S5E5 – How to Mold your GTM Team into a Revenue Factory

Scaling revenue operations effectively is essential to long-term success for any B2B SaaS company. Jacco van der Kooij, the founder of Winning by Design and author of Revenue Architecture, offers invaluable wisdom on creating a sales framework that adapts to the modern business environment. His insights are especially crucial for SaaS companies seeking to grow strategically, streamline their go-to-market strategies, and drive sustainable revenue. Let’s dive into some of the key takeaways from Jacco’s approach to building a winning revenue architecture.

Defining Your Revenue Architecture: Building on Proven Blueprints

One of Jacco’s central ideas is the importance of defining a comprehensive revenue architecture. He likens the process to how an architect designs a bridge or a house—building something strong and sustainable based on proven models. In the same way, SaaS companies should structure their growth strategies around well-established frameworks, which offer guidance on scaling and navigating challenges. But Jacco emphasizes that this approach should be applied only once a company has reached a certain scale—around $10 million in the U.S. or €3 million in Europe. The dynamics, costs, and market expectations differ significantly between regions, making it important to tailor strategies based on where a company stands in its growth journey.

Customer-Centric Selling: Putting the Buyer First

A major shift Jacco highlights is the move towards a buyer-driven approach to sales. With easy access to information, customers are often just as knowledgeable—if not more—about their problems and potential solutions than the sellers are. In this landscape, companies can no longer rely on traditional sales tactics that push products or solutions. Instead, Jacco advocates for a customer-centric approach, where companies focus on helping buyers make informed decisions. By aligning the sales process with what the customer truly needs, companies can improve satisfaction, boost trust, and ultimately, increase conversion rates.

Identifying Key Moments in the Customer Journey

At the heart of a customer-centric approach is understanding the moments that matter most to the buyer. Instead of rigidly following a set sales process, SaaS companies should focus on the pivotal interactions that genuinely influence a customer’s decision-making. These key moments—whether it’s a specific touchpoint, a feature that solves a pain point, or an insight shared at the right time—are critical to building strong, trusting relationships with customers. Jacco’s framework suggests that by honing in on these moments, businesses can craft a buying experience that feels more natural and supportive rather than pushy and transactional.

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Focusing on One Go-to-Market Strategy at a Time

As SaaS companies grow, the question of which go-to-market (GTM) strategy to pursue becomes increasingly important. Jacco warns against diversifying too early, as spreading resources too thin can dilute focus and hinder growth. Instead, he advises companies to stick with one dominant GTM motion—whether it’s inbound marketing, product-led growth, or another approach—until they hit a significant revenue milestone. This focused approach allows companies to perfect their chosen strategy, ensuring that efforts are not scattered and resources are allocated efficiently.

The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of Sales

Looking ahead, Jacco sees artificial intelligence (AI) playing a transformative role in sales. AI-powered tools and sales agents could revolutionize the way SaaS companies operate by automating routine tasks, streamlining the sales process, and even augmenting—or replacing—traditional sales roles. This could help businesses scale more efficiently and lower costs. However, Jacco stresses that human expertise will remain indispensable, particularly for high-risk transactions or complex deals. AI should complement, not replace, the human touch that’s essential for building long-term customer relationships.

Building a Revenue Strategy That Grows with Your Company

To sum it up, Jacco van der Kooij’s framework for building a successful revenue architecture revolves around a strategic, model-driven approach. The key is to align sales processes with the customer’s buying journey, focusing on moments that matter most to them, and leveraging cutting-edge technology like AI to scale effectively. By following these principles, SaaS companies can create a growth engine that’s not only scalable but also sustainable. Jacco’s insights provide a clear roadmap for navigating the complex world of SaaS sales and setting the foundation for long-term success.

Key Timecodes

• (0:00) – Introduction to the Episode
• (1:24) – Welcome and Initial Conversation
• (1:51) – Defining Revenue Architecture
• (3:03) – When to Start Building Revenue Architecture
• (3:45) – Getting Ready for the Next Step
• (4:45) – Key Steps Before Scaling
• (6:11) – Differences Between US and EU Markets
• (8:06) – Bad Fit for Revenue Architecture
• (9:05) – Aligning Sales with Customer Journey
• (12:16) – Customer-Driven Buying Process
• (14:52) – Knowledge Asymmetry Flip
• (16:13) – Setting Up Successful Revenue Architecture
• (17:41) – Establishing Go-To-Market Motions
• (21:05) – Experimentation Phase
• (22:19) – Go-To-Market Fit vs. Product-Market Fit
• (27:56) – Implementing Revenue Architecture Without AI
• (36:21) – Future of Revenue Architecture with AI
• (38:48) – Growing to 10K MRR Advice
• (39:39) – Scaling to 10 Million ARR Advice
• (42:48) – Summary and Key Takeaways
• (48:51) – Final Thoughts on Education and AI

Transcription

– Jacco

The customer decides the buying process, not the seller. So if the customer wants to see a demo first before you jump into the full discovery call, you need to contemplate that. We got to make sure that we measure the right thing. What are we measuring? Are we measuring deals? Are we measuring retention? Are we measuring what the win rate is? Are we measuring conversion rates, volume metrics, sales cycles? What are we measuring? We want to make sure that we measure that right. So as we grow, we can make good decisions based on that. You You got to have a certain amount of customers. You got to have a product that is working, that is able to fetch revenue and to the tune that the customer is willing to renew. And that is the reason why we set a certain stage of €3 million in US$10 million.

