Why I Joined MetaCX – Jake Sorofman’s Perspective

These are strange and unsettling times, unprecedented by the measure of almost everyone living and working today. But in the midst of all of the very real worries that we’re dealing with, life has a way of continuing apace. People get married, have children, start new jobs…

In a way, these occasions take on new significance, reminding us that nothing should be taken for granted. We lean into the ordinary, recognizing that these things are really anything but.

At the same time, overt celebration of these things can feel unseemly, striking a dissonant chord with all else that’s at stake. Finding the right way to talk about anything other than COVID-19 is a challenge because everything else feels superficial and insignificant by comparison.

I share all of this as context for my own anything-but-ordinary life change, which was announced today. After a remarkably fulfilling run as CMO at Pendo, I’ve joined MetaCX as president. MetaCX is a startup with an extraordinary vision and an even more extraordinary founding team.

Led by Scott McCorkle, former president of ExactTarget and former CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, MetaCX has set their sights on transforming supplier/buyer relationships in SaaS by focusing on business outcomes–not as some vague promise, but as the basis for a collaboration between suppliers and buyers in a way that holds each party accountable.

It’s a big idea and a problem worth solving, particularly right now.

I’ve long felt that most SaaS companies really struggle to deliver on their promises. That’s certainly not for lack of trying. It’s just that the pain they identify in the sales cycle and the outcomes they promise seem to get lost in translation after the deal is closed.

Consequently, there’s this nagging misalignment that persists between supplier and buyer as each party struggles to recall what outcomes they sought to achieve in the first place–and whether this software investment has positively moved the needle to that end.

Where there’s doubt, there’s always risk, particularly in a down economy. MetaCX seeks to finally connect software investments with real business outcomes that both parties can see.

The result is a radically new and refreshingly different view of how suppliers and buyers align on a shared definition of outcomes and a measurable way to prove they were achieved. This will transform how SaaS companies acquire and retain customers, where measurable outcomes become the steel thread that traces through the entire customer relationship.

Suddenly, light dawns. The promises SaaS companies sell on become the value they deliver and the standard against which they’re held accountable.

Nagging doubt gives way to real insight.

And with that insight, buyers may have the conviction to spend more. Today, enterprises manage subscriptions on a cost basis. With MetaCX, they can manage a portfolio of supplier relationships on a performance basis, doubling down where value is derived and cutting losses where it isn’t.

These are complicated times for all of us, personally and professionally. As macroeconomic pressures grow, the subscription economy will give way to the performance economy.

It has to.

The companies that embrace this new reality will be the short term survivors and the long term winners. Because there’s no hiding behind an empty promise these days.

Your customers want to see proof of value. And they’re counting on you to deliver.

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn.