Jan 26, 2012 | Breakthrough Marketing
Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing. While they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing. And while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there. With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science.
Hidden behind the dashboards and metrics lies a more fundamental problem. In today’s hyper competitive, global, instantaneous market, where buyers and consumers have nearly unlimited access to information and each other, the fight for attention and share has become a treadmill of constantly faster speed. With the proliferation of social media, and competivite solutions in even the most specialized market segment, we need a new Breakthrough marketing formula to feed the machine.
Simply put, we need a new model for getting noticed and getting bought. To achieve the highest breakthrough possible, we need to get great at Viewpoint, Value and Velocity. We need to move to Converged Viewpoint, Unique Value and High Velocity.
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| Viewpoint, Value and Velocity Converge to deliver breakthrough |
Let’s look briefly at each of these elements, what they are, and why they are needed.
Viewpoint
Viewpoint is a framing of the market in the context of your uniqueness. The uniqueness of your team, your capabilities, and your vision. Some call viewpoint thought leadership, some vision with a capital V, and some brand.
Why is Viewpoint critical? Without a doubt, we live in a world of data and information overload. But often overlooked is the aspect of information over-availability. As anyone who use Google knows, the challenge is not in finding an answer or result, but it is in finding the right or most helpful one. What does this mean for marketers? Let’s take a look at one small experiment. In November of 2011, KJR Associates examined a sampling of companies from the Andreeson Horowitz venture portfolio; Here’s a screen grab of that set:
We then examined the websites of each company and determined its “market category”:
Finally, we did a Google search using the a quoted market category name and looked at the quantity of search results returned. This is displayed here:
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| Market Categories |
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| Google Search Result for Specific Results |
So, as is clear from above, and totally consistent with our intuition, it’s a CROWDED marketplace for products and ideas. Even in very niches market segments, we have hundreds of thousands of results returned. The ONLY way to be noticed in this market is to provide something different, a UNIQUE and RELEVANT viewpoint.
In order to define Viewpoint providers must tap into the macro trends that impact their customers, as well as the discontinuity they offer to meet these trends. In my related post on Viewpoint, I walk through an example of this process.
Value
So while Viewpoint is critical to getting noticed, Value is critical to getting into the buyers shortlist. Simply put, Value is defined as the intersection between your unique capabilities express as business benefits, your customer needs, and the missing capabilities of your key competitors. This is shown with a simple sketch:
This unique Value is then articulated in forms such as competitive positioning statements, messaging, market segmentations and product feature benefit charts. Then when combined with Viewpoint, I can tilt the market in my favor. This process is further discussed here.
Velocity
With ViewPoint articulated and Value defined, the last piece of the puzzle is to deliver high velocity programs, those that deliver high quality leads across the buying lifecycle. Marketing Velocity = DE**2, or simply put:
Velocity = Delivery X Engagement X Experience
High velocity marketing is strong on message, meaning it effectively and creatively communicates Value within a powerful market Viewpoint. High velocity marketing uses appropriate Delivery channels and investments that meet buyers whereever and whenever they are in the buying lifecycle. More and more so, this is about delivering compelling experiences, as I have blogged about extensively. Lastly, high velocity marketing is fueled by high levels of interactivity and engagement. Gone are the days of depending solely on complex whitepapers to explain solutions. Vehicles like live demos, interactive assessments, and engaging video case studies are now a must. Velocity is further explored in this post.
In today’s high velocity market, we need a new HIGH BREAKTHROUGH marketing formula to feed the machine. High Breakthrough Marketing is a product of Viewpoint, Value and Velocity, or V–cubed! So, in order to deliver with velocity, organizations need to define a unique Viewpoint, articulate customer driven Value, and execute high Velocity programs. Without these 3 Vs, investments in marketing automation, content marketing and nurturing programs will deliver at best, mediocre results.
Dec 30, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
When I was a wet behind the ears sales rep in the Rolling Meadow’s Illinois branch office in 1986 (yes, they had computers back then :)), I remember the big sign that hung on the wall;
Calls + Demos = Sales
Now this office sold everything from PCs to copiers (yes, IBM sold copiers) to mini computers (S34, 36, 38, and later AS/400 and RS6000s) and the biggest S360 Mainframes. Though the sign belonged to the “Office Machines”, ie Copiers, team, I quickly learned in my territory of small manufacturers and distributors, the key to selling the minicomputer lay in not just having the right software package, but in putting a killer demo in front of the customer. As Jerry Maguire might say, “show me the money” and I say then and now, “show me the demo”.
