Vertical SAAS is a 150B+ Market. Are you missing the Purple Unicorn? Revisited
An article by Brian Feinstein from BVP on Vertical SaaS pegged the market size at 150B. This is what I wrote about what is fuelling the growth –
Formula to make your revenue target
Finding a sure shot model to deliver on revenue targets is a holy grail for sales. Ethan Teng is heading growth at Recurly and has delivered some spectacular success. He discussed his co-horted growth model to measure the end to end customer lifecycle – “ from acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, monetisation, and resurrection – and identify the biggest opportunities and points of leverage” in the GrowthTL;DR podcast.
Promoting your SaaS blog
Content marketing is the lifeline for any SaaS company. And blogs are a critical component in the lineup. Somehow we are more focused on the ‘Content’ part of ‘Content Marketing’. The ‘Marketing’ part languishes or gets sporadic attention. I have spent a lot of time in the past year writing in LinkedIn but even after paying for various tools I am not focused on the ‘marketing’ part. Every time I attend a meet of companies like SEMRush I come back wanting to implement ideas but they falter. Learning No.1. Nothing that needs real attention can move forward without a dedicated person who is doing that on an everyday basis.
SaaS Marketing. Before you sell.
There is no question that you need to hone your marketing game before you start selling at scale. The quality of channel that drives quality traffic is indicated by not only in terms of number of visitors but “in terms of (1) how quickly it can generate leads once you start investing, (2) scalability, and/or (3) potential return on investment (ROI).”
Customers on Customer Service
How do Customers define satisfaction? Which channels do they turn for support? When do they want self-service? Answers to these and other questions were attempted by Groove in their recently published report ”80 Customer Service Statistics” with data sourced from multiple companies and arranged under 8 segments like Customer Satisfaction, Customer Support Channels, Customer Self Service etc.
Mental Models for your sales hiring
Tomasz Tunguz wrote this lucid post on using mental models for Sales hiring at Startups. The first is that of looking at the experience of the sales person through the lens of Market Leader or Market Challenger. Selling for a Market leader is considerably easier and allows sales people to leverage the brand. However selling for a startup is very different and involves educating the market and convincing the buyer to abandon the market leader in the process of buying the challenging solution,
Valuing your SaaS
This is a complex and often opaque process. There has been a lot written about and discussed. The rule of thumb is that a SaaS that shows definite growth trajectory can expect a 10X revenue x rate of growth x net renewal rate, as post money value, give and take.
Sizing up the market
Undoubtedly one of the most critical slides in your pitch deck (not your pitch) is your TAM slide and there are confusions around how to estimate one. For starters it needs hard work unless you want to go for the Top Down model relying on industry reports and external estimates and simply aim for 1-2% of market share.
Anatomy of a Successful Sales Call
Steli Efti is one entertaining speaker and I had the opportunity to listen to him at Hypergrpwth SFO a few years back. He spoke at SaaStock last year (profanity alert) on designing a killer sales call. His 5 point formula –
Whats wrong with your Onboarding
Userpilot recently released an infographic “The 2020 State of SaaS Product Onboarding”. They looked at 1000 SaaS products and covered a lot of ground. Here are some telling stats (that you could benchmark your SaaS against)
