SaaStr 380: How To Effectively Sell Into Mid-Market, Why SEO Is The Best Kept Secret In SaaS & How To Show Credibility To Enterprise Customers as a Startup

Ryan Sandler is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Truework, the company that gives employees control over employment, income and other identity data. To date, Ryan has raised over $44M with Truework from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, Menlo and from the founders of companies such as Plaid, Seatgeek, Mino Games and Checkr. Prior to founding Truework, Ryan spent 3 years as a Senior Product Manager @ Linkedin.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

  • How Ryan made his way from LinkedIn Product Manager to founding Sequoia backed, Truework and changing the world of identity data?
  • Why does Ryan believe it is such an advantage to sell into mid-market? Where do most people go wrong here? How can startups show credibility to mid-market when they are so small? How can founders use case studies and references to build social credibility early on?     
  • What have Ryan’s lessons been when it comes to pricing? How does Ryan think about and approach discounting? How does Ryan feel about pilot plans? What elements can founders negotiate on to get the best pricing?    
  • Why does Ryan believe SEO is the best-kept secret in SaaS? How has Ryan structured his content and marketing team as a result? How can one automate as much of the content creation process as possible? How long should one expect in terms of lead times to see returns on the SEO strategy?    

Ryan’s 60 Second SaaStr:

  1. Hardest element of Ryan’s role with Truework?
  2. What would Ryan most like to change about the world of SaaS?
  3. What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? 

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Ryan Sandler

Om Podcasten

The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.