- If you Google SaaS metrics,
there are over a 100 different metrics
that you're gonna find
that you apparently are supposed to be tracking.
If you talk to a venture capitalist,
they're gonna give you a set of metrics,
if you talk to a PE investor,
it's gonna be a different set of metrics.
If you're bootstrapped and you're talking
to your fellow CEOs that are bootstrapped,
you might be looking at other metrics.
If you are talking to your social media manager,
they might be talking about likes,
if you're talking to your VP of growth,
they might be talking about traffic,
your VP of sales is talking about revenue, hopefully,
but then you'll go back to your room or your office
or you'll get off the Zoom call
or wherever you go for some solace
or you're talking to your co-founder,
you might be like, what do we actually look at
to figure out if we're doing good?
Like, are we gonna be successful or not?
Like, what do we look at?
And having worked with so many founders,
having been in SaaS for the last 15 years,
having in my own companies, I've faced this dilemma.
So in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through the three metrics,
the three metrics that actually matter
that will tell you if you are on the right path to success
or there's something you really need to fix.
And when you follow these three metrics
and you look at it every single day,
you will be able to accelerate the path
of your SaaS business.
Intro.
(upbeat ambient music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK
and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
that way you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Now, if you are part of this community,
first of all, we just hit 30,000 subscribers
as of the filming of this episode.
And so my people, welcome back.
I am so eternally grateful for you
and thank you for being here.
It just means a lot to me
that I can serve you in this way, it just means a lot to me
that we have this amazing go to market program
where I can work with you in a close way.
It's just awesome and I'm really thankful
for everything that this Unstoppable community is becoming.
So if you've been part of this community,
since if you're an OG,
if you've been with us through the beginning
and now we're at 30,000, be sure to comment below.
I'd love to hear from you
just for being part of this journey.
Now, okay, so we're gonna talk about metrics.
And now I remember when I was running my SaaS companies
and at one point we had a full data ops team,
a biz ops team
that would look at all these different metrics.
In the early stages,
it was just me looking at spreadsheets.
Now that I coach over 250 founders,
we'll have different founders come to me initially
with different metrics that they're looking at.
And I remember I was on this one call recently
and they were talking about all these different,
they had so many different numbers,
but they weren't sure what was wrong.
They weren't growing.
And I was like, wait, hang on,
like, all these numbers are good,
they're all good metrics, but they're not getting
to the root of what actually matters
and because of that, you don't have focus,
you don't know what to fix,
you don't know what to like actually make decisions on.
That's the sign of the right metrics,
when you're looking at the right metrics,
you can actually look at it, have a discussion
and say, okay, here's what we need to go fix.
This is the only thing that matters.
That's how you know you're looking at the right metrics.
And so over and over in my 15 years of SaaS,
over and over and coaching SaaS founders,
these three metrics that I'm gonna show you
actually came in handy to really diagnose where we are,
are we set up for success?
And if not, what do we focus on?
Or what do we iterate on?
In this video,
we're gonna dig into the three metrics that actually matter.
And when you measure these, you'll be able
to accelerate the growth of your SaaS business.
If you're excited to dig in,
go to smash out light button for the YouTube algorithm,
it really like's it when you do that,
and let's first set the context
and then we'll dig into metrics.
So the context is, I always look at these three metrics
within the context of your unstoppable sales funnel.
This is what I look at every single SaaS business on.
If you're not looking at this
and you're disconnected from reality,
all those other metrics are important
but these are the ones that really matter,
and the thing that matters the most is
how much traffic are you generating?
And out of that, how many of them are becoming leads
or hand raisers or getting into the product?
How many of them are becoming real sales opportunities
or real activated trials?
And out of that, how many of them are becoming revenue?
So this is the funnel
that I look at every SaaS business around
because ultimately this is what determines success.
Metric number one that I look at for any SaaS company,
including the ones that I have operated or operate now
or founders that I work with, that I help operate,
the first one that I look at is
what percentage of people that are finding out about you
are actually becoming a lead?
They're putting in their email address
or download your manifesto,
or they're going directly into the product
and starting a trial.
So this percentage is the first thing that I look at
because that's what tells me on,
hey, are you actually generating enough traffic?
And out of that, is it quality traffic that are saying,
oh, yeah, no, I'm interested,
like this is something that solves my problem
or I'm actually in market for this, or I'm exploring this
so tell me more.
Otherwise you may be generating,
I'd speak to a lot of founders
that are generating so much traffic,
and they're like, yeah, we are so good at traffic,
we're getting so many likes.
We like did really well on this like popularity contest
we were part of.
We announced this thing, but it's like,
well, how many leads did you get?
Like it doesn't matter otherwise.
