- If you've got a SaaS business
and you're not quite happy with your growth
and you wanna get back to growing faster,
it can be pretty overwhelming.
There are a million different levers and knobs and dials
that you can turn to actually accelerate growth
or reenergize growth.
And you never quite know which one to pull,
which one to turn.
I've been there.
There was one time where ToutApp,
we were coming off the heels
of multiple years of triple digit growth,
and then bam, (snaps fingers)
we just hit a wall.
We tried too many things, too fast.
We spun out of control and we almost died.
We found our way around,
and what I learned was
there's three very specific growth strategies
that have worked consistently well
to turn around stagnant or failing or stock SaaS businesses.
SaaS businesses are incredibly resilient,
you just have to know where to push and what to turn
to get it moving again.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three growth strategies
that you can use today to actually reenergize
and restart and kickstart growth for your SaaS business.
Intro.
(upbeat 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.
If you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop a video like this
with actionable strategies to grow three times a week.
So be sure to hit that 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're already part of this community,
if you're part of my SaaS go-to market coaching program,
welcome back.
It's super awesome to see you over here.
So there was that year where ToutApp almost died.
That was my last SaaS business.
And we had multiple years of triple digit growth
and then we almost died.
Literally almost died,
and my identity as a founder was tied to that business.
My business was everything and it was like haunting me,
but I found a way to get help from the right mentors,
get help from the right people
and we were able to turn the business around.
We were able to actually get back to
having our largest quarter in company history.
We were able to get our metrics right,
we were able to get to growing again,
all because we started to get back to brass tacks,
all because I sought out the help
of some people that understood
that SaaS businesses are incredibly resilient
and if you can revive them the right way,
you can get back to growing again.
In this episode, I'm gonna dig into
the three growth strategies.
Oh, those are two.
Third one.
Three growth strategies,
three growth hacks that you can use
to kickstart the growth of your SaaS business.
These are brass tacks,
these are very practical,
you can put them to use,
it doesn't require extra capital.
So if you're be excited to dig into these,
go ahead and smash that like button, if you haven't already.
And let's go into principle number one.
So principle number one,
if you've got a stock business
and you wanna get growth going again,
is the zoom-in pivot.
This also applies
if you are seeing glimmers of product market fit,
but you're not fully there yet,
and you're not quite sure why there's no kaboom
even though there's supposed to be a kaboom,
it's not quite working.
What you need to do is not pivot away completely,
you need to do a zoom-in pivot.
The best to zoom-in pivot example that I can give you
is Instagram.
Before Instagram became Instagram,
Instagram was 50 different things.
It had a whole bunch of features,
camera was one of them,
and filters was one of them,
but then a whole bunch of other stuff built around it.
But what they found was the most popular thing,
the most interesting thing,
was this part where you took a picture and put a filter
and made it look good and it went on Insta gram.
And when they zoomed in pivoted into that,
(snaps fingers) everything changed.
The same was true for ToutApp
and the broader sales engagement space.
If you think about sales engagement in the early days,
we would email templates,
we were tracking,
we were calling,
we were reports, we were updating Salesforce.
It was like a whole bunch of stuff,
but ultimately only one thing mattered.
How do I send 10 touches to a lead
and convert them from a lead to an opportunity?
How do I actually reach out to someone cold
through 10 touches from email social
and convert them to a real opportunity?
It's all that mattered.
And when companies zoomed in and pivoted
into that specific thing,
(snaps fingers) growth accelerated.
the message became simpler,
the value prop became simpler.
Everything got easier,
and therefore with that singular focus,
more people bought.
So chances are, if your SaaS business is stuck,
there's a part of it that's still working well.
Find your happiest customers,
find the most used features,
find the thing that seems like a toy, seems dumb,
but is actually the true value
your SaaS business is bringing and double down on that.
And if you do that,
then you're doing a zoom-in pivot
and everything's gonna come together beautifully for you.
Now, I didn't invent the phrase, zoom-in pivot,
Eric Reese did.
Eric Reese is the godfather of lean startups.
He was also an investor at ToutApp, incredible person.
So if you wanna learn more about zoom-in pivots,
go check out his books,
just Google Eric Reese,
we'll also link to it below.
The second principle is to double your pricing.
Literally, this is not complicated,
and I told you this is not gonna cost you any extra money.
Just double your pricing.
