Category: Software Development

How to keep your SaaS Startup Revenue on Track

Posted on by Jay

After an unprecedented bull run for 11 years, SaaS businesses are faced with a lot of uncertainty as they overcome the business impact of the global pandemic.

There is no fixed path ahead. The truths of each Monday are re-calibrated by next Friday. In the current scenario, agility is critical. You must look at the right leading indicators to make decisions quickly or risk getting buried under loads of data.

While revenue metrics like LTV, CAC, NRR, and Quick Ratio are solid ways to diagnose long-term trends with respect to how the business is performing, it is important to look at the leading indicators of your revenue health, and act on them before they significantly impact growth and cash flows.

Let’s dig into some metrics you should consider.

Cash Burn

Cash burn, the rate at which companies use up their cash balance or reserves, can be impacted by both revenue (inflows) and expenditure (outflows). It’s always good to conservatively assume a higher burn rate unless your business is accelerating.

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Even though there are multiple variables impacting your revenue, the key lies in being flexible and reacting wisely from an expenditure standpoint. It’s good to plan for all outcomes, and not assume you’re going to have a V-shaped recovery.

Practice conservatism and have one to three months of a runaway. This is impactful if the current situation is going to linger longer.

If your vendors are affected, reach out. You could prepay some of these expenses and probably negotiate a discount as well. A 10 to 20% discount means cash sitting on your balance sheet, which eases your expense burdens in the future

Sales Outstanding

At Andolasoft, we are seeing the DSO ratio increasing across all our clients as end customers are slow to pay in recent months.

Sales outstanding is basically calculating the time it takes for you to collect an invoice. This metric is one of the few things you can control.

If you received payment in 20 days pre-crisis, depending on the business you’re collecting from, it might take 30 to 40 days moving forward.

This could have a huge impact on your working capital. When forecasting for the next three to six months, take a closer look at the day sales outstanding ratio.

Accounts Receivables Aging Report

Given that most customers might be freezing their budgets, you may want to close payments on your receivables sooner than later.

On the other side, we’re also seeing businesses with stronger cashflow positions offering more lenient payment terms up to net-60 and net-90 days to build a stronger rapport with their customers.

A real-time accounts receivable aging report lets you see how much money your customers have paid, any outstanding payments, and current debt.

Aging reports help identify customers who aren’t paying, which makes it easier for you to reach out and negotiate payment terms.

Lifetime Value

The next thing you need to focus on is your growth sustainability. Growth should never come at the cost of profitability.

If you acquire a customer with a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC) and low lifetime value (LTV), it means you’re scaling but not profitably.

One way to balance growth and profitability is by the rule of 40. If your growth rate plus EBITDA equals 40%, it means you’re growing profitably.

In this scenario, you should ensure you’re bringing in the right kind of customers and make sure that your retention is high.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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The advantage of an LTV metric is that it gives you an idea of your customers’ quality. It also shows how well you’re able to retain them, which in turn, helps your team prioritize the accounts that are more likely to last longer than a free-trial period.

Total Credit Notes

Finally, you should be closely watching the leakage points in your revenue cycle.

The total credit notes report shows you the impact of credits and refunds you’ve offered to customers. While churn is bad news in itself, full refunds are even worse as they impact cash already in the bank.

I see some businesses restructuring their refund policies to only offer credits at this time, but it might have a significant hit on the brand. An option can be setting up internal policies, to look into the merits of each refund, then process it on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, acquisition teams are starting to use more coupons and discounts to close more deals.

While discounts are a great way to retain customers and continue running the sales machine, you need to watch its impact on revenue and ensure you are reporting on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and leakages correctly.

This way, you wouldn’t be pushed to a scenario where sales continues to close seemingly big numbers, but with all the heavy discounts you don’t even see its impact downstream on total MRR.

Everything you knew about growing a startup or SaaS business has been upended. You’ll be faced with making tough decisions and your commitment will definitely be tested.

But with a clear understanding of your startup’s health and how your finances are changing on a daily basis, you can navigate these choppy waters.

Planning to launch your SaaS startup? Let’s Discuss!

Key Steps To Developing A Successful SaaS MVP

Posted on by Jay

In times past, you bought something once and it was yours forever.

A few years back, you bought something once and it was yours forever. But today, you pay for the regular access.

Especially, when it comes to the use of software, vehicle, and even clothes.

