Here are a few May highlights from our SaaSX blog!
Unprepared for SaaS Due Diligence?
Justin started the month off with a piece on SaaS due diligence and the consequences of being unprepared for it. While this is something we’ve touched on a few times in the past, Justin uses this article to discuss the finer aspects of this sometimes-tricky subject and sheds some light on what it really takes to minimize the risks businesses must consider when facing due diligence unprepared.
“All you can really do is be prepared when you’re unprepared. You get into trouble when you hold your lack of preparedness against your investor. It’s not their fault you’re not ready. It’s yours. And that will cost you time, resources, and money.”
To Reduce SaaS Churn, Help Your Customers 24/7
I’ve said it again and again but it never gets any less true: It takes a village to reduce SaaS churn. It also takes time, dedication and passion. It requires you to be available to your customers 24/7, and it requires a team with that same level of commitment. In this article, I detail each aspect of those commitments and what it really takes join together to reduce customer churn.
“Customer churn is impacted by product, first and foremost. But it’s also how we market, how we sell and how we support customers. It’s a big tangled ball of customer retention fun. It’s never as simple as “Change this one thing and retention will improve overnight.”
Startup Life: Love it or Leave it.
The title says it all here. If you don’t have a team of people who are passionate about what they do, more times than not – they shouldn’t be doing it at all. Bloated processes, constant complaining, discontentment and general discomfort are not helpful in the short-term and are truly devastating to a company’s morale, culture and growth in the long-term. When it comes to the startup life, you really have to love it all, or let it go.
“If you love it, love it fully, stop complaining and hinting around about how hard it is. It is what it is, and this is what we signed up for. Love the workload. Love the chaos. Love the pace. Love that everything is constantly changing. That’s a choice you need to make if you are going to work at a startup. ”
Is Your SaaS Charismatic Enough to Build a Tribe?
An often-overlooked aspect of SaaS success is the process of developing a devoted tribe. What is a tribe? As Justin explains, your tribe is comprised of your greatest advocates. Your loyal super-fans. Your champions. Your truly dedicated followers and supporters. The difference between marketing coming from just you, or having thousands of authentic voices spreading the word on your behalf is dramatic enough to make or break your company. How charismatic is your SaaS?
“Listen and feel. Be authentic and real. Earn your tribe. And your social proof.”
10 Proven Strategies for SaaS Sales Success
Our Content Marketing Coordinator, Sage Duvall, put together a very thorough list of proven strategies for SaaS sales success. Organized into 10 simple steps, Sage discusses everything from the length of your SaaS trials to the structure of your sales incentives, and beyond. If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for powerful SaaS sales strategies, you’ve come to the right place.
“When pricing your SaaS product, start by asking two questions: How much money will you save them? How much money will you generate for them?”
A SaaS Customer Success Team Org Chart Example
You can scale your SaaS customer success organization in a fairly predictable manner. The trick is to scale just slightly ahead of revenue, and to get creative when solving your most pressing problems. To help you do just that, I put together a totally-customizable SaaS customer success team org chart template. You can download the template for free at the link in this article, and simply adapt and modify it in a way that makes sense for your organization. We hope it helps!
“Don’t worry too much about revenue per customer success role in the beginning. When you get to about $10m in ARR you can start to work towards a 1 headcount per $1.5-$2m in ARR benchmark. And even at that scale, don’t count customer success leadership or operations in that benchmark, so those roles will be additional to your front-line customer success staff.”
We hope you will join us over on the SaaSX blog where we write about lots of stuff just like this! Plus we’ve got podcasts, calculators, scorecards, and ebooks, so hop on over there.