SaaS advisors

Welcome to the segment of Category Surfers where we break down go-to-market strategies so you can build the best GTM engine for your SaaS.

One of the best ways to learn any skill is to get a mentor. Especially if you want to get more customers, figure out a new GTM strategy, or get to product-market fit faster.

Most people go about it wrong — they think they need to find an old billionaire and beg for a mentorship.

How to become a better sales leader

So I want to learn how to build SaaS sales orgs (hiring reps, comps, plans).

Here is a process of getting free valuable advice that helped me learn any skill...

it’s simple.

You send a cold email with the context of why you think a person is experienced and with a specific question.

“Can you be my mentor?” emails won’t work. You can’t be vague. You need to engage them. You need to ask for advice — then you need to follow through on the advice that they give you.

Boom — now you have an advisor that can help you find PMF faster, double your revenues, or help you get promoted.

How to pick the right “advisor”

Far more important than what to say in the email is to pick the right person to reach out to. In my case, I want to talk to CROs of high-growth SaaS companies.

Here are two main criteria that I’ll use to figure out who is the right advisor:

• 4-years rule

• thinking

The first one is about greatness. So what I look for is promotions — from an individual contributor position to a VP or director-level role.

And ideally, a couple of promotions. It’s very hard to bullshit your way into a couple of promotions over a span of 4 years. An awesome example below.

It’s also hard to bullshit your way of growing a company for 4 years. For 1 or 2 years you can easily fly on momentum and funding without making a big dent (like I did for both of my companies).

The second aspect is: do they do something on the side? LinkedIn posts, newsletter, consulting? Anything that shows that they want to share their insights.

List of the best sales leaders to learn from

I’m working on a list of the best sales leaders in multiple industries that match these exact criteria. Will share it next week!

What other personas you’d like to see a list of? Marketing leaders? Let me know by replying to this email…