Vidya Peters

Salesloft and Clari announced a merger. I call it a surrender. The legacy SaaS Unicorns are dying. Creative mergers and cap table restructuring is what happens when you burn through $937m in venture money and cannot grow sustainably. The VCs are paying for their mistakes. Employees equity will be crushed. Welcome to the new era of SaaS Wealth Destruction. But don’t worry, there’s a silver lining on the other side … BACKGROUND: When Salesloft acquired Drift in early 2024, I wrote: “To me, this is a merger that marks the beginning of many such mergers across all VC and PE portfolios that will play out in the next 1-2 years.” The Clari + Salesloft merger is another signal that the current winner take all investment and operating model no longer works. Over-capitalization no longer justifies premium pricing. The biggest and loudest conference booths no longer guarantee margins. The game has changed. Expect few years of “Creative Mergers” just to survive what’s coming.  Let’s first review the merged company: Drift + Salesloft + Clari + 9 other smaller acquisitions raised a total of $937M in venture funding and at its peak it had a combined valuation of $6.2 billion. Since the cap table was restructured with this merger; Clari’s real valuation is likely far lower - meaning investors and employees on both sides took a big hit. This is both a warning shot and a beginning of what’s coming. AI is going to accelerate such creative mergers and associated SaaS wealth destruction. Many Unicorns have to undergo this process to stay relevant or slowly fail. Ironically, the smartest Unicorn founders will choose valuation-crushing deals & rush to merge with other Unicorns. While such mergers destroy wealth and indicative of surrender, they are healthy for the overall ecosystem moving forward. Roughly 350 unicorns raised capital in the last 5 years. Many need restructuring. Why Salesloft + Clari merger make sense for the future? The real battleground of the future is CAC. CAC has already exploded in the past few years (60% for large SaaS). A platform like Salesloft + Clari has the potential  to subsidize CAC across multiple solutions and platforms while premium end point solutions will find it hard to survive and justify the ever rising CAC. Buyers are moving away from “Best of Breed” to “All in One” platform purchases. This also helps with the rising CAC. Every vertical will see the rise of multiple MEGA platforms - often a result of combining multiple Unicorns. With Clari + Salesloft’s combined product portfolio, data exhaust and high-quality customer base, Clari has a good shot at positioning itself as one of the MEGA revenue platform of the future. I hope more Unicorn founders have the courage to admit their mistakes and restructure before the music stops. But in the meantime, buckle up and get ready. We will see many more deals like this in the next 12-18 months. Welcome to the era of SaaS Wealth Destruction.

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Every sales org has a pipeline: Stage 1. Stage 2. Forecast. Commit. You can recite it in your sleep. But when it comes to renewals? Crickets.... There’s no real-time view of customer risk. No weekly trendline. No forward-looking model that projects retention. Isn't that kinda bonkers? You FORECAST growth, but you DISCOVER churn...usually when it’s too late to fix. The big mistake is presuming retention is a lagging indicator, when it would be more accurate to define it as a neglected one. Think about it...most CS dashboards read like a rearview mirror: - Usage metrics. - Ticket volume. - NPS. Useful? Sure. Predictive? Nah. Because churn doesn’t start when a customer says they’re leaving. It starts months earlier when their exec sponsor stops showing up. If you can spot the risk early, you can unlock more levers: - Re-engage power. - Reset the value narrative. - Escalate to commercial. - Offer roadmap visibility. - Re-map success metrics post-reorg. But none of that works if your team can’t see it coming, which is why you need a churn forecast...just like you do for revenue. Build a churn pipeline. Treat it like sales. Some things to build into this: 1. Define churn stages. Just like deals, risk evolves: - Stage 1 (Early): No exec alignment, lagging adoption, stakeholder turnover. - Stage 2 (Mid): Value not realized, weak champion, limited engagement. - Stage 3 (Late): Renewal live, buyer pushing back, pricing/legal blockers. Assign clear criteria. Surface it in Gainsight, CZ, or Salesforce. Manage it like opportunity stages. 2. Assign prevention plays. Each stage should trigger a play: - Stage 1 = exec outreach + roadmap session. - Stage 2 = commercial review + value plan. - Stage 3 = C-level call + tailored retention offer. Codify this. Don’t let reps improvise. 3. Forecast it weekly. Revenue leaders inspect pipeline weekly. CS should do the same with churn. Ask: - How many accounts moved stages? - What’s projected retention by segment? - What % of at-risk logos have exec visibility? Also, share your churn forecast with the CFO. If the CFO sees new logo pipeline every Monday, but doesn’t see churn risk until Q4? That's no bueno. Start sending a weekly churn report with: - Total ARR at risk. - ARR by churn stage. - Stage progression. - Active recovery plays. - Forecasted retention (with confidence levels). This reduces surprises while also forcing accountability. Why? Because churn is rarely a CS failure, but it's often a product gap, pricing mismatch, or sales promise that aged poorly. When churn is forecasted, it becomes EVERYONE'S problem. Which it is. tl;dr = you don’t “discover” churn. You forecast it. You stage it. You act on it. Just like sales.