Fast forward 25 years or so and I now have come to the corrolary to this sign for B2B technology vendors:
Marketing + Experience = Sales
As I have blogged about extensively, I believe that B2B technology sales and marketing is being transformed, as we move from products to services, we must move from traditional evaluation based product sales to experienced based service sales, this is true in SaaS models but in many other places too. In fact, just walk into any Apple store and see this in action, they are built to be giant experience labs, contrast that to the traditional cell phone store or Best Buy with product under glass covered cabinet shelfs or sitting tied down on turned off or canned displays.
Why is it then that B2B Software and SaaS providers continue to hide their experiences in the equivalent of a locked glass cabinet, behind weeks of qualification and sales calls that make a customer “prove” that they should be able to give it a go? Why not put the experience (trial, freemium, demo instance, whatever) front and center in your go to market?
I believe there are 3 main “reasons” for this hesitancy. They are:
1) The belief that the customer will not see enough “value” in the trial or demo experience.
2) The belief that my competitors will learn so much that this will put them at an advantage over us.
3) They simply haven’t invested yet (mentally or financially) in transforming their mindset, service and tactics to take advantage of experience marketing.
As you might guess, none of these reasons hold water for me. The first and second are simply outdated vestiges of the old way of thinking. If #1 is true, than shame on you for not delivering value, you best be fixing that regardless of your go to market strategy.
Reason #2 is just living in a fantasy land. First of all, a determined competitor will get a hold of your product or service, even if you spend a lot of effort and time to prevent it. Without passing judgement on tactics, I’ve seen shell companies, resellers, consultants and others to be effective paths for “back door” acquisition. It’s really not hard.
As for reason #3, rest assured, if you aren’t making this investment, one of your existing or soon to be competitors is. EVERY market is being disrupted and re-invented, you best be the one to do it to yourself. You can’t afford not to!
So with that I’d like to declare 2012 the “Year of Experience Marketing”…care to come along??
Jul 5, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
About 5 yrs ago, I had the pleasure of sitting through sales training with John Costigan. I remember John’s opening as he said something like, “How are you?” and got the typical quite reaction. John went on to say something like, “when I am asked, I say “OUTSTANDING” and you should too. Because to STAND OUT, you MUST BE OUTSTANDING”.
Fast forward to last week, when I was having a discussion on positioning with a very successful entrepreneur turned VC. He said, “the only way to win in today’s markets is to STAND OUT, create something new”. Immediately I thought of John and said to myself, “If you want OUTSTANDING positioning, you must STAND OUT from the crowd.”
When you look around B2B technology providers, those who do stand out usually take one of three fundamental approaches to differentiation, what I call 1+1=3, Embrace and Extend, and Copy and Paste. All can generate OUTSTANDING results and returns.
As Cloud computing goes mainstream, ISV, Hoster and other service providers can no longer depend on the previously successful, “We are X category, but as SaaS” such as early pioneers like Salesforce.com did. To truly STAND OUT and poke above the clouds, these three strategies offer proven paths to success.
1) 1+1=3 or Market Consolidation – Simply put, this is a strategy of adding together existing, adjacent capabilities in order to consolidate markets.
KJR client Nimsoft (now a division of CA) changed the IT monitoring market early on in the “Cloud era” by providing one product to consolidate the monitoring of Datacenter, Service provider and Cloud infrastructure, as I have blogged about extensively in this space. Market consolidation is an effective differentiation strategy because it provides clear value to the end buyer in cost savings and operational efficiencies.
Embrace and Extend – Next Generation X – The strategy of having competitive parity to existing capabilities and adding high value new ones.
Palo Alto Networks has created very rapid growth and disruption in the mature firewall space by embracing and extending the mature enterprise Firewall market with their “Next Generation Firewall” , not only consolidating the Firewall and IPS markets with their positioning, but by redefining the vary essence of a Enterprise Firewall to be Application and User centric, not port and protocol based. Their new App-ID and User-ID technologies changed the Firewall market dramatically, and gained them real first mover advantage over the incumbents. Embrace and Extend is effective because while disruptive, it goes after existing category dollars.
Copy and Paste – Stealing from other less related markets to create something
NEW!
