s11s

Anyone here knows a thing or two about Sendbird? A friend got an offer from there and was wondering how the org is?

Image from iOS.jpg

Please tag the folks as well, I hardly know a couple of people by face :slightly_smiling_face:

Please DM a few additional pics - will post on social. <@U038W1678JX>

I can identify <@U038WP8PLUA> from his Slack DP

I can also spot <@U035SL5MWPM> and <@U02V5Q7DUPJ>

I also want to know the menu - somehow feel it was good

Women of s11s in Chennai. Try to represent more please! :pray::skin-tone-4:

Had a great afternoon with pretty detailed conversations around Marketing. Thanks to everyone who showed up, let's set a cadence for this. :star:

Super start to the weekend with some really good conversations :beers:

Fun fact: Some of us stood outside near the parking space, and talked everything about marketing for atleast 1 hr after we all agreed to leave:joy:. That’s how interesting the people in this community are! :fire:

From Left

1. Self
2. <@U02U9C39MAA> 
3. <@U035SL5MWPM> 
4. <@U0396B4RZQD> 
5. <@U02VBQCQ7EG> 
6. <@U038WP8PLUA> 
7. <@U03014JNGMQ> 
8. <@U02V5Q7DUPJ> 
9. Kailash - Vijay friend 

This session is so informative! 10 yrs of SaaS event handling experience in 1 hour :exploding_head:

Screenshot 2022-04-02 at 6.31.06 PM.png

Very informative session by <@U038XFCC598>. Loved it from the start till the end. Thanks <@U03067NE389> team for organizing this beautifully :slightly_smiling_face:

Now I can start implementing some learning from the session with abm + field marketing tactics. 

<@U02TTEFFU6B> <@U02PDC4883V> <@U02PDC6B0HH> <@U02ULN6EFNV>

I learnt so many new things today :raised_hands:

Really great session, thank you <@U038XFCC598> for the insights. I learnt quiet a bit:pray::skin-tone-2:
Looking forward to more of these deep dive sessions

Oh no! I missed that. :slightly_frowning_face: do we have a recording?

Nice video, similar to this hubspot’s explainer videos.

Vendors Sandwich and Demoduck.. <@U02TTEFFU6B> 

Sandwich doesn't have the bandwidth. Will check Demoduck.

Uberflip has a really good one too: <https://youtu.be/u9YkoTLIN04|https://youtu.be/u9YkoTLIN04>

Have you folks checked Descript's <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9wqNe5J8U|explainer video>? I thought it was good too.

Yes absolutely. Do you know which agency?

Yeah. Sandwich hmm.. :D they're kick-ass and out of reach

Nice to have problem for them, not so nice for us :joy:

There is <http://contentbeta.com|contentbeta.com> as well. ServiceNow, Outreach, Leadfeeder use them.

HubSpot article on deciding whether to highlight 'benefits' or 'features' when writing marketing copy:
<https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/features-vs-benefits-messaging-ht#:~:text=Benefits%3A%20What's%20the%20Difference,they%20help%20the%20target%20audience>.

This is awesome! Thanks for this <@U02USELSBRT>!

<@U02TTEFFU6B> Not my work. Just playing a curator here.

<@U032SJN3W49> <@U031T1VCSM9> :point_up_2::skin-tone-2:

Currently on their Product Marketing minidegree's "Intelligence &amp; Strategy" course. 

It has solid baseline playbooks for all topics covered but there's definitely room to drill down more. A couple of modules also felt incoherently structured - like just a bunch of best practices. I'll send over screenshots of some topics' curriculum that aren't available for non-members so you can judge for yourself too :)

i've had the same question for awhile now. Can you send it to me as well <@U038ZH5QQ04>? Thanks a bunch :))

I think they are pretty good, but I'm a noob in product marketing. So , i find quite overwhelming. But the best part is the framework and the playbooks. I have only managed to clear the first part of introduction to product marketing 🥹

TL;DR The way VC funds do accounting and valuations is … weird. 
<https://www.saastr.com/tiger-global-was-down-34-in-q1-probably-your-vcs-were-too/|https://www.saastr.com/tiger-global-was-down-34-in-q1-probably-your-vcs-were-too/>

Well I think the most important thing to note is: tiger is NOT a venture fund. It's a hedge fund

But I'm sure even it's venture investments are down from the all time high multiples they were at  last year. It's signaling a correction (much needed).
If you look into detail. Their private investments returned 24% annually and 54% last year - so they're doing well

But their VC allocation is a minor minor part of their business and it's rly their equity investments that have been hurt

Very interesting, I agree that the market is in a correction phase right now <@U02UGB8DERY>

As someone who was a stranger in the strange land of SaaS I found Sammy Abdullah's writings extremely helpful (especially navigating fundraising and scaling business). Here's the link for everyone:
<https://blossomstreetventures.medium.com/14-updated-saas-metrics-46548d785ce|https://blossomstreetventures.medium.com/14-updated-saas-metrics-46548d785ce>

i'm learning more on branding campaigns and brand media buying. wanted to understand how they approach it and the respective KPIs etc.

