How to position your SaaS after reaching first million in ARR

Claire Sullentrop: 00:00:00

Hey, here's what your customers said they loved right? Now, here's what your marketing is currently doing, and here's what your messaging currently says. Here's all the gaps where we have opportunity to tighten up that messaging and go reach those customers in channels where they actually hang out, not just where you're kind of. Throwing ideas around because you heard that was a good idea.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:21

Hello everyone. Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast. I'm your host of pramine. Today we have Claire Sue Andro with us. Claire here runs a company called Forget the Funnel. Hey, Claire, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. All right, Claire, so let's talk about what forget the funnel does and you know how you sort of help your

Claire Sullentrop: 00:00:39

customers. Yeah, so forget the funnel is a boutique, uh, consulting firm. We work primarily, uh, nearly exclusively with SaaS companies. My co-founder, George, a Lotti, and myself, have long backgrounds in SaaS marketing. So I was, uh, originally the number two hire and the director of marketing at Calendly. That's how I got my start in SAS specifically. And Gia got her start in SAS as the, uh, original director of marketing and eventually VP of marketing at Unbound. Um, so we use our years of experience in that field and the, the growth framework that we've developed together, uh, which we've named the customer led growth Framework to help SAS companies rapidly figure out who within their customer base are their very best customer. Why do those best, most engaged stickiest customers choose their product versus anything else on the market? And then based on that insight, we help them improve their positioning, how they differentiate themselves, the marketing channels they use to attract more of those sticky, highly engaged, you know, high L T V customers.

Upendra Varma: 00:01:50

All right, we'll, we'll deep dive into all of those things. I mean, it's a pretty interesting problem that you're sort of trying to solve and. I know it's not, not gonna be easy, right? So we'll deep dive into that a bit. But I wanna get a sense of, you know, how many sort of, uh, SaaS customers you're sort of helping as of today and how, how you are sort of earning revenue from them. So just give us a sense of that as well.

Claire Sullentrop: 00:02:09

Yeah. Uh, in terms of how many, I mean at this point we've worked with dozens, uh, a couple hundred by now. Um, I would've to go look through our client's folder, but, uh, we've worked with some really, really awesome brands, uh, as well as you. Smaller startups that are just now making their name, um, some of the bigger brands that, that may have more recognition. Uh, full story, um, spark Toro, uh, the, the, the SAS that former MAs, c e o, ran Fishkin co-founded, uh, meet Edgar Social Media scheduling tool. Um, those are a couple of names that, uh, seem to be well known in the SASS and SASS marketing space. Um, but we've also worked with, you know, as, as I said, companies that are a little more under the radar, um, as.

Upendra Varma: 00:02:54

Right. So, so when, why do you say I've worked with, right. So when, at what point do you actually leave them and how does the whole arrangement work?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:03:02

Oh. Like how does the whole process work? Yeah.

Upendra Varma: 00:03:05

Okay. Um, so basically, so just help me understand at what stage do you jump in, right? So, and sort of, I think you can just pick one of your, uh, customers who's, who's been very successful. Just walk us through the entire process of how you actually sort of helped them and at what stage did you jump in? What did you do exactly? How did you turn out and when did you sort of leave them, if I can call it that Right. just walk, walk me through one such example. Yeah,