While Embrace and Extend disrupts existing markets, Copy and Paste creates new ones. Success Factors copied KPIs from financial and capital management systems and created a Human Capital Performance management market. Splunk copied “search” from Google and the Internet to create the “IT Search” positioning that has made it unique and sustaining. Copy and Paste works because the value of the positioning is easy to explain and apply to new markets. Copy and Paste is a great way to position and explain disruptive technologies, and creates new spending rather than consolidation or taking existing category dollars.
So as you look for stand out positioning, leverage 1+1=3, Embrace and Extend, and Copy and Paste as three effective paths to rise above the clouds and generate outstanding returns for your company.
May 26, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
I am constantly surprised at how much my 4 kids teach me, but sometimes it’s really cool!!!
Owen, my youngest is a typical 3 1/2 year old boy, energetic, physical and fearless. He’s been riding on a glider bike for the last year, and loves to blast down hills with his feet in the air, scaring the daylights out of his Dad.
For those of you unfamiliar with glider bikes, it’s basically a pedal-less 2 wheeler that you propel like a scooter with your feet. I’ve been watching him scoot around on his glider wondering how he would do with pedals, would he need training wheels at all?? Would he be faster than his 3 older siblings at getting on a “real” 2 wheeler? (they all transitioned from training wheels at ages between 5 and 6, one with virtual ease, one with a few tries and one with 6 months of struggle. )
On Tuesday this week, the answers became clear. Owen said, “can I ride Addie’s bike?”. I said, OK sure. Owen hopped on, I gave him a little push and he was off pedaling, with the balance already second nature. Amazing, 3 1/2 and riding a two wheeler already with NO teaching, no back breaking run alongs, no leaning the wrong way for balance.
So, what did I learn? First I kicked myself for not having glider bikes for the other 3, oh well. Second I marveled at the effectiveness of learning balance and pedaling separately, and how it eased the transition in a way that training wheels fail miserably at. Third, I learned that the boy is crazy fearless, but I kinda already knew that from his accumulated trips to urgent care and many other sorties in playgrounds and parks.
This episode got me thinking about transitions, especially ISV to SaaS transformations, and how to ease the pain and difficulty. Certainly, doing this requires a good deal of fearlessness and courage to change mindset, organization and tactics, as I’ve blogged extensively about. However, I think most organizations can find a glider bike or two to help speed the transition and avoid losing organizational balance in the process.
For example, one client of mine who has been incredibily successful with this transition, was already selling their product in subscription mode 90+% of the time. Perpetual to Subscription is a huge and often challenging business problem. However, for this client, it became a glider bike to SaaS. Pricing drives many sales and customer behaviors, my client rode this glider right into the SaaS model.
Another glider bike to SaaS might be your go to market model. Do you focus on customers getting a taste of your product through download or guided demos? This focus on direct product experience can be your glider bike to SaaS success.
What other glider bikes are out there to help speed this business transition? Would love to hear your stories…
In the meantime, we will be shopping for a new bike for Owen this weekend, and hopefully not going to urgent care!!!
Cheers
Ken
May 16, 2011 | Random Musings
(Ken’s note Sept 2016 – This is an older blog, but a relevant one still)
I recently finished my blog series on Bridging to SaaS Success, and I’ve been thinking a lot about one part of that framework, Mindset. I talked about the SaaS mindset, and said, “Mindset is made up of 3 things, orientation, perspective, and focus“.
Since then, Mindset has come up in my client work with technology clients, not only in the SaaS context, but in the discussion of transformative selling. Then it was there again in my non-profit work with our local school district and lastly in some work I’ve started on career transitioning from engineering to marketing. In all cases, my OPF (tm) Mindset framework has proven to be a quick and powerful way to both explain and leverage mindset as a way to understand and drive transformations in belief and action.
The OPF Mindset Framework:
Mindset is made of 3 components: Orientation, Perspective, Focus. In the OPF framework, each of these have a very specific definition.
- Orientation – My relationship and adjustment to the environment that I am in
- Perspective – My way of regarding/judging and interpreting facts
- Focus – Where I choose to concentrate my attention
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
Example #1, The SaaS Mindset – As I blogged earlier, SaaS providers need to change their Mindset:
- Orientation from Product to Service
- Perspective from Spikey to Continuous
- Focus from Transaction to Relationship
Without these changes, the incentive to drive the organizational requirements for success and the framework to make strategic choices will be flawed. I’ve seen many cases where ISVs have not succeeded with the transition to SaaS, not because of technical barriers, but because they failed to change mindset and therefore made poor organizational, resource and strategic choices.
