Dan Martell - November 15, 2021


5 SaaS Growth Strategies I’ve Learned From Non-SaaS Businesses

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Tony Robbins Franchise Prototypes Michael Gerber Alex Harimono Henry Ford Erica Rice Elon Musk Leila Ryan Matt
How To Hire & Retain High Performers For Your Startup How To Stop Micromanaging And Start Leading

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

191.46

Word count

2,439

Sentence count

128


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dan Martell shares 5 different industries and 5 specific lessons he has learned from them to help you grow your SaaS company. If you re an entrepreneur, you re going to want to pay attention to these 5 examples.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.080 You can study the best of the best.
00:00:02.240 If somebody is growing, they're leaving clues.
00:00:04.520 You know, Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues.
00:00:19.640 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell,
00:00:20.640 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:22.640 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:25.000 five different businesses that I look at,
00:00:27.760 or I've learned from as a software,
00:00:29.660 as a service SaaS entrepreneur,
00:00:32.260 to be inspired to help me come up with growth ideas
00:00:35.100 and be sure to stay with the end,
00:00:36.220 we're gonna share with you an exclusive training,
00:00:38.100 it's called the Idea to Exit mini course.
00:00:40.720 So if you wanna learn how I identify opportunities
00:00:43.320 in the market, build a clickable prototype,
00:00:45.700 pre-sell that to get funding,
00:00:47.320 to eventually recruit dev team
00:00:48.960 and all the process around that,
00:00:50.420 be sure to stay at the end,
00:00:51.840 but let's get into the different markets
00:00:54.340 that you can use to be inspired to grow your SaaS company.
00:00:57.440 One of my favorite sayings,
00:00:58.860 I actually don't know who said it,
00:01:00.120 but it's learn wide, practice narrow.
00:01:03.680 And I like that idea because I'm always looking
00:01:07.080 for inspiration in the world
00:01:09.920 to find things that I can use inside my businesses.
00:01:12.240 I mean, it doesn't matter if, you know,
00:01:14.340 Henry Ford learned about building the assembly line
00:01:17.260 from a meat packer in Chicago.
00:01:19.080 If you are eating at a restaurant
00:01:21.540 and you see something interesting,
00:01:22.680 the way they bundle up maybe the menu,
00:01:25.040 that might be inspiring.
00:01:26.180 or you're talking, you're hiring somebody
00:01:28.000 to come deal with your, you know,
00:01:29.940 some like lawn care at your house.
00:01:31.420 And maybe there was something,
00:01:32.700 the way they did their promotion
00:01:33.940 and the offer that you can be inspired.
00:01:35.600 I mean, the world is full of smart entrepreneurs,
00:01:40.500 systems, repeatable systems.
00:01:42.580 If you've ever read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber,
00:01:44.500 Franchise Prototypes,
00:01:46.220 where folks have figured something out.
00:01:48.560 You know, it might be the way they deliver the service.
00:01:50.480 It could be the way they price something.
00:01:51.860 It could be the way they market it.
00:01:53.220 And your job as the entrepreneur
00:01:55.520 is to learn wide, to be inspired,
00:01:58.220 to take those learnings and go narrow in the implementation
00:02:02.280 so that you can get an unfair advantage.
00:02:04.220 If you're doing what everybody else is doing,
00:02:06.880 I guarantee that you're gonna have the exact same results
00:02:09.400 as your other peers in the market.
00:02:11.340 But if you find those nuances,
00:02:13.240 those opportunities to R&D,
00:02:16.240 what I call rob and duplicate from other industries,
00:02:18.880 non-competitive,
00:02:20.040 that's where things start to get interesting.
00:02:21.900 So I wanna share with you five different industries
00:02:24.240 and the specific things that I took from those industries
00:02:27.300 to help me grow my software companies.
00:02:29.320 Upsells, this is one of my favorite.
00:02:31.720 I learned this from the gym industry, the fitness industry.
00:02:35.340 I've been blessed to have two friends of mine,
00:02:37.960 Leila and Alex Hermozzi,
00:02:39.300 who are arguably the top experts in the world of gyms.
00:02:43.400 They have a company called Gym Launch.
00:02:44.660 They help fitness studios, group studios, et cetera,
00:02:48.260 personal trainers to kind of build and scale their businesses.