Claire Sullentrop: 00:03:28

absolutely. So a lot of times we get called in when. The company has reached a point at which they've maybe been like kind of tackling marketing in a very piecemeal way, and they don't really feel like they've gotten like their hands around like a good, repeatable, scalable marketing system. Um, some of the pain points that we hear when companies reach out to us is, you know, we've tried, uh, paid and it's not scaling or, you know, we, um, we don't really know which channels are working and which are a waste of our time. Um, sometimes companies realize that their channels aren't working, working because their positioning is kind of off, like their product has evolved and their positioning hasn't evolved with, with it. Um, another common scenario is, hey, we just raised a big round of funding. We have a lot of growth goals ahead of. and we know that like the, the kind of like entry level marketing we've been doing is no longer going to work. So those are some of the, like, those are some of the inflection points at which teams bring us in. Um, oftentimes they're at least one or more million in revenue, uh, and they've got Happy Pay customers already, um, in their product, right? So they've got product market fit, they've got happy people in there, and now they're like, okay, how do we really unlock why these people. Fired an old solution and hired us so that we can go find more of them. So what we do when we come in is we sit down with the leadership team and we, we say, okay, tell us about your best customers. So when I say best, I'm referring to those that, um, are super happy with the product. They get it right. They're not a big burden on support. Um, like they're, they're relatively low touch, uh, and, and happy with the core product. They're not asking for customizations all the time. um, they are clearly engaged. Like they're not, it's not as if they purchased and then no one ever implemented, but they're actually using it on a regular basis. Who are those folks within your larger customer base? And this part is really important of those folks. How many became customers? Recently, um, and recently really depends on the market. So for self-serve products, that might be a couple of months ago, they were acquired for a more enterprise product. Product. It might be within the year. Um, but what's important about learning from recent customers is one, they have the most experience with the current version of the product. And two, they remember what life was like before and what was so painful that they looked for a new, so, So we identify those folks. Um, and then we actually either through surveys, sometimes interviews, we unpack not just their, their buying experience, but their their struggling moment, right? Like we asked that customer to take us back to life before they were ever even familiar with this product. What were they doing? Were they using nothing? Were they using competitor? And then in their own words, Not in like a closed multiple choice survey, but their own words. What happened that made them say, okay, I need something else. Right. And we kind of unpack those pain points and, and what they need in a new product and what's really valuable. Uh, my favorite part, honestly, is we ask them, like what was so compelling about this product that they chose it over anything else? Um, lots of times we get phrases like, oh, it was easy to use, or great customer service, or, um, it was, you know, super fast setup. And we take those, those high level values and we actually map them to, okay, what are the attributes? What are the features in this product that create that value? So then we can get way sharper in the company's positioning and their product marketing about why they're different, why they're better than their competi. and then we, with those insights, we meet with the team and we say, Hey, here's what your customers said they loved right? Now, here's what your marketing is currently doing, and here's what your messaging currently says. Here's all the gaps where we have opportunity to tighten up that messaging and go reach those customers in channels where they actually hang out, not just where you're kind of. Throwing ideas around because you heard that was a good idea. Um, so that's the, that's the gist. Our, um, like services.

Upendra Varma: 00:07:43

So just, just a follow up question on that. I get so, so, uh, let's just say you figured out a real positioning for them, right? So, so what exactly do you say, right? Are you gonna say, okay, these are the three growth channels that are gonna work for you, just go and invest in it. Mm-hmm. is, is that what you're gonna come up with? Is, is that exact pathway that you're trying to sort of help them with? Such

Claire Sullentrop: 00:08:02

a good question. can I give a few examples? Yeah, sure.

Upendra Varma: 00:08:06

I would love an example that in fact, asked. Asked an example in the beginning. Okay.

Claire Sullentrop: 00:08:10

Yeah. Great. Um, so I'll choose two different ones where the outcome meant very, very different activities that the team pursued. Mm-hmm. So one, uh, it was Meet Edgar, the social media scheduling tool. Um, we learned that within their best customer, Or or group of best customers. There were people who basically sought out the product for two reasons.

Upendra Varma: 00:08:32

Can you just, uh, help me explain at which point this is, where was Meeted go at, uh, in

