From Impossible to Inevitable 2nd Ed.

How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue

Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin

Publisher: Wiley, 2019, 314 pages

ISBN: 978-1-119-53169-2

Keywords: Sales

Last modified: Oct. 29, 2022, 4:51 p.m.

Synopsis

Are you growing as fast as you know you can, or are there big opportunities you know you're missing? If you decided to triple your revenue within the next three years, could you do it? Would you know where to start? Would you know exactly how to achieve it? It isn't magic, or luck, or privilege, or connections, or working harder.

The journey to doubling, tripling, even growing 10x begins with a single step: a template for success. The same template many of the fastest-growing companies in the world (like Salesforce.com, Twilio, Hubspot, Marketo, Zuora and others) have followed to grow FAST and create billions in record time. From Impossible to Inevitable outlines a seven-ingredient hyper-growth playbook of these companies.

Inside, you'll discover:

  • How to pinpoint why leads and sales aren't growing — and the way to fix it
  • How to 'Nail a Niche' the #1 missing growth ingredient
  • World-class lead generation practices around Seeds, Nets & Spears
  • How your marketing leader can act like a hypergrowth CMO
  • How to build a scalable sales team
  • Why your people don't work as hard as you do, and what to do about it

The co-authors used these lessons themselves. Imagine founding a company and leading it to grow more than $100 million in revenue, and then founding the biggest SaaS community on the planet, as co-author Jason Lemkin did. Or growing your income from $67,000 to $800,000 in six years, while working 20 to 30 hours per week, and welcoming ten children into your family. That's what co-author Aaron Ross did. These principles work.

Likewise, this book shows you how to shatter your growth plateau and get off the revenue rollercoaster. Whether you have a $100,000 business or a $1 billion business, 80% of the principles are the same, and you can use them to make more money, more predictably.

This book distills the 7 Ingredients of Hypergrowth into actionable goals:

  • You're not ready to grow until you Nail a Niche
  • There's no such thing as overnight success. You need sustainable systems that Create Predictable Pipeline
  • Growth exposes your weaknesses, causing more problems than it solves until you Make Sales Scalable
  • It's tough to build a big business from small deals. Learn how to Double Your Deal-size
  • It will take much longer than you'd like. Don't quit too soon. Be sure you can Do The Time
  • Ensure your people are owning, not renting, their jobs. Develop a culture of initiative by Embracing Employee Ownership
  • Don't be too eager to quit and try something else when things get hard. Make a difference, for yourself and your company, no matter what you do or where you work and Define Your Destiny

Follow this recipe to kick off your biggest growth spurt yet and turn impossible goals into inevitable success.