00:02:52.520 And one of the things that they taught me,
00:02:54.740 cause I was involved in a CrossFit gym, was how to upsell.
00:02:57.800 So when people come in to your gym,
00:03:00.560 a lot of people will just sell them a monthly membership.
00:03:02.480 It's like, oh, we have a discount, here you go.
00:03:04.480 But that's not the full solution.
00:03:06.460 To me, the way I think about an upsell is, okay,
00:03:08.760 if they came in for one specific problem to be solved,
00:03:11.720 I got to look at other opportunities to truly solve it.
00:03:15.080 So I've always joked that SaaS, software as a service,
00:03:17.840 really should be success as a service.
00:03:20.660 And you can look for opportunities in your offering
00:03:23.540 where you could upsell people to a higher level of service
00:03:27.240 in the initial conversation.
00:03:28.960 That might be by adding some success coaching
00:03:33.260 as part of the upsell.
00:03:34.480 That might be getting them on a better tier
00:03:36.600 that's gonna meet their needs
00:03:37.720 in regards to integration with their CRM tool.
00:03:39.760 Maybe they use Salesforce.
00:03:41.300 But I love the idea of having somebody
00:03:44.640 think they're coming in this way,
00:03:46.420 and I do this with all my coaching clients,
00:03:48.500 to buy a package, but as soon as they come in,
00:03:51.200 get on a call with them, do what I call an account review,
00:03:53.940 and then see if there's opportunities for them
00:03:56.260 to be upsold in the higher tier program.
00:03:58.540 Number two, use cases.
00:04:00.640 So one of the things you'll learn quickly
00:04:02.300 if you're growing your software company
00:04:04.380 is your product probably has different use cases.
00:04:07.920 Maybe you have software, one of my friends, Ryan,
00:04:10.140 he has a body shop software,
00:04:12.000 and some customers use them for lead generation,
00:04:14.360 others for selling their quotes,
00:04:16.080 and others for scheduling the appointments
00:04:18.520 of the body shop service.
00:04:20.100 So those are different use cases.
00:04:22.140 Well, one of my favorite industries that I learned
00:04:24.660 because I used to do this was consulting.
00:04:27.120 So consulting industry has this solution selling approach
00:04:30.900 to their model because the truth is,
00:04:32.140 is they can do a lot of things.
00:04:33.380 Maybe you have a product that can be a lot of things
00:04:36.040 to a lot of people.
00:04:36.880 It's not the best situation.
00:04:38.420 Maybe you've got a little, what I call feature-itis.
00:04:40.420 Maybe you've been building people's features.
00:04:43.380 you're like a really expensive custom dev shop
00:04:46.260 or very inefficient custom dev shop for your customers.
00:04:48.760 So you just keep building a bunch of stuff.
00:04:50.300 So you've got, I mean, I've seen some cases
00:04:52.840 where there's a dozen use cases.
00:04:54.720 What consultant companies do really well
00:04:56.780 is even though their offering is intangible,
00:05:00.340 they kind of package them up into solutions.
00:05:03.380 So think of, you know, when you're doing marketing or sales
00:05:07.080 that you're trying to identify a use case
00:05:09.580 and you're using that to sell your solution,
00:05:12.540 not just trying to sell your solution broadly
00:05:15.020 in regards to the positioning that it serves,
00:05:17.080 but a specific outcome
00:05:19.020 or delivering a certain set of value to your customers.
00:05:22.180 That will increase your win rates by almost double
00:05:25.260 by just using use case selling or solution selling
00:05:28.620 and reduce your sales cycle by half
00:05:31.260 because you're speaking specifically
00:05:33.440 to a problem they have today.
00:05:34.380 And then once they come in,
00:05:35.360 you do what's called land and expand.
00:05:37.000 You get the deal, then you expand the account.
00:05:39.520 Number three, activation.
00:05:41.480 So when people use a new product that they're new to,
00:05:44.700 they've gotta learn some terminology,
00:05:46.680 they gotta learn how the product works,
00:05:48.000 they gotta learn the flows, the success paths,
00:05:51.100 the actions to set it up, to configure.
00:05:53.340 And I always look at the gaming industry
00:05:56.880 and like how does the new user signup process look?
00:06:01.720 How does the level one?
00:06:02.840 See, most people will realize in the gaming industry,
00:06:04.540 because maybe you don't play video games,
00:06:06.360 in the gaming industry,
