Welcome back to The SaaS Playbook, a bi-weekly rundown of the top articles, tactics, and thought leadership in B2B SaaS. Not a subscriber yet?
⚾ There is plenty of talk about the benefits of employing a product led growth (PLG) strategy, but much less on how to actually implement one. Shimon Tolts, CEO of Datree.io shared the specific steps they took to adopt the model, which led them from 0 to 150 companies in a 3 month span. They started by making their product easier to access, removing their “book a demo” button in favor of a “quick start” self service option. They then made sure to show value right off the bat. Datree prevents Kubernetes misconfigurations from reaching production, so when a user creates an account, Datree immediately runs a process to identify these misconfigurations, demonstrating why they are worth the price tag. Lastly, they continue to drive new users to their tool by going all in on hands on product tutorials, pushed by industry influencers. The commonality is that all these efforts – putting product at the focus on their GTM, and let their hard work do the talking.
🏋️ A good analogy for the difference between an account manager and a customer success manager (CSM) is the difference between a bartender and a personal trainer – the first are reactive while the second are proactive. See, the lifecycle of a CSM typically starts as a proactive, scrappy generalist who manages the support process, but that can quickly evolve into a “do everything” role, in which they handle all tasks from onboarding to technical support. One way to avoid this overload for your CSMs is to adopt the mentality that all employees are responsible for customer success and project progression. Adding new KPIs to your arsenal such as time to value (TTV) and setting a shorter time as a company-wide goal will build alignment. Then, you can look at the trends at TTV and your ticket volume to inform how and when to scale the team.
🔫 As you startup continues to scale, you will likely need help managing all of the different revenue generating operations in your company. But before you jump the gun and hire a Chief Revenue Officer, you should always ask yourself the questions, why do I need one now? There are alternatives to consider, such as creating an internal working group with the sole purpose of addressing revenue challenges by departments. Pulling internal talent from the Sales and Finance team and designating them as revenue operations can be a good first step to address the need, and give you a better sense of where you really need help.
☎️ B2B SaaS demand generation is a hard game, so teams are willing to try every and all avenues to find what brings in quality leads. Cold calling exec decision makers is one tactic that often pops up, but in 2021 can we finally call telemarketing dead? The Bridge Group, Sales Hacker, and Modern Sales Pros partnered to create a survey on today’s sales methods to answer the question, and here’s what they found – only roughly 50% of execs still used office phones (no surprise) and 60% had a negative reaction to someone calling their mobile, even if the number was in their email signature. 21% still noted that a phone call was the best way to grab their attention, so there is a minority that will always appreciate a dial, but we expect that number will continue to dwindle.
🧙 While we all hate selling when we are the ones being sold to, it’s undeniable that the power of persuasion is key to our own success. Copywriting pro Jason McBride put together an entertaining write up on what makes sales copy successful, looking at 3 of the most charismatic professions: politicians, con artists, and magicians. His secret to powerful sales copy is not the writing itself, but to preach to the nearly converted. Instead of writing to your general target market, he urges marketers to write to the reader who is already looking for a solution so you avoid wasting time on the skeptics. He also explains that effective sales copy needs to show empathy in order to prove that you understand and “are one of them”, before giving them the facts they need to justify their choice.
