SaaSletter - October 2022 Demand Index, OpenView Benchmarks

The SaaS Demand Index (high-intent Google search data) has been updated through October 2022. Plus enhanced historical data.

---

Latest SaaS Demand Index - October 2022

Viewable Canva deck here and downloadable PDF here.

Like the September edition, Security and DevOps/IT Management continue to be hot. While E-Commerce and Marketing are among the weakest.

Overall, this SaaS top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) proxy looks healthy; consistent with earnings calls and quota achievement data, any slowdown in 2022 probably is a function of lengthening sales cycles.

Comparatively, SMB doing OK while Enterprise lags a bit:

Highest accelerations in high intent searches; represents top ~25% of n=340 sample

With special thanks to my assistant Gerelli, this edition now includes category drill-down slides + component logos in the full deck PDF.

Note: An alternative data provider was used for October 2022 and likely will be used going forward. Why? While both commercial SEO suites that underlay this analysis rely on the same Google API, the new suite provides more timely data along with more historical data.

OpenView 2022 Benchmarks

OpenView's full report is available here (email required).

This is an excellent report (with granular CAC + NDR data and a PLG section not shown here) that deserves a download.

Without giving everything away, here are my notable excerpts.

I love any and all revenue/employee charts

Digest this OpenView employee mix data alongside David Sacks' recommend SaaS org charts (talk at SaaStr 2021; slides here)

Curated Links + Tweets

The YTD sales environment continues to look grim - (declining) quota achievement data from RepVue threaded here:

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

🧵Checking in again on @repvue (a Glassdoor for sales platform) as a real time indicator for the SaaS sales environment: ENTERPRISE: Quota achievement 41%, flat vs Sept, down 4% since Jan /1

Dave Kellogg @Kellblog

The Founder's Guide to B2B Sales buff.ly/3E994vy Written by me working under the @balderton banner, this is the closest thing I've written to a book on B2B go-to-market. Thanks to Michael Lavner who worked with me and the whole Balderton team.

Anand Sanwal @asanwal

"Don't do these 68 things in your SaaS company" A prez i gave 4 yrs ago that detailed the screwups while building @CBinsights Lots of founders have reached out with similar stories. This 1 deck has has led to lots of fun convos and new friendships cbinsights.com/reports/saas-s…

Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  @jasonlk

The best startups though have been able to pivot Not so much their product, but to truly selling the ROI of their product "ROI" went a bit out of fashion the past few years. Products that simply aided efficiency, especially in sales, met the bar. Now you have to prove ROI