– Joran

My guest today is Jacco van der Kooij. Jacco is the founder of Winning by Design, a sales advisory firm that helps SaaS companies build scalable revenue operations. He’s also the author of Revenue Architecture, a book that breaks down how to design and implement a modern sales framework. The book covers over 250 diagrams, tables, and blueprints, all purpose-built for a current revenue that will streamline your GTM approach using scientific principles. Today, I’m going to get his knowledge on how to mold your go-to-market team into a revenue factory, driving growth, cutting cost, and enhancing product quality. Welcome to the show, Jacco.

– Jacco

Thank you for having me, Joran. How are you doing this morning?

– Joran

I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Thank Are you?

– Jacco

Yeah, good. Are you ready for this?

– Joran

I think I am. I might have to up my energy a little bit to match yours. Let’s just dive right in. So your book, Revenue Architecture, dies deep into structured sales processes. But maybe even a super basic question, how do you define revenue architecture? What does it actually mean?

– Jacco

Let’s start with this. If you think about building a bridge or building a house, you use an architect, right? That architect is using models. They know, for For example, you’re in the Netherlands, we’re going to put some poles in the ground in order to build on. Here in Western US, they build it on a plate or on a foundation. They architect the building of your house. Now, think of a bridge. They architect the bridge, and most bridges can be put together and perform very well again and again. How can they build a Golden Gate Bridge for the first time and make it instantly stand for 100 years? How can they do that? They use architecture. They use design and architecture skills and that’s based on models. Revenue architecture is exactly that. It presumes that we can build growth the same way we can build bridges, and that like bridges, like other things that you designed, they are built on proven models. And once you start to understand those proven models. You can start adopting your business to that and grow as you will. But build a revenue growth that is anticipated.

– Joran

When you look at SaaS companies, when should they start thinking about building up this architecture? Is Is it from the early stage? Is it from a different stage?

– Jacco

We don’t want to start too soon with that. You need to test out first the things. In the US, I would say you get to about 10 million US before you start having to work with building models. You first have to achieve that to get to a couple of million dollars. In Europe, I would say it’s a little bit lower. It’s 3 million euros. That main difference is because the difference is salaries between Europe and the US. So 3 million euro, 10 million US, you got to start building an architecture. You’re running a factory, so to speak.

– Joran

I guess because we’re going to talk about setting up the factory, setting up the architecture, maybe then some advice for the companies who are now going to 10 million and going to 3 million in the EU. What should they do before to maybe even get ready for that next step?

– Jacco

The big thing that you have early on, you have to do is get your data model ready and make sure that you have the data right, which means you have to get your pricing right and you have to get your founder mode sales. These are the first three things. Let’s start with number one, get What’s your pricing and strategy right, pricing and packaging right. Now, what pricing and packaging mean is you have to determine, are you going to become a monthly recurring fee? Are you going to do an annual subscription? Are you going to do consumption-based? Are you going to be performing Revenue-based. What are you pricing? All those models that I’m talking about right now are essentially recurring revenue models. That’s step number one. What is this factory that we’re working on? What product is it pushing out? Now, for most of the companies, that is a monthly subscription or an annual subscription. For a growing group, that can be a consumption-based model or even an output-based model. Whatever you pick, you need to make sure that you’re going to stick with that for a while because all your data that follows is based on that.

– Jacco

Number one, pricing and packaging. Number two, second step that we’re looking at, is how are you dealing with the founder-led sales mode? Founder mode here in the US is known as a particular mode that the company is propelled forward because of the energy and the insights that the founder brings to the table. That is very helpful to get to the first 2, 3 million dollars in US or the first million dollars in Euro. But then some of that can backfire. You still need founder mode to drive, but the founder offer works with lack of processes and that you need to overcome. That’s a very special topic we perhaps can dive deeper in. And then the third step, you got to get that data model right. What are we measuring? We want to make data-driven decisions later on. We got to make sure that we measure the right thing. What are we measuring? Are we measuring deals? Are we measuring retention? Are we measuring what the win rate is? Are we measuring conversion rates, volume metrics, sales cycles? What are we measuring? We want to make sure that we measure that right. As we grow, we can make good decisions based on that data.

– Jacco

Those are the first three steps.

– Joran

To summarize, define your pricing and packaging. How are you dealing with founder debt mode and get your data model right? Definitely define your KPIs and maybe even go one step back, like you mentioned, 10 million in US, 3 million in EU, you mentioned also because of salaries. Is that the only reason why you see there’s a difference between 10 million and 3 million, or are there any other things?

– Jacco

There are a couple of other things. Essentially, they all come from salaries. For example, when you generate leads in Europe, they can be cheaper than generating leads in the US. And that’s primarily of the submarkets that we have in Europe, like the Netherlands being one of them, Germany being another one, and the UK. Those are three very different submarkets. And if you compare those against to Spain and Portugal and Italy, they all have their own behavior. So buying a lead from an American company for America comes at a different price because the size of the country is bigger than in Italy and so on. That’s definitely one. The second thing that we’re going to see is that Europe has a different financing culture. The way companies get financed is at a lesser valuation, at a lower multiple. That is pretty normal for Europe. That is probably more normalized there than it is in the US, where sometimes you can go from 5X to 20X to 100X in the crazy world. I guess that’s what I see in EU, we’re evaluating companies based on the numbers from the past, like what have we been doing so far, whereas in the US, it’s more as what is the actual future?

– Joran

So what can this company become? Is that true?

– Jacco

That is in large part true. Forward-looking, definitely, is a way of a mindset of the US venture capital market. But it’s got to be proven by historic data. You can’t say, I’ve been growing from 1-2, to 3-4. Next year, I’m going to go to 20, and I want to be based on 20. Nobody will fall for that. But if you go from 1-4, to 8, to 16, then you can get valuation for 32, whereas in Europe, you will get valued for the 16 that you just produced.