But this comes with distinct advantages for both the vendor and the customer.

As the demand increases, the software and its platforms are constantly developed and improved. If you turn around you can see several well-equipped solutions that have all the mechanisms to deliver the best solution. But they are still adding more wings on it.

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As a new player, it will be a difficult journey for you to figure out what should be in your Software As A Service MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The questions like;

  • What feature to focus on?
  • What to Include?
  • Is it worth the cost?

may be speculating on your mind.

Let’s have a deep dive into it and build a SaaS MVP that customers will buy, use, and recommend as well.

SaaS Product, What Is It?

Software as a service (also known as subscribeware or rentware) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted by a company.

SaaS applications are also known as Web-based software, on-demand software, and hosted software.

For example;

Orangescrum (The Project Collaboration Tool) is a SaaS product that is hosted on the company servers and customers pay a monthly or yearly fee to access it.

And of course, you can find variations in this model.

Some companies allow their customers to deploy the on-premise model as well but still charge a regular fee.

As per Gartner Forecast; “The saas industry is expected to reach $85.1 billion by the end of 2019. This is only slated to grow as more companies use saas products regularly. An average organization uses 16 saas apps as part of its regular workflow.”Granter Forecast

Tech & Marketing giant Hubspot believes;

“for a successful launch of an MVP for a saas product, it is important to have strong support for media and specialized platforms and confirm demand for your product. The first aspect will give you a stream of constant leads and the second will give you an understanding of what you can invest in media while remaining profitable.”

Yes, it sounds like there is lots of potential in SaaS Development but there is lots of competition as well.

So, there are many factors to consider for developing a SaaS MVP that could springboard you to success.

Let’s have a look at how to confirm the demand for your idea before you start to build a saas MVP.

Get A Deep Understanding Of The Audiences Pain, Wants, And Needs

Many entrepreneurs come with an idea, they do the basic market research, through a website and start developing the features that will go into their SaaS MVP.

But this is complete wrongdoing process, reasons are:

This is a mistake for several reasons such as:

  • There’s no feature prioritization
  • Product demand is uncertain
  • Don’t have a clear customer persona
  • Not addressing a well-defined pain point

And the list goes on.

An efficient route would be talking to the people who you think as your target customer. And you should engage on this before launching your website, before the first lines of code, and even before you solidify your idea.

Why?

Why?

Because practically the market’s demand could be completely different from your imagination. If the market does not want this (your idea) then they are not going to buy it.

Let’s take the example from Buffer – the popular social media scheduling app.

When the founder got his idea, he didn’t start development right away. Instead, he tested demand by creating a landing page and a simple checkout flow that didn’t work. Instead, he collected email addresses and started conversations with the people who tried to sign up.

When the founder got his idea, he didn’t just directly jump to the development. He tested demands by creating a simple and engaging landing page with a checkout flow that did not work (deliberately). Then he collected the email Address and started the conversation with those users who tried to sign up previously.

His objective was to understand the aspect of the product, and what features they needed to make it work for their business.

After engaging with several peoples, the founder had a clear vision of the features for his SaaS product development. Then we started building the product and the rest is history. Buffer is making 10 million dollars in a year.

Another approach could identify your potential customers, reach out to them, and hold interviews. Through the open-ended questions, you could able to understand the problems and their needed solutions.

Prioritize Your Product Roadmap

After finishing the customer interview, you will have a clear view of what solution your market is looking for and how to reach a valuable proposition. It is completely up to you to decide which feature will be the best for fulfilling the market needs.

For example, if your users want to get more leads and uncover insights about their audience, there are many ways to go about it. You could create a survey tool, quiz software, popups that also ask questions, etc.

The interviews would’ve given you insights into how important aspects of the solution were. Maybe people want to generate leads the most and segmenting those leads was secondary. Maybe they need to be able to send those leads to their CRM.

A product roadmap will help you organize the features or aspects of your saas MVP. Some of them will make it into the initial version and others will be pushed back because they’re not as important.

The major benefit of a product roadmap is the clarity it gives you. You and your team know exactly where you are and what’s left to be done at any given point. If something becomes more important based on user feedback or changing priorities, you can update your product roadmap in a few moments.

Build The Single Most Important Core Feature

Feature creep is real.

It robs your product of its simplicity.

It destroys your focus.

Deadlines get shattered.

It turns your elegant solution into a slow unwieldy hulk.

