Stay ConnectedThe Metrics Brothers is hosted by Dave “CAC” Kellogg and Ray “Growth” Rike. The Metrics Brothers provides unique insights, strategies, tactics, and metrics that are relevant to AI-Native software and SaaS companies.
Each 25-30 minute episode will cover a topic critical to leading a B2B software company, and chock-full of practical advice that can be introduced and applied in most Native-AI, Agentic AI, and B2B software and SaaS companies.
ICONIQ Growth recently published their "Essential Go-to-Market (GTM) Board Slides", which includes the categories and metrics that they recommend be included in the GTM portion of the board deck. The template includes slides for the each category of GTM metrics they recommend including:
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike identify and discuss their perspectives on the top slides in the template, while also highlighting a couple of additional slides that would be valuable.
If you are a GTM leader, or a CEO or CFO looking on refining and optimizing the GTM portion of your board deck, this episode is full of good ideas and insights.
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Common Paper recently released a benchmark report on Cloud contract terms and conditions based upon data from over 1,000 companies. This is the first benchmarking report we have found that covers SaaS/Cloud Master Service Agreements.
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike, better known as the Metrics Brothers break down the benchmarks contained in the report including:
If you are responsible for designing, negotiating or enforcing Master Service Agreements in the Cloud industry, this episode provides broad and detailed insights on the latest MSA terms and conditions being used in the industry.
The Common Paper Benchmark report is available by clicking here.
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Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight joins Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike to discuss all things Customer Success and metrics! This is a "special episode" that combines deep Customer Success (CS) expertise with moments of light humor, pop culture references, and SaaS industry insider insights!
Topics discussed and benchmarks shared during this episode include:
Further into the episode, additional topics covered include:
There has been a lot of talk across the industry regarding the future of Customer Success, including if Customer Success as a function is needed which was highlighted in Frank Slootman's book "Amp it Up".
If you have a Customer Success team, are considering how to invest in Customer Success, or are just looking for an entertaining 20-minute conversation chalked full of great insights and a laugh or two this episode is a GREAT listen!
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Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the top metrics for a Customer Service organization that span the top three goals of CS including resolving, deflecting, and/or preventing cases.
During this episode, we lean heavily on CAC's background as a technical support agent for the first two years of his career, and then as the head of the Salesforce Service Cloud.
The primary job of Customer Service (Customer Support) including the three below macro-level goals
What are the top metrics to measure the performance of Customer Service while ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction?:
There are many nuances to the above metrics including the type of call (how-to or bug fixes), the ability to effectively deflect calls that solve the customer issue, and how to measure the longer-term impact of preventing inbound cases over time.
If you are thinking about or currently evaluating your customer service (customer support) performance metrics, this is a great conversation that covers a wide range of metrics, goals, and priorities for any customer service organization in a B2B technology business.
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What are the top metrics for a Professional Services (PS) leader in a B2B SaaS company? During this episode, our hosts Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the top PS metrics including:
Before diving deep into the actual metrics, Dave highlighted that PS's primary job is to "maximize ARR without losing money". A key highlight on the role of PS is that it is not primarily responsible for maximizing PS Revenue or PS Gross Margin, but rather to help accelerate deployment to subscription revenue recognition, product adoption, utilization, and customer value all leading to increased customer retention rates and subscription customer lifetime value.
One of the key points that were discussed is that Professional Services should not be goaled, or incented for maximizing PS revenue and/or optimizing Gross Margin. Generating cash from PS is a strategy that companies that are not in a good cash position may use to lengthen their cash runway - but not a strategy that maximizes the enterprise value of a recurring revenue business.
Attach rate is a common measurement that many B2B SaaS companies use. The most common way to measure attach rate is: PS Billings / Total ARR in a specific period, such as quarterly or annually. Being able to correlate those customers that use PS and the associated GRR can highlight how the utilization of PS has to customer retention.
What % of total revenue in a B2B SaaS company is the max for professional services? Dave "CAC" Kellogg used 20% as the absolute cap on PS, measured as a % of PS revenue to subscription revenue. Dave also recommended a Gross Margin of anything above zero percent, but optimizing Gross Margin at the expense of ARR is not a good long-term strategy.
If you are responsible for Professional Services in a B2B SaaS company, or are evaluating the strategic role and associated metrics for a PS organization this is a great episode to listen to.
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Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the top metrics for a Chief Customer Officer to use presenting to the board and to report to the executive team when the CCO has responsibility for: 1) Customer Success; 2) Professional Services and; 3) Customer Support
Those these are the high level metrics for a CCO, each function will have more detailed lagging and leading indicator metrics that Dave and Ray will cover in subsequent episodes of SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers.
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What are the top metrics for a Chief Marketing Officer to use when presenting to the board of directors and in a Quarterly Business Review. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the below top 7 CMO metrics during this episode:
Dave recently wrote a detailed blog article on this topic which can be read by clicking here.
"CAC" is a huge fan of the phrase "Marketing creates pipeline that closes" and dives into the detail of the top Marketing metrics during this episode.
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Top 5 Metrics for Chief Revenue Officers that own the entire customer journey, including Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention and Customer Expansion process.
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss 5 of the top metrics for a Chief Revenue Officer in 2024 including:
Key context to this episode, is it discusses 5 of the top metrics for a true Chief Revenue Officer, not a SVP/VP Sales with the CRO title. CROs are responsible for revenue growth across every stage of the customer lifecycle, and is a financial steward of the company focused on increasing enterprise value by leading the strategy and the execution of all processes that result in efficient, profitable revenue growth.
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Rule of 40 has been the standard metric B2B SaaS investors and operators have used to measure balanced growth...will the Rule of 40 be surpassed by the new Rule of X recently created by Bessemer Ventures? Join Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike as they discuss the details about the Rule of X including:
The Rule of 40 has been around for over a decade - but it was missing one key variable....which is more important growth or profitability? Beyond that, if one variable is more important what are the respective weights of Growth and Profit?
CAC and Growth have a little fun while diving deep into the details behind the Rule of X and the Rule of 40.
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How the Enterprise Value of a SaaS company impacted by growth rate is the topic of today's conversation with Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike - the result is a new metric named "ERG" - the Enterprise Value to Revenue to Growth Rate Multiple.
During this episode, Dave and Ray highlight several leading public, B2B Cloud companies and how their Enterprise Value to Revenue multiples are impacted when the growth rate is factored in.
With a public Cloud/SaaS company median growth rate of 21%, the median Enterprise Value to Revenue multiple of 6.1x and a median ERG of .31 - what does that mean when the ERG is calculated for public Cloud companies such as Workday, Twilio, Domo, ZoomInfo and Hubspot?
If you are interested in how growth rate impacts enterprise value in a B2B Cloud company - this episode is a great listen!
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