We’ve invested in 33companies since our founding and we’ve seen some CEO’s use their time muchbetter than others. In our view, beloware the tasks a CEO should prioritize.
Selling. Helpingclose and keep major customers is a CEO role that never goes away. Large, marquee customers need to feel the CEOcares about them and they need to know they have access to you. You should be helping your sales reps closemajor accounts and accompanying them on major sales calls. If you’re not doing this already, know that theCEO’s at your competitors are. Once themajor client is closed, they should have your email address and feel free toreach out to you any time. Additionally,good CEO’s check in with their major customers to make sure they’re happy andalso explore upsells, additional uses of the product, and even leads.
Recruiting. Asa CEO of a rising company in your industry, you should be in touch with thebest talent in your industry and constantly trying to lure them to yourfirm. This includes C-suite executivesbut also the best sales reps, tech talent, and great customer successreps. Nothing is more effective ingetting talent to a company as when the CEO reaches out directly and makes peoplefeel wanted.
Value propping. Spendingtime with your team and best customers to figure out how you can furtherimprove the customer value proposition of course is a must. This means understanding what your customerswant, delivering that, but also figuring out what your customers don’t realizethey want, but will love once they have it. For instance, none of us realized we needed an iphone until it cameout. Apple gave us something we didn’trealize we wanted, but once we got it, we loved it.
Scrutinizing thenumbers. It’s critical to have a deepunderstanding of the following KPI’s: cash efficiency, net dollar retention,and gross dollar retention. We find thatif those three figures are good, growth naturally follows. Additionally, always use the numbers to tellyou who is the ideal customer, and focus on that ideal customer solely. Ignore the rest.
Pricing. Howyou price the product can make our break the go-to-market. Even if you think you have pricing right,always consider how you can better align the pricing with the value yourproduct is providing. If possible, getaway from per seat pricing (we find unlimited seats makes you stickier) andinstead charge for the way your product provides value.
Partnering. Oneof your priorities should be to build partnerships with bigger companies. The reasons: i) larger partners ultimately become strategic acquirers that paythe biggest premiums for the business; and ii)great partnerships drive lots of revenue through integrations and theleveraging of the partner’s sales team to sell your product with theirs.
Do the meat andpotatoes tasks above, and your company will scale ad nauseum. Here are some of the things you shouldn’t bedoing.
Visioning. Nothingscares us more than an aloof CEO constantly preaching about his vision. You can see these CEOs a mile away: theyspend way too much time looking for speaking engagements on the conferencecircuit and are constantly pontificating about where the product is headed. They use the words ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ waytoo often, and don’t really get much done. Since they’re not actually executing with the sales team, CS team, andproduct team, all they’re doing is ‘thinking’ and probably don’t understandwhat it will actually take to execute. As one CEO put it to me, “young companyCEOs think the key to culture is a higher purpose, but the truth is nothingbuilds culture like WINNING.”
Reviewlegal docs. You are not a lawyer. You are not good at playing lawyer. So why are you reviewing edits to customercontracts? While you should certainly be aware of edits, this is something thatshould be left to a lawyer if it’s complex. If it isn’t complex, then just accept minor changes and move on. We’ve never seen an edit to a customercontract ultimately come back to hurt us.
Speakingwith VC. You do not need to spend muchtime speaking with VC unless you’re actually about to fundraise or are in afundraise. Believe me, if your businessis attractive, VC will be all over you when the raise is on – they don’t need arelationship. High level, superfluouscalls you’re doing with Associates or even VP’s aren’t really providinginformation on what the VC will be like to work with. If anything, the VC was comparing what yousaid to his notes from calls with your competitor because he isn’t building arelationship only with you. When you’rereally going to learn about a VC is during the fundraising process itself andfrom the reference calls you’re going to do on them as part of fundraising, soavoid the calls to get to know VC today.
Being CEO ishard. There is no playbook and every CEOrole is different, but the observations above tend to apply no matter what yourcompany does. Feel free to add moreobservations to the comments.
Thank you for yourreadership. Visit us atblossomstreetventures.com for more SaaS data and blogs. Visit us at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com