Needless to say, feature creep should be avoided at all costs. The benefits of adding a marginally useful feature are outweighed by the downsides.

There are several simple ways to avoid feature creep in your MVP and the final product.

Consider Each Feature Carefully

Many organizations think up great features and start implementing them. This can work in some cases but most of the time it doesn’t. If there isn’t a demand from existing customers or it’s not part of the original product vision then think long and hard before adding it.

Consider setting up a feature approval process. Every new feature has to meet specific criteria such as:

  • It’s been requested a certain number of times
  • It’s part of the original product vision (use this if the feature hasn’t been requested too often)
  • The feature will have a tangible impact on revenue or product usage

The criteria used to evaluate new features will be peculiar to your business but the most important thing is to have an approval process. You can improve it over time.

Differentiate Between Nice-To-Have & Must-To-Have Features

Every product has essential features that make it what it is. In a list building software, popups are an essential feature.
There are also headline features. These are the features that you can put on a landing page and people will look for but they’re not necessarily used often. In our product, one of the headline features is A/B testing but a small fraction of users take advantage of it.

Nice to have features are what they sound like. They’re interesting and may help with conversions but they’re far from necessary. When you differentiate your features in this way, it makes it easier to understand what you need to focus your energy on.

Keep An Eye On Usability

If people can’t use your software then they won’t. Usability should be at the top of the list for a saas MVP. The more features you add, the more screens, clicks, and buttons you’ll need to add. It reduces usability.

Always consider how difficult or easy a new feature will be to take advantage of. If it has a marked impact on a customer’s ability to get the most out of your software then it may be better to leave it off.

Launch It And Stop Developing

This is where many founders have issues. They launch a product and don’t get a lot of traction. They think it’s because their product isn’t ready yet. It may not be the best in the world but if you’ve built a great core feature, you can sell it.

That is why it’s an MVP.

There’s a temptation to start writing more code because the next feature will turn everything around.
It won’t.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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If you have a stable product, have launched it, and it has gotten at least one customer then stop focusing on development.

Instead, focus on getting more customers through sales or marketing. There are countless ways to go about this and many books, blog posts, and courses have been dedicated to the subject.

Here are a few methods to build awareness and acquire your first customers:

  • Host a podcast or become a guest on a podcast
  • Start blogging to build traffic
  • Focus on a single social media channel to generate leads
  • Reach out to your target customers
  • Tap your immediate network
  • Develop strategic partnerships
  • Use Quora connect with your audience and establish authority
  • Submit to startup aggregators like BetaList or Product hunt

These are just a few ideas and there are countless more. You were creative enough to start a business so I’m confident that you’ll be creative enough to get a few customers.

Conclusion

A SaaS MVP, when done right, can be the first step to building a successful company. When done incorrectly, it’s the beginning of a long road that may not yield much return.

There are multiple steps you can take to increase your odds of success.

  • Talk to your potential customers
  • Prioritize the right features with your product roadmap
  • Build the most important feature first
  • Launch and focus on getting new customers before you continue development

Do you have a SaaS Idea? Let’s Discuss. We will Monetize it!

Know The Benefits Of Hire Remote WordPress Developers

Posted on by Jay

COVID-19 Pandemic has changed the entire global market almost in the period of a week. And the business industries having no exception from this calamity.

Perhaps, the anti-dote might be under development but this global epidemic is going to make a long-lasting impact on the common society.

We can say the business to each individual is putting themselves in lockdown to skip this calamity. But certainly, we can not stop working. Every business and industry must go on.

If we would not, we can face global economic crises in the very recent future. There will be sectors, companies, and workers that will be severely harmed.

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So, let’s not stop running our business rather change the way we work. So that we can achieve equivalent productivity.

As also most every Government of states has released the advisory to stay at home and maintain social distancing to stop the spread of this virus, the online business stakeholder may consider hiring the dedicated or remote team for outsourcing their business needs.

When it comes to the point of running or starting-up new business;

Building a business website online may be something in your mind for days even not for months.

Well, it will take some time before you start as you need to decide on the right development platform and package.

Maybe, you want to try one of the top 3 CMS platforms (WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal) and are already seeking answers from professional wordpress website development company companies.

Even if you have professionals to build your website, you still like to manage it yourself once it is launched. So, you need to make certain crucial decisions like which platform to choose and use for your website development.

The million-dollar question is why?

