The fastest growing SaaS companies put the customer at the centre of everything they do. They listen to their customers: to understand their needs, goals, behaviour, and challenges.
Effective growth requires a framework for extracting customer insights: a regularly run process which helps you to prioritise product development, maximise customer success and accrue recurring revenue.
Growth strategies based on anything less than a deep understanding of an Ideal Customer are inefficient: a recipe for high customer acquisition costs, low customer retention and even damage to your brand.
It’s tempting to always be chasing a “silver bullet” for growth. The viral video, press coverage, star sales rep, or guerrilla marketing campaign which will propel you to success.
While these big wins may come along, they're unpredictable. Top performing SaaS companies therefore rely on process, taking a scientific approach to growth, rather than relying on chance:
| Company Stage | Pre-Traction (<$100K ARR) |
Early Traction ($100K - $1M ARR) |
Traction ($1M - $10M ARR) |
Scaling Up ($10M ARR+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company Focus | – Validate product-market fit – Develop MVP |
– Achieve product-market fit – Scale customer acquisition |
– Scale operations – Optimise processes |
– Achieve market leadership – Expand globally |
| Key Objectives | – Build a Minimum Viable Product – Acquire first paying customers – Gather customer feedback |
– Increase customer base – Refine product based on feedback – Start building brand awareness |
– Scale sales and marketing efforts – Improve unit economics – Enhance customer retention |
– Enter new markets – Diversify product offerings – Prepare for IPO or acquisition |
| Challenges | – Limited resources – Unproven market acceptance |
– Efficiently scaling acquisition – Initial competition |
– Managing rapid growth – Intensifying competition |
– Organisational complexity – Sustaining company culture |
| Metrics to Monitor | – User engagement – Early sign-ups – Customer feedback |
– MRR growth – Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Churn rate |
– Lifetime Value (LTV) to CAC ratio – Sales cycle length – Net Promoter Score (NPS) |
– Revenue growth rate – Employee satisfaction – Market share |
| Go-To-Market Strategy | – Direct outreach – Beta testing with early adopters |
– Expand marketing channels – Initiate content marketing |
– Multi-channel marketing – Develop partnerships |
– Global marketing campaigns – Strategic alliances |
| Team Requirements | – Founding team with technical and domain expertise | – Add sales and marketing roles | – Build departments (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success) | – Hire experienced executives – Develop specialised teams |
| Funding Considerations | – Bootstrapping – Angel investors – Pre-seed funding |
– Seed funding – Early-stage VC investment |
– Series A/B funding | – Late-stage VC funding – Consider IPO or acquisition |
Alignment across all your growth functions is essential for success.
Sales, Marketing & Customer Success each need to agree on common terminology, use consistent messaging, promote the same content, work towards the same goals, and share information and insight in a frictionless way.
Most important of all, there needs to be a common understanding of your company’s Growth Metrics, Ideal Customer Profile & Buyer Personas.
Pricing is the most powerful growth lever your SaaS company has, but too few treat it as such. Whether it's changing their prices based on "gut feelings" or unstructured debates between functions, few SaaS companies are making the most of their pricing's potential.
It's not enough to set-and-forget your pricing. By doing so you're leaving money on the table, and failing to align the growth of your customers with the growth of your SaaS.
The best performing SaaS companies make pricing a core competency, use a pricing framework, run continual pricing tests and never stop working on new ways to price better.
Discover How We Can Help You GrowRequest a free consultation. First, we’ll listen to you, and develop our understanding of your business, goals and challenges. Next, we’ll identify opportunities you can seize to grow faster, and maximise performance. No strings attached.
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