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For SAAS companies that do B2B it's important to remember two arms of the company: 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough

For SAAS companies that do B2B it's important to remember two arms of the company: 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries 2. Customer Support -> Big enterprise contracts generally have support written into them. Thus, for every enterprise customer Docusign may need anywhere from 0.1 -> 3 (or more) FTEs. If you price this right it's always worth it to keep growing the org this way. Docusign has a lot of opportunities to upsell customers on legal services they provide. You should also consider the scaling cost of internal support. For every 10 FTEs, add a manager. Also add on HR, accounting, janitorial, etc. Easilly 20% of the company might be these sorts of internal support roles.

babyshake 4y ago
> 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries It won't be long before GPT-3 or its successors will be putting many people out of a sales or support job.
- groby_b 4y ago
  Willing to make a bet on that? GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. There's also a large component of enterprise sales having a "trust" component where you know your counterparts. You're not spending approval-worthy amounts of money after only having talked to a chat bot.
  - athenot 4y ago
    > GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. Also, if your competitors are using GPT-3 to solve customer problems, having an actual, intelligent human can be a formidable differentiator in terms of customer experience.
  - zachthewf 4y ago
    Correct. The last professions in the world to be automated will be salesperson, politician, and plumber.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Politicians have been automated through a combination of polling data and lobbyist checks since B. Clinton.
      - lupire 4y ago
        Are you saying B Clinton is not a human?
        diffxx 4y ago
        Define human.
        lazyasciiart 4y ago
        It depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      I think sex workers are up there too. Similarly to a good salesperson, the skill and human touch will probably always be a differentiator compared to a machine/AI, leaving at least a niche market for humans.
    - startupsales 4y ago
      as a salesperson, I can confidently say that the change will be on the buyer side that eliminates the need for most salespeople. salespeople are already getting less and less time with prospects. Studies show salespeople only influence about 5% of the buying process. What comes next is automating recommendations for software products based on specific needs, buying criteria, etc.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    > I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. If there's a sales person whose job is to tailor sales decks to use cases, you might replace them. If a big sale takes a team of people to execute, maybe AI cuts a few of them off. Maybe the client is still talking to a real sales person when they need to, but that sales person is able to multiplex to more clients because the time they need to put into each is reduced. I think people often miss this aspect of "X technology will make this job obsolete"; it isn't "that occupation no longer exists" as much as "far fewer of that occupation are now necessary to do the work", and that change can have meaningful economic impacts. Farriers, blacksmiths and calligraphers still exist, but their work is no longer core to the function of anyone's economy.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Customer support is largely useless today and can be replaced by machine. It only exists because average (dumb) people tolerate a human customer service rep saying "I'm sorry but you're screwed" better than a web page saying it. Salespeople says BS to sign you up, only vaguely coherent, backed by some basic database facts about the product/price, so GPT can handle that. Think about Donald Trump: Huge fan base of paying customers, barely distinguishable from a chatbot.
    - YakBizzarro 4y ago
      Clearly you have never done or received customer support in a b2b environment. It can be as valuable or even more than the product itself.
- nradov 4y ago
  Doubt it. Companies have been using chatbots with NLP for years. This only occasionally works to refer customers with technical support questions to relevant knowledge base articles. Mostly they're just a waste of time. Enterprise customers tend to have more complex support issues.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Chatbots exist to waste time to divert calls. There’s a high probability you’ll give up and not bother calling. Only a moron would put them in front of a sale.
- TillE 4y ago
  You're not gonna replace people who make phone calls all day without something more or less indistinguishable from strong AI. Nobody wants robo-calls.
  - mrb 4y ago
    You don't need chatbot tech to be indistinguishable from strong AI, just indistinguishable from an average salesperson. Like babyshake, I firmly believe that this will happen one day. 10 years? 50 years?
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      You seriously think a salesperson can be replaced by a chatbot?
    - lupire 4y ago
      OK, sure, but handwaving enough, that's true for almost every job that exists today.
    - woooooo 4y ago
      FYI for you and other readers, sales is actually hard. Low barrier to entry followed by brutal survival of the fittest. Don't meet your quota? Fuck you, you're fired. People who survive for decades of that aren't trivially replaced.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Or as was put to me once, sales managers have no problem firing people. And that includes people who just had the bad luck to have their supporter at some company leave and be replaced by someone who favors a competitor. Or a project just gets put on hold because of budgets. I suspect many developers wouldn't appreciate being evaluated every quarter in no small part on factors that they have at best limited influence over.
      - mrb 4y ago
        You underestimate future AI tech (from 10-50 years from today) even more than you think I underestimate sales skills. The tech will completely blow your mind away, and you don't even see it coming ;)
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago
  Funny to see how little value devs and engineers put on sales people. Enterprise software success depends highly on sales people. Startup success depends highly on marketing. At previous company, SAP flew the CEO and a few others to Monaco for the F1 race. Interesting to see we had SAP and PeopleSoft implemented at the company.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Why can't a computer program automatically buy tickets for F1 and send them to prospects?
    - function_seven 4y ago
      How will it determine who gets the tickets? And which event is the most appropriate one for a given prospect? How will it know that the prospect is interested in the first place? Or available? Or worth wooing in this manner?
    - mattacular 4y ago
      It could do that part. Making the decision about what to buy, how much of it, and for whom etc would be the types of non-trivial decisions you need your sales AI to make better than a person
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      The F1 tickets are about access. Your pal the sales dude buys you scotch and yaks about SAP.
  - jdmdmdmdmd 4y ago