– Joran

Yeah, nice. We’re going to dive deeper in revenue architecture. One question before we really dive in. When should, because we know now when people should care about this? When should they not care about… Because what is a bad fit for this model?

– Jacco

The models that we’re running are primarily based on a few simple things. Number one, they are B2B-based. So not B2Consumer, not business to consumer, but business to business. Number two, they’re based on recurring revenue trends. In other words, companies that need to make their profit from the second to the third and the fourth and so on sale, not from the first sale. So we’re thinking about perpetual software and on-prem hardware. This doesn’t apply as much. There’s a lot of basic elements that still apply, but not everything. Those are our two quick markers, B2B recurring revenue. And what you start to see in Europe, at $1 million, you need to start putting the basics in place, and about $3 million, you start to operate like you start to use the models in order to make sure you model out where you’re going. That’s about the earmarkers there.

– Joran

Perfect. We have the perfect target audience because the podcast is called Growth Your B2B SaaS. They will definitely fit that. In the book, you emphasize the importance of aligning the sales process with the customer journey. Can you tell more about that?

– Jacco

Yeah, obviously. Look, many of us, we hate being sold. We hate being sold with a passion unknown to humankind. That’s for 99% of us. As soon as we sniff out somebody’s trying to sell us, immediately our alerts go up. Immediately, our defense system will go up. Why is that? Because we believe that when somebody’s trying to sell us, they are trying to pursue their own best interest over our best interest. That’s That’s why we hate being sold. Now, so if companies go in and try to sell something to you, then you feel like this is an awkward feeling. However, people love to buy. And so what the customer journey is about is making sure you help the customer to buy. Now, how do you do that? How do you go from selling product on behalf of your company to helping a customer to buy? That is to look at it from their point of view with their best interest in mind. Understand, we have 8 billion people on There will be plenty of people who have the problem that you designed your product for that you can sell to. That’s absolutely fine. Just find them and help them to solve the problem.

– Jacco

And the sales process is a natural outcome of that. It becomes a buying process rather than a sales process. That is the mindset of creating a customer journey. Now, normally what you will do, it is most customer journeys are very defined. They are defined by, Oh, in the sales process, I’m going to have a discovery call, and then I’m going to make a There’s going to be a proposal, and there’s going to be a negotiation, and then I’m going to have close, and something like that. Those actions are often very self-centered. I want you to think about a few moments that matter most to the customer. What is a moment that matters? The first discovery call, the first time they get to hear from you. You want to make sure that these moments, you put forth how customer-centric you are. You ask them the questions. You want to learn about them, not telling about what you are so excited to talk about. You You have to learn about what they want and what their challenges are.

– Joran

Yeah. A real practical example, like a broader, as you mentioned, not trying to sell, but actually loving to buy. So you have to ask another question. You probably have to get a lot of information from them. Any There are things you would definitely do in that journey?

– Jacco

The way you say it, and I know you don’t mean it that way, but for the audience to get them into gear is like, look, this cannot be an interrogation. To get a lot of information from the customer, if you’ve done your job right, you should have already used searchers, AI, and what is social media in order to determine what that problem was. You should already show up and be prepared for that. Now, helping the customer to buy is one of the rules. People hate being sold, but So therefore, you got to help them buy the product, and therefore, you got to have the mindset of solving them. That’s one thing. The other thing here is that the customer decides the buying process, not the seller. So if the customer wants to see a demo first before before you jump into the full discovery call, you need to contemplate that. Now, it doesn’t mean that you literally have to jump in the demo right away. If a customer says, Okay, folks, I got a little time. Can you just get straight to the demo? Then you should respond, Love it. May I ask you three questions to make sure I get the demo right for what you want to see?

– Jacco

Okay, and then you can ask one, two, three, demo. But you can’t say, it’s like, Oh, we’re going to do today, we’re going to do a demo, and I’m sorry, but today we’re going to do discovery, and then next week we’re going to do a demo. You can’t do that. The customer is there, they are deciding that They want to see the demo that way. Now, like I said, you can still ask two or three questions. And then if a good sales professional during the demo will be able to ask those very same questions. But that is a way of a customer dictating They’re telling you what they want. The days are gone that we’re telling customers how they need to buy. Look no further than yourself when you’re buying in the consumer world. You will not be dictated to how you buy. You will move to the next store and go, Okay, that’s not how I want it. And then you move immediately on and buy somewhere else.

– Joran

Yeah, because that’s what a lot of SaaS companies did. They first didn’t even show you the product. They walked through the sales deck, and then you might see the product in call two or three. Basically, you’re saying those days are over. The customer decides how the journey is going to be, but you can still dictate or get the information you need, but then in the way they would like to actually buy.

– Jacco

Now, Joran, we are already on a very important… Do you remember what the number one rule was? Was What do I say? What was the number one rule?

– Joran

Define your pricing and packaging.

– Jacco

Okay, those were the three points. What was the number one rule of buying and selling?

– Joran

People hate being sold. People love to buy.

– Jacco

Okay, number two rule was?

– Joran

What are the moments that matter? Show how customer-centric you are. Help them to buy.

– Jacco

Buyers determine the journey, right? And that leads to moments that matter so that you match your moments that matter. Number three thing, very important. Ask your audience to contemplate this, what’s happening. Over the past hundreds of years, the asymmetry in knowledge favored the seller. So the seller had more knowledge than the buyer. And if you go back 20 to 30 years, it was the seller who traveled from buyer to buyer. And in a pre-Internet world, that is how they gathered knowledge. That means that they knew the use cases better because the buyer had no time to meet all their peers in those days. The seller had all this knowledge of what the market was doing. They had all this knowledge of what their product was capable of, and they told the customer what was wrong with their system and why they needed to buy a solution. That’s the way how sellers were. They were field salespeople traveling from customer to customer. That asymmetry is not only gone, it has flipped. Now, let me give you a case And I can point from that. If you today go to a doctor, you don’t show up at the doctor letting the doctor just tell you what you have.

