Carter Perez: Field Notes from USA SaaS Expert

In this week’s issue of The Raise, we’ve put together “field notes” from Carter, laying out his insights from the coalface of global tech growth. Carter is also a fractional GTM leader, working with companies like Aiden Technologies and Ookla. Starting out at Xerox, he has spent most of his career in tech. Carter has a passion for the “phenomenal problem” of scaling companies, having achieved multiple exits during his career.

Carter shares a bunch of lessons for driving revenue growth. Here’s a preview:

Outbound is getting harder - “I used to be able to have an SDR (sales development rep.) team that would book between 15 and 20 appointments, per SDR, per month. That is no longer the case. Now SDRs if they can get anywhere between 8 and 13 appointments a month that they're doing really well.”

Email channels are saturated - “When you show up first thing in the morning, you open your email box, and there's probably 60, 80, or 100 emails in there. Well guess what, probably 50% of them, maybe more, are either things that are unsolicited, or are things that you might be interested in, but don't have the time to deal with right now."

Unit economics are paramount - For early stage companies, managing cash flow is critical, so you need to know what effect your metrics are having on burn and runway. “Because if you don’t, you can find yourself out of business very quickly.”

Keep up with AI - A prospective customer said, "Hey, great, I see that you're experimenting with AI, I want to have a deep discussion about exactly what you're doing and how you're doing it before I'm willing to invest.” Falling behind in AI means you’re likely to get passed by one of your competitors.