And so this is the first metric that I always look at.
What is the percentage of people
that are finding out about you
and actually becoming a lead or entering into your product,
becoming a trial?
Because that's what tells me like,
okay, there's something real here,
like you're actually attracting the right group of people.
And typically what I see is anywhere from 10% to 20%,
that's what's healthy in this stage
where you're generating traffic
and they're like, oh yeah, I'm interested.
Whether it's a landing page for your manifesto
or a star trial page for actually getting into your product
if you're more product led versus content driven,
although a lot of people start with a manifesto
and get them into the product, that's fine too.
10 to 20% is the first metric that I look at
on exactly from going from traffic to leads.
And this really matters because it tells me,
are you going after the right people?
And is your messaging right?
Is your manifesto right?
Are you hooking them in the right way?
Are you targeting the right ICP?
Like all those things come into play,
otherwise your ICP is broken and your messaging is broken.
The second metric that I look at
is out of those people that maybe downloaded your manifesto
or got into a trial,
how many of them actually became real sales opportunities
or real activated trials?
Now real sales opportunities, right,
just because someone downloads your manifesto
doesn't mean they're going to get into a sales call
but when they do,
that means that, oh, like the manifesto's working
and they're actually the right people
and they're like, oh yeah, I wanna spend more time with you
and learn more about your solution.
Similarly, if you're more product led,
let's just say the manifesto leads into the product,
if they're dialing the manifesto
and then they're actually getting into the product
and then they're actually activating into the product,
they're actually using the product,
that means that there's a real opportunity here.
And so the biggest thing I look at as metric number two,
is what percentage of people of the leads
are actually becoming opportunities?
And typically for this, we see 10%,
10% of people actually say like,
hey, like this is a real thing.
And that's like, it feels low,
which is why getting a lot of traffic
and getting a lot of leads is important,
and this number can be higher in the beginning,
but as you scale, it can start to go down.
But 10% is a pretty good benchmark
where out of the people that are like
just kind of browsing, 10% are like,
oh my God, I'm really interested, this is totally it.
Like, let's talk to sales or let's really use the product.
Otherwise you'll have to kind of get back at them.
Now, before I go to the third one
and this is a very important one and it looks obvious,
but it's actually not obvious,
there's some nuances here that I wanna tell you about,
before I go into the third one,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
I know that there are a 100 different metrics
and I know that you're probably tracking all of them
or none of them,
or you are tracking them and you're not looking at them.
But remember what I told you in the beginning,
what matters the most is when you are looking at
three or four metrics,
and it's telling you what to focus on next as a team,
what to fix, what to iterate, what to double down on
so that you can accelerate the growth of your business.
And that's why I love these three metrics,
because when you look at these,
you could actually make decisions on what to improve on,
what to iterate on.
And that is the most important thing.
If you're starting to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below?
Also smash our like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that and so do we,
and my team, we put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you're in this stage
where you're trying to figure out,
how do we generate traffic?
How do we generate leads?
How do we nurture them?
How do we turn them into opportunities or trials?
How do we convert them to revenue?
Then what you're doing
is building a proper go-to market strategy.
So if you're in that stage
where you're building a go-to market strategy,
then I invite you to check out
my SaaS Go-To Market Coaching Program.
Inside of the program,
I work one-on-one with you to actually help you
accelerate the growth of your SaaS business
by building a scalable
and an unstoppable go to market strategy.
You don't have to go anywhere right now,
I'll link to it below,
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video,
but right now, let's go to principle number three
which is the important one.
Are you ready for this?
The important part of this one is out of these people
that you're having sales conversations with
or they actively use the product,
you now have to ask yourself,
what percentage of them are you winning?
Meaning how many of them are converting to revenue?
And again, typically we see 20%.
20% of the people actually that get into a sales opportunity
will close to revenue.
Don't ask me why, this is the benchmark,
this is the benchmark, this is the average.
Will it be higher in some cases?
Yes.
If you're getting hot inbound leads,
they can be up as high as 50%.
If you're in the super early stages, they might be 70%,
if you're just convincing your friends to buy your product,
they may be a 100%.
But as you scale, it'll come down to 20%,
so you wanna make sure you're hitting that benchmark.
And what's most important about this piece is
it's very possible that you are doing a lot of activities,
you are generating leads, they're looking at your manifesto,
they're generating trials
but they're not converting to revenue.
And what that typically means
is that is either your sales process is messed up
or you're generating the wrong leads.
Any one of these things could be wrong
which is why this third metric matters the most
because ultimately no one cares
if you generated 5,000 likes,
what people care about
is did you generate revenue, like for you yourself?
That's what matters the most.
And so you wanna see what this conversion rate is,
and that's the third metric that matters the most.
