Allison Metcalfe

I’m fascinated with how complex the Bay Area rental market is right now. This impressive market trend report comes from our infamous econ team at Apartment List. Shoutout to Rob Warnock on putting these together. On the surface, the headline is simple: Bay Area median rent is $2,950, up +4.4% YoY. But two steps deeper, it’s clear this isn’t “one market” — it’s a patchwork of micro-markets behaving totally differently. A few stats I find fascinating: 👉 San Francisco: $3,621 median rent (+12.5% YoY) with just 3.6% vacancy and only 6% offering concessions.  👉 Oakland: $2,523 median rent (+2.7% YoY), but 7.2% vacancy and a massive 49% concession rate.  👉 Across the OAK metro, 25% of properties are still offering 1+ month free — even with rents rising.  👉 And 35% of searches into the SF metro are coming from outside the metro (top inbound: San Jose, LA, Sacramento) My takeaway: we’re seeing pricing power return, but it’s uneven — and incentives are still doing a lot of work behind the scenes. That mix makes strategy (and execution) matter more than ever for our PMC partners. What stands out to you?

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When I think about elite value management programs, Autodesk is among the top handful of organizations hitting the cover off the ball. It was a pleasure to be hosted by leadership team in Denver this week. Another packed house of GTM execs listened to their story. So what’s the recipe? I’ll tease out a few key components: ☑️Coming to grips with the fact that buyer expectations have changed and using this as the foundational reason for embracing value management. ☑️Early work to organize around value as an embedded disciple across GTM functions ☑️Launched “Path To Value” initiative which “embeds” value across people, process and platforms throughout the customer lifecycle. Key in this approach is a consistent focus on outcomes and value in all customer facing activities. And lastly, simplification of tools, processes, frameworks and playbooks. ☑️This was not done for Sales but with Sales. Very importantly. The value team embedded themselves into the sales motion. It didn’t try to dramatically alter what they were doing but rather augment and elevate what was already being leveraged. This is a critical miss for most programs. An important nuance. ☑️ Drive cross functional and cross geo alignment around value in the context of a “customer first” experience globally. ☑️ A value steering committee across sales, success, marketing and enablement. This leads to a cohesive presentation to the field. ☑️What about sales buy-in? Establish “value champions” from within the ranks to amplify and scale. In parallel invest in manager coaching. ☑️ Establish value management as critical to supporting and achieving corporate goals, in this case, the customer first experience. ☑️ Results, you ask? here are just a few.. ✳️✳️✳️ 63% uplift in adoption this year ✳️✳️✳️ mid -8 figures of closed won deals ✳️✳️✳️ 25% reduction in sales cycle time Congratulations and thank you to Beth Robins Kaiser Paul Fleming Josh Best for joining me on stage to tell this incredible story which by the way is just getting started! Big thanks to CCO Elisabeth Zornes for joining via satellite to discuss the strategic importance of #valuemanagement to the success of the organization now and in the future. Don’t forget to follow me here for more value management #success stories.

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🚀 From Programs to Playbooks: Scaling Post-Sale Excellence 📬 In this week’s installment of the post-sale success series, I’m tackling a challenge every SaaS revenue leader faces: how do you scale post-sale without losing the personal touch? 🧠 In our blog 3 Things to Keep in Mind When Building Your High-Touch Onboarding Program, we outline how companies can move from ad-hoc heroics to structured, repeatable playbooks that elevate the customer experience and protect revenue. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ghABGcbT 👀 Here’s the shift I see working with top SaaS teams: ✅ Treat onboarding as a program, not a project: define your success metrics and own the strategy. ✅ Delay automation until processes are tested and optimized. ✅ Use templates with purpose, not bloated checklists, and iterate upon them. ✅ Give teams visual workflows and milestones to drive accountability and clarity. 📔 From the Revenue Leader chair, inefficiencies in onboarding aren’t just operational pain points - they’re hidden taxes on growth. Playbooks remove that tax and free teams to scale with confidence. 💬 What’s one customer onboarding process you wish you could replicate across every customer? #CROInsights #PostSaleSuccess #CustomerOnboarding #RevenueGrowth #SaaSLeadership #OperationalExcellence #OnboardingPlaybook #SaaSScaling

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Reflections from Gainsight Pulse '25! As I head home from three incredible days in Vegas, and I want to share some honest observations about where we are in our AI journey in Customer Success. 🚨 The foundation still matters more than the innovation. 🚨 After countless conversations with fellow leaders, here's what I'm seeing: 🏗️ Data quality remains king. Your AI is only as intelligent as the data it learns from. Before we get excited about the latest models, we need to invest in product signals, robust system integrations, and yes - that unglamorous but critical CRM hygiene work. The fundamentals haven't changed. 🤖 Premium AI comes at premium cost. Companies like Gainsight are rightfully building separate Agentic AI product roadmaps (hello, staircase.ai). This isn't surprising - transformative technology requires investment. Budget accordingly and choose your battles wisely. 👥 People and process development never goes out of style. Cross-functional alignment, CS capability building, and organizational discipline - these aren't roadblocks to AI adoption, they're accelerators. Strong teams amplify technology's impact. ⚡ Here's what I've learned in 15+ years of CS evolution: there's no silver bullet, but we absolutely have the playbook. This Agentic AI transformation isn't fundamentally different from the changes we navigated in the early 2010s when we scaled through people, or then when we embraced outsourcing models, or in late 2010s when we sought to digitize our customer motions. The playbook remains consistent: Clear strategy. Define excellence. Standardize. Iterate. Ensure quality. Most importantly - every output must equal either results or a lesson learned. We've evolved through these phases before. We'll evolve through this one too. The leaders who combine AI's potential with operational excellence will define the next decade of Customer Success. #CustomerSuccess #AI #Leadership #SaaS #GainsightPulse #OperationalExcellence

