A collection of tips we picked up from SaaStock Remote, June 2020

1. Viking Venture Quick-Fire
tips from SaaStock Remote

2. Refocus your priorities
§ To help increase retention: add a free module of your software to existing customers
§ Segment your customers – will some be benefiting from the crisis? If so, they are probably looking to invest
§ Buying software has almost exclusively become an online prosess, even more so during C19. To make sure your business is taking full
advantage, make sure you have a good profile on all software review sites like G2 Crowd
§ Assess your value proposition by going through your messaging to make sure your value proposition is aligned with the market. Always
start by what is most public/’live’ (frontpage of website, outbound messages/e-mails, inbound content). Remember to align it with
what’s happening ([product] will make you money vs [product] will save you money.
§ Better conversions and better leads are not solved by more traffic and MQLs, you need to look at the conversion between MQL and
SQL to understand why and how that happens

3. Metrics: rip them up
§ To increase retention and minimize churn, add friction to the process of cancellations – for example: cancellation survey, discount,
adjustment to terms…
§ Assess credit card and payment failures as a marketing channel and not a bill collector. +118% increase in active churn when sending
an e-mail that payment didnt go through and threatening the customers. Communicate positively and ask for the right billing
information instead.
§ Rule of 40 has become the new North Star for SaaS businesses
§ SaaS Efficiency Dashboard: Total funding to revenue ratio, Runway, People to Revenue ratio, CAC Payback, Net Revenue Retention and
SaaS Gross Margin
§ If you can build analytics into your product, this will allow you to better analyse your business but you can also sell this data/analysis
to your customers
§ Alternative ways to grow your customer base: check out https://substack.com/ to find matching content to your value proposition and
try to get mentioned in their newsletter
§ Alternative ways to grow your customer base: check out marketplace e-mail lists like https://www.paved.com/. Are your competitors
using it? What is the CTR up against subscribers and price

4. Rethinking pricing and positioning
§ Think carefully about discounts and payment deferrals, short-term reliefs are usually a better option
§ Product led Growth: To increase net retention, try adding a bit of personality to your product. Small ‘gimmicky’ features are
inexpensive to make and can add a bit of fun to the customer experience, enabling you to sell within your product
§ Freemium: make sure customers have experienced real value from your product before you ask them to upgrade to a paid subscription
§ Avoid using percentages in your cancellation offers, offer something concrete like 2 months free
§ Top 5 churn reduction strategies:
§ Cancellation offers (pause subscription, discount)
§ Dunning campaigns (payment recovery emails)
§ User activation campaigns
§ Upgrade from monthly to annual plan
§ Improve payment acceptance (Go cardless)

5. Customer Centricity
§ For companies who have experienced an improvement in their performance due to C19, don’t let your guard down. Other companies
will take note of this success and copycats will increase your competition
§ Provide value to your customers by using data, it should pervade product development, marketing messages, customer success and
sales
§ Churn is hard to predict and hard to prevent so you should be focusing on predicting retention by finding data that show actual value
your customers are getting from using your product (effect analyses)
§ Look at data that shows your customers behaviour during covid-19. (Changes in) customer behaviour can give you insight for customer
segmention by looking at what your different customers types are needing, what products are need-to-have vs nice-to-have, in
addition to finding your ideal customers going forward
§ B2B companies need to look to B2C for inspiration – this is where all the innovation is happening
§ Netflix is a great example of this, they have been very successful in removing friction from both the buying process as well as the
user experience (no long sign ups, easy log in, recommendations, popular shows in your region, ‘pick up where you left off’)
§ Remember: «Your website is your store front!». B2B buyers are typically 57% of the way to a buying decision before they engage with
a brand and no one goes into a dealer BLIND
§ Are forms the best way meet potential customers? Forms vs conversation. Find ways to humanize touchpoints

6. Adapting your sales strategy
§ Cash is King: forget about long term contracts, get the money now. If companies go out of business as a result of C19 that long term
contract you spent ages negotiating isn't worth anything
§ Speed kills: if it’s a good deal, take it now
§ Re-orient your GTM team: take your hunters and re-orient them to chasing your current customers, more upsell than new sell
§ Deploy creative commercials: when selling remote, it is important to create a relationship and trust with your potential customers. A
great way to speed up this process is to be proactive in offerings bonus’ to the economic buyers. For example, 3 months free usage,
move from multi-year deal to single year…
§ Reignite your webinar structure by:
§ Have audience listen by playing some music/sounds every 10 min
§ Get them looking by asking ”Do you see the pattern right here?”, ”Do you see the slide?”, “now I’m going to the next slide”
§ Interact with the audience by asking ”are you taking notes?”, “Answer this poll”, tell them this particularly important and that
you will pause so they can take notes
§ Engage customers at the end by asking customer why they bought your product, how they use it
§ Use copywriting for what it is worth by:
§ Saving up inspirational ads, articles, videos and ‘copy with pride’. Use https://swiped.co/ for inspiration
§ Leverage headline formulas to make life easier
§ Check out copywriting books like Breakthrough advertising, The 16-word sales letter, The Boron Letters, Gary Halbert Letters
§ Do sentiment analysis to make sure the ads are positive (http://text-processing.com/demo/sentiment
§ Try 9-word emails to get engagement (studies show 50% opening rate and 20% response rate)
E.g. Hi [name]. Are you still interested in getting a demo of our product?