Some Christmas reading…

Written By David Hart

…based on data, of course.

I'm building a cohort-based course that I want to launch in 2025 and I’ve taken on board my own advice and been speaking to potential customers about what would be most useful for me to cover.

(Incidentally, if you’re interested I’m still collecting views on what to cover. You can find my survey here. Would love it if you could help by filling it in.)

And so I thought what would be useful would be to pull out the four most popular areas of interest, summarize them, and then point you to where I covered the topic in 2024. And as an exercise it’s also given me more ideas on what to cover for next year.

So…. in order of popularity:

1. Go-To-Market Planning

Top of the list was Go-To-Market. What do we mean by GTM? It’s not just how you do your marketing. It pretty much covers:

  • Defining your Target Audience

  • Value Proposition and Positioning

  • Competitor Analysis

  • Sales Plan

  • Marketing Plan

  • Distribution/Channels

  • Customer Success

  • KPIs and Metrics

Basically pretty much the whole commercial gamut. So, it’s not surprising that this is the most popular request.

There are a few articles from 2024 that are relevant to GTM:

  1. Why niching down is the best strategy for defining your target audience

  2. Why you should educate your customers about your competition

  3. Why you need to be strategic when it comes to cross-selling and up-selling.

  4. A house-keeping checklist to make sure you’ve got the basics covered, including the most important SaaS Metrics

2. Sales team creation and compensation

When it’s time to move beyond founder-led sales, should your first hire be a VP, or even a CRO? Or should you go for an account manager before you start hiring people to lead the team? And what should you pay? How should the compensation be split between basic and commission?

Some of these questions are covered here:

  1. Why a VP Sales/CRO is not the silver bullet you might hope it to be

  2. An exploration of Sales Efficiency vs Sales Effectiveness. What it means and how it impacts sales and marketing.

  3. My rip-off of Christoph Janz’s Funding Napkin - something I called the Sales Motion Napkin

3. Idea Validation

How do you know whether the product you are thinking of spinning out has any potential? Do you just go with your gut or are there other things to look at?

This is one of my favourite topics. Not surprisingly I wrote about it a few times in 2024.

  1. An analysis of how ideas come about and whether there is something about your own experience that can give you an edge.

  2. Why you should ask your customers questions that terrify you.

  3. A cautionary tale (my own) about what happens if you DON’T validate your idea.

4. Pricing

Pricing is probably the most impactful lever you have to increase revenue, yet so many people (I’ve been guilty of this) largely ignore it. Maybe in a kind of ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ type way, we are nervous about tinkering too much.

On top of that, entrepreneurs are renowned for underpricing their own products. We just can’t believe that we can charge much for something where the gross margin is so high. But that’s how SaaS works. Optimizing your pricing should be a priority.

Here are some topics I covered this year:

  • The analogy of towbar or seatbelt to determine your pricing approach. One of my most popular articles this year.

  • Should you offer a free trial as part of your pricing and packaging strategy?

And finally..

If you believe in the wisdom of crowds and all that, these are the articles that were the most popular in 2024:

  1. The MQL > SQL Framework is Dead!

    My most popular article. One person opened this post over 200 times! This article talks about a different approach to the notional MQL to SQL waterfall.

  2. Longer Sales Cycles

    Sales Cycles have gotten longer. The impact is more profound than just having to wait a few more weeks to close a deal. What is it doing to companies and how can they take steps to mitigate the issues it poses?

  3. A Simple SaaS Pricing Approach

    I mention this one above in my ‘towbar or seatbelt’ analogy.

  4. A VP Sales/CRO is not a silver bullet

    Again, mentioned already above.

  5. The Rule of 40 for SaaS
    What it is and how it’s not totally what it’s cracked up to be.

So there you have it. Another year of weekly newsletters (apart from that one time Substack lost one). Hope it’s been useful.

Thanks for all of your words of encouragement and I wish you a very Happy Christmas.

David Hart
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Focus in a Broad Way
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Target Audience: Niche Down.