– Jacco

You will already have prediagnosed yourself. You already have figured out what the potential cures are. You will bring that conversation up with the doctor. You are pre-informed. That means that the information between you and the doctor has significantly decreased. And you will find, at times, that you may know more about the doctor because you were pre-informed about what your situation was, so you can do a very narrow search on what you wanted. The doctor, on the other hand, didn’t know what was going on by the time you step in. It’s not that they don’t know. They just didn’t have the time to do that narrow search. As a result, there’s actually a gap that has flipped. As a patient, you may know more than what the doctor does. This is exactly the same as what’s happening to be selling. The buyers today, and more recently, via AI, may know a lot more about their problem than you are ready to discuss, and there’s a chance that they may know more about your product than your sales professional does. Think about that. They may know more about use cases. So it has flipped. And that is something most sales organizations are not ready to deal with.

– Jacco

Yeah.

– Joran

Love it. Maybe then dive into setting up a successful revenue architecture. Are there any key components that SaaS company has to set up to get to predictable, scalable growth?

– Jacco

Yeah. You need to have a certain customer base. We can build a bridge if the span is a mile long, so to speak, and you’re trying to build a suspension bridge. There’s certain limitations of technology that cannot be matched, in this case, with a suspension bridge. Same thing with business. Business. You got to have a certain amount of customers. You got to have a product that is working, that is able to fetch revenue and to the tune that the customer is willing to renew. And that is the reason why we set a certain stage of €3 million in €10 million. We want to make sure that there’s a certain scale of business in operation that we can start working with. That’s one. Second, you got to have an operational team. Whether that is a PLG motion or a deep enterprise sales motion powered by sales professionals, you got to have a team who can perform the work. You can say it’s like, Hey, we’re going to build a house, but if there’s no human beings that can man the equipment and oversee the building, then that ain’t going to happen. But so you need a certain amount of operational support and a certain amount of revenue.

– Jacco

In Europe, that is about €3 million, and I would say about 30, €40 people. In the US, that is about €10 million, €10 million, and about the same, €40, €50 people.

– Joran

Yeah. Then let’s assume you have this. What would be If you go into a company right now, they match all the criteria you just mentioned, what’s next? How would you go in and actually set this up or help them to set this up?

– Jacco

First thing we look at is what is the revenue versus the product price? For example, if you have $10 million and you sell $1,000 product, that may be a very different go-to-market model. If you make $10 million by selling $100,000 product. We call that the GTM model. We make sure, how is your go-to-market What is your native way of selling? For example, if you think about HubSpot, their number one go-to-market motion is inbound. If you think about Slack, their number one go-to-market motion is PLG. Companies often grow to $50 to $100 million based on a dominant first go-to-market motion. We need to establish what is your dominant go-to-market motion. Most companies, the problem they make early on in the $3, $4, $5 million dollar range, in the 2, 3, 4 million euro range, is that they diversify GTI motion too soon, spreading their resources too thin. And as a result, it will be very hard for them to grow and scale because it becomes too calm, the water is becoming too muddy for them to know what’s really working and what’s not working. That is a first, for us, a signal. Where you are in revenue, are you at 10 million, 20 million, 30 million?

– Jacco

What is your go-to-market motion and how many go-to-market motions do you have? That tells us early on whether you are scaling the business in a structured way or are you just shooting from the hip and trying to see what works. Unfortunately, Ron, most companies, and I would say seven out of 10, are having multiple GTM motions way, way too soon.

– Joran

Yeah, but I can even blame myself because it’s always a shiny thing like you see on LinkedIn or you see it happening elsewhere, right? Or if you go to events, you would always hear that it’s working for somebody else, or you always come to try it out yourself as I come from the Netherlands, originally from the Betouwer, from a small city called Thiel.

– Jacco

And my parents used to have a food truck. We would nowadays call the food truck. Can you imagine, you barely started a restaurant, you already launched a new food truck, you already launched a website with mass ordering, and you already launch a grocery store, you already do all that, you’re barely starting. That wouldn’t work, would it? You don’t have money to do all that. You barely have money to get the advertisement out about the restaurant. You already You’re already buying a food truck and you’re already launching a store that you don’t even have the groceries in yet? No, you can’t. All what we are saying is, the shiny objects will always be there. It’s to focus on the model that works and to understand that it will take a little bit of time and energy for all of the team to galvanize around that one model which you have proven, which you have shown.

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– Joran

One follow-up question, because to find out which one is working, you will have to try it out, right? You will have to market that food truck via flyers or via online ads or however, but you need to figure out what is working, right? So how would you deal with the experimentation phase to figure out actually what is the dominant go-to-market, which we really have to focus on?

– Jacco

What you’ll see now is the distinguishment between two terms, product-market fit and go-to-market fit. Product-market fit represent When is the product working and are customers willing to buy? Are they willing to pay money for it? Not one, not 10 friends, but random strangers in the industry, which doesn’t make them random, but they are like strangers in the industry who have never worked with you. Are they willing to pay the price for it. That is product-market fit. Go-to-market fit is, can you serve those customers in a way that you can scale? Most products are an automatic fit. For example, if you build an app store, if you build an app and you’re selling to the app store, you’re not going to sell a field sales organization to sell 100. That costs you $200,000 a year to sell a $500 app. That’s naturally. If you sell a $200,000 solution, it’s not too far fetched to say, Oh, I probably need a field sales organization that travels to the customer, supported by some engineer or architect or somebody to support a tactical set. In the end, it’s relatively simple on how you do that. Then if you see, we have defined there’s five different go-to-market motion, no touch, low touch, medium touch, high touch, and dedicated touch, which are set.