00:06:07.360 the level one is essentially a tutorial level.
00:06:10.640 You can play it, but as you're playing it,
00:06:12.880 it'll pause and it'll go, okay, now this is how you jump.
00:06:15.420 And you learn to jump and then you're doing things like,
00:06:17.400 oh, this is how you duck
00:06:18.920 and you slide underneath an obstacle,
00:06:20.820 or this is how you jump onto a wall to be able to climb it.
00:06:24.080 And to me, when I look at a lot of software
00:06:27.540 that's struggling to retain customers,
00:06:30.820 most of the time they have an activation problem
00:06:32.760 because if somebody understood the value served
00:06:35.640 on the website, the promise you made,
00:06:37.460 and then they come into the product
00:06:38.820 and they don't stick around,
00:06:40.040 and you have like double digit monthly churn on logo churn,
00:06:43.220 then that means there's probably something
00:06:45.020 in that activation step that needs to be resolved.
00:06:47.580 So you literally don't have to build anything new.
00:06:49.340 You just gotta make sure the customers feel the value
00:06:53.020 that you promise on the homepage.
00:06:54.200 And that's usually done through activation.
00:06:55.840 So go and study video games.
00:06:57.760 Yes, I'm telling you to go
00:06:59.780 from a research mindset point of view
00:07:02.260 and go play a ton of video games
00:07:04.260 and make notes of how you can take those inspirations
00:07:07.280 and apply it to your product.
00:07:08.760 Number four, product.
00:07:10.220 You know, it's been written about lean startup.
00:07:13.060 Eric Ries, good friend of mine,
00:07:14.280 he was an advisor to my last company, Clarity,
00:07:16.840 where he talked about lean manufacturing techniques
00:07:19.300 approached or leveraged to drive product decision-making
00:07:23.740 and creative kind of product rollout
00:07:26.700 and marketing strategies.
00:07:28.360 And for me, as a kind of a self-taught programmer
00:07:32.080 and systems nerd,
00:07:33.380 I went deep in things like the Toyota production system
00:07:36.420 and Six Sigma and like quality assurance.
00:07:39.740 And how do you build product that has low defect rates
00:07:43.620 and, you know, just solves the customer's problem
00:07:46.440 and has longevity and is creative in the solution
00:07:49.900 that creates a platform that can be extended.
00:07:52.240 And I just think if you've never studied
00:07:54.300 the manufacturing industry to really inspire, you know
00:07:57.860 people think like, oh, software is such a new thing.
00:08:00.600 It's been around for like 20 some years
00:08:02.220 software as a service anyways, but manufacturing objects.
00:08:05.760 And especially when the stakes are high,
00:08:07.340 like industrial design or cars,
00:08:09.300 where the cost of a prototype in R&D
00:08:11.540 and then trying to manufacture it.
00:08:13.820 Elon Musk said, you know,
00:08:15.760 prototyping an MVP is table stakes,
00:08:18.240 like rockets to cars.
00:08:19.920 He says, what's really hard
00:08:21.580 is how do you mass produce those things?
00:08:23.960 And I think that if you wanna,
00:08:25.480 if you're struggling with product
00:08:27.100 and how that connects to engineering
00:08:29.020 and how do you make sure you solve customers' problems
00:08:32.280 and do it in a way that's not wasteful, right?
00:08:34.340 where you have to rewrite a feature
00:08:35.820 or you have to rewrite the implementation feature,
00:08:38.000 be sure to go study the manufacturing industry
00:08:40.220 because they've been doing it for hundreds of years.
00:08:42.100 They've got a lot of cool principles, best practices.
00:08:44.880 One of my favorites at the Toyota production system
00:08:48.860 is the idea that anybody can stop the line.
00:08:50.780 If somebody discovers something being done wrong,
00:08:54.460 they have the power, they're empowered to pull that string
00:08:58.060 and the whole line stops.
00:08:59.600 That means in that moment,
00:09:01.220 somebody that's their manager rushes over
00:09:03.480 to figure out what's going on to fix it
00:09:05.600 because you have hundreds of people
00:09:07.400 and hundreds of thousands of dollars of product
00:09:09.440 that's supposed to be produced every day,
00:09:10.700 if not millions of dollars,
00:09:12.040 but at least that's a really neat way.
00:09:14.720 How do you do that in your software process?
00:09:17.080 I don't know.
00:09:17.920 I'm gonna let you figure that out.
00:09:19.000 I actually know how we do it,
00:09:20.460 especially if you're using things like continuing integration,