Claire Sullentrop: 00:08:37

terms of revenue? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yes. So when they reached out to us, they were already several million in a r r. Okay. Um, they had a very happy customer base, but. Um, even though they've, they were a, they were a rarity in that they had lots of great marketing. Yeah. Really good content. Um, a s a sophisticated ad strategy, like they were doing great. Yeah. But their revenue was still flatlining, like they were driving in new signups, but their, their trial, the paid rate wasn't great. And so new customers in turn were just kind of canceling each other out. Hmm. And so what we learned from talking with their most engaged customers, Customers showed up to meet Edgar to solve one of two problems. Uh, one, they were kind of more like, uh, early stage businesses that hadn't really invested in social media, and they wanted to see if it would work as a channel for building an audience and selling more. So they were kind of getting their hands around social media for the first time. And the other problem that a lot of people came to solve was more mature businesses that had already seen a lot of. In marketing on social media, and they were like, cool, this works. We need to scale. We can't do this manually anymore. Um, and what the team realized was, okay, that second group is way stickier, right? Mm-hmm. they're, they've already seen the value of, of this channel that we help them manage. Um, they're willing to pay more for tools to increase their presence on this channel versus those who are just kinda learning about social media. Um, you know, they may go out of business. It might not be a good channel for. and then we looked at their messaging and we were like, uhoh, y'all are trying to target both of these groups and you're not really speaking to anybody. Like, it's too vague. And so across their website, um, they, they ended because they had such strong marketing programs in place already, they didn't really do any additional marketing beyond what they were already paying for and investing in, but they did. The homepage, the features page, and the pricing page on their website to better speak to those more advanced businesses. And as a result of that, they ended up, oh, let me see if I can find the conversion rates. Um, da da da da. What's our media conversion rate? Um, shoot. Where is it? Uh, there's like a, this should be very like climactic and I, I can't find my case study. Um, they saw a. I wanna say 40% increase in the number of people visiting their website to sign up. Okay.

Upendra Varma: 00:11:14

Okay. Where's my, so I, that, that, that's, that's still a good number, right? I think I can work with that. So my question is, so you're saying the entire top of funnel lead generation, they already had, you know, channels that were bringing in, you know, new leads to the customers. All you help them is help them with this to sort of, you know, revamp that whole website, whole positioning so that the conversion just could go up, right? So yes. Is it that simple? I mean, my question is, I mean,

Claire Sullentrop: 00:11:39

In some cases, yes. And to your point, uh, in some, no. So what worked really well for Meet Edgar was their new positioning and messaging was attracting better fit customers. So not only did their conversion rate on the website increase their trial to paid conversion rate also increased cuz they were, they were bringing in more tech savvy users. Um, in other cases though, uh, we worked with, um, an HR tech company earlier this year and. we updated, yes, the positioning on their website, but also we, we worked with them to understand, you know, where are your ideal customers actually going when they look for a problem like this. Mm-hmm. And prior to that point, um, they'd been doing a lot of blog content. Um, they had a social media presence, but they, they hadn't really invested in. What they learned through our research were the channels where HR professionals were really hanging out, and so in their. What this work did was enable them to, um, we actually used Spark Toro. Mm-hmm. um, this audience research tool, and we helped them find private communities where HR professionals were hanging out. Uh, we helped them find podcasts where, HR professionals were going to to improve, like from a professional development perspective. And so they saw a big uptick because they had learned what channels they were just kind of defaulting to, and how those weren't actually the channels where they needed to be getting in front of their best customers.

Upendra Varma: 00:13:05

All right. So it's not just the conversion part that you typically help with, it's also the top of funnel sometimes,

Claire Sullentrop: 00:13:09

right? Yeah. Um, sometimes it's that it's really wherever there's the biggest opportunity for revenue growth. Yeah. Yeah.

Upendra Varma: 00:13:15

So, so yeah. Now, now my follow up question. So, So one thing I realized, right, talking to all of the SaaS founders is that your top of funnel and your conversion is heavily dependent upon your a acv, right? If you're, if you're selling, let's say a hundred dollars ticket versus, you know, a $10,000 ticket, right? So it's gonna vary, right? It's gonna vary entirely, right? So, So how do you sort of, I mean, you've got one experience. Yeah. And one thing I typically realize it is basically if you are a sales founder, you would have experience doing one thing or the other. Right? So you typically won't have experience of, you know, sort of solving all the problems at once. Right. Solving, coming up solution or framework, which will fit all markets. You real? Mm-hmm. you need real data, you can call that. Right? So how exactly are you sort of approaching these, you know, solutions for various such, you know, uh, markets?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:14:02

