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- 🚀 SaaS Launch Secrets: 5 Tips to Overcome Unforeseen Costs
🚀 SaaS Launch Secrets: 5 Tips to Overcome Unforeseen Costs
Proven strategies for long-term growth and success: From marketing to sales and beyond
Jason Long
June 11, 2024
Greetings from Playa del Carmen!
This week, we’re talking about the unforeseen costs and problems when launching a new Enterprise B2B SaaS - and there are 5 key areas we’re covering (with tips and strategies).
Three quick things before we get started:
🤑 I’m going to be running a financial forecasting webinar on Thursday the 20th of June at 11am EST. Sign up here if you’re interested.
🤩 Our Director of Operations, Dr. Michelle Cobb, is running a SaaS Messaging webinar on June 18th at 11:30am EST. Sign up here!
🍁 I am going to be speaking at the Montreal Startup Fest in July.
With that, let’s get into it - the 5 areas we’re discussing today are:
🗣️ Marketing and Demand Generation
💼 Building a Sales Team
🛠️ Developing Robust Systems
🕵️♂️ Navigating Litigation
📈📉 Preparing for Market Instability
1. 🗣️ Marketing and Demand Generation: Patience Pays Off
Anyone worth their salt will say the same thing: Marketing and demand generation are marathons, not sprints.🏃♂️➡️🏃♀️➡️
You might be pouring money, time, blood, sweat, and tears into your marketing efforts and demand generation tactics, but don’t expect your brand to be a household name in less than two to three years.
♟️The Long Game 🕰️
Storytime: At my last company, we shelled out over $65k PER MONTH on our digital marketing team (that’s not including trade shows or ad spend).
And guess what? It still took three years of relentless effort to dominate our market in SEO and have our brand become well-known in the industry.
But once we did, we pulled in 10-15 high-quality leads every week. 🏆
The trick here is to understand the long-term nature of marketing efforts and set realistic expectations for marketing outcomes.
Combining a solid marketing strategy with continuous effort (and investment) will ultimately lead to a stronger market presence and brand recognition. Still, you need patience and persistence for this to pay off.
Which, conveniently, leads to my next point…⬇️
🗝Consistency is Key Mandatory
Your marketing team needs to show up often and continue showing up.
That means Consistency is crucial and mandatory in your marketing. You need to show up, show up often, and continue…
🤝 Attending trade shows
💬 Engaging in countless conversations (network = net worth)
🎙️ Hosting and being interviewed on podcasts (establish yourself as a subject-matter expert/thought leader)
✏️ Writing articles/blog posts/newsletters (same as the previous line)
📧 Sending targeted email campaigns
💡 And other marketing endeavors
For some of the items above (eg. attending trade shows), remember - sometimes you have to do things that don't scale to enable things that do.
Showing up, engaging in conversations, and reminding people that you (and your company) exist helps build a robust presence and recognition in your industry.
Think of it like growing a garden🪴:
➡️ Each connection or contact is a seed, and every conversation and engagement is watering that seed. With time and nurturing, these seeds will grow into big, strong plants.
The more seeds you plant (the connections and contacts you make 🤝),
And the more you water and nurture them (the engagements and conversations you have 🗣️)
The larger and healthier your garden will become (the better your business will do🚀).
In summary: Be consistent with high-quality engagement to build trust and familiarity, making your brand the go-to choice when your prospects are ready to engage.
(Remember that buying is an emotional process, especially in B2B—the more someone trusts and is familiar with you and your business, the more willing they are to engage and buy from you.)
🔁Engage and Repeat
The secret behind my past success was engagement.
In my last company, we kept the conversations flowing, the content rolling, and our presence felt across multiple channels (remember, we spent $65k a month on digital marketing).
Even though we were a small company, we looked much bigger than we were, “threatening” to take our competitor’s market share (but not really in any significant way).
Our constant activity and relentless marketing made people take notice and remember our business 🧠.
Patience and consistency are your best allies when building a powerhouse brand!
2. 💼 Building a Sales Team: Time and Dedication
Now that we’ve tackled marketing, it’s time to address the other beast in the room— sales.
In my experience, getting a new enterprise B2B sales team up and running typically takes about a year, while individual reps may need up to three quarters to really get going.
(This is especially true if you’re hiring enterprise reps, as they’ll need adequate time to find their footing within the industry and your customer base.)
What does this all mean for you?
⏱The Long Sales Cycle
In enterprise B2B sales, the spin-up time for your sales reps is proportional* to your sales cycle length.
So if your sales cycle ranges from 6 months to 2 years (as it often is for enterprise sales), the spin-up time for each salesperson can be as long as a year and a half before they start turning a profit.
I know this timeline is daunting, but setting these realistic expectations early on is essential.
Early industry insights and a well-defined MVP (minimum viable product) can help jumpstart initial sales—but for those big, enterprise sales, it can take years to materialize.
I said it before, but it’s ALL about the long game. 🕰️
It’s essential that you recognize the extended timelines necessary for building an effective sales team. By taking this into account, you can foster steady, sustainable growth while ensuring that your sales efforts produce the results you want in the long run.
Again, be patient and persistent. Your efforts will pay off, setting the stage for a robust and profitable sales organization.
👩🏫Nurturing Sales Talent
Just like in marketing, consistency is key mandatory in sales, and the learning never stops. 🍎
Continuous training, support, and engagement with your sales team help them grow into their roles more effectively. Each salesperson needs time to understand the product, the market, and the customer base. 📚
Investing in your sales team means:
✋ Regular training programs: Conducting workshops and bringing industry experts to provide advanced training.
