Lessons from the Sales/Martech stacks of Forbes Cloud 100 Companies

Do the tools make the difference?

The Forbes Cloud 100 is a list compiled by the Forbes publication working with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The list highlights “the most promising and successful private cloud companies.”

What makes this list interesting for our learning exercise and exploration today is the criteria used in the creation of the list:

1. Market Leadership (35%):

   • Evaluated through market share, market size, and growth rate.

   • Includes brand recognition and overall influence in the cloud industry.

2. Estimated Valuation (30%):

   • Assessed based on the company's most recent valuation during fundraising rounds.

   • Considers public market performance of comparable companies.

3. Operating Metrics (20%):

   • Includes revenue growth, total revenue, and other key financial metrics.

   • Focuses on profitability, customer base, and other performance indicators.

4. People & Culture (15%):

   • Evaluate employee satisfaction and company culture.

   • Considers factors like employee growth, Glassdoor ratings, and diversity initiatives.

5. Innovation and Future Potential:

   • Looks at the company’s technology, R&D investments, and overall innovation.

   • Considers future potential in terms of new products, market expansion, and industry disruption.

6. CEO Interviews and Customer Feedback:

   • Input from interviews with CEOs of leading cloud companies.

   • Customer feedback and satisfaction are also taken into account.

While not a highly scientific endeavor, based on the criteria above we can see that there is some rigor and quantitative data that goes into the method used to assemble and order the list.

What does inclusion on this list mean? In general, it means the company is doing well and is positioned for growth and expansion.

There are hundreds of different things that need to go right for a company to be successful - it’s not only an outcome of solid Sales and Marketing performance. However, it would be pretty difficult for an amazing product with a near-perfect product-market fit to overcome a poorly performing GTM team.

So inclusion in this list could be broadly understood to mean that things are generally working well on the GTM side.

Do the tools matter?

This led me to ask a question - what role does sales and marketing technology play in fueling the growth of a company to the point that it gets included on the Forbes Cloud 100 (or any other “significant” list)?

Do these companies make use of tools that give them a significant advantage? Are they early adopters of AI tools? Do they have big, robust, fully built-out tech stacks?

An analysis of the GTM tech stacks of these companies yielded some interesting insights, particularly as it relates to the specific tools being used.

Take the tool category of Web Analytics and Tag Managers, for example:

• 100% of the companies use Google Analytics

• 97% use Google Tag Manager

How about Marketing Automation?

• 67% of the companies use Marketo

• 26% of the companies use Pardot

• 22% of the companies use HubSpot

CRM?

• 83% of the companies use Salesforce

• 22 of the companies use HubSpot

Data Enrichment?

• 50% of the companies use Clearbit

• 47% of the companies use HubSpot

Conversion Rate Optimization?

• 51% of the companies use Optimizely

• 31% of the companies use Unbounce

Note: The values for some of the categories don’t add up to 100%, and that can be for multiple reasons. The most common is that we don’t know the use case for some of the tools, particularly HubSpot, which could be used for both/either CRM and Marketing Automation. Another is that I’m using enriched data, for which there’s a margin for error.

This trend continues throughout each of the 19 categories I reviewed. The significant bulk of the tooling for each stack was highly concentrated with established, well-known, widely-used tools.

So what does this mean for acquiring tool knowledge? Is it beneficial to “go deep” on the most popular tools, knowing how popular they are? Does being a “super-user” of a prevalent tool set you up for ultimate career success?

Building a working knowledge of sales and martech tools is like having the keys to your Operations career car. The keys allow you to engage the rest of the critical parts of the car - the gas in the gas tank, the engine, the steering wheel, and the gas pedal. Without it, it will be difficult for your career to take you anywhere.

The keys only activate the potential of the rest of the car, though - they can’t do much past that. The ability to take your technical knowledge and apply it to create and improve processes is the fuel - what will take your career to places you hadn’t imagined previously.

The companies in the Cloud 100 aren’t in the Cloud 100 because they have new, better, or different tools.

Knowing that the tooling is vastly similar among these companies, we have to turn to other places to understand the performance that merits inclusion in this group.

The easiest (and probably most likely) answer? It’s how they use the tools and their attitude towards them.

To be effective, each component in your tech stack needs to meet 3 basic criteria:

1. It needs to be the right tool - the tool needs to be able to meet the requirements defined in your initial evaluation use cases

2. It needs to be implemented - the tool needs to be set up correctly and completely, with the appropriate enablement provided for all users

3. It needs to be used - the tool needs to be used on an ongoing basis, used repeatedly

If you think through your current stack, my guess is there is a percentage of tools that don’t meet all of the above criteria. I would also guess that the tech stacks of the Cloud 100 companies contain a lower percentage of ineffective tools.

Moving from ineffective to fully functional

It’s important to be mindful of how much time you spend in the tools themselves. Focus on what you’re delivering is vital. The result of automation or integration should be a positive outcome for a process or a workflow. It should make it easier for someone to do their job.

I know that it’s easy to get sucked into the black hole of wanting a new tool to do something new and cool. It’s happened to me many times.

It’s rewarding to take an idea from the “I think we might be able to do this” phase all the way through to a functional final version, especially if you have to overcome some hurdles to get there. But don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you need new tools to add new functionality to your stack.

In some cases, “doing more with less” isn’t a constraint, it’s an opportunity to fully realize the nascent capabilities of the tools you already own. It’s a chance to finally work through some of those backlog projects that have been sitting on ice for three quarters.

The difference between the Cloud 100 and the rest of us, when it comes too tools, I would guess, is the value they’re getting from their tools. The strategic ways they’ve applied the features and functionality available to them.

Those teams have a solid grasp of these concepts:

• Tech supports process, not the other way around

• More important than what tool you use is how you use it

• A “boring” tech stack can generate significant results

• Tool trends move slowly

• There aren’t a lot of viable challengers in the “must-have” tech stack categories

Wrap Up

Understanding the true value of the tools at your disposal and utilizing them strategically can set you apart in your career growth.

It's not always about having the latest and greatest tools but how effectively you leverage them to enhance processes and drive results. By maximizing the potential of your existing tools and continuously improving their utilization, you can pave the way for success for both you and your team.