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They can have my credit card
Jay Nathan & Jeff Breunsbach
May 08, 2024
The Middle from GrowthCurve.io
Three ideas to level up your week.
Hey Reader,
Welcome to The Middle, your midweek rundown of the most interesting things we've read this week.
I swear we have the shortest Spring season here in Charleston - the high was 83 today. (What am I supposed to do with that?) But I'm not really complaining.
However, it reminded me of a good Spring Clean. So, run through your home office and get rid of those papers collecting dust.
We’ve got a good one for you today, let’s jump into The Middle.
Jeff
PS: If you want to attend May's Level Up Webinar on The Big 3 of Subscription Revenue, click here
Today’s Newsletter is brought to you by Gainsight
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Companies are buying less software these days. Purchases decreased 23% YoY for the top 25 software categories in Q1 2024.
This is just one of many insights that Vendr shared as part of their Q1 2024 SaaS Trends Report.
As a result, software companies are looking to grab a bigger share of wallets.
From the report:
Compound product strategies are a growing focus for suppliers prioritizing stickiness through multiple offerings.
On our SaaS Leaderboard, two suppliers have cracked the code by excelling in multiple categories. Atlassian ranks in the top three for Project Management, Data Integration, and Team Collaboration and Linkedin leads in LMS and Job Marketplace and Recruiting.
These are the only two suppliers to rank for multiple categories.
For years, there have been reports that the average company purchases 75+ software products to run their business. These mostly become point solutions that solve a specific need.
As customers look for efficiencies, the fewer vendor relationships the better - it reduces complexity.
If you don’t have a multi-product solution today, you might be fine… or you might get churned for a product that can do more.
A CEO Committed to LinkedIn
People have often asked, "Is posting on LinkedIn every day worth it?"
Here’s what Devin Reed, Head of Content at Clari, has to say about it:
My CEO just started posting on LinkedIn last year and he got 6.1M views in the first 12 months. …
He’s gone from 12k → 24k followers, sourced multiple inbound opps, and web traffic from social is growing.
The playing field has shifted, and winning mindshare leads to marketshare.
Execs that embrace it are taking the lead (and having fun doing it).
Its never a bad thing to be engaged in channels, communities, and ecosystems where your customer already hangs out.
Today's top software brands are engaged in the market…not just in a singular place, but in several places. (Dan Cmelja at Apollo is doing this with his teams)
Devin lists a 5 step process he worked on with his CEO, Andy Byrne, to get their content machine running. Step 4 stuck out to me:
Set clear goals and OWN them
1st 90 days was setting our benchmark.
Then we committed (and hit) double-digit growth metrics every quarter. There are two sets of metrics:
— Content engagement (views, followers, etc)
— Business metrics (web traffic, inbound, etc)
They chose to control what they could; a discipline to focus on a simple framework and measures for success.
They didn’t jump into multi-attribution funnels or fancy technology to help automate posts.
Consistent posting, consistent refinement, consistent measurement.
Consistency and iteration trump precision out of the gates.
AI Corner: 30% of Support Tickets Never Go to A Human Anymore
In my quest to study more about AI in people’s day-to-day work, I ran across Hampton's AI Report.
(Hampton is a membership community for founders and CEOs.)
They surveyed their members to see how they’ve implemented AI into their companies.
One crazy quote from a founder:
“30% of our support tickets never go to a human anymore.”
Back of the napkin math:
1,000 tickets per month. $46.69 cost per ticket (stat from BMC).
300 tickets * $46.69 = $14,007 cost savings
(That's wild!)
You can read the entire report which shows what tools they're using, how they're using AI, and how much $ it's making/costing them.
If your team is using AI in your day-to-day work, press reply with a specific tool or prompt that you use so we can highlight you.
They can have my credit card
Scott Galloway, your glass-half-empty thought leader, joined the My First Million podcast to share lessons about building his media company.
In the episode, he had some pointed language on how he intentionally makes sure his employees have a best friend at work. Why?
Gallup data (and others) shows a higher satisfaction when an employee has a best friend at work:
Gallup: Best Friend at Work Data
You spend 40+ hours with these people, of course, you need to get along and ultimately befriend them. But, we can't forge these relationships in an office setting anymore.
Here’s what Scott says about creating a benefit to bridge remote friend-building:
And I have this rule at work or not this rule at this benefit. If any four of them are together, they get my credit card. They can go to Broadway or they can go to Tulum. And they've done those things without asking my permission.
As long as there's four of them, they got my credit card. And the number one source of retention, I think the key to building a small business is retention. Because we find good people, you just don't want them to be with you a year or two years and go to Google. Because the switching costs are enormous.
And if you find someone good, your job as an entrepreneur or the CEO is just to create an environment where they want to stick. The retention of employees is, in my opinion, this is huge.
People crave real connection (more than ever before).
It's easy for you to look at your budget and think “We don’t need any Travel & Entertainment budget, let’s shift that into working dollars.”
But then again, what’s the price you’d put on retaining a high-performing team?
 Jeff Breunsbach |  Jay Nathan |
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