Why Businesses Choose WordPress CMS:

Well, WordPress is one of the most commonly used CMS platforms for developing websites. More than 24% of websites worldwide are built on WordPress.

Since 2003, this CMS has taken the world of blogging by storm. However, several transformations have made it more than just a blogging website to an open-source web development platform.

WordPress is used by millions of web users globally and is a perfect platform to promote products and services. The CMS is easy to use, full of unique features.

WordPress also offers plenty of plugins that can dramatically improve user experience. With the help of an experienced WordPress development company, you can build a website that will boost sales and visibility of your business.

It’s not just about digital presence and sales though. With a WordPress-based website in place, you can leverage many other benefits to improve business efficiency and stay ahead in the competition.

Also Read: 8 Incredible Benefits for Choosing WordPress Development for Your Website

Advantages Of Remote WordPress Development Team

If a fast time to market is one of your priorities, with outsourcing app development you can start your project very quickly. It especially works best in the conditions of nationwide strict quarantine, when remote work is obligatory for everyone.

In such case the best option is to set up a team of remote developers who work for a software company, not freelancers since it is quite risky, and taking risks is not a good time when your business is operating on the edge.

Cost Reduction

It is one of the main advantages of outsourcing over in house development. An offshore outsourcing company helps businesses reduce development costs, which in turn frees up resources that can be used for new development opportunities.

Outsourcing Saves Time

The market typically requires a fast turnaround for the process of mobile application development. When outsourcing such a project, you do not waste time and money on hiring, training, and retaining employees.

Best Engineering Talent

When you team up with employees from other countries, you are getting access to the best engineering talents from all over the world, as opposed to simply hiring people that are available within a radius of 30 km from the location of the company.

This factor becomes especially crucial when you have not just a company, but a startup: where every new employee is an important decision that will almost certainly affect the outcome of your business.

You hire an experienced WordPress Developers, well-coordinated, and dedicated team. Well-established outsourcing companies offer fully staffed and dedicated teams of developers where team members have known each other for a long time and worked together on many projects.

You can be sure that these employees are professionals and have a lot of experience to meet the requirements of your project and introduce the best solutions.

High Communication Standards:

You get a team that follows the highest communication standards to ensure full transparency throughout the process, just as if you were working with an in-house team. Needless to say, they adapt to your local hours.

Close Supervision:

Your personal manager will keep you in the loop with regular meetings, demo sessions, and constant communication. As a result, you will always know exactly what your team is working on as well as monitor the progress status of the tasks and their expected completion date.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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End-to-end services and support. On-demand access to a pool of developers, DevOps, QA, designers & architects. You can easily and accordingly adjust your team size or skill set(s) to the project requirements throughout the evolution of your project.

Risk Reduction:

After signing a contract, all project risks are transferred to the outsourcing company. Typically, an outsourcing company guarantees delivery on time and on budget. Also, all your sensitive data regarding the project is protected due to signing a non-disclosure agreement, so that you can be sure there is no risk of a “project theft” or any confidential information leakage.

Also Read: What’s Going To Be WordPress Trends for the Year 2020?

Wrapping Things Up

Choosing WordPress to develop a website is a wise decision term for both performance and profitability.

If you want to build a website for your business, WordPress offers you a perfect platform for engaging target customers. By hiring a WordPress development company, you will get a quality website having all the features that will promote your business. You can also show the world that you offer them something unique to choose from. WordPress websites stand out in the digital space in terms of performance, appearance, and user-friendliness.

Looking for a remote WordPress Developer Team? Get in Touch!

What Makes SaaS Marketing Unique And How To Do It Well

Posted on by Michael Dehoyos

Software as a Service (SaaS) marketing encompasses a specific niche in the eCommerce market, but a pretty large niche. According to surveys, 80% of businesses use at least one SaaS product, and 73% predict nearly all of their most-used services will be SaaS by the end of this year.

That being said, this multi-billion dollar industry operates on a unique model, and as a result, requires a unique marketing approach.

A SaaS business host software and make them available to users through the internet, often via a subscription fee.

This is why traditional marketing tips are not always applicable to SaaS marketing: there is no physical product to showcase, the service is often constantly changing and updating, or it is highly specialized to suit a handful of companies.

Even the few users who fully appreciate the usefulness of the software don’t necessarily “own” the product.

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It’s due to all of these unique challenges that a specific breed of SaaS marketing has emerged. Some of these tips will seem counter intuitive to some marketers, but they are all designed to highlight the strengths of SaaS.

