Dan Martell - How To Build a SaaS Cancellation System

00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor,

00:00:02.000 and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.080 In this video, I'm going to teach you

00:00:04.720 how to create a SaaS cancellation page or system

00:00:08.480 to make sure you capture the cancellation.

00:00:10.680 And be sure to stay to the end where I'm

00:00:12.120 going to tell you how to get access to my free cancellation

00:00:14.960 page template.

00:00:16.080 Literally, all the copy, the landing pages, the wireframes,

00:00:19.000 all designed for you using the principles I'm

00:00:21.360 going to teach you in this video.

00:00:23.080 Let's get into it.

00:00:30.000 So one of the things that are going

00:00:38.380 to frustrate you the most building a software business

00:00:40.980 is churn and cancellations.

00:00:43.260 People come in, use the product, and leave.

00:00:45.860 It's like little stabs in the heart

00:00:48.480 because you put your heart and literally everything

00:00:51.960 into your business, and they're just

00:00:53.400 leaving out the back door.

00:00:55.020 It's a leaky bucket, and you want to stop them.

00:00:57.200 When I was doing this for Flowtown,

00:00:58.600 We had 20% monthly churn.

00:01:01.200 And I had to understand how to solve this.

00:01:02.960 I read the books, the blog posts, listened to the podcast,

00:01:06.060 and implemented the strategies that

00:01:08.040 were recommended to get it down to 8% churn.

00:01:11.100 That was for my own companies.

00:01:12.280 And since then, I've literally coached hundreds of SaaS

00:01:15.560 founders to reduce the churn in their business.

00:01:18.500 And one of the core frameworks is the cancellation page.

00:01:23.380 And there's three key principles that you

00:01:26.080 need to understand and think about when you're designing

00:01:28.020 These are going to walk you through.

00:01:29.340 Number one, remind the loss.

00:01:32.460 If somebody is going to cancel and they've spent time,

00:01:35.520 hopefully you got them activated through your trial process

00:01:38.160 or your onboarding or customer success,

00:01:40.320 and they've implemented information,

00:01:42.360 they've connected devices, and they've used Zapier

00:01:44.960 to connect different tools, and there's data in the system,

00:01:49.140 then when they go to cancel, you actually

00:01:52.200 need to show them doing this will

00:01:55.980 cause you to lose the 15 landing pages, the 400,000 contacts,

00:02:00.980 the whatever assets or information

00:02:03.720 they've already configured, right?

00:02:06.600 The more you can make it seem or like maybe they

00:02:10.220 got some value from the product.

00:02:11.740 The more you can let them know the impact or the loss

00:02:15.800 that they're going to have from using your product

00:02:17.880 when they go to that cancellation page,

00:02:19.600 it's like right front and center and bolded,

00:02:22.140 then it's going to give you the opportunity

00:02:24.900 to make them think twice.

00:02:26.440 And it's in that, hmm, is this really the right time

00:02:29.980 to cancel this service?

00:02:30.980 Maybe I should go work some other areas of the business.

00:02:33.140 Because whatever reason, they're probably

00:02:34.440 looking to upgrade.

00:02:35.140 It's not that they don't want to use it anymore.

00:02:36.600 They just need something that's different, maybe better,

00:02:39.100 because it's missing a feature.

00:02:40.520 So you want to remind them of the loss

00:02:43.140 to make them think twice.

00:02:44.900 Number two, align alternatives.

00:02:47.560 So this, to me, is the most powerful opportunity,

00:02:50.280 if you don't have a cancellation page process,

00:02:52.680 is to ask them why they're cancelling.

00:02:55.900 Is it the price?

00:02:57.080 Is it the features?

00:02:58.400 Is it the configuration?

00:03:00.100 Is it the support?

00:03:01.580 Whatever the issue is within the product,

00:03:04.320 as soon as you know that, OK, and I'm

00:03:06.300 going to give you the templates, but if you have a tab

00:03:08.560 and ask them all these different reasons they're cancelling,

00:03:11.880 then you can provide alternatives.

00:03:14.380 If somebody's downloading or cancelling because of the price,

00:03:16.740 maybe it's because you have a marketing tool

00:03:18.780 and they're no longer using that marketing channel,

00:03:20.700 or they've already done the work and they're

00:03:22.440 not going to need this for another quarter, whatever it is.

