SaaS Backwards - Reverse Engineering SaaS Success

In this episode, SaaS Backwards host Ken Lempit switches places to the guest seat to discuss upcoming trends in SaaS marketing for the new year and what companies will have to do to be successful.Ken is the Chief Strategist of the Austin Lawrence Group, a growth marketing agency specializing in B2B SaaS, and has a 30-year track record in software marketing.The key areas discussed include:As outbound prospecting gets harder, how will companies be successful?How will sales and marketing KPIs shift toward more meaningful measurements?Will traditional techniques like postal mail and custom publishing make a comeback?And will generative AI take its place as a tool instead of a replacement for people?Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Pricing is often the most overlooked “P” in the SaaS marketing mix. We see it in our marketing practice often.Companies may be averse to raising prices for fear of losing customers, focusing on other priorities like product development, or simply don’t understand the impact on the business.In this episode, we caught up with Pat Meegan, Senior Partner at Maple Street Advisors, who talks about assessing the opportunity for pricing growth regularly by looking at four key indicators: Leadership doesn't have a clear pricing strategy that everyone can point to and have confidence in.Inactivity in pricing for a significant period (six months to a year).Market data that indicates the potential for better pricing or an optimized pricing structure.Value-added to the product without corresponding pricing adjustmentsAnd given the risks such as customer churn or dissatisfaction, Meegan provides insights into how companies can approach pricing to drive growth and satisfy both their customers and investors.Key Takeaways from this episode:How to evaluate a DIY approach to pricing or bringing in an external advisorHow to determine if pricing is a lever you can pull for growth and profitabilityHow to pressure test new pricing strategies to mitigate churn riskOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

When going through a repetitive and time-consuming mortgage application process in 2017, Mang-Git Ng was surprised that the process wasn’t automated.He realized that there were many industries that still operated in the internet dark ages and that moving all these PDFs and paper documents to online forms could solve a major problem.But after he and his co-founder had built their initial product, they struggled to gain traction, especially with limited sales and marketing experience. Through much experimentation, they started identifying patterns in their customer base and certain industries (like human resources workforce management and insurance) that had a need for generating, processing, and signing documents, and their product was a great solution. By focusing on these verticals, Anvil was able to deeply understand the challenges and language used in these industries, allowing them to speak to their target customers more effectively. Six years later, Anvil is a seven-figure ARR SaaS company that has raised $10M in funding.Key takeaways from this episode:Finding patterns in your customer base that can be exploited for niche-based sellingHow to sell to companies that are resistant to changeWhy you should focus on sales and marketing early in the processOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Because of the challenges in the current financing environment and the cautious approach of strategic buyers and private equity firms for SaaS companies, we invited Marty Magida on to discuss practical strategies to enhance company value and navigate the complexities of the M&A market.Magida is the managing director of Berkery, Noyes & Co an independent investment bank providing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory to middle-market leaders in the global information, software, services, and technology industries.Marty advises listeners to stay informed about industry trends, cultivate relationships with potential buyers, and pay attention to the metrics that drive acquisitions.It’s a must listen for all SaaS leaders that plan to raise funding, exit the business or participate in a merger or acquisition.Key Takeaways from this episode:Manage risk profile by reducing concentration and striving to be asset light.Improve consistency of results by focusing on recurring revenue and making it costly for customers to switch.Maximize value by building a strong management team, ensuring reliable financial reporting, and cultivating relationships with potential buyers.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

You’ve probably never thought about what goes on behind the scenes when you return a product, but there’s a lot to it. In this episode of the SaaS Backwards podcast, Chuck Fuerst, CMO at ReverseLogix, gives a look behind the scenes at some of the challenges and opportunities in the returns management system category.And because it’s so complicated, their go-to-market strategy requires problem agreement to be considered. And because companies enter different stages of problem awareness, the company has adopted a modular approach to pricing and packaging that allows them to take advantage of a land-and-expand strategy. Overall, the Fuerst emphasizes their need to stay close to customers, understand their pain points, and deliver value through a comprehensive solution that addresses their needs one step at a time.Key Takeaways from this episode:How active listening shapes their messaging and positioning Building credibility and validation through analyst relationsHow ReverseLogix takes a modular approach to pricing to fit their land and expand strategyOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

