take up to move the lead through the funnel.

4. Establish a Strong Leadership

Your sales operation structure should have a direct line to the executives. 

Make sure that your team is led by a vice president, director, or senior manager. These leaders should report to the president or a high-level sales leader. 

While sales ops and marketing work closely together, your sales team is the one that understands the overall sales strategy. This team should be part of sales rather than marketing.

5. Get More Team Members for Supportive Sales Tasks

According to the State of Sales Report by Salesforce, 75% of sales reps have taken on new responsibilities at work. Supportive tasks should not throw your sales ops team members off track. These are the administrative tasks that ensure sales process optimization.

For instance, recruitment, training, and onboarding of new members are all supportive tasks in sales as they don’t directly impact the sales process.

Similarly, invoicing and billing a customer to collect revenue, tracking sales commissions for the payroll team, and creating sales forecasts and sales contests are all supportive tasks for your sales operations team.

A proper pipeline on how these tasks are completed can help to strengthen your sales ops structure.

6. Make Use of Technology

78% of customers expect a consistent customer experience at every touchpoint and digital channel.

It’s essential that your team is not burdened with manual tasks that take their time and energy from critical activities. Use technology as much as possible to automate tasks.

CRM software, email automation software, lead prioritization engines, and sales software are just a few of the tools that you can make use of.

However, it will also be counter-productive if your sales ops team is toggling between 10+ tools. Figure out the role a new software will play in your sales process and only then implement it. 

7. Who to Hire

According to one report, 36% of sales ops professionals agree that it’s hard to recruit and retain good hires in sales ops.

Putting together any new team can be challenging, but more so in the case of your sales operations team because of the central role they play in your revenue growth.

Keeping in mind certain qualities can help you make the right choice. This includes the ability to analyze data. They should have excellent communication skills so they can help the larger team understand the significance of the data.

As the sales ops team is linked to almost all parts of the organization, they need to be able to build relationships.

Succeed with an Effective Sales Ops Team

Building a sales operations team is one of the most critical steps of your enterprise sales cycle. Done well, it can improve productivity and deliver a stellar customer experience. 

More than anything else, sales operations will help you create a robust system of selling where data, insights, and technology play an important role in driving performance and sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

• Both AdTech and MarTech industries are all set to grow rapidly in the years to come

• By staying updated with the latest trends in AdTech and MarTech industries, you can ensure that your company stays on top of the game

• As it grows, artificial intelligence will become more widely used in the MarTech industry 

• The recent boom in new AdTech products/companies has led to a need for AdTech companies to differentiate themselves 

• The AdTech and MarTech industries are both booming right now. But with an upcoming recession, what does the future hold for these industries? 

The AdTech market was valued at $438 billion in 2021 and will grow at a CAGR of more than 9% from 2021-2030. 

The MarTech industry is also growing rapidly, and according to reports, the MarTech market in the UK and North America is worth $149.7 billion. The global market was estimated to be worth $344 billion in 2021. 

Given their consistent growth throughout the years, it is safe to say that both industries will continue to expand despite a recession.

The Current State of AdTech & MarTech Industries

AdTech

What is AdTech? 

“Advertising technology,” or “AdTech,” refers to a broad category of software and tools advertisers use to deliver and track their digital advertising campaigns and target audiences. 

AdTech software platforms assist agencies and brands in buying advertising space and enable publishers to set ad space’s price and sell it. 

AdTech is a rapidly growing industry that is constantly evolving.  

We have seen a boom in new AdTech companies and products in the past few years. This has led to a more competitive landscape and a need for AdTech companies to differentiate themselves. 

Despite the challenges, the AdTech industry is still growing strong. The continued rise of digital advertising and the growing popularity of programmatic advertising drive the expansion. 

With the AdTech industry constantly changing, it can take time to keep up with the latest trends. But by staying up-to-date on the latest news and developments along with focusing on customer obsession, you can ensure that your company stays ahead of the curve. 

MarTech

What is MarTech? 

MarTech refers to any software or tools marketers use to plan and execute their marketing activities offline and online.