– Jacco

These are five different and very well-known GTM motions, which are part of revenue architecture. You can pick and choose what you want based on the price that you’re selling.

– Joran

I think that’s really important because in the end, you have to figure out what is your average revenue per account to identify how much money can you spend to actually acquire them. That’s where you have the different motions.

– Jacco

That is true for today and probably for the next 2-3 years. But let’s anticipate that we will have sales agents soon enough that will jump on a Zoom call and do the work for the seller. When we’ll get to that point, we’ll have the conversation that the price of a seller across all those different segments is equal, and therefore, it will all roll into one go-to-market motion. But we’ll cross that bridge when we’re there. We at Winning by Design are furiously working on solutions for that, and we believe that by the end of Q1, We’re going to see the first capable sales agents entering the market that can be put to work.

– Joran

You don’t mean AI sales agents, right?

– Jacco

Yes, I do.

– Joran

I’ve seen the first tools already coming out and the LinkedIn post It looks promising. I don’t know how it is going to actually work, but that’s nice.

– Jacco

Yeah, we’ve seen live demos. It is absolutely astounding what is possible. And that was only the version 0.1. We expect within four weeks to see the first versions with a 1.0 number. If photorealistic is coming and it’s there, we’re going to be wild. At the beginning, we will be a little bit… Many of you will find that it’s off-putting. You go, Why am I talking to an AI? But similar to how we felt at one point in time, it was odd to get a car with a stranger or how we found it odd to go sleep at a stranger’s house. Folks, Uber and Airbnb have become the norm these days, and so we’ll see the same thing in the future. Sales agents will become the norm. Mark my words, we will see a replacement within the next three years, 70% of the go-to-market field force, as in sellers, SDRs, and so on, will find a way to be replaced by AI agents. It will be there. It is a given. By the way, when I say replaced, I don’t want us to think that these people will, obviously, they lose their job. I want everybody to understand that 70% was never meant to be human capacity.

– Jacco

The human capacity we use in these jobs has always been a primary placeholder. For example, we see it with sales development reps these days. Sales development reps, historically, have been a placeholder, a way of… I use this, a human with a shovel. A human is not meant to be digging a hole. The back is It’s not designed that way. The human arch of the back is not designed that way. No human beings are going to strike because an excavator is digging a hole. Please go ahead, take this hard labor away from me. The same way SDRs were never meant to operate as if they’re operating a machinery in the forms of email automation, all that will go away. The spamming that we’re currently using needs to disappear. We’re going to see a lot of changes in the next 2-3 years. The first company embracing this have already started. They will believe that it is unstoppable. It is exhilarating at an incredible place. And so we anticipate that in the middle of the year, you’re going to see the first AI systems commercially deployed in the B2B space.

– Joran

It makes sense when you say the AI is going to do all the hard work, like the construction, as you mentioned. What about the term people buy from people? So if we’re going to replace everything with AI, can we still keep it personal? Can we still build a relationship with our clients?

– Jacco

You have to think of human oversight. I think that in the first couple of years, no direct purchase can be closed of significance. Like a $20,000 platform sale without human involvement. That is because of the risk involved. If the risk of the purchase is significant, that it can cause harm for the customer, for example, PII harm, as in private data of a person, then there will be a human being who requires oversight. This is called human in the loop mode. And that is, for example, happens with your very complex systems that are automated. There always needs to be a human in the loop. Think about a reservoir or a dam that is flushing water out. You’re not going to flush water out unlimited and just open the dam wide away without a human in the loop approving that. So think about it that way. Same thing we’re going to see. But lower prices, folks, this is already happening. Amazon is already a form of a sales sales agent. You’re already doing this. Kayak is already a form of a sales agent. They’re already recommending what you should buy at the lowest price. They’re already acting as a buying agent for you.

– Jacco

It is only logical that there’s a sales agent going to be opposite of that. So yeah, this is happening in the consumer space already. We already love it, and so will it, too, in the B2B space. We just have to get used to it in the beginning because of that awkward AI interaction we’re going to see in the first couple of months. But at the rate that we’re going right now, Jérôme, This is only getting better with every revision, and it’s going faster than we’ve ever anticipated.

– Joran

Yeah, nice. I do think you’re right. It’s going this route. But I guess for the people who are not to win yet who find it really awkward and want to do things now, can you maybe share some best practices on how to implement this Skate Board, people’s sales process using the principles from revenue architecture without using the AI as sales agents?

– Jacco

It essentially it comes down to the same thing. This is the good news. If Before there is the execution of what you’re using, the main difference between selling an AI or selling a human being is the cost center of that. It’s the different cost. Ai comes at, let’s say, $10 per hour, and a human being, let’s say, to whatever price it is, $40 an hour. So what we see is that price difference is really where it comes down to. But both are executing a process. That means that ultimately, what it starts with is the process. What is your sales process? And as we said before, a few of the rules apply down here. Hey, number one, are you helping your customers to buy? Number two, customers dictate the process they wish to buy. So you simply need to look at your past 20, 30 customers and go like, How did they buy? You map that, great experience around that, and you’re off to the races. And when we say you map the process, you don’t want to drone parent your customers and track every click for everywhere they place. You’re not going to make a difference with that.

