Denise Holland Dresser - Belvedere Tiburon, California, United States | Professional Profile | LinkedIn (original) (raw)
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- Nathalie Scardino We know that impactful work requires time to focus, and at Salesforce, we’re using our own technology to carve out more space for our employees to do just that. For example, Einstein in Slack answered 370,000 queries in a single quarter — helping employees save time through AI-assisted meeting creation, content editing, feedback summarization, agenda creation, and more! With Project BaseCamp, we’re also creating a single destination for employees to search for and get support, news, events, tasks, and training — all highly personalized and relevant to them. In close partnership with our CIO Juan Perez, we’re just getting started. Together in Trust with our AI Council, we’ll continue to shape the global employee experience roadmap, prioritizing employee feedback and business needs. Check out my blog to learn more about how we’re putting AI in the hands of our employees to enhance their experience, engagement, and productivity.
- Gokul Rajaram Salesforce's crucible moment Salesforce is poised to enter uncharted territory. Q2 will be the slowest revenue growth quarter in their history, and crucially, their first ever single digit YoY revenue growth quarter. (They project a max revenue growth of 8% YoY in Q2). Durability of revenue growth has historically been the #1 driver of valuation for growth technology companies, and investors typically look for an enduring growth rate in the high teens, at the very least. Now that SFDC is entering sub-10% growth rate, they potentially morph into a free cash flow story, i.e. they need to target 30 – 40%+ FCF/EBITDA margins. But are Marc Benioff and his team ready to go down this path? Or are they going to push hard to capitalize on the Gen AI wave, continue to do big acquisitions and get growth back up again? At 10%-ish growth rate, they're basically in line with a lot of the PE-backed legacy software plays. And the question for investors becomes: why invest in Salesforce if some of these other companies can deliver mid – high single digits (or even 10%ish) growth but with much higher margins? So Salesforce has to choose a path: either reaccelerate growth back to at least 10%+ YoY (likely low teens) and still get credit for growth OR focus on making FCF margins much stronger and be valued on FCF. Just to be clear, I'm rooting for SFDC. I hope they can get growth back up. They have been an iconic technology company for decades and one should never count Marc Benioff out. But the grim reality facing them is that the longer they stay in the no man's land of low growth coupled with low FCF margins, the more challenging it will be to sustain investor interest.
- Gokul Rajaram AI-native companies need to embrace new pricing paradigms (price based on work done, on outcome vs hours, etc). Inevitably, new pricing models are accompanied by new workflows, new ways of invoicing, and new challenges around billing. This makes Sequence's modern billing platform particularly relevant: Sequence helps finance and commercial teams automate manual billing and stop revenue leakage. Sequence has just launched their CPQ Product for B2B software businesses with hybrid pricing, designed specifically for AI, B2B SaaS and Fintech startups. This release empowers B2B teams to create flexible pricing proposals or contracts, including teams selling custom deals with usage tiers, minimum commitments, or ramped pricing, Sequence CPQ works for any pricing model or deal term. As a customer says: "Sequence is like a notion page supercharged with pricing tools." Excited for Sequence to build the critical infrastructure needed to enable new, flexible paradigms that are critical for the AI revolution.
- Charlie Moss More Rigor for Sales Teams per Amit Bendov and Marc Benioff How do Gong and Salesforce respond to the “headwinds” and “budget scrutiny” mentioned in many B2B SaaS earnings calls earlier this month? More rigor, more discipline, focused enablement, and a refined GTM strategy are a major part of their approach. Gong’s CEO, Amit Bendov, last week on the SaaStr podcast episode 741, and Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, on the May 29, earnings call, stated similar approaches for how they plan to navigate current “headwinds” and “budget scrutiny” expressed by many B2B SaaS companies recently. Here are the approaches that Gong has put in place: - Weekly KPIs, weekly results, and monitoring key activities - Tracking every deal with MEDDIC - Greater accountability for the sales team and sales management Amit also shared that at first some of his sales teams “didn’t love it” but now that they are hitting their numbers and seeing the results, they are warming to the additional structure and discipline. Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, interrupted his COO on the earnings call to reinforce the current narrative inside Salesforce to deliver “strong financial metrics” and a “high level of customer success” organized around the following three guiding principles: 1) Start every quarter with much higher pipelines, 3x vs 2x coverage (deeper inspection) 2) Need a much higher level of enablement (for gen AI models, data frameworks, etc.) 3) Level of stability (versus disruption of shifting strategy to meet fiscal demands) Marc sums up the Salesforce approach with this quote, “So, there is a level of balance that has to be achieved in regards to stability and disruption. And those three attributes, having 3x pipelines, having much higher levels of enablement, and having much higher levels of stability, that is the key to managing in this (more challenging) environment and this part of the (B2B SaaS) industry right now. Both CEOs talk about enhanced rigor, discipline, and a more structured approach to the sales process being a more effective path to navigate this current environment. From my perspective, this is a good example of two highly successful companies continuing to examine their internal GTM processes and experiment with adjusted approaches to achieve success. To what degree have you documented and effectively enabled your sales process for this more challenging environment? Will enhanced rigor, discipline, and a more structured sales approach help your sales reps ramp faster and/or close more deals? What are your thoughts?
- Paul Self A wave of consolidation is sweeping through the sales tech industry. I recently listened to a brilliant episode from the Topline podcast, featuring Salesloft CEO David Obrand, that shed light on the current state of the GTM tech landscape. As highlighted in the episode, key players like Clari, Gong and Outreach are expanding their offering to boost their TAM and offer more comprehensive solutions. Whilst the trend is understandable, the danger is long-standing partnerships start to fray as overlapping functionalities emerge - partnerships that were once the lifeblood of the sales tech ecosystem. For us, it begs the question. In a world of all-encompassing GTM suites, is there still a place for specialized, best-in-breed solutions? I believe the answer is a resounding yes - but only if they can offer extraordinary value. To thrive in this new era, point solutions must not only deliver great results but also seamlessly integrate into a company’s core tech stack and existing workflows. At MultiplyGTM, we’re laser-focused on providing planning intelligence that complements rather than competes with the everyday solutions revenue teams rely on, and goes deep in addressing a critical need - empowering revenue leaders with the confidence and clarity to achieve their goals. Whilst we may lack the resources of larger players, our goal is to provide unparalleled planning intelligence and insights that drive revenue, while growing sustainably and delivering immense value to our customers with our domain expertise. We're on the cusp of announcing some game-changing partnerships too that will extend our reach and impact, while maintaining our focus on delivering the revenue planning capabilities that drive profitable efficient growth. Stay tuned! 🚀
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