Growth-oriented Customer Success
For SaaS vendors, the Purpose of a Free Trial is to create a customer. Period. If you don't agree with that statement then you really won't like pretty much everything else I'm going to say in this article. Free Trials are not for tire-kicking … [Continue reading]
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz One of the most powerful concepts I've ever come across in business is the idea of the customer's Desired Outcome. And if you're thinking "one of the most powerful concepts in business" seems like a … [Continue reading]
"The Seeds of Churn are Planted Early" is a phrase I came up with in early 2013, published shortly thereafter, and have said and used many times since. I wanted to go on record with that - BTW, if you see the term’s use outside of my work or that of … [Continue reading]
The mantra of "grow at all costs" - that seems to include acquiring wrong-fit customers (those who aren't your Ideal Customers), churn be damned - has popped up several times lately and my reaction to it is two-fold. First, I immediately thought how … [Continue reading]
The common refrain by SaaS experts that think business is just a math problem is that if a customer stays long enough to pay back the cost to acquire them (the metric is called Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC), they became a "profitable" customer … [Continue reading]
How do you define success for your SaaS customers? While it sounds simple, it’s not. Success is only achieved when your customers reach their Desired Outcome by their interactions with your company. But first, you have to understand what it is that … [Continue reading]
A few months back an article was published that talked about how this popular brain training game (I can't remember what it's called) made their onboarding process MORE complex - not less - and increased their active users by 10%. While the article … [Continue reading]
Surveys can be dangerous if used wrong, but can be super-powerful if used correctly! Whether it's the Net Promoter System to gauge customer satisfaction, doing pre-launch customer development work for your startup, or one of the myriad methods we use … [Continue reading]
I'm not a psychologist, but I play one every day as I try to figure out why people (users, customers, visitors, etc.) do what they do... and how to get them to do more of what I want them to do. I spend a lot more time reading books about - and … [Continue reading]
After getting a demo of their new product from their Chief Data Officer (Luke Deka) while I was in Poland, I was excited to catch-up with Greg Pietruszynski, CEO of Growbots, when I got back to San Francisco. We talked about lots of different topics, … [Continue reading]
I was talking to my friend Piotr Zaniewicz the other day about the importance of network effects on SaaS businesses. I mentioned how the common misconception around network effects is that, in order to achieve a real network effect (this is the … [Continue reading]
Micky from Kahuna Accounting sent me an email to share that they grew their B2B business from 0 customers/0 revenue to 180 customers and $40k/month ($480k Annually) in just over a year, and a major part of that was their use of the Ideal Customer … [Continue reading]
While just about every B2B SaaS company offers a Free Trial - especially those with self-service sales models - in my experience, the percentage of SaaS companies that feel their Free Trial is "successful" is fairly low. Disappointingly low, … [Continue reading]
I was talking to the CEO of a SaaS startup on Clarity about a dilemma many companies go through. They've decided it's time to get deliberate about their progress and start testing their Ideal Customer Profile... but there's a problem. They already … [Continue reading]
In my recent article on accurately calculating your SaaS metrics, I mentioned how some customers shouldn't be considered customers yet. I referred to the fact that there's a "stick point" or that point in time in the early part of the customer … [Continue reading]
The CEO of a SaaS company reached out to me the other day and he had a very dangerous misconception that could seriously impact their potential as a company. I hope by talking about it here I can save more SaaS companies from falling into this … [Continue reading]
How often do you hear the term "Social Selling" and either can't figure out what it actually means or just want to call shenanigans on it? You know you're not going to close a six-figure deal on Twitter, right? That's not reality. But that doesn't … [Continue reading]
There is often a gap between the functional completion of your product and the customer's Desired Outcome. I call this the Success Gap. And this Success Gap that stands between what your product does and your customer's Desired Outcome is a huge risk … [Continue reading]
A user is someone that uses your SaaS product, right? Or is it someone that signed-up? Or someone that's active? Or someone that logged in a few times? Hmm. Okay, so maybe defining a user is hard, but defining a customer is easy, right? A customer is … [Continue reading]
Active customers churn. And when they do we're shocked and confused. How can this happen? Your customer was very active, logging-in several times in the last month. I think it's fair to say that if Active customers churn, then "active" - as a … [Continue reading]
