SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1424 He Launched CRM in 2003, Bootstrapped, now $3.5m in ARR
18 Jun 2019
Chapter 1: Why did Craig transition to the SaaS model?
If you guys love the podcast, you want to get the audible version of my new book, How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital at capitalistbook.com. A user named just J on Amazon said this in a review, a four-hour workweek for 2019.
Chapter 2: How did SalesNexus achieve $3.5 million in ARR?
He goes on to say, I bought this book because I read somewhere that it was like a four-hour workweek of 2019 and it absolutely delivered. The book delivered on both big ideas and has specific actionable templates, including unredacted and minimally redacted emails.
Chapter 3: What strategies helped SalesNexus grow its customer base to 5,000?
This book is not chock full of self-promotion or useless platitudes, but it's broken down into four key rules explained in solid detail and with specific and often amusing anecdotes. Reading this really got my wheels and my head turning of how to be resourceful, which many say is the ultimate trait of a successful entrepreneur.
Chapter 4: How does SalesNexus ensure customer success through implementation?
My favorite of the four rules is blank. You have to go read the review to find out.
Chapter 5: What role does marketing automation play in SalesNexus's pricing strategy?
But guys, thanks for supporting me on the podcast. I hope you go grab the book on Audible today at capitalistbook.com.
Chapter 6: How does SalesNexus maintain a low customer acquisition cost?
Start sooner, coming from a guy that launched in the CRM space pretty early. He was pretty soon for his industry in 2003, helped usher in that era.
Chapter 7: What is Craig's approach to managing churn and customer retention?
Today has 5,000 paying customers, doing about 3.5 million bucks in terms of AR run rate. That's up about, call it, 20, 10% from about a year ago when he was doing about 3.2 in terms of AR, but bootstrapped, which I love.
Chapter 8: What future opportunities does Craig see for SalesNexus?
Cashflow positive, 2% logo turn per month, so healthy lifetime value. Pays on average 300 bucks to acquire a customer, so it gets paid back in less than, call it, five, six months. Team of 20, based in Houston and other remote locations. This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn.
Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company. It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers.
With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Craig Klein. He's the founder and CEO of SalesNexus.com, a leading CRM, marketing automation, and lead generation solution for sales teams from 10 to 100.
He's also the author of Inside Out, Selling a Guide to Growing and Managing Sales Teams. Craig, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes, sir. What is wrong? This space is so competitive. What is going through your head? Why compete? Why not quit, move on, and try something less competitive?
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first of all, we started 15 years ago when there wasn't so many competitors. And at that time, our target market was people that had been using ACT. If you remember that, that was like the granddaddy of all.
It's still around. They were just they were just on the show. Swift page.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Great program. And everybody loved it. But, you know, it wasn't in the cloud and Salesforce came around and put everything in the cloud. And that was our plan is we're going to help everybody using ACT get into the cloud.
So why did Benioff take the win there and you didn't win?
Well, he raised a shitload more money than me. Are you bootstrapped?
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