More Than Free Samples

If you can conjure up any examples of SaaS products, the first thing you’ll likely notice is that they’re all free, at least for a time.

Free trials are the lifeblood of SaaS, as it gives users the chance to try out the software, get hooked and convince them to continue onto the full subscription.

Compare this to traditional marketing: most companies wouldn’t dream of giving out complete access to their product for free.

That is the difference between direct ownership and SaaS, one relies on the specific instance of sale while the other is a long game that relies on protracted investment and engagement.

Make It Quick

Another thing that sets apart SaaS from regular products is the speed of sales. In B2C SaaS interactions, the time between a customer discovering your service and signing up for a free trial is often a matter of hours.

This is one of the advantages of the free trial: it encourages your customers to engage quickly because there is practically no barrier to entry. Often customers will look to SaaS products because they solve a particular need that has suddenly arisen, rather than a long decision process.

Seeing as 89% of SaaS businesses depend on new customer acquisition for growth, capitalizing on this sudden need is essential.

This means the way you make sales has to facilitate this speed of entry. A SaaS customer will usually make a purchase decision not long after visiting your product’s landing page.

Compare this to product marketing, which could mean days or weeks of research and deliberation, allowing for a more wide-net internet presence.

For SaaS landing pages it is more important than ever to sell your product succinctly, after which try to put as few barriers as possible between your landing page and your checkout page.

Stand Out, But Not With Price

As the SaaS market is expanding os rapidly, you can be pretty sure that, whatever your product offers, there will be competitors out there offering similar services.

It begs the question: how do you stand out in such a crowded market? The first inclination might be to undercut on price.

It’s a common tactic from traditional product marketing; offering the same product for less; and while some statistics show a 1% price reduction boosts sales by 11%, it’s not always a sustainable tactic in the SaaS game.

Due to the iterative and constantly updating nature of SaaS, you might be able to offer the cheapest option for some time but eventually, another company can come in and undercut you, dragging the price down for the whole market.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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If you base your offer on pricing then suddenly you don’t have a leg to stand on. Much better is to advertise the quality of your features first, something that takes a lot more work to beat.

The Way Forward

This is only the beginning of what makes SaaS marketing, what gets your customers in the door. The hard part is continuing to engage them in your service, and that’s all down to the quality of your product.

Put the quality of your software first and the marketing will follow.

How To Make Your SaaS Development Idea Successful

Posted on by Jay

With many SaaS companies in the market these days, it’s becoming harder for everyone to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s important for any SaaS business to have a well-thought-out development road-map. If you don’t, you’ll do yourself a serious disservice, because a successful SaaS business is built on solid, tested software solutions. Even so, there’s a lot of competition out there. That’s why you have to be extra cautious when thinking about your SaaS development strategy.

The statistics say SaaS has been wiping out the dependency of an enterprise’s old, outdated software to pursue its operations. And the reasons are:

  • Software-as-a-Service has the on-demand usage model with the minimum entry point. Unlike on-premise apps, as z huge upfront costs need to be showered at the time of software updates, customization & other IT-infrastructure related requirements.
  • On SaaS, the end-users don’t have to invest in the total IT-infrastructure setup, as the entire hosting, customer support, and hardware & software implementation process are taken care of by the SaaS vendors itself.
  • The elements inside these cloud offerings can be easily scaled up & down by doing changes with few clicks or adjustments from the data centers and with certain cost allocation, whereas if the investments are done on the on-premise infrastructure, the cost & load would be comparatively heavy.

By the end of this year , 80%-90% of businesses will run their core operations over the Software-as-a-service model. It’s because this software helps to continue with complicated tasks without putting a load on hardware memory, run from anywhere via an internet connection, purchased on a subscription basis, leaves the technical glitches & upgrades part with the providers only.

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That means software-as-service is here to stay and those who are on a lookout to become a SaaS application development provider, they need to be mindful of the pitfalls of software-as-a-service development and come up with practices & measures that can help them stay afloat & reap home the desired revenue figures.

Don’t know these pitfalls or measures that can help you become a top-notch SaaS app development services provider?

Worry not, the following has all the answers that Infoxen believes will be of sheer help to you.

1. Know Your Client-Base First

Knowing the target audience is very important before starting the software-as-a-service-based development business – as based on that only you will prepare your acquisition & pricing strategy.