A friend is working on a series of explainers like this for multiple topics. 

Btw if you wanna deep drive in Game Theory The Art of Strategy and Algorithmic thinking to Game Theory is a must read.

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• Use the + button at the end of slack channels and sign in to another workspace. 
• Then find s11s by logging in with the email you originally registered with.

1. Building a brand in a new market where we don't have a footprint. 
2. What are some SDR best practices and processes if I'm running the team from India?
3. How does one create “idiot-proof” processes that can be replicated while scaling/growing the team?

We're basically in a way, building the entire Demand gen - SDR - Sales process. Clean slate. 
Any insights welcome. 

Some thoughts on these points:

1. Brand building
• divide your market into smaller segments and pick a niche segment within your market which really cares about what you have to say
• build out your positioning to really matter to this early group
• find where this group hangs out on and just be present at all those places
• rinse and repeat. let organic feedback guide rest of your journey. don't pour in any money till you've had that initial set of champions
2. SDR best practices (for India-based teams)

• starting with hiring an experienced leader who has built sales teams before is the best starting point, there are several nuances which can be missed
• timezone differences tend to kill productivity, hence get people who've done it before, so the transition is smooth
• hire candidates with very strong internal and external communication and can speak the same language of the customers
• your existing sales and support conversations is your best friend. find trends in what people from that market are asking. have battlecards ready for all those conversations before hand so they face the least friction
• sales/prospect intelligence tools can be helpful when trying to understand/sell into a new market/geo
• record every call for post-mortem later on and setup time to analyse and learn from it
3. Growing pains

• biggest mistake people make while growing too quickly is ignore the processes and culture in lieu of more headcount. spend equal time into orienting a new employee as you spend in hiring them. make sure they understand your company culture/employee code and have them shadow someone for atleast 3 months before they start taking their own quotas/KPIs
• start following agile methodology. see <https://andrewchen.com/how-to-build-a-growth-team/|this> and <https://www.atlassian.com/agile/teams|this>
• have frequent catchups to catch any outlier issues early on
• over communicate owners, tasks and KPIs. people should be able to recite in their sleep who owns what and why. again seen this mistake too often where people are not clear on who owns what or there are multiple owners for a single KPI
These are just some starting thoughts from the back of my head. happy to answer any specific questions/doubts.

This is helpful. Let me go through and compare this to our existing processes/plans. I'll send across a DM to you for sure. Thank you for taking the time out to share this! <@U02USELSBRT> !

Thanks <@U039FQ2SNNN> - Let me connect with you on DMs later this week then. 

Some great lessons in here by <@U0308CADFH7>
<https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marketing-decisions-helped-hiver-7x-itsgrowth-how-we-broke-nagpal|https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marketing-decisions-helped-hiver-7x-itsgrowth-how-we-broke-nagpal>

Hi <@U02VA7PNZ5Y>, I have a couple of contacts. Feel free to DM me for their details.

I have couple of contacts too, based out of Mumbai. In case you still need it.

Dharmesh Shah created this <https://wordplay.com/daily> as a hobby project. It’s at 3M+ weekly actives :sweat_smile:<https://twitter.com/dharmesh/status/1510987115672354826?s=20&amp;t=ZBKktzr0j-whSNbaPyKJWw>

Thank you Ashwin, checking :slightly_smiling_face:

<@U02UFNZS7NW> Our product - StackBrain - provides slice and dice over Shopify. No number of users though - it would be complete guess. Depending on your use case - you could substitute that filter with premium apps, traffic, alexa rank.

We have been setting it up for eCommerce stores, you can DM if interested for a discussion

Abstraction of the UI layer of Salesforce is the ongoing trend in the sales tech market. Rattle,Troops, Scratchpad, Dooly all of the products are trying to do the same. 

Salesforce is getting unbundled into specialised tools.
The movement earlier started with tools made to fit to the SDR AE workflow that's where early versions of sales engagement and call coaching were born and now the wind is moving more and more towards tools dedicated to improve data entry - by automating it, removing the human layer both for more accurate data and to take weight off reps shoulders.  

The part which is ever more interesting is that Vista Equity Partners are involved via investments or acquisitions in most tools unbundling Salesforce.

<@U02V8GRRHDG> Been in this space for a couple of years now, would love to chat

<@U02UGB8DERY>  Not just Salesforce but almost all the tools. New tools are bringing, analytics, CRM, marketing automation, meetings, project management and collaboration to right where employees spend the most time ie their slack and teams interfaces. The main value add is minimal context switching, lower learning curve and faster path to value.