Yeah, it's such a good question. So the way that we think about it is in that, I, the, you may not have only one ideal customer group, to your point. Um, you may have an ideal customer group on your SM B plan, right? Where they're, you know, a, a lower A C, B, a C, B, and then you might have a different customer segment entirely that has more enterprise needs. So what we recommend and what we help companies do is that same process, um, but independently for those two different groups because ultimately, while they're both getting value from the same product, they might need very, very different experiences to get that value. Um, so it's, it's a process you can definitely rinse and repeat across different segments of the audience you serve. Um, another, another common example of serving multiple segments is companies that. Companies that, that have a product that helps both, you know, a single brand. Um, and, and that also helps service provider bra brands. So Spark Toro is a good example of that. Like the head of, you know, marketing at a startup would get a lot of value from Spark Toro, but so would an agency that serves clients over and over and over and over. So those two segments also need a different experience. Different features matter to them, um, and. Yeah, I hope that

Upendra Varma: 00:15:23

answers the question. Yeah. Yeah. So, so let me just sort of, uh, simplify what I was trying to understand. That's, for example, imagine I'm a SaaS founder, I come to you. Yep. Let's say I've grown 200 k r r, maybe something worked for me. I I might have came, I might have grown 200 K with a bunch of contacts, right? All of those things. Right Now I really wanna focus, I I wanna figure out those two or three, you know, uh, lead generation channels, right? That are going to predictively grow my business, right? So how exactly are you going to help me, you know, do this? So how exactly, what, what's your, what's your approach gonna look like for.

Claire Sullentrop: 00:15:53

Um, you said you're, you're a couple hundred K in a r r, so you have some customers Yes.

Upendra Varma: 00:15:59

But I don't have any proven, you know, acquisition channels. You can call something that's repeatable, right? I got them doing a bunch of random things, but nothing's really, you know, you can say nothing's fully predictable and nothing's really working. I wanna, I want those 2, 2, 3 channels that can bring me consistently, you know? So how would you help me?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:16:17

I would, one of the biggest challenges that SaaS teams face in choosing what marketing channels they should pursue is overwhelm There. So fucking many. Yeah. And there's always a new one. There's always a new channel. Exactly. Example. Um, so like suffering from overwhelm is probably the biggest blocker. And to avoid that, what I would do is of those customers that you find to be like the best fit for the product, I would actually ask them where they went when they were looking for solutions like yours. Um, did they go to Google? Did they actually just ask a friend? Um, did they hear about it in a private community? Did they hear about it at an event? Like where were the channels? They were actually looking for the information? And those are the channels that I would prioritize experimenting with with my team. Now, will that be your forever channel? Maybe not as you scale. But replicating what worked well for your best customers and where they spent time is the sures way to start driving more predictable growth. Oh, that's the, and then as you attract,

Upendra Varma: 00:17:22

yeah, go ahead. Yeah, that's, that's the thing, right? So basically, I like a typical SaaS founder who's, who's very early. I, I'm not even talking about somebody who's like couple hundred, you know, thousand in revenue. I'm talking about somebody who's still, you know, at an early stage, he got a bunch of customers doing a bunch of random things, but he really don't, don't know where they got, like, how to sort of scale that, you know, how to sort of figure out. Channels that, that I wanna work for them. I mean, there are like bunch of, whole bunch of them that he's gonna experiment with. Right. And if he keeps on experimenting with for next couple of years, he might just go bus. Right. Because it's not gonna work for them. Yeah. And so how do you sort of figure those working channels within like, you know, months time, you know, without actually going bus? So what's, what's your advice for them?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:18:01

Uh, what I just said, which is ask your customers. So

Upendra Varma: 00:18:04

that's the thing, right? So it's, it's, uh, so they really don't know where to get those customers from. I mean, so what happens is all of the SaaS founders these days, they do a lifetime deal or things like those, right? They get a whole bunch of customers. Now, how do you sort of figure out a channel, a channel that's going to effectively, you know, you