Example #2 – Transitioning an educational institution. There has been a lot of talk in our schools about the pressure put on young students to perform to ever increasing pressure and academic standards. Tales of preschoool parents worrying about whether their preschool is the right feeder to the Ivy Leagues is now a cultural meme. Fighting this are documentaries like “Race to Nowhere” and “Waiting for Superman” which document the huge costs to our children and society of this over emphasis on achievement. Locally, I’ve been working with our elementary school on trying to raise “whole children” and what this means to the community. I believe that to succeed, we must redefine the communities mindset when it comes to their goals of the public school:
- Orientation – From Curriculum to Learning
- Perspective – From Achievement to Development
- Focus – From “Teach to the test” to “Teach for life”
I firmly believe that if we can shift our mindset on our educational goals, we can actually not only raise healthier, happier children, but can actually improve our levels of achievement.
Example #3 – Transitioning careers from engineering to marketing. I work with a LOT of engineers, many who have marketing in their job titles. The #1 thing that separates those who successfully make this transition is those who change their mindset.
- Orientation – From Technology to Business
- Perspective – From Details to Big Picture
- Focus – From Problem Solving to Solution Sharing
Engineers who fail to change their mindset are easy to spot. They have a hard time focusing on scale related business problems and solutions. They get trapped in “features and functions” and can’t see the proverbial forest for the trees.
As you can see from above, the OPF Mindset framework can be applied to a wide set of transformations, from organization, to cultural to individual. So the next time you are faced with a transformation that is failing or struggling, step back for a minute and examine the Orientation, Perspective and Focus that you, your organization or team has adopted, and whether it is the right one for success, or anchored in your behaviors and beliefs of the past.
Happy Bridging – Ken
May 15, 2011 | Random Musings
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the Goldman Sachs Cloud Computing conference in Menlo Park, Ca. Goldman put an amazing group of companies and execs on stage. Particularly interesting to me was the conflict in opinion between the “Selling SaaS to the Enterprise” and the “Empowering the Clouds” panels when it came to the topic of the Enterprise sale cycle and process.
The first panel had execs from Workday, Apptio, Appirio and Zuora. The execs from the first 3, took the position that SaaS has NOT fundamentally changed enterprise sales. I am not a reporter, but the net of their position was, “We are still doing large deals, the cycle is still 6 to 9 months, nothing has changed”
The second panel had execs from PaaS providers Engine Yard and Joyent, and automation PaaS provider RightScale. Not surprisingly, these folks, who tend to target developers, saw that the dynamics have and are changing to shorter, trial and experience driven selling cycles. They see developers log in, code and deploy, and boom, there’s a sale. Short, sweet and fast. John Dillon, CEO of Engine Yard was emphatic in declaring that the enterprise sale was coming to an end.
I have blogged recently about the transition from evaluation to experience go to market, and so I definitely lean toward the second panel’s view. Successful SaaS and PaaS and IaaS providers understand the power of experience to start, accelerate and end a sales cycle.
Now certainly, many of the SaaS providers on the first panel, rightfully point out that successfully implementing a ERP or CRM or IT Portfolio management Service requires more change within the organization, which is really NOT related to SaaS vs. Software. Change in large orgs comes slowly and with pain. However, Chris Barbin of Appirio did agree that SaaS has shortened the time and cost of prof services in support of these implementations, and in fact is building his business on these types of $100K range projects vs. the old Accenture/EDS style $Ms of dollars projects.
We are in the 5-6 yr of the cloud computing transformation, the early SaaS successes (eg. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Workday and Successfactors…) took the enterprise sales model and replicated it with SaaS Services.
However, next generation successes like Box.net, DropBox, and those we haven’t seen yet, will likely disrupt these first generation successes with new sales and marketing models that fully leverage the power of experience. This, I believe is the future of Enterprise technology sales.
May 9, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
This is my fourth blog in my series on Bridging to SaaS Success and today I’d like to focus on Go To Market Strategy.
Once we have shifted our mindset from product to serviceand ourorganization from linear to circular, we must now bridge our go to market strategy, objectives and tactics from Evaluation to Experience.
Today’s customer has little patience for White Papers, datasheets, detailed feature function product specs and the like. They may attend a webinar, but the next step is experience. Even for large organizations with complex buying behavior, the expecation of SaaS is easy, accessible and meaningful experience of the service, either through demonstration instances, trial or freemium models.
