Two industries. Everything else, we
turn down
Industry-agnostic consulting sounds like reach. In practice it means starting every engagement from zero: learning your buyer, your cycle, and your benchmarks on your budget. We sell in two markets: SaaS and IT outsourcing. Both are technology sales. Our team has spent decades inside them.
Nobody is an expert in every market · We’re experts in two · Decades of operating experience inside both
THE CONSTRAINT
Being an expert in everything isn't focus. It's a claim nobody can keep
Most sales consultancies list every vertical they'd accept a cheque from. We list two, and decline the rest. Not as positioning: as a rule we actually enforce, because the value is in the specifics, and specifics don't transfer from retail to a technical enterprise sale.
2 markets we work in
Every other category: referred out or declined
Why the rule holds
A generic framework is portable. A benchmark is not. Knowing that median SaaS NRR sits near 104%, that a 15-point spread moves the valuation multiple, that EPAM went from $668 to $98 and what that did to outsourcing buyer behaviour - that's the part that shortens an engagement from a quarter of discovery to a first working session. In a market we don't know, we'd be a generic consultancy, and there are plenty of those.
WHY THESE TWO
They look like different businesses. They're the same sale
One sells a licence, the other sells capacity. Underneath, both are technology sales, and that shared structure is why one team can go deep in both without spreading thin.
What they share
- A technical buyer who spots a generic pitch in one line
- Committees, not champions – CTO, CFO, security and procurement all weigh in
- Long, evidence-driven cycles where proof beats promises
- You’re selling capability, not a product off a shelf
- Buyers who research you before you ever reach them
Where they diverge
"You can rent a framework anywhere. What you can't rent is someone who already knows what your buyer says no to, and why."
Serg Panasenko · Founder, Sales Planet
IT Outsourcing & Staff Augmentation
The market repriced the model
EPAM $98. Globant $39. DXC $8.57. Public IT services stocks are back at 2017 levels, and the old motion – cold email, Upwork, “we have great devs” – isn’t coming back. Positioning and differentiation now carry more weight than outreach volume.
Six public companies, same story – see the data →SaaS
NRR is the new ARR
Snowflake 126%. ServiceNow 122%. Median SaaS 104%. A 15-point NRR spread maps to roughly 5× the valuation multiple. Below 110% you’re running on a treadmill – which puts retention and expansion ahead of new-logo acquisition.
NRR benchmarks and the compounding math – see the math →THE TWO MARKETS
Same four services. Different sequence, different benchmarks
The diagnosis is industry-specific. Selling SaaS isn't selling outsourcing, and running the SaaS playbook inside a dev shop produces motion without revenue.
WHERE THE DEPTH CAME FROM
Decades of practice, not a vertical page written last quarter
Our people carried quota inside these markets before Sales Planet existed. The benchmarks aren't researched - they're remembered.
Benchmarks we already hold
What good looks like for NRR, CAC payback, pipeline coverage, win rate and utilisation in these two markets – so week one is diagnosis, not orientation.
Playbooks that have run before
The same motions installed across multiple companies in the same market. What transfers, what doesn’t, and where it usually breaks on the second quarter.
A rule we actually enforce
We turn down work outside these categories. That’s the cost of the depth – and the reason the depth exists at all.
DXC Technology · KPMG · Creatio · Case IH · Reply.io · SPD Technology · Intellectsoft · PandaDoc · SoftServe · Hyundai
BUILT INSIDE
These aren't resume lines. They're the environments where our people learned what systematic sales looks like at scale in technology, and delivered results before bringing that to Sales Planet clients.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About the focus
We're a tech company but not exactly SaaS or outsourcing. Do you work with us?
Often yes - the line is the sale, not the label. Marketplaces, dev tools, managed services, product studios and hardware-plus-software companies usually run a technology sale with the same buyer and the same committee. Tell us who signs and how long the cycle is, and we'll say plainly whether we're the right fit or whether you'd be better served elsewhere.
Doesn't narrowing to two markets limit what you can see?
It limits the breadth, which is the trade. What you get back is depth: benchmarks that are current, playbooks that have already failed once and been fixed, and a diagnosis that starts in week one instead of after a month of orientation. Breadth is useful for a research firm. It's expensive for a client paying for a four-week audit.
Our company does both - we sell a product and staff-augment on the side.
Common, and it's usually where the sales system quietly breaks. Two motions with different economics run through one team, one pipeline and one comp plan, and neither gets a real playbook. That's a good audit: the first thing we'd map is which motion actually funds the company and which one is borrowing its capacity.
Do you take work outside these two markets?
Rarely, and only when the sale itself is technical enough that our benchmarks still apply. If it isn't, we say so and point you elsewhere. A generic consultancy is easy to hire and we'd make a bad one.
Your market has its own failure modes. We already know them
Start with a Sales Audit - four weeks, a written report, and a diagnosis benchmarked against companies that sell exactly what you sell.
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