Claire Sullentrop: 00:18:20

send them an email, If you send them an email and you say, Hey, I'm the founder of this company. I'm super happy you're here. Um, I'd love to get on the phone for 30 minutes and really understand your experience because I want this thing to be great for you and I wanna find more folks like you. Um, and when you have early champion, like early customers who love you, it would be, uh, many people find it surprising how eager those folks are to talk to someone at the company. Um, in my early days at Calendly, When we were, we, we were lucky to not have an acquisition problem. The product, yeah. Really spread like wildfire and, and onboarding and, and activation were our bigger challenges. Um, but I was lucky enough to get to reach out to hundreds of different customers at that time, um, and just ask them, like, tell me, tell me how, how did you even find this thing we're brand new in the market? What were you looking for? What were you Googling? Um, what else did you consider? And really having those one-on-one conversations. A lot of times what I find, um, is that that founders, especially if it's their first business, founders, are hesitant to talk to customers one-on-one. They're, you know, worried because they've never done a research project and maybe they're scared they'll fuck it up. Uh, they're worried they'll annoy their customers. early champion. Customers are surprisingly vocal and super excited to be involved. Um, so that's, uh, how I would say you get past that, like, uh, that roadblock of getting that insight.

Upendra Varma: 00:19:50

Makes sense. So you say work with your customers, figure out where they're hanging out, then Yeah. Start approaching them or figuring out then, right. That's the way you wanna

Claire Sullentrop: 00:19:57

take them. Prioritize where they're actually going. Yeah. Rather than just like trying a random tactic. Trying Another random tactic. Trying another random tactic. Yeah. I mean, tactics are great, but that's your, that's your prioritizing framework. Yeah. Yeah.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:09

I think this, this advice will definitely work if you have, you know, a whole bunch of customers and you're, you're already doing a couple million revenue, but I mean, it's really hard to do if you are just early and just starting out, right? Because you don't even know who your customers are. I mean, so that's, that's always gonna be a bit.

Claire Sullentrop: 00:20:25

Uh, there's also a, there's a lot to be said for, um, you know, learning from beta users, right? If you've got, if you've got users who aren't paying yet, but are, are in the product in a, in an early version, they can be a great substitute. Worst case scenario, I've worked with a number of early stage teams where, um, they don't have any customers yet, and there's a, there's a whole separate process for audience research as well. Um, it's a little bit trickier because. you're not learning from people who customers have vouched for your product. They're paying for it, right? They've, they've voted with their dollars. The audience is the audience. Research is trickier because you're going to have to do a lot more, um, guessing on whether you're moving in the right direction. Um, but we have a, actually our, our, um, My business partner, GIA and I recently finished writing a book and we've got a, a chapter on customer research and then we have a second chapter on audience research because to your point, it is tough when you don't have those paying customers to learn from.

Upendra Varma: 00:21:25

Alright, so Claire, let's, let's come back to your own business, right? How do you charge these customers that you work with?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:21:31

Uh, how do we charge, uh, flat fee. Or if you want a kind of a C M O for hire on board, um, then we just work on a monthly retainer, kind of like a SaaS. Um, but it's service as a service instead of software as a

Upendra Varma: 00:21:43

service. And are you, are you, are you just two folks in your entire consultancy? Uh, you put

Claire Sullentrop: 00:21:49

myself. Yeah. Uh, my, my partner Gia. Um, we also have a strategic advisor. Uh, her name is Beth. She's a seasoned marketing exec. Um, she's one of our best, like c m o for hires. Um, so she helps a lot of companies in a fractional C M O role. And then our success manager, uh, Ethan, who keeps the trains running on time, as well as some expert researchers who when we're working with a company help us dig in and uncover that, um, that, that data on why customers buy. So what does that make us about? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6. Now makes

Upendra Varma: 00:22:25

sense. Alright Claire, so one last question, sir. Right. So you've got all of this amazing background, right? You've seen Calendly grow from like a nothing to you know, you know, pretty crazy out. Yeah. right? So why don't you just start a SaaS company? Why are you helping other SaaS companies? What's the story there?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:22:40

Uh, I am getting such valuable experie. Seeing so many different businesses and how they operate and the challenges that they hit. Um, and that is giving me a, I'm very grateful for this. It's giving me a very broad understanding. How to solve for different business problems at different stages. Um, it's not out of the question that Gia and I may start or acquire, uh, or something. We may get involved in a SaaS directly at some point, like that's definitely on the table. Um, but right now I'm having a lot of fun and learning so much, um, with how many different SAS examples I'm seeing.

Upendra Varma: 00:23:20

Alright. That makes sense. Alright Claire, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. You know?

Claire Sullentrop: 00:23:24

Absolutely. Again, it was, thank you for having me. It's a lovely conversation.