    Yup. Devs like to think that sales people don't contribute real value and are basically just marketing, and that's true to a degree, but it's also true that sometimes the entire product doesn't contribute real value either. A senior dev building Uber/delivery clone #1745 run by VC funny money is "contributing" the same as a sales person, no matter how many frameworks and algorithms he uses. (Unless, of course, that algorithm is itself contributing to some efficiency in the deliveries.)
- KoftaBob 4y ago
  Think about how complex it is to develop AI that can understand and participate in a human conversation at only a basic level. Now increase that complexity by orders of magnitude, since we're talking about the conversational skillset that a successful salesperson would have. Everything is possible over a long enough timeline, but when AI is advanced enough to function as a successful salesperson, there will be a large number of other jobs that AI will also be "replacing". In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Well, Facebook is pretty good at automated advertising. Those YouTube ads featuring pitchmen/people could be replaced by perpsnalizedt deepfake for race/gender/style that fits the target.
    - b112 4y ago
      I think you are confusing a call centre employee, who blind calls via auto dialing, and reads a script, with a sales person selling a COTS, and doing inside sales. There is zero comparison to this and a facebook ad, or targeted marketing.
  - b112 4y ago
    In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is Indeed. So many people I knew, thought full self driving, any weather, any road, fully AI, would be here by 2015. Then 20. I doubt we will have it before 2050.
  - startupsales 4y ago
    you're assuming sales conversations will be necessary in the future. I do not think that will be true for most purchases. It is much easier to match buyers with the right product based on their buying criteria. This is what buyers want anyway.
- greggsy 4y ago
  GPT-3 ain’t buying me a coffee. They’re not inviting me to their Christmas party either.
- subsubzero 4y ago
  I feel like both sides think this, Engineer - Our company is so good word of mouth should be enough to bring in sales, if we need any more lets look to AI for a solution. Sales - We bring in the money, all engineers do is cost the company money, we could probably run the app/develop the product on a skeleton crew, can't wait for AI to make those jobs obsolete! Truth - Both engineers and sales are hugely successful to any companies strategy and AI isn't taking anyone's(engineer or sales) jobs not for a long time :)
  - 23B1 4y ago
    As a sales guy, I can assure you we value the development of good product over all else. It makes our jobs a hundred times easier.
    - lazyasciiart 4y ago
      Yea, but at most companies that doesn’t mean valuing all the devs ;)
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    Some boring business book: Successful businesses must have 3 Successful divisions: good product, good sales and good finance/admin.
- quickthrowman 4y ago
  B2B sales are generally relationship based, even inside sales. I don’t see a chatbot developing a relationship with a human customer.
- codegeek 4y ago
  It will happen the day humans stop having emotions. So, never. Humans buy with emotions whether we like it or not. Emotions require another human to talk to. You cannot "Product Led or AI led" your way out of complex purchases.
- jjslocum3 4y ago
  This engineer thinks good engineers are much more fungible than good salespeople. The engineer's output is worthless unless someone else can be convinced to pay for it. It will be more difficult to automate the sales function than the engineering function.
chrisseaton 4y ago
Does anyone actually directly employ janitorial staff these days?
- mcculley 4y ago
  I have been involved with companies with government security clearances and organizations simply worried about intellectual property theft. As a rule, the most serious of those organizations do not allow subcontractors free rein of the building, which janitors need. (Edit: Yes, I am aware of some high profile failures.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    I think you can get subcontractors that specifically provide cleared janitors. (The same way that for example the NSA famously uses cleared contractors for things like IT.) But anyway, Docusign surely isn't an example of such a company or agency.
    - mcculley 4y ago
      Yes, NSA’s high profile failure with Booz Allen is a great example of why some things should not be outsourced.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Is it? It's not like the various intelligence agencies haven't had their share of on-the-payroll moles.
        mcculley 4y ago
        In my own experience with such organizations, we were less worried about moles than by inconsistencies in vetting, training, and process.
greggsy 4y ago
Don’t forget that signing is primarily a legal activity. Every jurisdiction handle it differently, and it’s important to be able to articulate what your product can and can’t do. This was particularly relevant during the dark days of COVID lockdowns and quarantined, where those laws and practices were tested to their limits. They likely outsource a lot of that regional work, and do so on an ad hoc basis, but they still need knowledgeable people to coordinate it.
- conductr 4y ago
  Isn't the user responsible for the "Docu" part and they only facilitate the "Sign" part? Point being, it's up to the users to figure out if signatures on a digital platform will be legal or not in their jurisdiction. DocuSign probably has some fine print explicitly stating they're not responsible for improper use.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    It's likely they still have to deal with law suits, at least until the judge rules on the fine print. It wouldn't surprise me if they have legal/expert support for certain cases. The last thing you want is some dumb client losing a case that creates precedent which ruins your business model.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    They do more than sign, they manage the process and lifecycle of agreements. You can buy a turnkey loan solution for example from them.
    - conductr 4y ago
      They help you manage the workflow of documents. As say a car dealership using docusign, you still provide the documents and actually have to use their tools to make the workflows unless you pay them to help. I don’t think they offer to actually write the contracts. You’d hire a local attorney or just digitize what you already have. That’s been my experience after a couple enterprise level deployments. I could be wrong and we just didn’t need it.
thedougd 4y ago
I bet there are teams for consulting, solutions, and services. "Need help digitally transforming your blah blah blah with Docusign?"
MattGaiser 4y ago
Aren't sales people also heavily paid in commission? I.e. for a large part, you only pay if they bring in business?
- codegeek 4y ago
  For a lot of B2B SAAS which sells to enterprise, sales people can get decent salaries. An SDR (finds leads and books meetings) could get anywhere from 50-65k Base salary with commissions and Account Executives (AE, they do demos and close) could even get starting salaries of 100K plus. So yes, they get paid through commissions but at SAAS companies, they also get a decent base to start with. Ultimately though, the total comp. adds to the payroll and reduces profit regardless.
  - tylergetsay 4y ago
    at any company the sales person will have a "base", but at none can they take it for very long. even in 100% commission roles if you make no sales you get what's called a draw check because it's illegal to pay less than minimum wage per hour worked
giantg2 4y ago
Lawyers likely make a large part of the organization too. At least compared to other similar size companies.

