Remote work continues to be a hot topic as COVID subsides in many regions of the world and companies attempt to call their employees back into the office. The issue is that many employees, specifically those classified as “knowledge workers” are resisting.

It is certainly no secret to most any market observer that economic activity and most public equity markets worldwide have been quite robustly supported from a combination of the following primary drivers/factors:

As we move quickly toward the end of 2021 the pressure is on for sales teams to meet annual goals. But often the tactics that we use to drive sales (fuel….such as incentives, pricing deals and other “carrots”) actually increase buyer resistance….or friction.

After a year of missing out on events, business travel and, for a lot of folks, a load of new revenue, it can be easy to scream “YES” at every opportunity thrown your way.

As in many industries, hybrid and remote work are the new normal for marketing tech/services and insights professionals. With this “new normal” many of our traditional business models are being challenged.

Public market valuations reflect real-time information and have high data integrity because they include a wide array of companies and are based on audited financial statements. Public valuation data is the primary starting point for valuation analysis by both buyers and sellers. One key valuation index is one developed by SaaS Capital – aptly called The SaaS Capital Index. The index represents pure B2B SaaS companies, and specifically excludes companies like LinkedIn (when public), PayPal, Carbonite, and Dropbox. The index also excludes legacy and conglomerate software vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle, who have a mix of perpetual and SaaS revenue.

The last decade and a half (really since the Great Financial crisis of 2008) has brought many challenges to businesses worldwide; amongst perhaps the most salient: maturing economies, low growth and, in turn, deflation and negative real rates of return most everywhere. The Covid crisis has unfortunately aggravated and perpetuated this reality. Virtually the only games in town over the past five years or so which offer a decent investment return over and above the rate of inflation: Equities and (perhaps unbelievably), Crypto. 

Although the business environment of less travel and face to face meetings and more (much much more) videoconferencing persists, it also presents companies with unparalleled opportunities to hire talent in locations they may not have considered in pre-COVID times, where working from a centralized office was the norm.

Lately we’ve been coaching a number of Founders struggling with rejection. Whether it’s losing business to a competitor, pitching a Venture Capital firm for funding and receiving a “not interested”, or losing key employees who jump ship for another firm we can likely all agree that rejection isn’t an awesome feeling.