00:03:24.600 So you can introduce maybe a pause plan,

00:03:27.080 where they can save their data in the system

00:03:29.380 for a lower monthly cost that's worth it

00:03:31.800 so that when they come back in three months,

00:03:33.480 they don't have to reset everything up.

00:03:35.600 If they've already invited team members, created templates,

00:03:37.640 processes, et cetera, in your tool,

00:03:39.860 you can maybe downsell them to a different plan

00:03:41.900 or upsell them to the plan that has the missing features

00:03:44.880 that they want.

00:03:45.500 So that's another option is you want to say,

00:03:47.100 is it a missing feature?

00:03:48.000 Maybe that thing you need, for example, Salesforce integration

00:03:51.720 is available as an add-on or in a higher level plan.

00:03:56.340 So you want to make sure that you align the alternatives

00:03:59.360 to the situation they're in.

00:04:00.580 If they go and say, hey, it's because it's not

00:04:04.800 working the way I needed it to, then

00:04:06.660 you might want to offer a one-on-one customer success

00:04:09.900 conversation.

00:04:11.060 Or you might want to offer some training.

00:04:12.820 Or you want to get them started on a chat.

00:04:15.980 Maybe they're having an issue that

00:04:17.240 could be covered through one of your customer support reps,

00:04:19.580 and you just want to start a chat.

00:04:20.860 There's all these different reasons

00:04:22.740 that people are canceling.

00:04:24.160 And if you can align the alternatives

00:04:26.320 to the specific reason, then you're

00:04:28.860 going to have the highest probability

00:04:30.820 to save them from canceling, from churning from your product.

00:04:35.220 Number three, win the why. 0.62

00:04:37.420 So to me, if somebody is going to cancel, I can't save them.

00:04:40.420 I can't align alternatives.

00:04:41.760 I can't remind them of the loss.

00:04:44.040 And they're going to cancel anyways.

00:04:45.840 I need to understand why.

00:04:47.600 I need to capture that.

00:04:48.640 And I think a lot of you guys are like, yeah, well,

00:04:50.620 our interface isn't great.

00:04:51.800 Or, yeah, I know we're missing this feature.

00:04:54.280 I don't care if you think you know.

00:04:55.740 I want you to ask.

00:04:57.580 And I want you to capture that.

00:04:59.200 And the way I coach my clients to integrate this feedback

00:05:03.160 is you put it into the product meeting.

00:05:05.420 To me, if the cancellation reasons,

00:05:09.220 the words written down by your customers when they canceled

00:05:12.200 are not being reviewed by you if you're managing product

00:05:14.680 or your product manager on a weekly basis,

00:05:17.320 then you don't understand the economic model of SaaS.

00:05:21.080 Because the way it works is retention.

00:05:23.020 It's saving customers.

00:05:24.440 It's building a product that better meets the needs.

00:05:26.880 Because you made them a promise, and there

00:05:29.020 is a gap between your promise and what the product actually

00:05:31.700 did.

00:05:32.200 And you need to build the bridge across that gap.

00:05:34.600 You need to fix the product so it delivers on that promise.

00:05:37.660 And it's going to come from the cancellation.

00:05:39.740 So you want to capture the why, why they're canceling,

00:05:42.740 and feed that into the product manager's conversation.

00:05:46.620 So real quick recap how to build a SaaS cancellation system.

00:05:51.520 Number one, remind the loss.

00:05:53.880 Number two, align alternatives.

00:05:56.220 And number three, win the why.

00:05:59.220 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:06:01.120 I want to share with you my exact template

00:06:03.500 to implementing this into your business.

00:06:05.460 It's called the cancellation page template.

00:06:07.740 You can click the link below to download your copy

00:06:10.680 of the full wireframes, the different tabs,

00:06:13.560 the copy on those pages, the alternatives

00:06:16.760 that I would recommend for each different scenario

00:06:19.180 so that you can make this simple and implement

00:06:21.340 in your business, click the link below

00:06:23.520 to download your copy of my PDF template.

00:06:26.520 And if you like this video, be sure to subscribe to the channel

00:06:29.820 or hit the like button.

00:06:31.140 If there's anybody else that you know that this could serve,

00:06:33.340 feel free to share with them directly.

00:06:34.540 And don't forget to turn off the notification bell

00:06:36.700 so that you get notified as we publish new videos every week.

00:06:41.080 As per usual, I want to challenge you

00:06:43.040 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:06:45.460 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:06:50.760 Ready?

Dan Martell - February 10, 2020

How To Build a SaaS Cancellation System

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