Startups Must Retain Early Customers Before Paying Salespeople Commission
Catherine Blackmore · The Secrets of Net Negative Churn: Customer Advocacy · Aug 28, 2017 · at 16:08
Catherine Blackmore (Oracle Marketing Cloud GVP) discusses early-stage SaaS hiring strategies on a SaaStr panel moderated by Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Why on earth would you pay a salesperson commission before you know if you're going to retain your customers? So it's that first hundred customers, maybe first 10, 20 customers, depending on your business model, before you even think about commissioning a sales force.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Catherine Blackmore
Customer Success Leaders Should Be a Company's Most Strategic Executives
“The customer success leader, in many ways, should be your most strategic resource and executive in the company, because if you think about it, your customer success organization should really be the mirror around what is working and what isn't working.”
Monetizing Customer Success Requires Self-Serve Alternatives Before Charging For Services
“Before you can have that ask for the services order conversation with your customer, you need to make sure that you actually have tools available that they can opt to do themselves. So whether that's Resources in the community, or training online content that …”