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The "arrogant doctor" analogy perfectly captures why so many B2B pitches fall flat despite having genuinely great products—if you're a founder struggling to get your team, investors, and customers aligned on the same vision, this is worth your time.

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Canada 🇨🇦 I’m heading your way In June, I’ll be at DSA Canada Connect 2026 and I want to talk about something I’m seeing across almost every Direct Selling company right now: the massive AI acceleration gap opening up. On one side: companies moving fast, solving real problems, building capability. On the other: companies stuck in planning mode, waiting for the “right” strategy. The difference isn’t technology. It’s action. In my session, I’m going to run you through something we’ve done with many of the 20+ direct selling companies we work with, something that accelerated their progress significantly. You’ll learn: → Where you are right now (honestly) → Where your immediate opportunities are → How to lead this, regardless of your title or technical background → Real examples of what’s working and what’s not And we’ll tackle both sides of this transformation: the incredible capability AI unlocks AND the very real risk it poses to human connection at the absolute heart of direct selling. It’s my first time in Canada (getting in a week early to explore), and I can’t wait to help you get on the right side of the acceleration gap. Thanks to Peter Maddox for inviting me and Ben Robinson for recommending me. If you’re there, see you in June!

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Over the past decade, we’ve run one of the leading talent marketplaces, helping the world’s top companies access independent talent to power their most critical work. Along the way, we’ve learned what modern staffing firms need to succeed: speed, automation, digital candidate experiences, and fewer manual, repetitive tasks.  We’ve been quietly building our own proprietary technology to solve these workflow challenges and improve our own productivity as a company. Today, we’re bringing that technology to the broader industry with the launch of GraphiteOS, an AI-powered recruiting operating system that we believe will fundamentally transform how staffing firms operate in the years to come. This isn’t just a product. It’s the technology infrastructure staffing firms need to operate faster and more effectively in an AI-driven, “agent-first” world.  We believe this technology will enable levels of recruiter productivity and client satisfaction that have never been seen before. Recruiters shouldn’t be stuck juggling disconnected tools and performing repetitive tasks. With GraphiteOS, we’ve built an all-in-one platform that connects the dots - sourcing, matching, screening, onboarding and billing - so teams can focus on what matters most: the high-value work that drives placements. I’m incredibly proud of what our team has built and, more importantly, what it will enable for our early customers where the platform is being deployed as we speak! Learn more at www.graphiteos.ai #GraphiteOS #StaffingTech #FutureOfWork #AIRecruiting #StaffingInnovation

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The territory allocation debate in SaaS sales is the worst debate of 2025. And the only reason it keeps resurfacing is because people still treat SaaS like a field-sales operation. There are industries where territory planning absolutely matters. If you sell into manufacturing, field services, or any environment where reps physically visit sites, geography plays a real role. Travel time, proximity and face-to-face access matters - I’m not arguing that. But SaaS is a different world. Most selling happens online. Buyers evaluate software from wherever they sit and geography tells you NOTHING about how a buyer communicates, what they value, or how they make decisions. Yet companies continue to assign accounts based on maps as if state lines guarantee fairness. They don’t. Some regions will always be richer. Some will always be slower. New York will never resemble Arkansas. Drawing neat borders has never solved performance gaps in SaaS. The real driver of performance is something leaders rarely sit with long enough: how well each rep’s communication style, natural tendencies, and persona align with the buyer environments they’re selling into. If you have ten reps, this is the part you cannot skip. You must understand, with intention: — Which reps are analytical and naturally align with analytical buyers. — Which reps are outgoing and relational, and build trust faster in conversational environments. — Which reps are more reserved and thrive with buyers who prefer structure and detail. — Which reps are fast-paced and comfortable in quick decision cycles. — Which reps need deeper, steadier conversations to build long-term trust. — Which reps handle multiple stakeholders with ease versus those who perform best with focused one-on-one relationships. — Which reps align with rigid, formal communication norms versus more fluid, exploratory ones. This is not optional work. If you skip this, no territory model will ever feel fair or perform well, because you’re matching accounts to locations instead of matching accounts to the actual capabilities of your reps. When you allocate accounts based on communication fit and persona alignment, everything changes. The conversations feel smoother. Trust builds faster. Reps operate with more confidence because they’re selling into environments that make sense for how they naturally work. You get more predictable performance without changing your headcount or your product. This is why the territory debate in SaaS needs to end. SaaS doesn’t have a geography problem. It has a fit problem and once you solve for fit, the map stops mattering.

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