– Jacco

What you have to do as a human being is make sure that you interact with them in the moments that matter most to them. Now, one of those key moments, as oddly as it may be, based on what the AI did I just mentioned, is that human beings like to meet other human beings. After years of online buying and selling. Actually, a lot of people nowadays love to meet at conferences. If you go back to 2019 and 2018, we had many conferences. People didn’t want to meet each other any longer. They were spending too much time on the road. We nowadays see that customers perhaps don’t want to spend at that many conferences, but when they are at a conference, they’re not just spending at the conference. They want to do breakfast, they want to do running clubs in the morning and run with them. They want to, at They want to have dinners. They are loaded. Those events that they pick are loaded. Community events are loaded with activities. That is the new way that human beings interact with each other and very well suited for the European culture, where where you can do this on a country level or very well suited in the US, where you can do that on a city level like New York and LA and San Francisco and Atlanta.

– Jacco

We call those cities, NFL cities, the major cities that have an NFL team. We’ll see that in-person communication starts to play a vital role in the world where most information exchange is going to be managed through an AI system.

– Joran

Yeah, that’s really interesting because in the end, we’re trying to automate as much as we can, but we are going to in person. I just came back from SaaS took last week. We’re going to meet up in person in two weeks at the SaaS Summit in Benelux in Amsterdam. I think it’s 100% true. What they, for example, do in the Netherlands is they would only allow people from sea level, founders, high-level people who you want to meet, who you do want to have the breakfast with, who you do want to run with, so you can share your challenges and even have the right people in the room with you.

– Jacco

That’s right. Sometimes people are being excluded. If you’re an individual What we call an individual contributor or a manager or executive, you may feel excluded. Some of these events may say, Okay, this is only for executives, which is a common way that you feel like, Oh, am I not good enough? That is not the case. Teachers need to meet with teachers so they can learn how to teach their students. Students need to meet with students so they can exchange how they absorb the trade material. It is a very natural alignment so that people can talk about how they’re tackling problems. Don’t feel excluded by these events. Rather, embrace with your own community that you’re part of. Then if you become an expert in your community, you’ll automatically move up to the next community and so on and so forth.

– Joran

Yeah, I think that’s really good to say because I love that it’s sometimes exclusive, but it’s not that I don’t like the other people. It’s more as in they have the same challenges, same problems, as you mentioned, with the teachers, they would have the same problems as well.

– Jacco

For example, that applies really well to rapid growth companies, where if you’re a €3 million company, there’s There’s no need to start communicating with a company that operates at $500 million. The executives at that size of company, the lessons that they’ve learned cannot immediately be applied to a €3 million company, two worlds apart. Or actually, it’s about three, four worlds apart. Don’t feel like that is like, Oh, I’m excluded from this group. No, you’re matched to the group where you can get the most out of over the next 12 months.

– Joran

Nice. When we go back to implementing the revenue architecture framework, we always make it sound really easy on podcast. We just talk about it and tell how to do it, best practices, things like that. If people read the book and they want to implement it either by themselves or even by design, what are some challenges they’re probably going to run into and how can they overcome those?

– Jacco

The number one challenge that people have is they read it, they understand parts of it, but they have no one to talk to about because they’re the only one at the company. Imagine that in Europe, it’s soccer, in America, it’s American football. But imagine that you have a sports team in which the defensive team has no knowledge of what the offensive team is doing. And not only that, but the defense on the left side, left back, has no understanding what the defense on the right back is doing. That’s how today most teams work. Every executive runs their own. They don’t operate like a team. And so the first challenge is that revenue architecture flushes that out immediately. If you do not work as a team, it won’t work. Many of us are familiar with the concept of Jim Collins Jim Collins, be on the bus. Jim Collins is a famous book from Good to Great. The concept in that book is being on the bus. When a great company asks you to join, what does it matter to you what function you have? Just get on the bus. Now, using that a bus analogy, in the bus, there’s only one driver.

– Jacco

The founder. And that driver controls the steering, controls the gas pedal, controls the stick shift, and even the temperature in the car, so to speak. And that mindset of one person is driving and we’re all along for the ride is what has dominated executive teams over the past decade or We’ll push people out of the bus and get them on the bus. We rotate people in every 18 months or so. Folks, that is the nature of a bus. But as you know, Joran, when we’re thinking about growth and hyper-growth, we don’t think about a bus. As a form of transportation. We’re thinking about a rocket. When we’re sitting in a rocket, we’re sitting like five white in the rocket, and everybody can blow up the rocket with the flip of a wrong switch. That’s what we’re having today. We have four or five executives on the team. They’re all flipping switches at the same time. The rocket doesn’t reach altitude. Why not? Because Joe on the right and Maryanne on the left are taking action. They have an adverse impact on the growth of the company. They think they’re doing the right thing. They do not operate as a team.

– Jacco

Revenue architecture will say, How can we fly this rocket? If lead generation is not hooked up to opportunity conversion? If opportunity conversion is not hooked up to onboarding, we will never achieve recurring revenue. The ultimate The goal of the enterprise is to achieve recurring revenue. To do that, you got to deliver the customer recurring impact. No recurring revenue if you don’t deliver recurring impact. You will unsubscribe from Netflix three months after they come out with new content. No recurring impact, no recurring revenue. To deliver that recurring impact takes a village. Takes a village. It cannot just be one person, one sole customer success manager responsible for that. That impact was sold at some point in time. That was communicated, discovered, demoed, promised on the website. That journey needs to be a coherent journey from the customer, and that requires an entire team effort. Those days of, Hey, I’m just here to generate leads, or just my role to create wins, those days are over in the world of recurring revenue. If you close deals and they churn three months later, you will have only lost more money. Or as we say, the more deals you win, the more money you lose.

– Jacco

Yeah.

– Joran

One I’m going to ask a future question, but you maybe even already answered it with the AI sales tools. But let me just see if I can ask it, then I get something else out of it. I guess, how do you see the role of a revenue architecture evolving SaaS sales is going to shift towards customer-centric and maybe even towards AI sales agents? How do you see it changing?

– Jacco

Today, we overuse human capacity to fill in the gaps of things that we haven’t been able to automate quite yet. And so what you’ll find is that there’s too many people in a company too early on. As a result, the costs go up, which is called sustainable. It becomes unsustainable. Was laying out too many salary And because we need so many people, the demand for the same people goes up, and that means the price goes up, the salaries are catapulting and deliveries are not, right? This comes from the simple concept that if you want exponential growth, you cannot be dependent on a linear system. Now, increasing the number of people you hire is considered a linear system because it’s going to take a while to open up the rack, to start recruiting candidates, to interview, and so on and so forth. We’re talking about at least six months for most organizations. And so that is considered a linear system. By the time I need more, I already need to start hiring people that I need a year from now because it’s going to take another six months to get them fully onboarded and trained and whatnot.

– Jacco

Today, what we have seen is that organizations that want exponential growth are dependent on the linear system based on people. That simply won’t match because as we see going forward, markets are moving too quickly. An opportunity window opens up. You don’t have time to hire the right people. You don’t have time to take two years to grow into that window. You got to take immediate advantage of that. That is where we’re going. Can a company, when the window is created, jump into that window without being lucky, without being there by chance? That requires that we need to think beyond the human capability, that we need to complement what humans are seeing combined with AI, and they need to become a synergistic map. That is going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months. We were to learn how to do that.

– Joran

Yeah, David. We’re going to dive into the final two questions. These are revenue-related questions. First of all, what advice would you give a SaaS founder who is just starting out and growing their BP SaaS to 10K monthly recurring revenue. It’s a really early stage.

– Jacco

Okay, first step there, embrace AI. This is not only because it’s low cost, it’s because it’s going faster. Now, you use AI to scale, but you need human beings to be the creative mode. Ai will not help you to learn what is the right GTM motion. A human being will. You have a quality human being and you scale via AI, but you need to embrace AI as quickly as possible. It is just inevitable. I guarantee you that most founders, especially when they’re engineers, are already on that trajectory. They’re going to look at go-to-market motion and they go, Yeah, finally, that’s the way how revenue architecture depicts it with an engineering mindset. It’s easy to create a future scalable system, automated system out of it. Makes sense.

– Joran

Saying we now pass 10K MRR, and I’m going to make a huge step. What advice would you give someone who’s growing to 10 million ARR?

– Jacco

To design their growth, to architect it, and to architect it the same way they would have architected the product. Today, we see that most organizations or founders are handing that off to what they deem to be an expert, on the other hand, only to come to learn two, three years into the agreement, that person never was an expert. Think of the Most sellers or successful salespeople have at the zenith of their career, they’re probably right at their early 40s, right? You think you start selling at about the age of 6, 26. Sales is not a trade. That means at the age of 40, they probably have three or four jobs. That means that their experience with three or four years on average experience per customer, their experience in generally is outdated because they are just coming into the new market. Compared that, in my case, I started engineering in the Netherlands at what’s called the LTS, but I started that journey, what, at age 12 or something like that? By the time I was 26, I already had 12, 13, 14 years of engineering education behind me, most of which was spent at Philips Electronics.

– Jacco

So you already have another 12, 14 years of experience in it that salespeople at the age 40 don’t have. That is often a misunderstanding understanding. We want to make sure that when you bring on that expert that you contemplate and make sure that they’re a good fit. Tom, an advice that we see many companies go wrong early on.

– Joran

Now I understand why you make a lot of examples towards the industry based on your background. Cool. Let me see if I can summarize what you just said. First of all, revenue architecture is built from proven models, but only look at it when you have 10 million in US, when you’re in US or 3 million in Europe. But get this in order first to find your pricing and packaging. How are you dealing with founder that mode and get your data model right. Definitely define your KPIs and follow up on them. People hate being sold. People love to buy. So what are the moments that matter most? Show how customer-centric you are. Definitely help them to buy, but the customer decides the journey. Nowadays, buyers know a lot more about their problem and might know a lot more about your product than you do. When you are going to implement revenue architecture, define your go-to-market motion, make sure you know exactly what your dominant go-to-market motion is. And common There are still some mistakes that spreading your resources to 10. So don’t try all of them, but focus on the dominant one. When we look at the future, 70% of sales agents will be replaced by AI agents, where humans will be doing oversight and the hard work is going to be done by the machines, so the humans will always be in loop.

– Joran

In-person communication with events is going to play a vital role. When implementing revenue architecture, operate as a team, not as so the departments. When you’re growing to 10K MR, leverage AI AI, go to 10 million AR, architecture growth. To finalize with these two quotes, which I love, no recurring revenue when you don’t have recurring impact. If you want exponential growth, you can’t depend on a linear system. So inspiring more people think beyond human capabilities.

– Jacco

I thought that was absolutely stunning. I’m sitting there enjoying. That’s better than an AI system could do today. So congratulations on that. There you go.

– Joran

I’m not going to be replaced by an AI yet. Nice. Love it. Cool. If you want to get in contact with you, you’re not coming.

