Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Turning Metrics into Revenue: My Journey at Owner

18 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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A first-person account (spoken/transcript) of the speaker’s early months at a company called Owner. The speaker describes cleaning up poor-quality deals, letting reps go, and initially worsening results before improving leading sales indicators (deal quality, call size, pipeline velocity). At a board meeting the speaker was told that leading indicators are interesting but to report back when they translate into actual revenue.

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So this is a story that I like to tell but never really told you. In my first full month at owner, the results were worse than the month when I started. I was cleaning up a bunch of, you know, bad deals. I had to let two of the four reps go. It was a. It was a, you know, we were just trying to. To upgrade and move to our next level of sophistication. My second month was worse than my first month. And then we had a board meeting, and we had seen a bunch of leading indicators now all tracking the right way. Deal quality was up. The call, the size, the. The pipeline velocity was increasing. I felt good with the direction we were going and presented it in the board meeting. And your feedback was, those are interesting metrics, but it's not revenue, so let me know when it's revenue.