🧑🏫 Mentorship and coaching: Pairing new salespeople with experienced mentors and providing one-on-one coaching.
🤖 Sales tools and technology: Equipping your team with the right software and tools so they can focus on selling.
📝 Ongoing feedback and performance reviews: Implementing a regular feedback system and setting clear, achievable goals.
💸 Incentives and recognition: Offering competitive bonus and commission structures, as well as public recognition for achievements.
📞 Call Reviews: Your sales leader should be sampling sales calls and giving feedback to sales team members. But if they don’t have time, a good friend of mine, Stephen Steers, runs a company that will listen to sales calls and give feedback for you.
By investing in your sales team’s development, you're setting them up for success, which will, in turn, drive your business forward.
So stay committed, invest in your people, and watch your sales flourish.
Got any tips or experiences to share about building a sales team? Hit reply and let me know! 🗣️
3. 🛠️ Developing Robust Systems: Iterative Excellence
Getting to a small tool MVP isn’t often overwhelmingly difficult, but creating a robust, enterprise-level solution can take years.
The development process is iterative, and you must ensure a solid foundation before implementing advanced, enterprise-level features. 🏰
Once you start aiming for enterprise-scale clients, you'll likely need to refactor code to accommodate growth, as well as improve the product to meet customer demands and requirements; all of this will likely push timelines further out. 🕰️
Remember, product development is iterative. You need to slowly and methodically build out your enterprise offering piece by piece to ensure scalability and reliability. 🐢
This whole process lends itself to building a competitive and reliable product that’s attractive to your enterprise clients.
The trick is to embrace the iterative process and focus on continuous improvement. I know I’ve said it before, but your dedication will pay off in the form of a robust and scalable product.
I recommend focusing on niche channels in the early stages of your SaaS product; this can help you avoid direct competition and potential litigation.
At my previous company (a long-term care software company), we effectively leveraged SEO* to dominate that niche market without immediately threatening larger competitors.
(*In that specific industry, SEO was considered less competitive as our competitors weren’t using it significantly—for your industry, think about what marketing and exposure channels count as “less competitive” or “underutilized.”)
We also focused on other less competitive channels like podcasting, enabling significant organic growth on our end and minimized exposure and the risk of legal challenges from established players.
By focusing on niche channels, you can build a solid foundation before facing direct competition, giving you a head start in establishing a strong market presence.
Have any strategies for navigating competition? Hit reply, and let’s discuss! 🗣️
5. 📈📉 Preparing for Market Instability: Proactive Planning
Elections, pandemics, recessions, extreme weather (climate change), the list goes on…
You can be the most organized person in the world, but preparing for market instability can be tricky because you never know what will hit you next.
My point is that these external factors are beyond your control, yet they pose significant risks. While unpredictable, budgeting for potential market instability is essential to maintain flexibility in your business plans.
How? By making your business flexible. 🙆♀️🙆♂️
🌟 Proactive planning = being ready to pivot when necessary
🌟 Flexibility = being adaptable
The big thing here is that it’s not all doom and gloom; imagine setting your business up so you can:
📉 Quickly pivot to mitigate losses when the market dips and at the same time;
📈 Be agile enough to seize gains and opportunities when the market swings up. That’s the sweet spot!
Diversify your revenue streams so you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. Keep your operations nimble, ready to adjust costs and strategies as market conditions change. 🔀
You can act swiftly if you stay ahead of the curve by constantly monitoring trends.
By staying adaptable and ready to pivot, you can ride the waves of market instability and come out stronger on the other side. 💪
Got any tips on preparing for market instability? Hit reply and share your thoughts! 🗣️
🌟 Other Cool Stuff
🤑 Financial Forecasting Webinar
I am putting on a financial forecasting webinar where I am going to teach people how to build effective, assumptions-driven, financial forecasts for their businesses. We are going to go through the assumptions narrative and help people understand how to take ideas and turn them into math. It’s a free webinar, but there are only 20 seats so I can answer questions. Sign up soon if you want to join!
🤩 SaaS Messaging Webinar
Dr. Michelle Cobb, our Director of Operations at JHMG is putting on a webinar two days before mine on the 18th. In her webinar, she will be covering:
Practical Marketing Tips - Learn how to talk about what you do so customers will actually listen and take action. No more guessing about what works.
An Effective Marketing Plan - Leave with a step-by-step plan you can implement now. Bring in more leads, convert more customers and make more money.
Brief Website Reviews - Tailored feedback to help you apply what you learned. Get your website review video afterward if your site is not discussed in session.
🍁 Speaking At Montreal Startup Week!
I am so excited to share a stage with Mike Frost and Jacob Lanydoo talking about raising capital, growing revenue, and CEO tools at Montreal Startup Week in July! Our event will be a pre-event 3-hour workshop that will dive deep into these areas. Get tickets here.
🇨🇦Heading to Montreal For The Summer
I used to live in places where you left for the winter because it got too cold. Now I live in the tropics where it gets too hot in the summer, so I’ll be in Atlanta, GA from mid-June until early July when I’ll head to beautiful Montreal Canada from July 5th to mid-August. If you’re in Montreal, let’s meet up!
🇲🇽 Check out my talk at DCMEX 2024!
I was invited to speak at DC MEX 2024 where I talked about CEO tool on the mainstage. I just got back the video from the editors and it looks solid. Take a look if you want to learn how to connect your financial forecast to your OKRs to your team performance management to your scorecards.
Until next time, keep the ideas flowing,
Jason