Table of Contents

    • Preface: Systematizing Success
      • Lessons from the World's Fastest-Growing Companies
  • Part I: Nail a Niche
    1. "Niche" Doesn't Mean Small
      • Are You Sure You're Ready to grow Faster?
      • How to Know If You've Nailed a Niche
      • Achieve World Domination One Niche at a Time
      • The Arc of Attention
    2. Signs of Slogging
      • Are You a Nice-to-Have?
      • Big Companies Suffer, Too
      • Case Study: Where Aaron Went Wrong
      • Your Current Strength Can Be a Future Weakness
    3. How to Nail It
      • Where Can't You Be a Big Fish In a Small Pond?
      • Work through the Niche Matrix
      • Case Study: How Twillio Nailed a Billion-Dollar Niche by Walking in its Customers' Shoes
      • The 20-Interview Rule
    4. Your Pitch
      • If You Were a Radio Station, Would Anyone Tune in?
      • Elevator Pitches Are Always Frustrating
      • They Don't Care about "You": Three Simple Questions
  • Part II: Create Predictable Pipeline
    • Introduction: Lead Generation Absolves Many Sins
    1. Seeds — Customer Success
      • How to Grow Seeds Predictably
      • Case Study: How Gild Dropped Monthly Churn from 4 to 1
      • Case Study: Customer Service Excellence at Topcon
    2. Nets — Marketing
      • Three Uncommon Approaches of Hypergrowth CMOs
      • The Forcing Function Your Marketing Leader Needs: A "Sales Qualified Lead Commit"
      • Corporate Marketing versus Demand Generation
      • How Inbound Changed in 10 Years Between Scaling Marketo to $100M+ and Founding Engagio
      • Heroic Marketing: When You Have No Money and Little Time
    3. Spears — Outbound Prospecting
      • Where Outbound Works Best — And Where It Fails
      • Outbound Lessons Learned Since Predictable Revenue Was Published
      • Case Study: Outbound's Role in Acquia's $100 Million Trajectory
      • Case Study: How Sagemount Triples the Value of a Company in Three Years
      • Case Study: How Zuora Drives 60%-Plus of Its Growth by Outbound, Even When Accounts Need Nurturing for Years
      • Build an Outbound Program Right the First Time
      • Have You Been Too Successful at Inbound?
    4. What Executives Miss
      • Pipeline Creation Rate: Your #1 Leading Metric
      • The 15/85 Rule: Early Adopters and Mainstream Buyers
      • Why You're Underestimating Customer Lifetime Value
  • Part III: Make Sales Scalable
    1. Learn from Our Mistakes
      • Growth Creates More Problems Than It Solves — But They Are Better Problems
      • Top 12 Mistakes in Building Sales Teams
      • Advice from the VP Sales behind LinkedIn and EchoSign
    2. Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier
      • Why Salespeople Shouldn't Prospect
      • Case Study: How Clio Restructured Sales in Three Months
      • Can You Be Too Small, or Too Big, to Specialize?
      • Specialization: Two Common Objectives
      • Specialization Snapshot at Acquia
    3. Sales Leaders
      • The #1 Mis-Hire is the VP/Head of Sales
      • The Right VP Sales for Your Stages
      • Ten Favorite Interview Questions
    4. Hiring Best Practices for Sales
      • If You're a Startup: Four Phases of Hiring Your First Sales Team
      • Simple Hiring Tricks
      • When Doing Something New, Start with Two
      • The $100 Million Hubspot Sales Machine: Recruiting and Coaching Essentials
      • Case Study: How to Cut Down on Wasted Interviewing
    5. Scaling the Sales Team
      • If You're Churning More Than 10% of Your Salespeople, They Aren't the Problem
      • Three Ways to Cut Churn and Increase Sales Motivation While You Scale
      • Advice to CEOs: Put Nonsale Leaders on Variable Comp Plans, Too
      • Are Tour Enterprise Deals Taking Forever?
      • Five Key Sales Metrics (with a Twist)
    6. For Startups Only
      • Every Tech Company Should Offer Services
      • What Jason Invests In, and Do You Need to Raise Money to Scale?
      • What the Headcount of a 100-Person SaaS Company Look Like
  • Part IV: Double Your Deal Size
    1. Deal Size Math
      • You Need 50 Million Users to Make Freemium Work
      • Small Deals Get You Started, Big Deals Drive Growth
    2. Not Too Big, Not Too Small
      • When You Can't Turn Small Deals into Big Ones
      • If You Have Customers of All Sizes
    3. Going Upmarket
      • If You Don't Want Salespeople …
      • Add Another Pricing Tier
      • Pricing Is Always a Pain
      • Going Fortune 1000
  • Part V: Do the Time
    1. Embrace Frustration
      • Are You Sure You're Ready for This?
      • Everyone Has a Year of Hell
      • Comfort is the Enemy of Growth
      • Motivation: How Aaron Reached Escape Velocity
    2. Success Isn't a Straight Line
      • The Anxiety Economy and Entrepreneur Depression
      • Mark Suster's Question: "Should a Person Learn or Earn?"
      • When a Straight Line Isn't the Shortest Path to Success
      • Change Your World, Not the World
  • Part VI: Embrace Employee Ownership
    1. A Reality Check
      • Dear Executive (From an Employee)
      • Dear Employee (From the Executives)
      • P.S.: "Dear Senior Executives, Don't Get Left Behind" (From the CEO and Board)
      • Are Your People Renting or Owning?
    2. For Executives: Create Functional Ownership
      • A Simple Survey
      • "No Surprises"
      • Functional Ownership
      • Case Study: How a Struggling Team Turned into a Self-Managing Success
      • To Turn Things Around
    3. Taking Ownership to the Next Level
      • Financial Ownership
      • Move People Around
      • The Four Types of Employees
  • Part VII: Define Your Destiny
    1. Are You Abdicating Your Opportunity?
      • Your Opportunity Is Bigger Than You Realize
      • How to Expand Your Opportunity at Work
      • You Need Some Humdrum Passions
      • Your Company Isn't Your Mommy and Daddy
      • Forcing Functions: How to Motivate Yourself to Do Things You Don't Feel Like Doing
      • Sales is a Life Skill
      • Sales is a Multistep Process
    2. Combining Money and Meaning
      • Meaning Gone Wrong
      • What's Your Unique Genius?
      • Ignoring Real Life Doesn't Make It Go Away
      • Aaron, How the Hell Do You Juggle 10 Kids and Work?