Starting a SaaS company and scaling a SaaS company are two very different things. The same is true for "scaling" a SaaS company in the very early days vs. scaling a SaaS company through the growth phase. And since every company is different and … [Continue reading]
I spend a lot of time talking to SaaS companies about how they should identify their Ideal Customers, understand how they operate, know what their Desired Outcome is, listen to what they say, etc. etc. Whether it's a focus on acquiring new customers, … [Continue reading]
When it comes to SaaS, you basically have two sales models: high-touch and self-service. Small, bootstrapped SaaS companies often like to go the low-touch, self-service way. Large, venture-backed startups often like to take the high-touch, Enterprise … [Continue reading]
I get this question from time to time: "Lincoln, is it okay to offer discounts right on your pricing page?" Short answer: No. The longer answer, with some nuanced yesses thrown in, along with some tactics that you can employ, is below... … [Continue reading]
About a year ago I shared my super top-secret way to automate personal emails more effectively - called the "Customer Success bot" method - with the awesome folks on my mailing list. Since then, I've come up with several new uses for this framework … [Continue reading]
When was the last time you referred your friends or invited co-workers into an app after you just signed-up for the free trial? When was the last time you imported your address book right after you opened an app for the first time? Right. So why do … [Continue reading]
When it comes to customer churn, there are two kinds: avoidable and unavoidable. But I guarantee that the amount you label as "unavoidable" is actually much smaller than you think. I know, but... "Most of our churn is out of our control, so it's … [Continue reading]
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz Customer onboarding has come up a lot lately, which is great since having a poor onboarding experience for your customers can pretty much kill your growth... if not your business. The first in-app … [Continue reading]
Email Prospecting, the once-secret method (still) used (to great effect) by the hottest companies to get the attention of the biggest enterprises out there - even if all they talk about publicly is inbound marketing, adwords, and social - is no … [Continue reading]
Getting customers to pay up-front for a year is great... the challenge comes 12 months later at renewal time. There are four ways to do renewals, but only one right way. This came up recently with a SaaS founder, and since annual pre-payments are … [Continue reading]
I hit Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, right in the gut. And then I took a hard shot to the chest by Gainsight's New Business director. Working in a startup is rough, lemme tell ya. As Nick and I stood on the sidelines during this company outing - … [Continue reading]
So... what does Success look like for your customer? That's the question that's at the base of my wildly popular "The Secret to Successful Customer Onboarding" article. BTW, this article is good... but I have another one that goes into more detail on … [Continue reading]
At the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, a security research duo showed how they built a cryptocurrency-mining botnet by leveraging cloud platform services - like Amazon Web Services, Heroku, or Google App Engine - using only Free Trials and … [Continue reading]
I got this question about SaaS Free Trial Extension requests and I thought I'd answer it here, for all to see. "Lincoln, that was a great guest post by Steli Efti from Close.io on sales mistakes that lead to churn. I was reading Steli's blog and … [Continue reading]
Here's a secret no one talks about: SaaS Free Trial Length is a Marketing Gimmick. There isn’t a best SaaS Free Trial length that works for every SaaS company, in every category, for every market. I know, that contradicts my reputation for saying … [Continue reading]
Having a clear definition of your Ideal Customer is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Your Ideal Customer Profile - ICP - dictates (or should dictate) everything from the features and functionality of your product you … [Continue reading]
I've said many times that the seeds of churn are planted early. Whether it's in your marketing - both the things you say but also the types of customers you target with your messaging and outreach - to the things you say and do during the sales … [Continue reading]
I got this email asking whether to require a Credit Card to start a SaaS Free Trial or not and what the best Free Trial length is. So instead of just answering him directly, I decide to use it as the basis for this article. Here's the email: Hey … [Continue reading]
Sadly (for us... pretty awesome for them, I suppose) Stacklead was acqui-hired by LinkedIn and is being shutdown. If we’re honest, email lead capture is pretty much why we have a website. I mean, aside from making a sale the first time someone hits … [Continue reading]
The other day I got an email from a SaaS CEO friend of mine telling me his product team is finally ready to tackle a major problem with their onboarding flow during their Free Trial. It turns out they have one screen in the flow that is causing them … [Continue reading]
