A short YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin outlining how sales playbooks differ when selling a well-known brand versus an unknown product. Lemkin contrasts his experience at Adobe (broad brand recognition, different cadence and lead flow) with challenges faced by well-known SaaS companies like Salesforce, noting that brand recognition changes the sales toolkit but does not guarantee easier quota attainment.
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.
