We’re championing the Real SaaS Revolutionaries. The leaders and experts building the SaaS companies today that’ll shape our industry and community tomorrow. Each week we’ll be profiling some of the SaaS champions, nominated by their peers. Know someone who deserves the spotlight? They could be our next Revolutionary!
Today we have two Real SaaS Revolutionaries: Scott Cowley and Ben Murray.
Scott Cowley is founder of The Sales Mastermind, a community for founders of SaaS and Service Providers to grow their sales. Since he was 15 he has been working with SaaS businesses and service providers to improve their revenue.
Tell us the founding story of your company?
Far too many SaaS companies fail due to a poor sales system. I wanted to help founders who sell, but don’t consider themselves “sales”people. Firstly to get their time back, then to build a team and lastly to expand their sales organisation.
What’s been the highlight of building your company?
Helping a company go from no sales process to over 150k in one-time services revenue and 178% MRR growth in only a few months. Then chatting to them in the following months and they kept growing both metrics.
From your experience, what’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to other SaaS leaders?
In the early stages – revenue solves all problems. And most SaaS businesses never get out of the early stages.
Recommend one book, blog post, podcast episode or video that’s really helped you as a leader.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Ben Murray helps software companies achieve financial improvement and transparency by partnering with stakeholders to link operations and finance. He is the CFO at Mobile Solutions and author of The SaaS CFO blog. He joined SaaStock’s How-To Series to help SaaS founders understand how to accelerate debt collection.
Tell us about your path to your current role
A bit of a varied path. Started out with a degree in business but then had a short stint as a mainframe programmer. Went back to grad school for my MBA and then worked my way up the FP&A (financial planning and analysis) ranks in the airline and software industries. Started my blog about 4+ years ago to share my knowledge and love of SaaS metrics and forecasting.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
Meeting SaaS founders, finance, accounting, etc from all over the world through my blog. Hearing how my resources help them in their role/business.
From your experience, what’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to other SaaS leaders?
Time is limited. You have to execute with urgency.
Recommend one book, blog post, podcast episode or video that’s really helped you as a leader.
Gotta listen to Nathan Latka’s podcasts.
