Selling the Cloud

In this episode of Selling the Cloud, hosts Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson welcome SaaS industry veteran Paul Melchiorre, a leader in sales transformation, private equity investing, and board advisory. With decades of experience across multiple technology revolutions, Paul shares his insights on the evolving landscape of SaaS sales and what it takes to thrive in today's market.

Key Discussion Topics:

The Changing Buyer Behavior in SaaS – How buyers have become more sophisticated, procurement-driven, and selective in their decision-making.

AI’s Impact on Sales & Business Models – How AI is disrupting traditional SaaS models, from pricing to customer adoption strategies.

The Role of Leadership & Culture in Growth – Lessons from Paul's experience in scaling companies to billion-dollar valuations through IPOs and private equity sales.

The Shift to Efficiency in 2025 – Why the coming year will be about operational efficiency, leveraging technology effectively, and moving beyond the “growth at all costs” mindset.

Customer Success & Expansion Challenges – Why product-led growth alone isn’t enough and how SaaS companies must rethink their approach to customer success and expansion.

Common Mistakes in SaaS Sales – Why sales teams struggle to forecast accurately, fail to differentiate beyond their product, and overlook the broader enterprise objectives of their customers.

Tune in now to learn how to adapt and succeed in the AI-driven SaaS economy!

In Part 2, Paul dives even deeper into the challenges and opportunities in SaaS sales, including the future of GTM strategies, sales team efficiency, and what AI-driven selling really means for revenue leaders. Plus, we discuss the biggest pitfalls to avoid when scaling a SaaS company in 2025. Don't miss it—subscribe now to get notified when the next episode drops!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Part 2 of this episode of the “Selling the Cloud” Podcast, RevOps edition, we continue our conversation with Joseph Zito, founder of (X)Form. We explore the vital role of RevOps in ensuring successful strategy execution, addressing the common pitfalls that occur post-strategic offsite, and how an Operating Partner can help the C-suite stay ahead of the game.

Joseph delves into the misconception that CEOs and executives can execute a company's strategic vision on their own, highlighting the importance of external support for achieving high performance. We discuss how an Operating Partner facilitates growth amidst "business as usual", helps unpack conflicting internal narratives, and ensures the organization remains focused on its strategic goals. Additionally, we examine the critical role of having a strong Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to avoid inefficiencies and drive targeted success.

Show Notes:

Co-hosts: Mark Petruzzi and Katerina Ostrovsky

Guest: Joseph Zito, CEO of (X)FORM

Show Notes:

What is a bowling chart? Bowling Chart is a visual performance measurement tool for the KPIs of an organization, department or a person.

Strategic Planning process: Hoshin Kanri

What makes an effective executive: The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker

The book: To Sell is Human by Daniel L.Pink

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Chief Revenue Officer title is growing in popularity across the B2B Cloud industry. Is the CRO a new role in companies, or just a fancy new "C-Level" title for the head of sales?
Warren Zenna has recently launched "The CRO Collective" to educate and inform CEOs, first-time CROs, and aspiring CROs on the role of the Chief Revenue Officer.
Warren identified that the CRO role was often being mispositioned within a company and too often ending in failure. His goal is to help hire, onboard and enable first-time CROs to be successful.
The desire to found and lead his own company, not work for a big company, and passion to leverage his own leadership experiences across marketing, sales, and customer success to help fellow revenue leaders who aspire to become CROs. When Warren shared his vision to advise and assist CRO's and the CEOs who hire them to find success, he was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming confirmation that this was a much-needed service.
The traditional customer acquisition and expansion models are not performing well in concert with the evolving customer buying journey. Traditional metrics that are siloed within marketing or sales or customer do not provide valuable insights into the entire customer journey. Moreover, the siloed nature of these three different departments is not in alignment with the need to provide each potential buyer and then customer a consistent customer experience across the entire lifecycle.
How can a head of sales develop the experiences and competency in marketing to become an effective CRO? Warren's path started with selling marketing services and solutions to CMOs. This experience allowed him to apply the practice of enterprise sales directly to impact and improve marketing ROI. After thousands of conversations and deal cycles with marketing departments and executives, he had built the foundation to include marketing into his responsibilities as he advanced his career.
When asked if we invest too much time on internal processes versus the external customer experience, Warren responded with three reasons this is the case:
1. Venture Capital money comes with expectations that are primarily focused on revenue growth and not necessarily customer experience...in the short term. This heightened focus on growth often affects the priorities and focus
2. Most CROs come from a sales background, and their experience is often far too focused on "closing new customers" and not on the longer-term customer satisfaction or the skills required to create brand awareness and/or target buyer engagement
3. When companies have three separate departments focused on specific phases of the customer journey, no one owns the customer experience across their entire journey.
So what does the "CRO Collective" do? There are three unique components to the CRO Collective members:
1. Advisory services to CEOs considering the introduction of the first CRO role
2. Advisory services to first time CROs as they maneuver through their first CRO role
3. Educational services to aspiring CRO candidates
If your company is considering introducing a CRO role or you are a sales, marketing, or customer success professional that aspires to become a CRO, this conversation with Warren Zenna and the CRO Collective is a great listen.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy personify Larry Long Jr. In fact, his self-appointed title is "Chief Energy Officer".
Larry has a long career in B2B Sales, following his college baseball career at the University of Maryland. This experience has led to his vision to educate, inspire, motivate, energize and entertain sales organizations and sales professionals.
Mindset is critical to B2B Sales success, and Larry says this requires "MBS", or taking care of your Mind, Body, and Soul. Balancing all aspects of your life is critical to long-term success in sales. Another key factor to success is to answer the question:" do you have a great coach that is challenging you to take it to the next level to be the best you can be"?
Larry suggests doing a self-audit to identify one thing you can do to elevate a single aspect of your personal well-being. Larry suggested using the ABCD's - Action, Belief, Care, and Dream to conduct your self-audit to hold yourself accountable.
Larry highlighted that sales leaders need to increase the amount of time they invest to understand, and then impact the "MBS" of every person in your organization, beyond hitting the number. Today's modern sales professional places as much weight on personal growth, and culture as much as they do on compensation.
Sales leadership is a people business, and by asking yourself, "what are you doing to help someone else" you will be far ahead of the curve on being a leader that people will want to follow.
Larry highlights that his energy delivers a "JOLT" to a sales organization, but is not the primary ingredient to a long-lasting, positive culture. A long-lasting culture requires ongoing focus to ensure each member of your team is being challenged and growing as an individual, as well as a sales professional.
Larry recommends the following EPIC qualities are critical for B2B sales success:
E - Entrepreneurial spirit
P - Practice, Preparation, and Planning
I - Internal Drive and Design
C - Communication, Curiosity, Confidence, Care
Continuous coaching is one of the most important yet most difficult skills for first-time managers to master. Larry does not think we need specialized coaches to supplement first-time managers, but we do need to be careful of promoting the top salesperson to sales manager without the appropriate training, mentoring, and coaching.
If you are looking for a JOLT of energy and entertainment, while also hearing some new ideas and concepts to fuel your sales career or sales organization, Larry Long Jr. is a great listen.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The average tenure of a Vice President of Sales in the B2B Cloud industry is reported to be anywhere between 16 - 20 months, with 18 months being the median.