Marketers use MarTech solutions for various marketing activities, including social media marketing, email marketing, marketing campaigns, marketing strategy, marketing automation, retargeting, and more.

The MarTech industry is currently in a state of flux.

For years, marketers have relied on various technologies to help them reach their target audiences. But with the ever-changing landscape of the digital world, it can take time to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.

This is where MarTech comes in.

MarTech is the term used to describe the intersection of marketing and technology. It is the process of using technology to solve marketing problems. 

With the help of MarTech, marketers can automate their tasks, personalize their messages, and better track their results.  

MarTech is constantly evolving, and it can take much work to keep up with the latest trends. But by staying informed, marketers can ensure they are always using the best tools to reach their audiences.

Are AdTech & MarTech Prepared for a Recession?

The global economy is showing signs of slowing down, and many experts predict a recession shortly.  

Advertisers and marketers are already feeling the pinch, with ad spend growth slowing down in recent months. So the big question is: are AdTech and MarTech prepared for a recession? 

There are a few things to consider in the AdTech industry. 

• AdTech is a highly competitive industry. During the last recession, ad spending increased as brands sought to cut costs and be more efficient with their advertising budgets.

• A recession could be good for AdTech. As brands look to cut costs, they’ll be looking for more efficient ways to reach their audiences, and AdTech can offer that. 

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the MarTech industry.  

With new tools and platforms being created daily, it takes time to keep up with the latest and greatest. However, with the global economy heading towards a recession, it’s important to ask: is MarTech prepared for an economic downturn? 

While it’s impossible to predict the future, there are a few things we can look at to see if the MarTech industry is prepared for a recession: 

• Most MarTech platforms are subscription-based, which can be easily scaled back or cancelled if necessary.

• Many MarTech companies offer pay-as-you-go pricing models, which can be helpful for cash-strapped companies. 

• Specific MarTech platforms offer free or low-cost trial periods, so companies can test them before committing.

The Future

AdTech

Advertising is evolving; consumer behavior and how we consume media is changing. Advertisers are now turning to AdTech to target and reach consumers in new and innovative ways. 

AdTech includes various technologies and platforms to deliver, measure, and optimize advertising. This includes programmatic advertising, ad exchanges, and even data management platforms.  

AdTech is constantly evolving, and it shows no signs of slowing down. As consumer behavior changes, so too must advertising. AdTech will play a pivotal role in the future of advertising, and it is poised to revolutionize the industry. 

Although we are heading towards a recession, the future of AdTech looks bright. And there are several reasons to be optimistic about the future of AdTech. Here are the top three positive aspects: 

• AdTech is becoming more efficient

• AdTech is becoming more automated

• AdTech is becoming more AI-oriented

These three trends suggest that companies that invest in the latest technologies will weather the storm and come out stronger on the other side of the recession.

MarTech

The MarTech industry is changing rapidly. New technologies are emerging and transforming the way businesses operate. Here’s a look at some of the latest trends in MarTech and what they mean for the industry’s future. 

One of the biggest trends in MarTech is the move towards artificial intelligence (AI).  

AI is already used in various applications, from customer service to marketing. And as AI technology develops, it will become even more widely used in MarTech. 

Another big trend is the increasing use of data.  

Businesses are collecting more data than ever before and using it to drive their marketing decisions. As data becomes more accessible and easy to use, companies will continue to use it to form their marketing strategies. 

MarTech is becoming more and more accessible to companies of all sizes, thanks to the rise of cloud-based solutions and pay-as-you-go pricing models.  

And as MarTech continues to evolve, we expect to see even more innovations to help businesses market more effectively and efficiently. So if you’re worried about the future of your MarTech, don’t be. The future of MarTech is bright, regardless of the current economic climate. 

To Wrap Things Up

The global economy is forecasted to enter a recession soon. This might impact various industries.

However, AdTech and MarTech are driven by data and technology, which are two areas still expanding even in times of recession. As long as companies are willing to invest in data and technology, AdTech and MarTech will continue to grow.