One of our fellow software as a service companies, Success Factors (employee management software), notes re-investing 108% of their revenues into sales and marketing for this year...crazy numbers, but worthwhile if you have a good product, can prove yourself and have an ongoing relationship with an organization (think exponential growth --- renewing clients + new clients + additional services for both).
One thing that CEO Lars Dalgaard hits on is how it is hard to get the "big businesses" to buy from you. I can feel his pain in our business...there are a lot of hoops to jump through and the need for most large organizations to innovate has been relatively low --- as the big dollars and repeat customers traditionally have allowed their marketing efforts to be more or less branding exercises with little ROI attached to these activities (or habits). Things are changing...it's not just the small guys that are needing to innovate to compete, with globalization factors, a rough economic time the ears of even the 'big guys' are perking up when it comes to marketing ROI and lead generation. We are ready to talk to them about corporate blogging and bust through the challenge of selling to big business.
