Promise Phelon is the CEO @ TapInfluence, bringing the first ever influencer marketing platform to the Fortune 1000. Under Promise’s leadership the company has enjoyed a 300% increase in revenue in 2015 alone, they made the successful transition from a services to a SaaS model and were successful in raising a fantastic $14m Series B. Prior to TapInfluence, Promise was the Founder and CEO at 2 startups, one of which, The Phelon Group, grew to 8 figure revenues and was successfully acquired in 2009. Before that, Promise got her start at BEA systems.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Promise made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be at BEA systems, one of the most exciting companies in the valley at the time?
• How does Promise view the importance of building long lasting relationships with colleagues? How does Promise suggest is the right way to leave a job and sustain the best communication and relationship with former employers and colleagues?
• What does Promise mean when she states the importance of upward empathy? What are the benefits of installing this in your organisation? What is the right way to breed a culture of upward empathy?
• How does Promise differentiate between ‘advocate’ and ‘mentor’? What is the right way to attain each of these? At what point in one’s career is the right time to have each of these?
• What does Promise believe is the formula for making the successful transition from a services based business to a SaaS business? How can one make the change without significant customer churn and revenue loss?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Promise know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
2. How does motivating people differ when outside of the valley?
3. Should customer success be able to upsell?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Promise Phelon

Kurt Bilafer is the CRO @ WePay, the most complete payments solution for platforms. To date, they have raised close to $75m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Max Levchin and August Capital just to name a few. As for Kurt himself, prior to WePay he has had experience both in startups and large corporations with his founding of Pilot Software, sold to SAP in 2007, where he spent a further 7 years holding titles such as a Global Vice President of Sales and Director of Strategic Accounts.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Kurt make his way into the world of SaaS? What were Kurt’s big takeaways from seeing the internal machinations of SAP?
• What is the one metric that guides Kurt’s thinking? How can you calculate your “magic number” for your business? Why must SaaS founders switch from activity based metrics to KPI’s?
• How does Kurt assess scalability and repeatability of revenues? What is a reasonable ratio for sales and marketing expense to revenue?
• Why should SaaS founders focus on the LPI of “time to money”. How can they look to optimize this? How has Kurt seen the enterprise sales cycles change since his time with SAP?
• How does Kurt assess conflict within the sales and marketing teams and customer success and product teams? How can managers look to implement an element of prioritization into what sales teams submit to product teams?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What is the worst piece of SaaS advice that Kurt commonly hears being given out?
3. What should one look for in their VP of Sales?
4. What mistake does Kurt see most in the world of SaaS?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kurt Bilafer