A complete list covering buyer persona in terms of his behavior, business type, profession, motivation, passion, demographics will help you march towards the path where you can easily identify “type of product or service they are looking for”.

Know Your Client-Base First

By interviewing such elements or your potential clients, you can plan to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first, as such products will always have scope for further enhancements & will always invite users to put-in their thoughts & functionalities within it.

You can develop as many product packages based on every different buyer persona to gain a competitive edge.

2. Choosing A Pricing Model That Compliments Your End-Users Requirement

On a broader level, there are 3 types of pricing models for extending software-as-a-service solutions that you can choose from-Usage-based pricing, flat-rate pricing & Tiered pricing. Let’s extend these terms to get their better understanding:

  • Usage-Based Pricing:

It’s the most common pricing model where users pay the fees each time they use storage, data or make transactions. As a development company, you can opt for this type of pricing model for your clients who have a small startup or financial base and cannot afford to pay extensively at one go.

  • Flat-Rate Pricing:

It’s the basic pricing model where only a single software-as-a-service product, with a particular set of features under one pay, is made available to the end-users. Here a predetermined subscription fee is charged from the client’s pocket. As a SaaS application development service provider, you can go ahead with this model if your end-users are comfortable at paying hassle-free all at once rather than after utilizing the services.

  • Tiered Pricing:

Here a variety of software-as-service packages at different cost plans, features & functionalities are circulated for different clients’ requirements. This model is great to have on-board if your company wants to target buyers of multiple personas & requirements single-handedly.

You can choose any of the above pricing models based on your client behavior, buying pattern & growth opportunities.

3. Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

To start on a good note as a SaaS development company, make sure the user-experience & customer satisfaction you deliver to your clients is top-notch. Be precise & careful while developing your first software, choose the UX elements carefully.

Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

Here is how you can add on to your Customer Satisfaction:

  • Be transparent with your customers, timely update them with every module, and ask them for necessary suggestions to ensure project success. Along with it, find the best solutions to treat lacking areas before final deployment. Since every development will be parsed through agile methodology, it will be easy to iterate fast & make the fixes asap.
  • To give your clients the hang of your developed software, draft some welcome emails, tutorial guides, or allot a personal assistant to guide through the functionality of developed products from your end.
  • There is no such thing as over-communication. You can strengthen your bond with your clients by always keeping them in the loop, questioning their requirements, gathering their feedback to foster a better product development environment & customer experiences.

4. Deploying SaaS-Specific Marketing Practices

Software-as-a-service solutions since they have no physical traces and changes constantly need special attention when it comes to their marketing. Although, if SaaS products are carefully architected & render top-notch services, there lies no need for marketing tactics, much.

But if the product has just started on hit & trial methods and demands huge penetration in the market on the initial levels, these all things for you as SaaS application development providers can do to gain better traction with your prospects:

  • Give your customers free trials to let them vibe with the product & get the better tuning with it until they don’t start paying for it.
  • Shoot a series of blog posts in the software-as-a-service community, defining your business stories and how you craft products suiting to every project requirement.
  • Reward a customer if he/she suggests you or refer your SaaS app development services by inundating some reward programs.

5. Preparing For Third-Party Integrations Way Before The Software Development

Since SaaS applications work on a cloud network, their integration with data centers & other third-party platforms has to be secure, effortless & quick. A SaaS development company here has to be well-equipped with third-party integration strategies way before they commence with the development phase. Here is how you can go ahead:

  • SaaS applications must have great data synchronization with different third-party channels. For instance, if the app targets the travel tech industry, the integration with accommodation options like Airbnb could be considered.
  • Consider developing a platform that makes your end-users life easier by enabling them to work with PDF files, ZIP files archives to streamline data import.
  • Create a browser extension of your product to let users have your product in hand all the time. For instance, popular app Grammarly has a web extension that allows users to integrate it with already in use applications.
  • Decide the payment integration option that users prefer and are safest in all accord.
  • To achieve great user coverage, integrate your product or software with SDK tools of framework like Microsoft (as it’s vastly used for enterprise suites).

6. Render Software With Possible Offline Mode Support

Downtime of the app or unstable Wi-Fi can take a toll on anyone, especially when the important task is in process.

International Data Corporation compiled a stat that “for the fortune 1000 companies, the average cost they had to bear after their unplanned application downtime was ranging between $1.25 – $2.5 per year”.