And the reason this is so powerful
is because when you start to measure the conversion
of the traffic to the leads
and you have a benchmark for that, when you have the leads
to the opportunities and trials
and you have a benchmark for that
and you have the opportunity as trials to the revenue
and you have a benchmark for that,
what you're able to do is look at it every single day,
every single week
as you're executing on your go-to market strategy,
and you're able to say, and look with your team on saying,
hey, do we have a closing problem?
Do we have an ICP problem?
Do we have an activity problem?
Like you can actually make decisions
on what's broken based on these three metrics.
And this is all that matters,
because this is what really tells you,
are you headed for success or not?
Because if you're not getting the leads
and you're not converting,
that means there's something wrong with your traffic.
If you are converting
but they're not converting to revenue,
if they're converting to opportunities, that means maybe
there's something wrong with your sales process
or your traffic.
So you can make decisions on what to do,
and that's why these three metrics matter so much.
Now the last piece I wanna leave you with
is now that you know these three metrics,
you're like, well, okay, cool TK, we're measuring these,
What do we do now?
Like, how do we actually increase the number of leads
or how do we make sure that we're getting the right leads?
Or how do we actually increase our win rates?
These benchmarks, we're nowhere close to that?
Well, first of all, this is good,
because now you're looking at what to measure what matters,
and now you can actually say, cool, how do we fix these?
These are the three things to fix.
Because if we fix this, we have a great business.
This is where your go-to-market strategy comes in.
There's three big pieces
to a successful go-to-market strategy,
I call this your unstoppable sales funnel.
The first one is your ICP.
The second one is your manifesto, this is your messaging.
And the third one is your Broadway Show.
And this is your consistent set of sales
and marketing activities.
So the ICP determines who you're really targeting,
and then the manifesto is built off of the ICP
to say how to target them, and the Broadway Show
is the set of things you run consistently
to bring your manifesto to your ICP.
And this is what I essentially call
"your unstoppable sales funnel".
And it's a very, very scalable way to grow a SaaS business.
And when you implement and incorporate these three pieces,
you are able to impact these metrics.
And if one of them is broken, you'll be able to figure out
which one of these you actually need to iterate on.
This is exactly what I work on with founders
inside of my SaaS Go-To Market Coaching Program.
We've had over a 100 SaaS companies
go through the program, we've had amazing success stories,
we've actually shared them in this YouTube channel
some of the best success stories,
you can look at the playlists below,
but the real thing that we do in this program
is build out your proper SaaS go-to market strategy,
help you track these metrics and iterate on it
and execute on it
so you can accelerate the path to your next stage of growth.
So if you're interested in working together
to actually build out your scalable go-to market strategy,
execute on it, look at these metrics
and work with me to actually iterate
and go faster and reduce execution risk,
then I encourage you to go to tkkader.com/gtm.
tkkader.com/gtm.
When you go to that page,
you'll get all the details of exactly how the program works,
you'll be able to fill out a small application form
and then hop on a call with us.
When we get on the call,
we'll look at exactly what you're struggling with,
we'll figure out if we can help,
and if we can, we will start working together.
It's as simple as that.
Hitting 30,000 subscribers has been a milestone,
incredible milestone, and even bigger milestone for me
is the over 250 founders that I get to work with internally
where we actually take the principles
we teach in this YouTube channel
and apply it and work together to iterate.
That's been like the most rewarding thing.
And so if you want to get in on the inner circle here
and really work together to accelerate the growth
of your SaaS business,
you want to go into implementing these principles,
go to tkk.com/gtm.
I'll also link to it below.
Also, if you got value from this video,
please smash out like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really loves it when you do that.
In case you're noticing that I'm sweating,
it is really hot in here
because I don't think my AC is working
and it's like a hundred degrees in Texas.
So I'll have to look into that right after this.
But more importantly, if you got value from this,
smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
it really likes it when you do that.
If you have a fellow founder,
if you're part of a community of other SaaS leaders,
please share this video with them,
it'll just mean the world to us.
My team and I put a lot of love into these videos.
I drop an episode like this
with actionable strategies and tactics
on how to grow your SaaS business every single Sunday.
So be sure to hit that subscribe button,
that bell icon that you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
If you wanna work together
and actually implement these principles
I teach in this channel
and accelerate your growth and reduce execution risk,
you're gonna have to do this alone in any way,
might as well get coaching
and actually follow our framework that's proven
and go to tkk.com/gtm.
And lastly, remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business,
when you are with us, yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode
or inside of the SaaS Go-To Market Coaching Program.
See ya.
(beep) All right.
My hair looks weird, but we're gonna do this.
(laughing) Okay.