In this interview, Peter Jurisic discusses the recurring challenges SaaS startups face in sales and marketing, such as insufficient budget, lack of sales experience, hiring friends instead of professionals, slow decision‑making, and missing KPIs. He emphasizes the need for experienced sales leaders, clear playbooks, and modern tools like LinkedIn Navigator and CRM platforms (Salesforce, Zoho). Jurisic shares a practical tactic he used at Amicus Attorney—providing inside sales reps with a “pocket economist” for each territory to deepen market knowledge. When asked about hiring, he advises that, budget permitting, the first hire should be an experienced salesperson who can also act as a sales manager and develop the playbook. The conversation then shifts to Jurisic’s success at Absorb Software, where he grew revenue from $700 K to $4.2 M by establishing lead capture on the website, targeting high‑profile prospects (e.g., Virgin Mobile’s head of marketing), securing testimonials, pursuing industry awards (Brandon Hall), and mastering online demos that start with a compelling “wow” moment and focus on the prospect’s problem. He highlights the importance of online demos, influencer outreach, and a structured demo flow that quickly showcases value. Overall, the interview offers a roadmap for SaaS companies to professionalize sales, leverage technology, and execute disciplined growth tactics.
Chapters
Yeah, you don't just help, you know, you started with that one company and then from there you started working with many, many different startups and you probably see that problem over and over again where, you know, they have troubles with sales, they have trouble with marketing. just able to survive and pay the bills. Is there a common denominator that you see there that you— or maybe specifically in the SaaS world of an example you can share?
Yeah, without question.
I'll give you an example. So typically there's not enough money set aside for marketing and sales. There's no sales experience in the company. They often hire friends or associates that they believe would make good salespeople. They take too long to make decisions. when it comes to the sales staff or the efforts they're looking at. Um, and they have no KPIs around sales efforts, um, uh, whether it's the number of contacts, outbound calls, et cetera. So, um, an example of that was in 1996, I joined, uh, a SaaS company very early on, one of the first, um, called, uh, Amicus Attorney Software, um, which was— it became SaaS, but early on it was desktop, and then, you know, groupware was just still being talked about, but essentially the same problem. The gentleman, you know, the fellow that ran the company, highly intelligent lawyer, um, but he thought that lawyers would be the best people to sell to lawyers.
Not so. Um, you need to be able to close, right? You need to be able to engage. You need to understand the business of, of, of listening And, you know, one of the things I often find that happens is that with inexperienced salespeople, they don't really know how to approach it. They don't know how to, you know, do a needs analysis, et cetera. So it's common. I've seen it in many, many companies.
Yeah.
So you gotta find the right salespeople. You gotta find a sales manager that understands how to scale a sales team, how to build a playbook, how to use the latest tools. I mean, LinkedIn right now is becoming one of the foremost tools for managing sales, especially LinkedIn Navigator. And so you have to understand where the future is. You have to look to what's leading edge. For example, there's new sales tools called playbook tools where you build an actual playbook on how to market through through LinkedIn Navigator, how many touchpoints, et cetera, and they're outstanding tools. Or another common mistake is they don't use CRM tools, right, customer relationship management. How do you track your KPIs or your leads or your prospects without a proper tool like Salesforce or Zoho, you know, et cetera? So— Just if I may offer one more thing, I find it quite interesting. As you know, these days you can fill out out a form online and, you know, within moments your phone will ring from the salesperson. In many cases, not in all cases. And what is shocking to me is how many times somebody calls me and they don't know where I am. They haven't been to my website. Um, and, uh, you know, one of the things I did at Amicus Attorney is I gave every— Gavel and Gown Software— I gave every one of our inside sales team a pocket economist for every state that they covered in their territory, because I wanted them to be familiar with the sociological, the geological, geographical nuances. And they should be aware of the news too, because you want to know what is in that, what is affecting that, that company, that person, what sort of industries they are. And it made a profound difference.
