From what I can tell, marketing people and salespeople come from different gene pools. They have different skills, different motivations, different comp schemes, and different goals. But they shouldn’t be at war.  In fact, for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, when marketing people and salespeople don’t work together, bad things can happen.  It takes longer and costs more money to acquire customers, and those customers are more likely to leave.    In the lingo of SaaS metrics, this hurts the customer acquisition cost/customer lifetime value ratio.  That can sink ..read more

My dog-eared copy of “Selling for Dummies” lays out a seven-step selling process.  Other experts plot a similar cycle, some with 5 steps, others with 8 or 9 steps.  These are useful, plotting out a logical process.  But when it comes to marketing and selling software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, they aren’t quite accurate.  What’s missing are the gaps between each step. Most times, selling SaaS solutions isn’t a smooth flow from one step to the next.  Instead, it’s more a stream with steep ladders along the way.  Prospects, like fish, need to hop up the steps on ..read more

A slow sales process is a bad thing for most companies, but it’s especially bad for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.  Because they are usually selling via a subscription, revenues delayed are revenues lost.  With traditional licensed software, if a purchase gets pushed back 3 months, the company can simply recognize the revenue in the following quarter.  Not ideal, but the revenue isn’t lost.    Not so with SaaS companies.  If a customer gets bogged down through the evaluation process and the purchase is delayed by 3 months, that’s 3 months of lost subscrip ..read more

I’m not sure why some companies want to be secretive about who they are and what they believe in.  Maybe it’s an abundance of modesty or an overdose of “corporate speak.”   In every piece of communications – website, email promotions, newsletters, press announcements, and any other item that goes to the outside world – these companies focus exclusively on the features, benefits, and advantages of their solution.  That’s important information, but that’s not the only thing a prospective customer wants to hear about. This is especially true for software-as-a-service (SaaS) compani ..read more

Keeping the trust of customers is critical to software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.  SaaS companies are selling a promise, not just a product.  Customers subscribing to the service are trusting the SaaS vendors to make good on their promise to reliably deliver an essential service.    To keep those customers, SaaS companies need to earn and keep that trust.  It’s an on-going task.   The consequences of losing trust are severe.  It means losing existing customers, losing revenue, difficulty in recovering customer acquisition costs, and a bad reputation which ..read more

I write about value propositions and messaging…a lot.  You absolutely need a solid story in place before you start producing marketing deliverables and executing customer acquisition campaigns.   (See “Spend first, think later: Bad idea”) Ideally, in fact, you should have a value proposition in place before you even start building a product.  You should clearly understand who the product is for, what problem it solves, and why someone should buy it from you. But once you have articulated the value proposition and messages doesn’t mean you’re done.  It’s not just a love ..read more

Sometimes SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies come to me asking for help with a website, search engine optimization, blogs, or a white paper.  They want to execute a particular program or create a deliverable of some kind. Once they tell me what they’re looking for, I usually ask a simple question:  Why?  I want to know what the company is trying to achieve with the stuff they’re asking for. To be more specific, I ask two kinds of questions to help clarify: What do you want to say and to whom?  I can’t just make up a bunch of nice words; I need to understand their value ..read more

Lots of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies will ponder for weeks, sweating over pricing details: should we charge $25, $27, or $32 per month, which features should be included in the premium package, but not the basic package, or should the lower tier extend to 100 users or 250 users.  From what I’ve seen though, getting these details exactly right isn’t what matters most for SaaS companies.  There are other, much more important decisions about pricing that make a bigger difference in whether a company succeeds or fails. Connect the price to the benefit Ensure that the price of t ..read more

The idea of capturing the essentials of software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing in a short list probably sounds audacious, maybe even nutty.  After all, I’ve been at this work for more than 15 years and been writing this newsletter for 12 years.  I’d like to think I’ve picked up more knowledge than I can fit in a few bullet points! Though I won’t to go into any detail, I do think it would be useful to identify key issues that SaaS marketers should be aware of.  I won’t have all the answers, but at least I can help you ask the right questions. Start with the value proposition Befo ..read more

Search for “marketing messages” on Google and about 164 million results come back.  A search for “value proposition” comes back with even more.  Some are clever lists – “5 elements,” “6 steps,” “20 tips” – and others are long, academic tomes. I suppose all this attention to the topic of messages and a value proposition is much deserved.  Companies should explain to their customers, prospective customers, investors, and anybody else who their product is intended for, what problems it solves for them, and why someone should buy it from then instead of someone else. But even though ..read more