10 Things Every SaaS Company Needs to Know
Customer and Product
1. Product Simplification: Focus your product around your core differentiator. Always come back to the key thing your product does better than anyone else.
2. Know your Customer: Constantly be in touch with your customers, in person when possible. The best way to stay ahead of changing customer needs is to hear it directly from the source
3. Customer Success: Other than standard customer success, partner with your most successful customers and turn feedback cycles into tangible improvements in your product
Growth and Retention
4. Multiple Growth Levers: Find sustainable ways to acquire customers without relying on a single marketing strategy. Experiment and own one to two channels: content marketing, SEO, integration marketing, PPC, outbound etc. and scale them
5. Negative Churn: Aim for net negative churn, meaning grow your revenue without adding new customers. While difficult to do, customer knowledge (see points 2 and 3), focus on your core differentiator, and intelligent pricing can aid you in this journey
6. Understand your Sales Cycle: Is your sales cycle low touch, solely dependent on leads? Or a high touch cycle complete with product demos and hand holding through the sales process? Understand and build your sales organization accordingly.
Finance and Operations
7. Scalability: Grow with the end goal in mind. Build your infrastructure and processes with the future in mind to support seamless growth without major disruptions.
8, Cash is King: Maintain a strong focus on invoicing and collections and payments to ensure healthy cash flow and financial stability. Leverage a rolling 13 week cash flow forecasting to own your cash
9. Selective KPIs: In a world of 100s of KPIs, obsess over a concise set of key performance indicators to measure progress and inform strategic decisions. At minimum your KPIs should include MRR, Gross and Churn Churn, Gross Margin, and Customer Acquisition cost
Last but not least - People
10. People – Surround yourself with talented, dedicated individuals who can drive your company's success.