And when you're hiring somebody for a sales role, are you hiring a manager first? Are you looking to hire— because that's always a challenge, right? Are you hiring, you know, somebody who's entry-level and then you're, you know, training them? Or if you don't have that background and experience, like somebody like yourself, are you looking to bring on a manager to take that over for you, um, if you're struggling, especially as a software company?
Well, if— let's say you're depending upon your budget. Good question. Uh, if you're hiring, it depends upon budget. All right, if you could afford to, you should have a sales leader. You know, you could, you don't have a great budget, but your first salesperson needs to be experienced. You don't wanna teach anybody how to sell.
Yeah.
And you also, unless you have that background yourself, you want that person ideally to take on the role of sales manager as your cash flow improves to hire other salespeople, because that individual will have developed the playbook.
Yeah, it makes sense.
And understanding.
So it makes sense. And so you also worked as the VP of Business Development at Absorb Software, where you managed to grow the sales, I think, from $700K to $4.2 million. Um, can you share what the story was around there, how you accomplished that, and what were the strategies that worked then?
Well, that's a lot— it's one of my favorite stories. I, I, uh, I met the 2 founders of, uh, one of the co-founders of Absorb walking my dog.
Okay.
And I had just finished a management buyout in Toronto of a large company, the Danone Water division. I was living in Calgary with young kids, and I was on an airplane 4 days a week. I was super elite in 3 months. So that was not healthy. My wife was getting divorced, wasn't good for my kids. So I walked away from that. And Mike and I were walking one day and he says, what do you wanna do? I said, you know, I think I could sell your software. And I didn't know anything about learning management systems. I didn't know anything about adult-based training. I didn't know anything about Bloom's Taxonomy, which was a training tool. So I met him and his partner, and they showed me the application. I could clearly see it was superior. Interesting, learning management system space, very crowded, 400 systems. Little Calgary-based company, no money for marketing. So I made a deal, I said, I cut a deal, I said, look, I'll work for you for free for a year, and you give me a certain percentage at the end of the year for, if things work out. So their salesperson they had hired was a Calgarian friend who'd worked there for 6 months without closing one deal. They had 3 customers, one in the States and 2 in Canada, not of significance. And they were focusing on the oil and gas sector here in Calgary, 'cause they knew it. No, we can't go there, we have to pivot. First thing we need to do is do lead capture on our website and, One day, and it was a good website these guys had built. We got— Mike sent me a lead and he said, here, Peter, this is a Gmail account, it's probably not really a real prospect. So I looked at the name, I researched and found a gentleman, he was real. I can't recall his first name, his last name was Furnish, brother of Neil Furnish, who was married to Elton John. And he was head of marketing for marketing and development education for Virgin Mobile. So I contacted him, set up a demo. When I learned the application, I learned what to do, how to do proper demos. I'd learned that a long time ago. And we just heavily discounted the product, made a deal on the condition we could get testimonials from him. And that was key. Second thing we needed to do was examine the sector and see where the thought leaders were, influencers, et cetera. So there was a company called Brandon Hall, which gave out awards for learning applications. So we need an award. So we, I focused on awards and within, you know, a year or so we received a couple of bronzes and silvers for our application. And that brought to us notoriety. We started getting more leads. I was the guy doing all the sales, but then as things improved and we had fascinating businesses like Lufthansa, Rolls-Royce, et cetera. I loved engaging with those companies. We were able to hire more salespeople and get more leads and close more business. The interesting thing is, in all of that business pre-COVID, we only met one customer once. Everything was done online through demos. And that's another absolutely important part of the SaaS world is in doing a demo. Many people, you know, what should you start with? Should you start, you know, start in the middle, the beginning, the middle, or the end? Start at the end. Start with a wow factor. Hit them. You don't have to go through the application, think piece after piece. Find out what solution they're trying to solve or problem they're trying to solve, and then present it to them right away, and then take it back as to how you get there.