babyshake 4y ago

> 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries It won't be long before GPT-3 or its successors will be putting many people out of a sales or support job.

groby_b 4y ago
Willing to make a bet on that? GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. There's also a large component of enterprise sales having a "trust" component where you know your counterparts. You're not spending approval-worthy amounts of money after only having talked to a chat bot.
- athenot 4y ago
  > GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. Also, if your competitors are using GPT-3 to solve customer problems, having an actual, intelligent human can be a formidable differentiator in terms of customer experience.
- zachthewf 4y ago
  Correct. The last professions in the world to be automated will be salesperson, politician, and plumber.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Politicians have been automated through a combination of polling data and lobbyist checks since B. Clinton.
    - lupire 4y ago
      Are you saying B Clinton is not a human?
      - diffxx 4y ago
        Define human.
        lazyasciiart 4y ago
        It depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    I think sex workers are up there too. Similarly to a good salesperson, the skill and human touch will probably always be a differentiator compared to a machine/AI, leaving at least a niche market for humans.
  - startupsales 4y ago
    as a salesperson, I can confidently say that the change will be on the buyer side that eliminates the need for most salespeople. salespeople are already getting less and less time with prospects. Studies show salespeople only influence about 5% of the buying process. What comes next is automating recommendations for software products based on specific needs, buying criteria, etc.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  > I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person. If there's a sales person whose job is to tailor sales decks to use cases, you might replace them. If a big sale takes a team of people to execute, maybe AI cuts a few of them off. Maybe the client is still talking to a real sales person when they need to, but that sales person is able to multiplex to more clients because the time they need to put into each is reduced. I think people often miss this aspect of "X technology will make this job obsolete"; it isn't "that occupation no longer exists" as much as "far fewer of that occupation are now necessary to do the work", and that change can have meaningful economic impacts. Farriers, blacksmiths and calligraphers still exist, but their work is no longer core to the function of anyone's economy.
- lupire 4y ago
  Customer support is largely useless today and can be replaced by machine. It only exists because average (dumb) people tolerate a human customer service rep saying "I'm sorry but you're screwed" better than a web page saying it. Salespeople says BS to sign you up, only vaguely coherent, backed by some basic database facts about the product/price, so GPT can handle that. Think about Donald Trump: Huge fan base of paying customers, barely distinguishable from a chatbot.
  - YakBizzarro 4y ago
    Clearly you have never done or received customer support in a b2b environment. It can be as valuable or even more than the product itself.
nradov 4y ago
Doubt it. Companies have been using chatbots with NLP for years. This only occasionally works to refer customers with technical support questions to relevant knowledge base articles. Mostly they're just a waste of time. Enterprise customers tend to have more complex support issues.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Chatbots exist to waste time to divert calls. There’s a high probability you’ll give up and not bother calling. Only a moron would put them in front of a sale.
TillE 4y ago
You're not gonna replace people who make phone calls all day without something more or less indistinguishable from strong AI. Nobody wants robo-calls.
- mrb 4y ago
  You don't need chatbot tech to be indistinguishable from strong AI, just indistinguishable from an average salesperson. Like babyshake, I firmly believe that this will happen one day. 10 years? 50 years?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    You seriously think a salesperson can be replaced by a chatbot?
  - lupire 4y ago
    OK, sure, but handwaving enough, that's true for almost every job that exists today.
  - woooooo 4y ago
    FYI for you and other readers, sales is actually hard. Low barrier to entry followed by brutal survival of the fittest. Don't meet your quota? Fuck you, you're fired. People who survive for decades of that aren't trivially replaced.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Or as was put to me once, sales managers have no problem firing people. And that includes people who just had the bad luck to have their supporter at some company leave and be replaced by someone who favors a competitor. Or a project just gets put on hold because of budgets. I suspect many developers wouldn't appreciate being evaluated every quarter in no small part on factors that they have at best limited influence over.