In a post in November 2010 entitled, “Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer” , Ben Horowitz of Andreesson Horowitz concluded;
“If you are selling to consumers or companies that behave like consumers, then moving away from the old channel models may make perfect sense. However, if you plan to sell to a large enterprise, keep in mind that the new boss is the same as the old boss.”
And while Ben’s point on having to manage a buying process is spot on, this blog has been bandied about by others as evidence that we should cling to the old enterprise sales and marketing model. This interpretation is just WRONG. It ignores the fundamental shift from product to service.
Service organization knows this first hand that services are evaluated via experience, not spec sheets, RFPs and lab evaluation. SaaS providers who replicate and cling to today’s software Go To Market model are doomed to LONG sales cycles and MISSED opportunity.
One infrastructure ISV who launched their SaaS offering experienced this first hand. Initially, they continued their sales and marketing model of stringent business and lead qualification before trial approval. For every 100 trial requests, they approved less than 10, with an average qualification period of 2 months. This stringent qualification gave them a close rate of about 2 in 100 trial requests, as 20% of trials closed.
When they experimented with a much loosened qualification, where ~30% of the 100 requests were granted in an average of 2 weeks an amazing thing happened. Their conversion rate per 100 request shot up from 2 to 6, an incredible result, meaning the “less qualified” leads that experienced the product actually converted at the same rate as the previous model. This means that for every 100 leads in the old model, they were throwing away 4 deals!!! Not only that, they shortened their sales cycle, and are now leveraging their SaaS trials to sell their on-Premise solutions as well.
The mindset and tactical shift from Evaluation to Experience marketing and selling can payoff like this in any market segment. However, to reap the full benefits and scale of a SaaS model, providers must take a long hard look at all pieces of the marketing mix, from pricing to channel to promotion and messaging, to competition and company organization.
This brings me full circle to the post that started this series. In order to be a successful SaaS provider, organizations must not only build a great service, but they must shift their:
- Mindset from Product to Service
- Organization from Linear to Circular
- Go to market strategy and tactics from Evaluation to Experience.
With that, the Bridge to SaaS Success can generate revenues, share and valuation that meets and exceeds our most aggressive goals.
Happy Bridging,
Ken
Apr 27, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
Continuing my blog series on bridging to SaaS success, today I want to talk about transitioning from a linear to a circular organization architecture. Once I have adopted a SaaS Mindset, the next think I need to do is build the supporting infrastructure to SaaS success. In this context, your infrastructure is made up of your people and skills, your domain expertise and your organizational approach.
For the time being, let’s assume you’ve built/hired the technical skills you need, and you are sticking to your domain “knitting”, in other words you are an EXPERT in the needs and solutions you deliver and you are not simultaneously bridging to a new solution space as you move from product to service. If you lack the skills, then get them, if you are jumping domain AND delivery models, well, good luck, you’ll need it.
OK, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk organization. Today’s organization and its interaction with customers looks like this:
It’s linear, with sporadic customer contact. The product mindset we discussed in the last post is spikey and transaction oriented, and the organization’s linear structure is perfect to support this mindset.
But, as we move from a product to a services model and mindset, the organization must reflect the continuous and relationship oriented mindset we’ve adopted.
The organization must be circular, surrounding the customer and look like this:
Because services are about experience, to truly optimize our experience delivery, we must collapse our organizations and surround the customer. Sales and Marketing, Dev and Ops and Support and Delivery must function as a tightly knit ecosystem, enveloping the customer in the highest quality service delivery possible, continuously.
This is a HARD transition to make, it requires executive commitment and drive, and constant attention. However, market leaders MUST do this or they will fundamentally remain a product company, which is the kiss of death for any SaaS provider. Marc Benioff was wrong when he said the “End of Software”, he should have said the “End of Products”.
Apr 25, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
July 3, 2012 Update: I wrote this post over a year ago, in April 2011, when Amazon had a significant outage. In the wake of this weeks outages, I thought it was worth reposting…)
April 2011: The easy thing to do today would be to pontificate about the Amazon outages and the impact they had on service delivery for a wide range of SaaS providers…but you don’t need this blog to do that, it’s old news now (4 days later!). Instead, I’d like to use this as a great opportunity to talk about what I call the SaaS Mindset.