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Most sales playbooks are missing the most important part. And it's costing you deals. Here's what kills me: I review playbooks all the time. They're full of features, benefits, and process steps. But they skip the ONE thing that actually matters: **What problems do you solve?** Not benefits. PROBLEMS. I just wrapped a training on this, and y'all, the lightbulbs were going off. **THE BRUTAL TRUTH** Ask your rep: "What problems does your product solve?" They'll say: "We save time, increase revenue, improve security." Wrong. Those are benefits. If you save time, the PROBLEM you solve is wasting time. If you increase revenue, the PROBLEM is missing revenue targets. If you improve security, the PROBLEM is data breach risk. See the shift? **WHY THIS MATTERS** People can't picture the future. They can't see that 3X pipeline you're promising. But they can feel the pain of not having enough pipeline RIGHT NOW. Talk about problems they're experiencing today, not benefits they might get tomorrow. **THE PERSONA PROBLEM** Here's where it gets worse: The problems you solve for the VP are different than for the CFO. The pain points for ops are different than for sales. Yet most playbooks treat every buyer the same. My man Keenan . nailed this with his Problem Implication Chart in Gap Selling (still one of my favorites) Map it out: - Problem: No access to customer data in the field - Impact: Inaccurate quotes, wasted time, bad customer experience Problem → Impact → Solution. In that order. **"YOU GET DELEGATED TO WHO YOU SOUND LIKE"** This hit different when I heard it. Talk to the CRO about deliverability issues? You're getting sent to ops. Talk about increasing CAC because response rates are tanking? Now you've got their attention. Same problem. Different language. Different result. BONUS TIP - You have to describe the problem the same way THEY would. Classic Example I hear - 'Working in Silos' - when is the last time you heard a prospect say that vs 'no idea what the other side is doing' You have to describe the problem the same way they would, in THEIR language. **THE FIX** 1. List every benefit of your product 2. Flip it - what's the opposite? That's the problem 3. Map problems by persona 4. Create questions that uncover those specific problems 5. Practice talking problems, not features Your playbook should be a problem-mapping machine. Not a feature factory. Most playbooks start with product. No wonder they don't work. Do you REALLY know what problems you Save this one. Share this one. Put this stuff to work ya'll.

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Sales workflows are scattered across multiple tools. (And teams waste hours switching between them.) • Research happens in one place. • Prospect data lives in another. • Sequences are built somewhere else. Apollo's AI Assistant changes this completely. It's the first AI that runs your entire sales funnel in plain English. No switching tools, no setup, no prompt engineering required. I tested this with a recent outreach campaign. Instead of spending my morning jumping between platforms. I told the AI: "Find 200 SaaS companies in California with 50-200 employees and set up personalized outreach sequences." Ten minutes later, everything was live and running. Here's what it automated: ✓ Complete prospect research with enrichment ✓ Decision maker identification and contact finding ✓ Personalized sequence creation and launch ✓ Real-time performance tracking and optimization What used to waste my entire morning now happens while I grab coffee. The AI handles complete workflows, not just single tasks: ➟ Built on Apollo's market-leading B2B database ➟ Works in conversational English, no technical skills needed ➟ Shows every step and explains costs upfront ➟ Runs end-to-end processes across your entire funnel The future of GTM isn't managing more tools. It's having one AI that runs your entire revenue engine. 📌 Join Apollo’s AI Assistant waitlist: https://bit.ly/465MC5Q 🔄 Repost to help others automate their sales workflows #ColdOutreach #SalesProspecting #LeadGeneration #OutboundSales #ApolloAIAssistant #ApolloPartner #ApolloPartnership #SponsoredByApollo

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Your outbound is probably too clever. And it’s killing your results... Right now, your prospects are drowning in: ➤ Cold DMs referencing the last post they liked ➤ Hyper-personalised fluff that doesn’t convert ➤ Complex messages that simply confuse Here’s the truth: Simple > Smart. I got a cold email the other day that referenced a random post I liked. It felt like a stretch. No real insight. No relevance. Just....noise. Personalisation works...but only if it’s relevant and value-driven. Here’s what’s actually working in our outbound flows: ➤ Clear articulation of the ONE problem we solve (linked to their pain points) ➤ Built-in curiosity (“how exactly are you doing that?”) ➤ Timing that feels contextual, not creepy ➤ Offers that align with where the prospect already is And when that’s all dialled in? You don’t need to beg for meetings. You attract them. If your outbound feels like shouting into the void, simplify. Start with this:  👉 Can your prospect instantly understand the problem you solve? (Hot tip: Use a platform that simplifies things and 10x's your clarity, just like Instantly.ai⚡)