    - mrb 4y ago
      You underestimate future AI tech (from 10-50 years from today) even more than you think I underestimate sales skills. The tech will completely blow your mind away, and you don't even see it coming ;)
DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago
Funny to see how little value devs and engineers put on sales people. Enterprise software success depends highly on sales people. Startup success depends highly on marketing. At previous company, SAP flew the CEO and a few others to Monaco for the F1 race. Interesting to see we had SAP and PeopleSoft implemented at the company.
- lupire 4y ago
  Why can't a computer program automatically buy tickets for F1 and send them to prospects?
  - function_seven 4y ago
    How will it determine who gets the tickets? And which event is the most appropriate one for a given prospect? How will it know that the prospect is interested in the first place? Or available? Or worth wooing in this manner?
  - mattacular 4y ago
    It could do that part. Making the decision about what to buy, how much of it, and for whom etc would be the types of non-trivial decisions you need your sales AI to make better than a person
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    The F1 tickets are about access. Your pal the sales dude buys you scotch and yaks about SAP.
- jdmdmdmdmd 4y ago
  Yup. Devs like to think that sales people don't contribute real value and are basically just marketing, and that's true to a degree, but it's also true that sometimes the entire product doesn't contribute real value either. A senior dev building Uber/delivery clone #1745 run by VC funny money is "contributing" the same as a sales person, no matter how many frameworks and algorithms he uses. (Unless, of course, that algorithm is itself contributing to some efficiency in the deliveries.)
KoftaBob 4y ago
Think about how complex it is to develop AI that can understand and participate in a human conversation at only a basic level. Now increase that complexity by orders of magnitude, since we're talking about the conversational skillset that a successful salesperson would have. Everything is possible over a long enough timeline, but when AI is advanced enough to function as a successful salesperson, there will be a large number of other jobs that AI will also be "replacing". In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is.
- lupire 4y ago
  Well, Facebook is pretty good at automated advertising. Those YouTube ads featuring pitchmen/people could be replaced by perpsnalizedt deepfake for race/gender/style that fits the target.
  - b112 4y ago
    I think you are confusing a call centre employee, who blind calls via auto dialing, and reads a script, with a sales person selling a COTS, and doing inside sales. There is zero comparison to this and a facebook ad, or targeted marketing.
- b112 4y ago
  In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is Indeed. So many people I knew, thought full self driving, any weather, any road, fully AI, would be here by 2015. Then 20. I doubt we will have it before 2050.
- startupsales 4y ago
  you're assuming sales conversations will be necessary in the future. I do not think that will be true for most purchases. It is much easier to match buyers with the right product based on their buying criteria. This is what buyers want anyway.
greggsy 4y ago
GPT-3 ain’t buying me a coffee. They’re not inviting me to their Christmas party either.
subsubzero 4y ago
I feel like both sides think this, Engineer - Our company is so good word of mouth should be enough to bring in sales, if we need any more lets look to AI for a solution. Sales - We bring in the money, all engineers do is cost the company money, we could probably run the app/develop the product on a skeleton crew, can't wait for AI to make those jobs obsolete! Truth - Both engineers and sales are hugely successful to any companies strategy and AI isn't taking anyone's(engineer or sales) jobs not for a long time :)
- 23B1 4y ago
  As a sales guy, I can assure you we value the development of good product over all else. It makes our jobs a hundred times easier.
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    Yea, but at most companies that doesn’t mean valuing all the devs ;)
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  Some boring business book: Successful businesses must have 3 Successful divisions: good product, good sales and good finance/admin.
quickthrowman 4y ago
B2B sales are generally relationship based, even inside sales. I don’t see a chatbot developing a relationship with a human customer.
codegeek 4y ago
It will happen the day humans stop having emotions. So, never. Humans buy with emotions whether we like it or not. Emotions require another human to talk to. You cannot "Product Led or AI led" your way out of complex purchases.
jjslocum3 4y ago
This engineer thinks good engineers are much more fungible than good salespeople. The engineer's output is worthless unless someone else can be convinced to pay for it. It will be more difficult to automate the sales function than the engineering function.