Last week, I blogged here about bridging to SaaS success and said that you have to change not only your product to a service, but you have to change mindset, org structure and go to market tactics. Today, I want to talk about transitioning from a Build and Sell mindset to a Market and Deliver one.
In our last 20 years in the tech industry, we’ve been in what I would call a Build and Sell mindset. Now that we are selling services, we must transform to a Market and Deliver mindset.
Mindset is made up of 3 things, orientation, perspective, and focus. In order to make this transition, we must get all three of these in alignment.
First and foremost, we must shift our orientation from product to service. Products, even software products, are tangible things to be purchased, installed and used. Services are experienced. This fundamental shift ripples through everything else we need to do to succeed with SaaS. Maybe all you Product Managers should change their name to Service Managers. When I worked with AOL, with their many flaws, one thing I noticed was their maniacal focus on “The Service”. The words had almost a mystical quality and permeated their mindset.
Second, we must shift our perspective from spikey to continuous. Products are built, shipped and sold as discreet widgets, which leads release schedules, sales quotas and customer relationships that are “spikey” by their very nature. Services are always running (hopefully:), and always under evaluation and subject to churn. Customers make a continuous buying decision and their ongoing experience is what drives long term value. Providers who understood this went the extra yard to be ready to drive continuous delivery despite Amazon’s challenges. A great example of the right mindset driving the right investment.
Third and last, we must change our focus from transaction to relationship. Great product companies have always understood this, good ones not always. There is no missing this continuous mindset with SaaS, it’s a must have. In the enterprise software world, transaction is king. Large investments create both economic, organizational and personal committment to decision well beyond healthy levels. Buyers love SaaS because it raises the bar on providers to deliver real service levels, and lowers both real and perceived switching costs. I know their are plenty of Amazon customers looking TODAY at alternative service providers. This is a wake up call for Amazon if they should choose to compete for mature and enterprise customers, they need to raise their relationship game significantly.
How does your organization’s mindset stack up for SaaS success? What action plan do you have to get a Service orientation, perspective and focus to permeate from Dev to marketing to sales and support???
Apr 20, 2011 | Breakthrough Marketing
(June 2012 – A quick note and update: While I originally wrote this series in early 2011, today it seems both slight dated, but also more relevant than ever. While I still see packaged software vendors, nearly 100% now have significant SaaS/PaaS and IaaS efforts underway. It is without a doubt the future and it is here. However, many managers still have not fully understood the nuance of this transition, and are still operating with product mindsets, linear orgs and evaluation based go to market tactics. This makes this post and series more relevant than ever. I hope you find it helpful and informative…)
I see a lot of ISVs launching SaaS services, that’s great. However, many of these initiatives fail to attract leads and customers in the volume expected, resulting in management, market and shareholder disappointment. Why is this?
While organizations spend a LOT of time understanding the technical transformation required to build a SaaS service, they fail to understand that this is just the anchorage of the transitional bridging they must do. In order to gain share and revenues they must deal with the remaining pieces of the bridge to SaaS success, which are their mindset, their organizational structure and their go to market tactics. Let’s take a look at a basic blueprint for bridging to SaaS success.
Mindset – P-> S: Product to Service. Services require a mindset of continuous relationship management, not of spikey product delivery and transactions. Changing your organizational mindset is the next step to SaaS success. Read more about Mindset transitions here.
Organization – L-> C: Linear to Circular. Today’s ISV structure is built to deliver products in a build and sell mindset. Even organizations that have adopted Agile SW development paradigms still go to the rhythm of minor and major releases, quarterly sales cycles, etc. Lead to sale to renewal. All linear processes. Successful service organizations are circular, they surround the customer with experience, support and delivery from the time of first contact onward. Read more on surrounding the customer here.
Go to Market Tactics: E -> E: Evaluation to Experience. Today’s go to market mix, pricing, channel and promotion is built to drive evaluation and transaction. Successful service go to market requires a shift to tactics that drive experience and satisfaction. Successful SaaS organizations shift their go to market tactics and investments and become experience, not product marketers. Read more on driving your marketing and sales Velocity with Experience here
Are you catapulting or bridging?
If you know where your going, but fire away without preparation and work, you are catapulting not bridging. Even SaaS start-ups can fall into the trap when they build their organization and tactics with people who are not transitioned to this new world themselves. Catapulting leads to poor execution and results. So start today by looking to see if you have bridged to a SaaS world or have catapulted without changing your mindset, organization and go to market tactics.
Happy Bridging
Ken
