Jason M. Lemkin discusses how selling SaaS with a well-known brand is not necessarily easier — it changes the playbook and cadence. He cites Salesforce (Marc Benioff) as an example of a strong brand still facing sales challenges, and recalls being a VP at Adobe where widespread product recognition meant different sales dynamics (e.g., no inbound leads but hitting quotas was still hard).
And you will learn this over the years in any type of sales, but especially SaaS, is that the playbook is just so different when you have a brand behind you, it doesn't actually mean that it's easier. Look at Marc Benioff today. Sales Source is struggling in this current environment to hit its plan. Half of its sales reps are underperforming. So it's not easy. Even with the most iconic brand in SaaS behind you. It's just different. It's different. I can tell you, when I was a VP at Adobe, we didn't even have leads because everyone in the world was an Adobe customer. It didn't mean it was easy to hit the quarter. It was just such a different cadence when everyone had heard of you, when everyone had already used your product at some point in their lifetime, than a product no one's heard of at all. And the toolkit's totally different.
