10 Things Every SaaS Company Needs to Know
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Customer and Product
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1. Product Simplification: Focus your product around your core differentiator. Always come back to the key thing your product does better than anyone else.
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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
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3. Customer Success: Other than standard customer success, partner with your most successful customers and turn feedback cycles into tangible improvements in your product
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Growth and Retention
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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
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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
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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.
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Finance and Operations
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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.
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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
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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
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Last but not least - People
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10. People – Surround yourself with talented, dedicated individuals who can drive your company's success.