Why is the tenure so short? Is this really an issue considering the high growth rates of B2B Cloud companies? How can we increase the tenure of the VP Sales?

Amy Volas has a broad array of experiences in B2B Technology including roles as enterprise sales professional, recruiter, and sales leadership, and is well-positioned to opine on this critical topic.

B2B Tech sales experiences a 30%+ attrition every year and this was before the trending topic of the Great Resignation!

Missing the VP Sales hire is a seven-figure mistake, and there are basic steps that can be taken to reduce the probability of a poor fit hire.

It starts first with clearly defining the "job" that needs to be done now, and not hiring for the future state 2-3 years down the road. Identifying the "milestone" that you want the VP Sales to help you attain is a great first step. Being real, by clearly defining the "work" that needs to be done NOW is critical to hiring the candidate who has the experience and skill sets to accomplish that goal, but may not be the right person to lead the efforts to the second or third milestone years down the road. In fact, in Amy's 20 years of experience, she has only seen one (1) VP Sales successfully scale from $1M to $1B+.

Just because a VP Sales has been part of a company that scaled to $100M+, that does not necessarily translate to what is needed when a company is just beginning to scale from $1M to $5M. By clearly defining what is needed in the next 12 months, you can develop the criteria, including specific experiences and skills sets, all captured within an associated scorecard for the VP Sales candidates.

Being honest is a top recommendation that Amy says every CEO needs to bring into the VP Sales recruitment process. At $1M ARR, let the candidate know that you are hiring a VP Sales to get to $10M ARR, and that this person may or may not be the VP Sales when the company is trying to scale from $20M to $50M.

This honesty in the VP Sales recruitment process goes both ways, as a candidate who may be a great fit for scaling a company from $20M to $100M+ may not be a good fit for scaling a business from $1M to $10M. An example, if a candidate wants to be a CRO, responsible for marketing, sales, and customer success for a company with less than $1M ARR, they may be a "poor fit" for this stage of the company.

It is imperative to be very careful and precise in this hyper-competitive market. Stepping back and clearly defining the top goals for the VP Sales candidate over the next 12 months is critical to minimizing the risk of over or under-hiring for this critical role.

A key takeaway from this conversation - with a 18-month average tenure for a VP Sales in the B2B Cloud industry may be ok...as long as both the candidate and the hiring executive is honest and transparent about the role, the goals, and the commitment to providing an environment for growth...though it may not be in the top sales executive role.

Amy also highlights the importance of "self-awareness". No one can be great at every aspect of their role, and being able to admit when you need help and then be confident in asking for help. All too often, assumptions between the CEO and VP Sales lead to a lack of credibility and/or trust. As a sales leader, being able to say this is where I need help, here is the result of me getting assistance and this is who I need help from (type of person/resource) and what it will cost.

If you are hiring or interviewing for a VP Sales role in the B2B Tech industry, this conversation with Amy Volas is a great listen!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.