The Sales Framework Every Founder Needs | Mark Roberge
"There's 20 fires going on at every moment in the office and you have enough water to put out four."
Mark Roberge shares what it takes to build and scale a company, from finding product-market fit to knowing when it's time to grow.
He also shares the framework behind his new book, The Science of Selling, and why founders should scale based on their own data, not another company's success.
Guest: Mark Roberge, Founding CRO of HubSpot, HBS Professor, and Co-Founder at Stage 2 Capital
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20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot from $0-$100M in ARR, The Framework for How Startups Should Scale into the Enterprise, How to do Channel Partnerships Right and How to Construct Sales Comp Plans Early On with Mark Roberge
Mark Roberge is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark was the founding CRO at HubSpot, where he scaled ARR from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference.
In Today's Episode with Mark Roberge We Discuss:
1. Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot to $100M in ARR:
What are Mark's biggest lessons in what worked in their sales strategy in scaling to $100M in ARR?
What elements of Hubspot's sales strategy did not work? What would he have done differently with the benefit of hindsight?
What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known when he started at Hubspot?
2. How the Best Startups Scale into Enterprise:
What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when scaling into enterprise?
When is the right time? What do founders get most wrong on timing of scale into enterprise?
What do you need to have in place both from a team and product perspective to make the transition?
3. Second Product and Second Channel:
When is the right time to launch the second product?
Why does Mark believe that you should be turning down customers in the early days? Why is not every customer right for your company?
How does Mark think about channel diversification? Does Mark agree you only need one channel to scale to $50M in ARR and two to scale to $100M in ARR?
4. 99% of SaaS Founders Do Partnerships Wrong:
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when doing channel partnerships?
What can and should they do to set channel partnerships up for success?
What do the channel partners need to have to be equipped to sell the partner solution?
What level of buy-in and from who on the channel partner side is needed for the partnership to be successful?
What did Mark learn from Hubspot's partnership with Salesforce scaling to 10% of Hubspot's revenue?
SaaStr 703: Who Will Win the Go-to-Market AI Race — Startups or Incumbents? with Stage 2 Capital's Managing Director and Co-Founder Mark Roberge
As AI continues to reshape the way businesses operate, it has become a critical differentiator in gaining a competitive edge. Stage 2 Capital Co-founder and Managing Director Mark Roberge dissects the advantages and challenges faced by both startups and incumbents in leveraging AI for Go-to-Market strategies. Uncover the unique capabilities that startups bring to the table and how they disrupt established players with their agility, innovation, and ability to adapt to changing market dynamics.
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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 594: Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital Co-Founder and Managing Director Mark Roberge
Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies.
Stage 2 Capital's Co-Founder and Managing Director, Mark Roberge, breaks down what a consumer tech growth team looks like and how they operate. He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG.
Full video: https://youtu.be/prLzBINL4tI
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Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling
Mark Roberge’s first anxiety attack hit him six months after 9/11, and his second hit him in the middle of a big speech while he was an executive at HubSpot. And Roberge, who now lectures at Harvard Business School and co-founded the venture firm Stage 2 Capital, says it’s important to include that anxiety in his entrepreneurial story. “I talk about it because there is a stigma associated with it,” he says. “Society values some of the things I’ve accomplished, but when I admit to everyone that I have severe anxiety, it gives other people comfort.”
In this episode, Mark and Joubin discuss the connections between HBS and KPCB, taking the long way around to get to MIT, Mark’s first company PawSpot, the meteoric rise of HubSpot, why it decided to zag when all the competition was moving upstream, being pigeonholed inside of big companies, what to say to reps who are trying to leave, extreme anxiety attacks, escaping to the gym, whether Mark would encourage his sons to work in tech, why customer retention matters more than revenue growth, becoming a VC, and why the best plan can be not having a plan.
In this episode, we cover:
Mark’s first sales job — selling $2000 vacuum cleaners — and what he learned from his sales coach father (06:45)
How he met and started working with HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah (10:24)
Should you hire more sales reps, or incentivize existing reps to work harder? (19:40)
Why established players can’t embrace product-led growth as quickly as smaller competitors (27:19)
The stress of chasing a number and why “it’s always a grind” (36:03)
Struggling with — and talking about — anxiety (41:01)
Making time exercise and family dinners during the HubSpot journey (46:29)
The reasons why someone might not want to join a startup (50:25)
Ex-Shopify exec Loren Padelford’s big question for Mark (55:28)
Do MBA programs “get” what’s happening in the tech sector? (59:54)
Why Mark decided to get into venture capital with Stage 2 Capital (01:02:40)
Links:
Connect with MarkTwitter
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Connect with JoubinTwitter
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Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
SaaStr 498: The Most Common SaaS Sales Potholes and How to Avoid Them with Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital
Mark Roberge is the Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, Sr. Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and author of the bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. In this podcast, he'll outline some of the most common SaaS sales potholes when scaling from $0 to $100 million and how to avoid them.
Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-most-common-saas-sales-potholes-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-mark-roberge-podcast-498-and-video/
Sponsors:
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SaaStr 221: HBS Sr. Lecturer and Former Hubspot CRO Mark Roberge on His Step by Step Guide to Revenue Growth
Mark Roberge is a senior lecturer with Harvard Business School, former CRO of Hubspot and author of the bestseller "The Sales Acceleration Formula". Join him as he takes you through his step by step guide to revenue growth.
Missed the session? Here's what Mark talks about:
An in-depth guide to driving revenue growth by company stage
When to scale and how fast
Product market fit, go-to market fit during the experiment stages
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
SaaStr
Mark Roberge
SaaStr 119: The Sales Mistakes That Can Kill Your Startup & How To Avoid Them with Mark Roberge, Former CRO @ Hubspot & Michele Law, Former COO @ OpenDNS
Mark Roberge is a Senior Lecturer @ Harvard Business School where he teaches entrepreneurial sales and marketing. Prior to his role with HBS, Mark was the Chief Revenue Officer @ Hubspot where he increased revenue over 6,000% and expanded the team from 1 to 450 employees. As a result, Mark has been named Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World and awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year by MIT.
Michele Law is an investor and advisor specialising in building and executing on go to market strategies, creating new revenue models and the operations to support them. Michelle has sat on both sides of the table having been a Principal at Greylock for 8 years before moving to be COO at OpenDNS where she led the sales and customer success team growing enterprise revenue from $0 to $20M ARR in 4 years, prior to the company's acquisition by Cisco for $635m. Michele then moved to Castlight Health where she grew revenue from $13 to $75m.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
Why it is fundamentally dangerous to prematurely focus on growth? How can founders know when is the right time to focus on growth? What does the path to growth phase look like?
How should founders assess and structure the core components: customer success, unit economics and growth? In which order should they be prioritised? What does the funnel look like?
What should the profile of your first sales hire be? How can founders understand who and when to hire? From Hubspot days, when has Mark seen the transition from generalist to specialist?
What should your sales compensation plan look like in the early days of the company? Why does Mark believe that churn is rooted in the sales compensation plan?
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