No matter the enterprises operate via software-as-a-service applications, one downtime or poor-connectivity can lead to unsubscription of such software.

Extend support of offline accessibility as a SaaS application development services provider:

  • Make provision for the information or data to store even in the offline mode, as soon as the connectivity restores, data should be able to sync well.
  • Make a feature of “download files” (to let users download important files) when situations like downtime come unannounced.
  • Make an automated/manual update function to help with the syncing of data or documents when a proper connection is available.

7. Bring Aboard A “Customer Success Management” Department

“Customer success is not about support or being reactive – it’s always about being proactive.”

Having a customer success management department will act as a link between “where the sales happen” & the “product’s functionality” – which will help to evaluate your customer’s actual health by using mixes of usage data, contextual inputs, marketing, sales & customer support strategies.

The advent of such will evoke the users to share their true stories behind the usage of such software or product, which will eventually help to drive more cross-sells.

This is how you can funnel your CSM or Customer Success, and Management team:

  • Customer success management (CSM) team should be collaborative with the other organizational teams be it sales, product or marketing as it will help in sketching & resolving customer issues from all ground levels.
  • “Users love when they are served beyond their expectations”, the job role of your CSM team shouldn’t restrict to just delivering what users are expecting but it should race beyond the delivered promises as well. Your team can go the extra mile by preparing product based on different users & their traits, arrange some webinars or seminars to educate your product scope, or shoot a support mail even after delivering the product maybe with a message “Hey, how are you doing with the software we developed for you”.
  • Be on tips with the consumer metrics, these metrics can be in terms of – when & how soon the user is willing to upgrade to high-subscription plans, or how much they are liking the product/software that they are ready to prefer it to a friend or inside their circle.

8. Keep Your Analytics Handy To Measure The Key Metrics

It’s important to keep the analytics handy to determine the progressing growth of SaaS development services company, as such businesses are prone to suffer losses in the early years of their operation. Losses occur because acquisition costs exceed, sometimes customers pay only after utilizing the product/services, which is why actual revenue comes very late.

Thereby, it becomes immense for such software development businesses to know & understand the key metrics in advance – to know whether their business is scaling up or is turning towards major pitfall.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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To know when to put the breaks on time or know if your company is viable in proceeding ahead, consider the following metrics to measure success:

  • Consider billing date over the booking date to evaluate your revenue flow, as on billing date you get the actual sum flowing into your bank account – this will help you access the true financial health of your company.
  • Evaluate the reason behind the churn rate. Churn rate is a situation where users stop subscribing to a particular service (here it’s SaaS). Calculate the number of churn rates & possible reasons that triggered its advent.
  • Balancing the Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost spent on customers to persuade to buy the product/service. LTV or Lifetime Value is a predicted net profit that is expected from the future relationship with customers. The LTV figures should be 3 times greater than CAC, even if it’s the other way, that should not be continued for a long time as higher CAC value depicts that the company is putting a lot of cost on retaining customers than actually gaining from them.

These were the few metrics that can help to evaluate your business drive & allow you to put in the breaks before you are close to any downhill.

Winding Up!

These were the few ways demonstrating how you can go big with your software-as-service specific development business, the success & profitability of establishing such business lies in how well you are staying in competition and treating your customers with the best possible product ever.

Go the extra mile, beyond delivered promises, know what your customer’s persona is, find what pricing strategy is keeping LTV in action, create your metrics that are visible in your customers’ success, and chalk out several other your side of strategies to funnel your business.

To get basic to extreme support in the preparation of your SaaS-based business model, reach out to Andolasoft Inc, a SaaS application development company, where we consult, develop & deploy the high selling SaaS-based products by following the aforementioned points & hundreds of others (which you will find out on consulting us).

Have a cloud-based app development project to finish? Request for a callback!!!

How To Sell SaaS Product To More Customers With Less Time

Posted on by Hermit Chawla

Running a SaaS company is a big task for any CEO. Ideally, you’ve assembled the correct group around you, yet when you are merely beginning, your group may be extended flimsy, taking on different jobs.

If you don’t have a new business coming in all the time, at that point, before you know it, you’ll be out of income, and your SaaS will be dead in the water.

So how would you ensure you can keep everything running smoothly, while as yet acquiring a new business?