00:09:23.160 CI, if you don't know what that is, go Google it,
00:09:25.400 but be sure to be inspired from the manufacturing industry
00:09:28.560 because it's an old industry.
00:09:30.140 They have a ton of cool best practices and principles.
00:09:32.500 And I think you'll really be inspired
00:09:33.960 by how they solve some of the problems
00:09:35.100 you're probably dealing with today.
00:09:37.420 Number five, pricing.
00:09:38.920 This is one where I'm not gonna even mention
00:09:41.440 a specific industry.
00:09:42.680 I'm just gonna say it's all around you.
00:09:45.580 Everything from my friend, Matt,
00:09:48.040 who runs a company called Pila Case
00:09:49.560 and the way they were doing a buy one, get one free,
00:09:51.880 the buy one, wash one case cover.
00:09:54.260 So they actually do this cell phone case.
00:09:56.740 So go check out Pila.
00:09:58.900 to just like pricing discounts,
00:10:03.900 getting people to decide to make a decision,
00:10:07.140 guarantees the offer, the packaging.
00:10:09.580 I mean, pricing is really value metrics.
00:10:12.020 There are so many people around.
00:10:16.000 And I like to study the folks that have been around
00:10:18.200 that grow the fastest,
00:10:19.180 because there's usually something around the offer.
00:10:21.100 There's something around the way they price their product
00:10:23.620 that really allowed the market to understand it quickly
00:10:27.680 and cycle through and get success
00:10:29.620 and feel like whatever they invested to pay for,
00:10:33.020 what they actually wrote a check for,
00:10:34.600 that it's valuable.
00:10:36.100 And if you can look at these successful companies,
00:10:38.560 one of the ways I do is I go look at the Inc. 100.
00:10:40.900 The Inc. 100, fastest growing companies, not 500.
00:10:44.440 Skip the, make it just the 100.
00:10:46.560 Go look at their product sites.
00:10:48.240 Go look at their pricing.
00:10:49.060 Go look at how they communicate their offers.
00:10:51.760 Get on their email list.
00:10:53.220 Get on their ad remarketing.
00:10:54.940 Start seeing their ads and offers showing up
00:10:57.440 in your Facebook feed so that you can study the best of the best. If somebody is growing,
00:11:02.800 they're leaving clues. Tony Robbins says success leaves clues. You want to get into their world
00:11:08.420 so you can be exposed to those clues to really perfect your pricing because that is where the
00:11:14.160 magic is going to happen. And it is all around us. Anytime you see an offer, just make sure you
00:11:19.220 pattern match against people that are actually successful. So quick recap, five industries to
00:11:24.200 learn from to grow your SaaS company.
00:11:26.740 Number one, upsells from gyms.
00:11:28.760 Number two, use case selling from consultants.
00:11:31.240 Number three, activation from the gaming industry.
00:11:34.320 Number four, product design from manufacturing.
00:11:37.860 And number five, pricing from all people around us
00:11:41.600 selling anything, especially the fastest growing ones.
00:11:44.880 That's how you will take things to the next level.
00:11:47.340 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
00:11:48.740 I wanna share with you the idea to exit mini course.
00:11:51.360 Click the link below to get access
00:11:53.360 of the exclusive training,
00:11:54.420 where I'm gonna show you the three stages
00:11:56.680 that I use to launch new software projects
00:11:59.560 to give you the roadmap.
00:12:01.000 Maybe you've been software curious,
00:12:02.540 you've been following me for a while,
00:12:04.080 and now is the time that you decide to jump in
00:12:06.900 with both feet.
00:12:08.360 Click the link below to get access
00:12:09.820 to that free mini course to inspire you
00:12:12.520 to approach it without wasting all your money,
00:12:15.160 wasting your time or building something
00:12:17.360 that nobody wanted in the first place,
00:12:19.120 but they were kind to you because people are nice,
00:12:22.380 but that does not mean they're gonna part with their money.
00:12:24.480 So click the link to get access to that.
00:12:25.880 If you liked this episode,
00:12:27.240 be sure to click the subscribe button,
00:12:29.700 share it with somebody that you care about
00:12:31.880 and leave a comment.
00:12:32.880 Let me know is the number one thing you took away
00:12:35.340 from today's episode.
00:12:37.160 And as for usual, I want to encourage you
00:12:40.180 and challenge you to live a bigger life
00:12:41.920 and a bigger business.
00:12:42.860 And I'll see you next Monday.