I like to win! If you like to win, you’ve come to the right place. My new book, Winning at SaaS, is a sales playbook dedicated to those who are responsible for accelerating sales growth and shareholder value in an early-stage SaaS company. Let me introduce myself and explain how I can help you win at SaaS.
Forty-five years of experience
I started as a teacher and a football coach for the first 10 years. I left teaching to go into business and was fortunate to join IBM Corporation in the 1970s. The training I received there was phenomenal. This was a time when software was an innovative and growing category. I had a good career at IBM then joined a software company founded by former IBM executives, called Software Plus, where I led the sales and marketing aspects of that company. Next, I became the head of retail industry marketing at Oracle.
I founded Tafaro & Associates in 1990. For the next 20 years, I worked for companies as an interim president and executive responsible for driving growth and revenue acceleration for each specific company. The companies ranged from the former Bell Atlantic Software Systems, Investran, and other notable companies offering technology services and institutional products. Their objectives were all about how they could grow, and how they could scale.
From 2013-2021, I chaired a CEO Peer Advisory Board, in conjunction with Vistage International, focused on leadership development and organizational performance.
Today, I’m an author, speaker, and always at my core, a teacher, who wants to give back what I’ve learned.
How I can help you win at SaaS
With more than forty-five years of executive management, sales, marketing, and leadership experience in technology and service-related businesses, my focus is squarely placed on helping early-stage businesses accelerate SaaS growth and generate optimum shareholder value.
As an entrepreneur, I combined all I learned and experienced with companies in live sales settings to create a proven sales and marketing system called the Tafaro Growth Accelerator™. It was developed, tested through hundreds of sales situations, and constantly refined.
I can help you win at SaaS by sharing with you the sales and marketing foundations, tools, and skills that make up the Tafaro Growth Accelerator, the system that was adopted and mastered by these companies to accelerate growth and return value to investors. Flawless execution is needed by all parts of the organization to achieve profitability—to win.
Winning at SaaS is a playbook I’ve written for CEOs and CROs about sales strategies and how you scale a business that’s different from a traditional software license business. The SaaS business is different in both your approach to sales and customers. With SaaS, you need to think in terms of recurring revenue and long-term client relationships with an emphasis on customers for life.
This brings me back to the Tafaro Growth Accelerator. Today, business success is measured in months, not years. SaaS is a perfect fit at a perfect time for small businesses that want to grow quickly. With SaaS solutions, customers don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, software or hardware that would be required with other software solutions. They simply subscribe and use what they need as their business grows.
With so many SaaS solutions out there to choose from, it’s apparent that not all SaaS solutions are the same. If you’re running an early-stage business, you need to distinguish yourself from the rest to highlight your differentiators. You need to think and act in terms of customer lifetime value (CLV), that is, measuring how valuable a customer is to your company. In short, customer service needs to top your list.
As the CEO or CRO of an early-stage SaaS business, your success requires exceptional leadership, a customer-centric culture, and a logical, measurable, and repeatable sales process that’s flawlessly executed. And you need an organization that is aligned and committed to winning new business, maintaining the highest degree of customer satisfaction, and continuously adding value. These are winning differentiators that will accelerate your sales growth and increase shareholder value. They will serve your firm and your customers for life. This is where I can help you. The Winning at SaaS playbook works, and it can work for you!
“Put this definitive guide in your hands. You’ll be equipped with a treasure trove of insights, strategies, and practical wisdom from a seasoned software veteran.” – Ben Harrison, Co-Founder DealCloud, Inc.
Learn more about generating revenue and profitability in a SaaS business by scheduling a consultation with Steve with the form below.