<@U032AUA6KFV> also was working on this value prop for different use case, not sure if they still are.

<@U02USELSBRT> Yeah the major philosophy is obviously - Meet your users where they are for most of the modern age SaaS products. I haven't seen an industry booming from the abstraction yet though anywhere else apart from Salesforce.

Love the direction Rattle is taking. Thanks for the shout out <@U02USELSBRT> — we have a general project / account management product. You can access it <https://slack.com/apps/A01N7821QG4-paco|here> (major upgrade incoming)

<@U02UGB8DERY> - indeed salesforce abstraction is the primary one in the space. But there are major signals of this use case being everywhere else in enterprise s/w workflows. e.g.
• <http://Moveworks.com|Moveworks.com> (IT ticketing, HR, Finance enterprise s/w workflows)
• <http://blameless.com|blameless.com> (SRE sw workflows)

The larger trend is "systems of communication &amp; collaboration" like Slack on top of systems of record like SF/Marketo/Hubspot. This is also happening in PLG tools like Correlated/RevenueHero or Headsup where Slack is the key update, alert channel.

Also wanted to understand how do marketers collaborate on their marketing activities and marketing-sales handoff ?Do they use slack ?

Hi Niranjan 
Sending the details of a good friend. He has extensive experience in UI/UX. Hope it helps! 
<mailto:iamsachinsharma@outlook.com|iamsachinsharma@outlook.com>
<tel:8219280542|8219280542>

AI – marketers have polluted this term beyond recognition

New-age
Just because I was recently told that it's related to hippie culture in a lot of places. :joy:

The Modern &lt;insert-saas-product-category&gt;

Any thoughts on this? <https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/surge-in-vc-exits-at-startups-4731377/>

You can reach out to Ankita @ <tel:+65 9773 8991|+65 9773 8991>

Guch was helpful. Just had a call with them

<https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02PS0CGPU1/p1645593253265179?thread_ts=1645593253.265179&amp;cid=C02PS0CGPU1|https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02PS0CGPU1/p1645593253265179?thread_ts=1645593253.265179&amp;cid=C02PS0CGPU1>

For SEO and content Himani Kankaria @missive digital. Best, I worked with.

Is it cringe to recommend yourself:sweat_smile:

Thinking of starting a book club for Blore folks. The idea is to share books and have discussions on books. If anyone is interested in joining please do so <#C03AJCGV0N8|>

A code word like "kala gulab" will also do

I like Kaala Gulaab.. jali ko aag, bujhi ko raakh kehte hain.

...Aur jis company ke CMO US mein baith-te hain, use SaaS kehte hain

Kaala Gulaab.. jali ko aag, bujhi ko raakh kehte hain.

...Aur jis company ke CMO US mein baith-te hain, use SaaS kehte hain

<@U02PDC4883V> - another rap opp.

Yaar aaj kya mazaa aa rahe hain
s11s rap songs ft. <@U02USELSBRT> <@U02TTEFFU6B> <@U032MN1BESJ> <@U02PDC6B0HH>

<https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02PS0CGPU1/p1649312783390789?thread_ts=1649307191.019959&amp;cid=C02PS0CGPU1|https://s11s.slack.com/archives/C02PS0CGPU1/p1649312783390789?thread_ts=1649307191.019959&amp;cid=C02PS0CGPU1>

Iss jugal bandi ko national award dilwao. Bahut epic

Hello everyone. Since we have had new members join in, it’s always good to have a friendly reminder

*Rules of the community*
1. No marketing of one’s own self and company allowed (except in <#C0318NH5G3C|>)
2. Channels are mostly self explanatory :slightly_smiling_face: - whenever in doubt use General
3. Invite people by asking them to sign up on <http://www.s11s.club|www.s11s.club>
4. Share content that you learnt from, that will help others in the group
5. No usage of offensive language
6. To ping the admin use general or reach out to the admin
7. Participate! The more folks share their experience, the more we can all grow together


Seems there are quite a few (including me), how about a group call? <@U02UM0SR45Q> 

That's cool, I'm up for it if the others are?

Up for the call, just forayed into Enterprise marketing.

Does this weekend work for everyone? We could do Saturday 12:30 in the afternoon?

12:30 is good for me too. Who is hosting? Do share the meeting link please

Happy to host and share a zoom link - can the admins allow us to make a separate channel for this? We can stop spamming the other 1000 :stuck_out_tongue:

Whoever is up for it - send me a DM and i’ll add you to the calendar invite :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks guys, for everyone who joined in! I know it was helpful for me and also great to connect with you all :slightly_smiling_face:
One learning I took was probably shorter introductions and better structure - so yeah!