Here are top SaaS solutions on how to sell SaaS product to more customers with less time

1. Comprehend The Value Of Your Product

You ought to have the option to persuade your possibility of the genuine estimation of your product.

What are the advantages to your possibility, and by what method will your product assist them with accomplishing their objectives?

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On the off chance that you are experiencing difficulty articulating any of this to a possibility with certainty, you may need to return and invest some energy working it out.

2. Contract A Sales Team

Try not to be modest while enlisting your sales group; a high sales rep will pay for themselves, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Yet, that doesn’t mean you should employ just anyone. Be particular; somebody who might make a decent remote helper (VA) doesn’t have the right stuff necessary to bring a deal to a close.

On the off chance that you redistribute your sales to an inappropriate people, your bet is accomplishing more damage to your business than great.

3. Make Your Email Campaigns More Personal

Individuals’ inboxes are pummeled with messages each day, so, significantly, you can stick out and offer worth — mainly if they are possibilities trialing your product just because.

Have a go at making your correspondences with your clients progressively close to home. Utilize genuine names in your email addresses instead of “Sales@yoursaas.com” or “admin@yoursaas.com.”

It might appear to be a little detail, yet it’s the seemingly insignificant details that can have a significant effect while associating with your clients.

4. Email Tracking Strategy

Messages ought to go out in various circumstances, for example, upon joining, on the off chance that they visit the record crossing out page, or if their preliminary is reaching a conclusion.

It additionally shows that you care about how they are utilizing your software and that you effectively see approaches to improve their client experience.

5. Call Your Customers

Not every one of your possibilities will need to jump on the telephone, yet addressing individuals straightforwardly can massively affect changing over an opportunity into a paying client.

The phone is an extraordinary method to qualify or exclude somebody rapidly, or for you to react to any protests on the spot.

6. Always Give Demo Of Your Product

Concentrate on demonstrating a possibility of how your product is going to assist them with being progressively fruitful.

Keep the demo short; on the off chance that you can’t get the estimation of your product across in under 15 minutes, at that point, you are accomplishing something incorrectly.

You either don’t have the foggiest idea about your product, your possibility, or the worth you are giving.

Now and again, the SaaS sales rep completes the demo by saying thank you and never requesting the deal while the lead is hot.

Your demo is a sales apparatus, so toward the finish of the demo, clarify what the subsequent stages are for them to pay for your software.

The best time to request the deal is the point at which your possibility has your product front-of-mind.

7. SaaS Development

The cash is in the development. It would help if you got either a reasonable yes or no. A perhaps is undoubtedly not a no until it’s a no.

So ensure you or your group follow up until your possibility offers you a response somehow.

Utilize a client/customer relationship with the board framework (also called a CRM) to deal with this, or you can set up mechanization in your auto-responder to do this.

Set a few principles, so on the off chance that they don’t react to or open the messages, you get told to catch up physically either by email or telephone.

8. Nail Our On-boarding Process

You have to ensure that when your clients pay for your product, they are utilizing it.

How often have you pursued the rec center, just to quit pursuing a month or two?

What occurs straightaway?

You drop your participation following a half year since you aren’t utilizing it and are simply squandering your cash.

This is the reason it’s critical to have an onboarding procedure. Onboarding is the way you ensure your clients are taking advantage of it, so they don’t alter their perspective and drop.

The unpredictability of your product will decide how included you or your group should be while onboarding.

Bomb this, be that as it may, and your clients will stir quicker than a child experiences diapers.

9. Increment Your Prices

While prevailing over your rivals on cost may appear to be a decent method to get a head start in your industry, selling your product also efficiently may reverse discharge, making numerous possibilities question in the event that you can convey on your guarantees.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

It costs a similar measure of exertion to procure one $10 client as it does one $50 client, so is there any good reason why you wouldn’t have any desire to get 100 $50 clients rather than 100 $10 clients?

10. Sell Prepaid Annual Plans

One approach to decrease your beat and to get clients to submit long haul is to sell prepaid yearly evaluating plans.

While month to month repeating income (MRR) is better when it’s coming in routinely, everything necessary is several bombed installments, and out of nowhere, you’ve lost a client.

Take a stab at offering your possibilities limited rates if they purchase a prepaid yearly arrangement, and give them what the rebate resembles from month to month.

Know that annual estimating implies you get all the cash in advance, so if you spend everything promptly, you’ll be sitting tight an entire year for the following part of income to come in, instead of the next month, which influences your month to month income.