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Most AEs can’t get a meeting with a CFO. My clients are getting them with CEOs, COOs, and CFOs—consistently. The secret? Not magic. Not spamming. Hyper-personalized, multi-channel outreach powered by ChatGPT. Here’s the exact framework we use (that gets replies when “short and sweet” emails fail): When I ask sales teams how many times they follow up with an executive before moving on, the most common answer is: “Two emails, maybe a call.” That’s why you’re losing. Executives don’t respond because: Your outreach is generic You stop before you break through the noise You rely on ONE channel (usually email) Here’s how we fix it. 1. Go narrow before you go deep Stop prospecting to everyone in your patch. Pick your A accounts—the top 10-20 that would change your year if you closed them. 2. Use 3-4 channels every time If you send an email and don’t follow it with a call, a video, and a LinkedIn touch, you’re invisible. I’ll use ZoomInfo or Seamless to get the cell number, call right after sending the email, leave a voicemail, then send a voice note or video if no pickup. 3. Reach out 10+ times (not 2) My largest deals took 10-15 touches before the first meeting. If you believe you can help them, they need to know you’re serious. 4. Hyper-personalize using AI Forget “Hope you’re doing well.” Here’s the structure: Line 1: Personal, sincere compliment tied to research Line 2: Observation about their stated goals/priorities Line 3: The gap between where they want to go and where they are today Line 4: How you can close that gap Close: Soft call to action 5. Steal my favorite ChatGPT-4o prompt “I’m a sales rep at [Company] targeting [Name, Title]. Write a personalized, executive-ready email that speaks to their role, their publicly stated goals or quotes, and how we can help them. Be concise, use bullet points, and end with a soft CTA.” (more in the video below) Combine this with deep account research before you ever reach out, and you’ll have emails that sound like you wrote them just for that exec—because you did. I’ve seen this method work when: - You’re selling to an account that already uses your product (reference it in the first line) - You can’t find public info on a prospect—personalize at the account level instead - You need to enable champions to sell internally You don’t get meetings with executives by sending “short and sweet” emails. You get them by showing you’ve done the work— And proving, in detail, that you understand their business better than 99% of reps hitting their inbox. Get my top 4 ChatGPT prompts for tech sellers here: https://lnkd.in/gbznEjgq

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How to turn your AEs into a winning team: - product positioning - Discovery training - Command of the message - Great CRM setup - Nice Sales deck - listen to Calls in Gong ^^ tasks split across marketing, RevOps, AE leader, enablement. How to turn your SDRs into a winning team: - map the TAM - learn a variety of decision maker titles - cold calling training - set up email infrastructure - buy and set up multiple data tools - learn copywriting for exec communication - learn about SMTP, DMARC, DKIM - run complex math to determine how many leads are needed - collaborate with marketing for MQL handoff - optimize sequence settings to prevent bottlenecks - validate CRM data to prevent bounce leads - learn LinkedIn strategy for messaging prospects - learn to leave proper voicemails - run discovery on inbound leads - build a variety of sequences - run the math on A/B testing messaging - pass proper notes to the AE - follow up with leads that ghosted the AE - handle phone objections different than email ones - test a variety of tools, and fight for budget contstantly - help SDRs career plan and understand comp plan ^^ worst of all, the SDR manager has to do 90% of this in their own! Then SDRs and SDR leaders are paid less than their AE counterparts. Then when things aren’t working the SDR team is cut while the AE team is trained. How does this make sense? Been saying it for years #SDRsMatter

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Stop chasing the “perfect call time”. It feels smart. It’s a trap. Every SDR has heard the myth of the magic hour. → The idea: There’s a golden window when prospects always pick up. → The reality: Every day is different. Every person lives in their own world. There is no universal best hour or best day. No secret slot. No shortcut. The right moment isn’t found. It’s made by volume, persistence, and consistent dialing. Top SDRs don’t wait for luck. They create it. Here’s what they do: → They call at all hours, not just the “recommended” ones. → They track their own data, not just industry averages. → They build habits around action, not hesitation. → They treat every dial as a new chance, not a wasted effort. → They know that every “no answer” is one step closer to a “yes”. Quantity creates luck. Calls create timing. The more you dial, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. The better you get, the more you win. Stop waiting for the stars to align. Start dialing. Persistence beats perfection. Consistency beats timing. The best SDRs don’t chase the perfect call time. They make their own.

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