chrisseaton 4y ago

Does anyone actually directly employ janitorial staff these days?

mcculley 4y ago
I have been involved with companies with government security clearances and organizations simply worried about intellectual property theft. As a rule, the most serious of those organizations do not allow subcontractors free rein of the building, which janitors need. (Edit: Yes, I am aware of some high profile failures.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  I think you can get subcontractors that specifically provide cleared janitors. (The same way that for example the NSA famously uses cleared contractors for things like IT.) But anyway, Docusign surely isn't an example of such a company or agency.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    Yes, NSA’s high profile failure with Booz Allen is a great example of why some things should not be outsourced.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Is it? It's not like the various intelligence agencies haven't had their share of on-the-payroll moles.
      - mcculley 4y ago
        In my own experience with such organizations, we were less worried about moles than by inconsistencies in vetting, training, and process.

greggsy 4y ago

Don’t forget that signing is primarily a legal activity. Every jurisdiction handle it differently, and it’s important to be able to articulate what your product can and can’t do. This was particularly relevant during the dark days of COVID lockdowns and quarantined, where those laws and practices were tested to their limits. They likely outsource a lot of that regional work, and do so on an ad hoc basis, but they still need knowledgeable people to coordinate it.

conductr 4y ago
Isn't the user responsible for the "Docu" part and they only facilitate the "Sign" part? Point being, it's up to the users to figure out if signatures on a digital platform will be legal or not in their jurisdiction. DocuSign probably has some fine print explicitly stating they're not responsible for improper use.
- giantg2 4y ago
  It's likely they still have to deal with law suits, at least until the judge rules on the fine print. It wouldn't surprise me if they have legal/expert support for certain cases. The last thing you want is some dumb client losing a case that creates precedent which ruins your business model.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Spooky23 4y ago
  They do more than sign, they manage the process and lifecycle of agreements. You can buy a turnkey loan solution for example from them.
  - conductr 4y ago
    They help you manage the workflow of documents. As say a car dealership using docusign, you still provide the documents and actually have to use their tools to make the workflows unless you pay them to help. I don’t think they offer to actually write the contracts. You’d hire a local attorney or just digitize what you already have. That’s been my experience after a couple enterprise level deployments. I could be wrong and we just didn’t need it.

thedougd 4y ago

I bet there are teams for consulting, solutions, and services. "Need help digitally transforming your blah blah blah with Docusign?"

MattGaiser 4y ago

Aren't sales people also heavily paid in commission? I.e. for a large part, you only pay if they bring in business?

codegeek 4y ago
For a lot of B2B SAAS which sells to enterprise, sales people can get decent salaries. An SDR (finds leads and books meetings) could get anywhere from 50-65k Base salary with commissions and Account Executives (AE, they do demos and close) could even get starting salaries of 100K plus. So yes, they get paid through commissions but at SAAS companies, they also get a decent base to start with. Ultimately though, the total comp. adds to the payroll and reduces profit regardless.
- tylergetsay 4y ago
  at any company the sales person will have a "base", but at none can they take it for very long. even in 100% commission roles if you make no sales you get what's called a draw check because it's illegal to pay less than minimum wage per hour worked

giantg2 4y ago

Lawyers likely make a large part of the organization too. At least compared to other similar size companies.