– Jacco

On that note, imagine how many people would be able to do what you just did. I’m making a point here because what you’re doing, you’re good at what you’re doing. People who are good at what they’re doing will not be replaced. It’s all the other people who fake that they’re good at what they’re doing but want to get paid the same as you. That’s the problem. Unfortunately, in our industry, we have a lot of that. We have a lot of people that were never meant to be here. They just ended up because they were no doctor, they were no engineer, they were no traits person or anything, and they just said, That will be flushed out with AI. That’s my point. But experts in their field will always remain highly needed demand for that at a premium price. It is a given.

– Joran

100%. In the end, maybe you’re replacing the good work, but then it isn’t. We’re going to leverage AI to the max to do our job even better, more efficient, quicker, all those things.

– Jacco

That’s right. The people who previously found a home that had no idea what to do and ended up in sales, those folks need to go find a home elsewhere because sales no longer can be just a place where you make lots of money without knowing what you’re doing and just showing up at the right time in the morning gets you paid. And again, the sales professionals among us know that is the case for a large share of our workforce today. We know it’s true. We may not want to admit to it, but in our belly, we know there are way too many people that have set up camp that are unfamiliar, unwilling, and unable to perform the task at hand. I can tell you, since we train lion’s shears of them, I walk into a room and I can tell you, almost within the first 10 minutes, how much percentage of that room wants it and how much percentage in that room is there because they have to be. In 10 minutes, I can tell you that.

– Joran

Yeah, nice.

– Jacco

You know why?

– Joran

People probably ask questions, the energy they deliver.

– Jacco

Why were you able to summarize so well a second ago? Because I love That’s the topic.

– Joran

Then I love what I’m doing.

– Jacco

What did you do? What were you doing the whole time?

– Joran

Oh, making notes, lots of notes.

– Jacco

Taking notes. People don’t have an interest, don’t take notes because they always want to listen to what they heard, they consume only. All you have to do to look at the room is who is sitting there pen and paper is fine. Even typing on your cell phone is fine. If somebody says, Jacco, I’m taking notes on my cell phone. Just want you to know I’m not… I’m all in. However, you take notes. Some people say, I record a call and look back on it. That’s not the same. Taking notes, and the act of taking notes is a form of digesting information. Great people, and you’ll see it when you see me post pictures, look at that. Often it’s with executive, I often do executive workshops. Nine out of 10 people in executive workshops are taking feverish notes on paper often. Again, I’m fine if somebody opens up the computer and say, Okay, I’m going to take notes on the computer. Are you fine with that? I’m all in. It doesn’t matter how you take notes. But the process of taking notes is different. When I look into a room, it’s when I know what I’m dealing with.

– Joran

This is good advice for people listening right now. If you want to learn and look interested, definitely make notes.

– Jacco

Hire great people, hire people who take notes. Exactly.

– Joran

If you want to get a contact with Jacco, how can he do?

– Jacco

We’re going to We’re going to come to Europe pretty soon. For those of you who are in Europe, we’re going to do a two-day workshop in the Netherlands. And what day was that again, Joran? I forgot which day it was. I think the event is on the sixth, and you’re doing it on the seventh and the eighth of November. That’s right. We’ll be in November sixth. We’ll We’ll be joined with SaaS Basin conference, and then seventh and 8:00. We just come back from GTM Summit up in Austin, Texas. Winning by Design has conferences almost in every region all across the world, from Latin America to China to Australia, all across Europe, and obviously all across the US. For those who wish to look for it, the book Revenue Architecture is available on Amazon and on our YouTube channel, youtube. Com/winningbydesign. You will be finding plenty of videos is to entertain yourself wherever it is and however you consume your content. With that said, Joran, what is the number one thing that you’re taking away from this?

– Joran

I’m not ready yet to implement your revenue architecture. That’s personally. The other thing for me, personally, I need to leverage AI more. We passed a 10K MR, but the amount we use it right now isn’t good enough to reach exponential growth because it’s too dependent on people right now.

– Jacco

Look, and Joran, here’s what has happened in light of what we just You’ve practiced. You self-qualified yourself. Imagine that I would have tried to sell you on it. Now, I’m not selling revenue architecture. I’m educating you and you become a buyer, and now you self-select where you’re jumping in on. That is what a good buyer’s journey is all about.

– Joran

Because at one point I’m going to think, Hey, now I’m qualified. I can actually talk to Jacco again.

– Jacco

That’s right. And that’s how it goes. I am a big believer. You educate your customer to the best of your abilities. I cannot guarantee guarantee that I’m going to win a deal by outselling them. I can guarantee that I will do the best job educating the customer. I can guarantee that. I will give you my best effort in educating your customer. At the end of that, I trust the odds will be in my favor when it comes down to winning a deal and recurring revenue. It’s as simple as that. Focus on educating your customers with the best intent to help them succeed and take the win rate at the end. You will always see it will be a favorable win rate, if not immediate, which often happens, people have a tendency to come back in the second or third goal around when they move to the next company, go like, Your education helped me. As simple as that, it’s a proven method that is guaranteed to work, whether you deliver it via human beings, via AI, or via smoke signals for all that matter. Educated human beings will generally make the right decision for their company.

– Joran

Nice. To finalize, we’re going to add a link towards the book you mentioned, Jim Collins, Good to Great. We’re going to add a link to your Amazon review, Architecture Book. Covers over 250 diagrams, tables, blueprints, everything you need to know. If you want to have it in a video format, check out the YouTube, which we’re going to link towards by winning by design. Thank you for coming on. We’re going to add a poll towards this Spotify episode as well. So make sure you answer it and make sure you leave a review so we can beat the algorithm, so far, Spotify and Apple.

– Jacco

Thanks again, Jacco. Joran, thank you for having me, people listening. Thank you for listening to this session. Have a fantastic day. Love the energy.

– Joran

I need to replicate this. Cheers. Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show. If you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reddit, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.