In our Fall product update webinar, Chief Product Officer Barrow Hamiliton, Manager of Product Grant Chambers, and Director of Product Marketing Andrea Wunderlich (that’s me!) showcased some of Maxio’s most powerful features for helping companies activate a hybrid go-to-market strategy.

We covered:

• The changing market dynamic 

• What a hybrid go-to-market motion actually entails 

• A sample B2B SaaS company with a complex, hybrid GTM model 

• A sample subscriber journey 

• What’s next on Maxio’s product roadmap

Why should SaaS companies leverage a hybrid GTM strategy?

We all know the business environment around us has changed significantly over the last couple of years. A new B2B era is upon us. Gone are the days of growth at all costs, sky high valuations, and an unlimited supply of funding. 

This new era requires growth efficiency and greater financial rigor. There is no better proof of this change in the market than what we are seeing happen with valuations. 

The

Rule of 40, and its impact on company valuations

You’ve likely heard a lot recently about the Rule of 40, a useful tool for measuring the balance of a company’s growth and profit margin. Less than 18 months ago, 10% on the rule of 40 was the low bar to get a 10x valuation. Based on a 2023 study from Software Equity Group, companies now require 50% on the rule of 40 to command a 10x valuation, meaning if you aren’t growing north of 50%, you better be profitable. 

That’s a pretty significant swing in expectations.

How to achieve growth efficiency in today’s market 

So how do you achieve the Rule of 40? Well, it has two implications. 

On the profit margin side, you need to think about how to keep your G&A and R&D costs low, but on the growth side, you need to think about growing your revenue more efficiently.

Reducing headcount and cutting back on tech spend for GTM teams can only take you so far. 

You need to fundamentally rethink the way your products are packaged, sold, and delivered to customers to discover where you might capture efficiencies.

Product-led growth, which in many cases means self-service models and pay-as-you-go, has long been touted as a path to efficient growth because customer acquisition cost is lower.

However, our recent Maxio Institute data shows companies that offer sales-negotiated contracts have higher CLV and have maintained healthier growth rates in the downturn. 

Additionally, Gartner reports that PLG-only models result in a 23% higher chance of buyer regret, which spells disaster for retention efforts.

The logical conclusion here is that you need to run both a sales-led and product-led motion—a hybrid go-to-market model. 

But what does a “hybrid go-to-market motion” even mean? 

Some in the SaaS space define hybrid GTM as the ability to offer both subscription and usage-based pricing to customers. Others define it as the ability to run both self-service and sales-led motions in parallel. 

More often than not, a single GTM motion aligns with a single pricing model. This isn’t because customers want it that way, it’s because mixing and matching acquisition and pricing models is an operational nightmare. 

That’s where Maxio comes in.

How to operationalize a true hybrid GTM model in Maxio 

Maxio is a financial operations software that was purpose-built to support the needs of growing B2B SaaS companies. That includes supporting your hybrid billing model. Let’s take a look at how it works:

For demonstration purposes, let’s look at how this would work for a fictional SaaS company with a complex, hybrid GTM model. 

SaaS Mail Co. is a B2B SaaS company that specializes in email marketing. They have two “self-service” type plans, the usage-based plan and the starter plan, and one sales-negotiated enterprise plan.

As you can see, the SaaS Mail Co. product catalog is pretty complex. It includes offerings like metered components, overage charges, user seats, and non-product items like 24/7 support. 

All of this is easy to configure in Maxio’s Advanced Billing platform.

On our product webinar, Manager of Product Grant Chambers walked us through a sample subscriber journey for a SaaS Mail Co. customer. (We’ve included his demo below.)

This journey includes things like: 

• Moving from an evergreen to a term subscription 

• Mid-period upgrade 

• Reverting back to an evergreen subscription after the term has expired 

• Using a self-service portal to make changes to the subscription 

All of the subscription actions taken in Advanced Billing are reflected on in Maxio Platform’s financial and SaaS metric reports, making it easy for SaaS Mail Co. to see:

• Future draft invoices for a term subscription that includes a usage component 

• Easily see future revenues at the customer and term subscription level 

• Easily distinguish between subscription and usage revenues in SaaS metric reporting

What’s next on Maxio’s product roadmap

Stay tuned to learn more about what’s coming for Maxio, and how you can better leverage our software to meet your revenue goals. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming next:

Maxio Payments

Unlock automated reconciliations, batch reporting, journal entries, and seamlessly sync payments & deposits directly to your GL.

Developer Tools 

Easily integrate your web applications with Maxio using our embeddable components and SDKs (Software Development Kits).

Data Extensibility 

Extend the value of your Maxio data and enable new insights with new benchmarking and reporting capabilities.

Ecosystem Integrations 

Facilitate business processes and with Maxio’s continually evolving ecosystem of integrations including NetSuite, Intacct, QuickBooks, Xero, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more.

Watch the full recording from Maxio’s Fall 2023 Product Update Webinar: Hybrid GTM Demystified.

Ready to operationalize your company’s hybrid go-to-market model? 

Maxio is the only billing and financial operations software purpose-built to support growing B2B SaaS businesses. We automate your billing, subscription management, collections, and reporting, so you can stop chasing dollars and focus on evolving your business strategy and operations.

Get a demo to see first-hand how Maxio can help you adapt to the changing market.

About the author

Andrea Wunderlich has spent the last five years working in various GTM roles including sales development, content marketing, and market strategy for B2B SaaS leaders like Chili Piper and FullStory. She now leads Product and Customer Marketing at Maxio, a billing and financial operations platform built for B2B SaaS, helping SaaS leaders carve a path to efficient growth.