We don’t often summarize interviews in other media, but I really liked this piece in FT on the changes Yamini Ragan made when she became HubSpot’s CEO, promoted from CCO. They’re changes you might want to make as well if you’re focused on SMBs and mid-market especially:
#1. Moving from Churn to NRR as the Core Retention Metric. This may sound obvious to more enterprise folks, but many Very Small Business and SMB focused SaaS companies still focus more on churn than NRR. It’s part of the legacy of B2C and SMB having a lot of similarities in SaaS. But while HubSpot is still primarily SMB focused, it’s a rich offering for SMBs, with an ACV of about $10k and 100% NRR. Driving that NRR up even +5% could have a profound effect at HubSpot’s scale. And yours as well.
If you’re more focused on churn than NRR, it’s worth flipping that around if you’re at the very lowest end of the market and ACVs.
#2. NPS is now the #1 metric at HubSpot — for all employees. We’ve talked about this so many times over the years, that the real power of NPS is that it’s the one metric every employee in every functional area can impact. It’s exciting to see Yamini make this the #1 metric every HubSpot employee now sees — each and every week. It aligns the whole company on a singular goal everyone can impact. A classic SaaStr post on this here.
#3. More “step meetings”. This is an important one, and something many of us as founders don’t do enough of. As CEO Yamini added more “step meetings” where senior managers and the C-level execs don’t just meet with their direct reports, but indirect reports and reports a layer below. How often do you meet with individual top AEs, or CSMs, or engineers? Not enough. Give yourself a “step meeting” quota. One a week is a great place to start.
And of note:
#4. It’s now “No Meeting Friday” at HubSpot. We tried this for 2 years at SaaStr on Wednesdays and it went well, although recently we sunsetted it. It was great for folks outside of sales, but eventually, it became easier for us to return to a normal meeting week to integrate with the salesteam’s natural cadence. But try it.
More here.
And a great deep dive on making customers successful with Yamini Rangan here:
