Scaling a SaaS business can be a huge challenge, but it's also an exciting opportunity to grow and improve. Just like leveling up in a video game, scaling your business means you need new strategies, better tools, and a strong team to handle bigger challenges. This guide will help you navigate the tricky parts of scaling by offering practical tips and real-life examples.
Sales: Automate & Train
As you scale Saas, you need to come to terms with this: you do need sales. It might happen later rather than sooner, but it's still a question of "when," not "if." So, start forming your sales wisely.
Scaling your sales operations involves establishing a repeatable and scalable process. Here are the steps to get you started:
Develop a sales playbook
Document your sales process, including scripts, objection handling, and closing techniques. This ensures consistency and efficiency as you onboard new sales reps. A well-defined sales playbook helps new hires get up to speed quickly and ensures that your team follows best practices consistently. It should cover every stage of the sales cycle, from lead generation to closing deals, and provide clear guidelines on how to handle various customer scenarios.
Implement a CRM system
Use a CRM to track interactions, manage leads, and analyze sales data. A CRM system is crucial for scaling and maintaining customer relationships. These tools help you streamline your sales process, improve customer service, and gain insights into sales performance through robust analytics and reporting features. With a reliable CRM, your sales team can focus on selling rather than administrative tasks.
If you don't know where to start, check out the US Chamber of Commerce article on how to choose a CRM. The point is, yes, there is Salesforce and HubSpot everyone talks about. But there are dozens of CRMs on the market that are designed to target more niche markets and industries, and there's a good chance you can find one more suitable for your business' needs and tasks.
Train your sales team
Regularly train your sales team on new strategies, tools, and market trends. Continuous education helps keep your team sharp and adaptable. Training should be an ongoing process, with sessions covering new product features, industry developments, and advanced sales techniques. Encourage your team to attend webinars, workshops, and conferences to stay updated and motivated. The specifics of SaaS require your sales team to be both business-savvy and at least somewhat tech-savvy. So, make sure they know and understand your product well.
For SaaS, you will often need lead generation, customer success specialists and account managers. As you keep growing, make sure you don't overwhelm one person with all these tasks. Don't focus too much on individuals and foster a culture of teamwork and knowledge sharing.
Introduce top-down sales
Many startups in early stages rely on a bottom-up, product-lead approach for their sales. Simply put, if your product is good enough, people will start using it, recommend it to others, and, most importantly, adopt it in their teams. However, for SaaS scaling, you need to introduce top-down sales.
Top-down sales is a strategy where the sales process begins by targeting the highest-level decision-makers within a potential client organization, such as CEOs or senior executives. This approach aims to secure buy-in from top management first, which can then influence and expedite the adoption and purchase process throughout the entire company.
As Sarah Wang and David George from a16z put it about scaling B2B SaaS:
"As products proliferate through an Enterprise customer, there’s a limit to the users who want or are able to discover, use, and pay for it on their own. As the company starts to scale, relying purely on self-serve often results in an asymptotic flattening of the growth curve, resulting in linear or worse, declining growth."
Marketing: Learn What Works
When you’re trying to grow your marketing, it’s important to focus on what’s already working well.
Customer feedback
Talk to your current customers to find out how they first heard about your product. You can use surveys, interviews, and data analysis to get this information. This feedback will show you which marketing methods are most effective. For example, if many customers found you through a Google search, it means your SEO is strong. Knowing this helps you spend your time and money wisely.
Allocate more resources to successful channels
Once you know which marketing methods are working (like Google searches, social media, or word-of-mouth), put more effort into those. This might mean creating more blog posts, being more active on social media, or improving your referral programs. By focusing on what’s already working, you can get better results without wasting resources. For example, if email marketing is getting a lot of attention, consider sending more targeted emails.
Expand content marketing
Create valuable content that helps your audience with their problems. Good content, like blog posts, case studies, and guides, can bring in more visitors and show that your brand is an expert. This not only attracts new customers but also keeps current ones interested. Companies like HubSpot have grown a lot by creating useful content that draws people in.
Example: Dropbox’s referral program
Dropbox grew quickly by encouraging their users to invite friends. They rewarded users for bringing in new people, which led to a lot of new sign-ups through word-of-mouth. This strategy turned satisfied customers into promoters, reducing the cost of getting new users while increasing engagement and retention. Dropbox’s success shows how powerful it can be to use happy customers to spread the word about your product.
Management: Learn to Delegate
When you're growing a SaaS business, good management is super important to keep everything running smoothly.
Effective delegation
It's crucial to trust your team by giving them tasks they can handle well. This means figuring out who is good at what and giving them the right jobs. When you delegate tasks properly, you free up your own time to focus on bigger goals. It also helps your team feel responsible and motivated.
Regular check-ins
Have regular one-on-one meetings with your team members to talk about how things are going, solve any problems, and give feedback. These check-ins help you stay connected with your team and ensure everyone is working towards the same goals. They also show that you care about your team's success, which can boost morale and motivation.
Performance metrics
Use specific goals and measurements to track progress and see where improvements are needed. These metrics, known as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), should be clear, realistic, and time-bound. Regularly reviewing these metrics helps you make informed decisions and keep your team on track.
Hiring: Expand Strategically
When you think about how to approach SaaS scaling, think of the team who will be doing it. Growing it is vital. But it needs to be done carefully to fill in the necessary roles first and to not compromise the general team structure and company's culture.
Hire strategically
- Identify key positions and focus on hiring for roles that will have the most significant impact on your growth. This often includes positions in sales, marketing, and product development. Use a skills gap analysis to identify the roles that are crucial for your next growth phase. Tools like SkillSurvey or LinkedIn's Talent Insights can help.
- Avoid over-hiring: bringing on too many new employees too quickly can strain your resources and dilute your company culture. Instead, implement a phased hiring plan. Start with a few critical hires and evaluate the impact before adding more.
- Ensure each new hire aligns with your company culture and long-term goals. You can include culture fit assessments in your interview process. Use tools like Culture Index or custom interview questions focused on your core values.
- Use structured interviews and assessments to find the best candidates. Develop a standardized interview guide with scoring rubrics. Incorporate behavioral interview techniques and situational questions.
- Use assessments to gauge candidate skills and fit. Practical Tip: You can use platforms like Codility for technical roles or Criteria Corp for general cognitive and personality assessments.
Use cell division hiring
- Create new teams by splitting successful existing teams. This helps maintain productivity and smooth transitions during growth. For doing this, identify high-performing teams and leaders who can mentor new teams. Create a roadmap for splitting teams that includes timelines and key milestones.
- Ensure that successful team dynamics are preserved. Regularly check in with both the original and new teams to address any challenges. Use team-building activities to foster collaboration and morale.
- Facilitate knowledge transfer between old and new teams. Implement a mentorship program where experienced team members guide new ones. Use collaborative tools like Confluence or Notion for documentation and knowledge sharing.
Onboard effectively
- Develop a robust onboarding process to help new hires integrate quickly. Create an onboarding checklist that includes introductions, training sessions, and access to necessary tools and resources.
- Provide training, resources, and support to set them up for success. Use learning management systems (LMS) to deliver structured training programs.
- Conduct regular check-ins with new hires to ensure they are settling in well. Schedule 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins to review progress and address any concerns. Use feedback tools like SurveyMonkey or TINYpulse.
- In some cases, you can get more hands on deck with other options than hiring new personnel. Product design outsourcing is often a good idea when you don't have enough tasks for an in-house designer. And even if you do, due to scaling your team is overwhelmed, at Eleken, we offer team extension services: our designer basically becomes a part of your team for as long as you need them. So, don't be afraid to get a bit more creative with how you scale.
Product: Rethink Architecture and UX
When you're having trouble scaling a SaaS business, it often comes down to your product's code, design and functionality. They might simply not be ready for the expansion. Engage a senior designer to reframe your app with future functionality in mind. When scaling your product, it's not just about adding new features. You need to rethink the overall design and user experience.
Reevaluate product architecture
Make sure your product can handle more users and future growth. This might involve reworking the code, improving databases, and making the system more scalable. A good architecture is crucial for keeping your product reliable and fast as you grow.
Improve navigation and UX
If you've been on a market for long enough, there's a high chance your design is outdated and it's time to change it. As your product evolves, so should its navigation and user experience. Simplify user flows, enhance usability, and ensure a seamless experience across all touchpoints. A well-designed UX can significantly reduce churn and increase user satisfaction. Conduct regular usability testing and gather feedback to continuously improve the user experience.
Your old customers might hate it at the beginning. But it's the price you have to pay if you want to attract the new ones. Neither gaining new users nor expanding to new markets is possible if your design looks and feels straight out of 2010.
Add new functionality
To attract new users and markets, continuously add new features. Prioritize these features based on customer feedback and market trends. Avoid overloading your product with unnecessary features; focus on what adds real value. Agile development methods can help manage this process efficiently.
Reconsider your pricing strategy
Once you've started to scale – and especially after you've done the redesign and improved the product – it's only logical to either start charging more or diversify your pricing strategy with different tiers.
Take note that during SaaS scaling, changing your pricing often goes hand in hand with growing (or starting) your sales team. If you drive your product in the right direction, you can expect your customers to be willing to pay more. However, the more complex and pricier your product is, the more involvement from your company's side its acquisition requires.
Examples from Eleken's practice
There're quite a lot of SaaS B2B companies that came to us at a point when they were trying to scale. An outdated design became the bottleneck hindering their scaling efforts.
Ricochet360
Ricochet360, a cloud phone system and CRM platform, faced challenges as their user interface became difficult for new users to navigate, leading to a high churn rate. To tackle this, they partnered with us to redesign their product. The goal was to make the interface more intuitive and reduce the time required for new users to learn the system.
Our designers started with a thorough product analysis to identify friction points, such as the lack of standardized data entry formats and cluttered screens. Our designers made some smaller changes along the way to make the transition both quicker and easier for the customers who were used to the old design.
These strategic redesigns significantly shortened the learning curve, making the software easier to use and reducing the support burden on Ricochet360. The result was a more modern, user-friendly interface that positioned the company for successful scaling.
Data Streams
Data Streams, a data management product from Seoul, faced challenges when trying to enter the global market due to its complex user interface. To overcome this, they partnered with Eleken to redesign their product, aiming for a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.
Our design team conducted thorough competitor research to understand market demands and user expectations. They developed a new informational architecture, simplifying the redesign implementation. The team focused on creating user flows that catered to common scenarios, building a data flow from scratch.
Key improvements included a customized dashboard with drag-and-drop features, allowing users to organize their datasets visually. The new design also featured a streamlined browse screen, organizing essential information efficiently to minimize screen switching.
While working on a comprehensive redesign, our designers also delivered an interim UI revamp to provide immediate improvements. This dual approach allowed Data Streams to benefit from a modernized interface quickly, supporting their global expansion efforts.
The redesign significantly enhanced user experience, making the product more accessible and competitive in the international market. Data Streams' success showcases the importance of thoughtful UI/UX design in scaling SaaS products globally.
Conclusion
Scaling your SaaS business might seem like a daunting task, but with the right strategies, it can be an achievable and rewarding journey. Remember, it’s not just about getting bigger; it’s about getting better at what you do. Keeping in check various product design KPIs can help you understand where you are moving and how successful you are in your business processes.
Embrace the challenge, learn from the examples of successful companies, and don't be afraid to innovate and adapt along the way. With dedication and the right approach, your SaaS business can reach new heights and make a significant impact in the market.
If you need a reliable design partner to redesign your product to help you reach new customers and markets, drop us a word. At Eleken, we have a lot of experience of working with products that are trying to scale. Even if you have in-house designers but your growth requires some additional hands on deck, we're always glad to lend a helping hand.