As a CEO, you probably don’t care much about how your accounting and bookkeeping is done.But you do want insights you can drive once your month is closed out. Burn rate and cash flow comes to mind.At the Ascent conference in New York, we caught up with Swapnil Shinde, CEO of Zeni, a SaaS that claims to have the world’s first finance operations platform for startups that includes intelligent bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services.Key Takeaways:When it comes to defining ICP, the sharper the knife, the faster it cutsFinding the right accounting software mix for startupsThe state of AI technology being used to drive accounting insights fasterOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

For our 100th episode, we’re excited to interview Brent Adamson, the global head of research with Ecosystems, a SaaS platform for collaborative customer value management that helps its users quantify and align with customers based on the value being delivered.Adamson is most known as the co-author of the books The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. And as marketers, both books have been instrumental in shaping our view of content development as an agency and the role it plays in furthering the B2B sales process.But with everyone trying to teach customers something new and lead with insights (whether they’ve read Challenger or not) the overall impact on customers is less likely to enlightenment, and more likely to overwhelm. So, instead of seeing your content and thinking, “Oh wow, I’ve got to do something different,” they’re thinking, “Oh no, here’s another thing I have to worry about.”Adamson takes the role of content a step further in this episode, explaining that both the marketing and sales process today not must only build trust for the supplier, but also within the prospect's mind so that they can accomplish the implementation on their end. Key takeaways from this episode:Why B2B marketers should focus on creating a collaborative and value-based conversation with customers, rather than simply presenting ROI calculations, and generating content.Why it’s important to help customers feel confident in their decision-making process by providing context, connecting them to relevant content, and addressing their concerns about implementation.Empathy is a crucial skill for salespeople, as understanding how customers think about their business and helping them feel better about themselves can lead to successful sales outcomes.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Coming from sales positions where she’s carried quotas, Brandee Sanders knows what having skin in the game for marketers looks like.    And it’s not tracking MQLs or developing a strong tech stack.   It does look like examining the data to find repeatable opportunities for sales pipeline.   In other words, do we truly know how and why closed/won opportunities entered our orbit and what motivated them to take action to purchase?   According to Sanders, the disconnect is that “Most marketers just roll over in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I have a great idea for a campaign.’ They won't look back and say, retrospectively, ‘Is this at a target audience that we know is an ICP? Is this going to be the type of content that even performs for us? Are we going to do a video when, like, 99.9% of closed/won came through a webinar or a podcast?’”   As the new CMO of Revenue.io, Sanders immediately got entrenched in the data to find opportunities for repeatable processes that would fuel her roadmap to success.   Key Takeaways from this episode:    ·  How to build a roadmap to ensure your success as a new CMO/marketing leader·  Where AI is today in analyzing sales conversations and delivering real-time insights·  How the role of the CMO is evolving to become more data-driven and revenue-focused  Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Strategic initiatives often get de-railed when CEOs delegate them instead of taking ownership. This lack of clarity can lead to confusion and lack of focus throughout the organization.That’s the problem Ulf Arnetz is solving through his Swedish-based company Howwe, a SaaS enterprise platform for CEOs to orchestrate and operationalize strategy implementation at every level of their organization.The platform allows CEOs to prioritize goals, track progress and align teams towards achieving revenue and profit targets.And like most, his entrepreneurial journey wasn’t a straight line.Check out the full episode where Ulf teaches us the importance of solving specific problems, focusing on measurable results, starting from the bottom, embracing micro-delegation and more.Key Takeaways:·      Why success strategies rely on top-down micro-delegation where each level of the organization take ownership of their specific goals and initiatives·      How the company transitioned from consulting to a SaaS with 96% of their revenue coming from licensed subscriptions.·      A look into Sweden’s entrepreneurial ecosystem - a great place to start and grow software companies.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

Probably best known for helping Gong grow from $200K to $200M in five years, Chris Orlob talks about following his passion for helping people learn valuable sales skills through his new company pclub.io. (That’s short for President’s Club for non-salesy folks).But sales training wasn’t the original focus.Originally, they started out to build a company called QuotaSignal that sold a hiring value proposition, but since hiring took a nosedive in the current economic climate, had been developing an online sales training course that took off. One of his biggest differentiators in his training is the focus on selling the CFO—and if you’ve paid attention to this year’s TrustRadius report on the buyer/seller disconnect, you know that they’re playing a bigger role in most enterprise purchases.Other key Takeaways from this episode:Why every SaaS should re-evaluate their pricing model on a regular basisHow to find the right buyers in an account, arm your champion, and write compelling business cases, and multi-thread.How they quickly grew their training through email, Linkedin and word-of-mouth.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.