Through the history of ToutApp,
we went from charging $30 a month
to 49 to 79 to $125 a month.
Literally $125 a month per seat,
that's what we were charging.
We started at 30.
We kept doubling our pricing and it turned out
that yes, we added to the platform.
We made it more robust,
but people were willing to pay a lot more for our product
because of the value they were getting.
Now, in a subsequent video,
I'm gonna be talking more about value based pricing
and how to create that.
So if you wanna learn more about that,
be sure hit the subscribe button and that bell icon
and you'll get notified when I launch that video.
But the most important thing for you to do
is actually think about how to double your pricing,
that's super important.
I bet you are undercharging for your product.
In fact, you probably are undercharging for your product.
So if you can find a way to actually repackage your product,
rethink your pricing strategy,
align it to the value they're gonna get,
create an ROI calculator,
then you'll be able to kickstart growth again
with the customers that are already coming in
through the door.
Now, before I go into principle number three,
let me just pause here for a second.
If you're starting to think about ideas already
on how you can zoom-in pivot,
how you can raise your prices,
because of the zoom-in pivot,
how everything can become a lot simpler
and therefore you can kickstart growth again.
Can I just get a yes in the comments below,
that way I know you're with me and you're getting value.
It just means the world to me and my team,
just like seeing comments from you.
And smash that like button if you haven't already.
By the way if you want a proven framework to follow
to actually build out your growth strategy,
to kickstart growth,
I invite you to check out
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
More details on that at the end of this video,
I'll also link to it below.
Let's go to principle number three.
Principle number three is double down
on your one growth engine.
Here's the thing.
If you have some revenues in your SaaS business,
chances are you begged, you pleaded, you got mom to buy it,
you got a whole bunch of things going
to try and get to that revenue.
But one thing we find counterintuitive as you grow
is you think you're supposed to add more,
but it's actually not true.
Great companies that drive faster growth
coalesce into one growth engine.
So there's a very specific way you can actually find out
what your one growth engine is.
The one that is delivering the best results,
the one that is yielding the best results.
What you need to do is actually find out
how to get into that one growth engine.
If you can do that, then you'll be able to grow faster,
compounding the other two things,
changes you've done in your business.
If you wanna learn more
about how to find your one growth engine.
I did this video that you can check out
where I go into detail
on how to actually diagnose your business
and find your one growth engine.
To recap, there's three principles
to kickstart growth again,
number one, do a zoom-in pivot,
number two, double your prices
and number three, find your one growth engine
and double down on it.
Now, before even someone writes a comment,
there's always someone that writes a snippy thing like this,
it's like, this is obvious.
Yes, this is obvious.
Building SaaS businesses does not require a PhD, it doesn't,
what it requires is discipline,
what it requires is courage to do the hard things,
what it requires is to not give up,
what it requires is for you to press on,
look at the data, make the decisions,
that is where great SaaS businesses are created.
It doesn't need complicated strategies,
you don't need a PhD,
you need discipline,
that's what you need.
So are these fairly straightforward?
Yeah.
Is there an art to doing these?
Yes.
Is there some nuances
on how you actually do a zoom-in pivot?
Sure.
But that doesn't mean you can't do it.
What I encourage you to do is actually figure out
how you can employ these sweet principles
to actually kickstart the growth of your SaaS business.
If you got value from this video,
please smash that like button,
it'll mean the world to me and my team.
If you got value, please comment below.
Even if you think these are too obvious
and these are terrible,
tell me.
I actually mean that.
I wanna hear from you,
I wanna engage with you.
I'm happy to have a dialogue and a debate.
So share your comments below.
I respond to every single one, I promise.
At least right now I do.
Maybe that might change,
but right now I respond to every single comment.
I drop a video like this three times a week,
so be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
that way you will get notified.
If you have a founder friend,
if you have a team that's going through this,
please share this video with them,
it'll mean the world to us.
And also if you want to follow
a step-by-step proven framework
to build out a growth strategy for your business,
to drive more growth,
to figure out what your one growth engine is,
how to do a zoom-in pivot and even get your pricing right,
then I invite you to check out
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
It's a proven framework that you can follow step-by-step
along with my coaching
to drive growth for your early stage SaaS business.
Now, the better the fit, the better the results.
It's not for everyone.
So go to tkkader.com/gtm or follow the link below,
tkkader.com/gtm
and you'll get all the details on the program
along with a link and an application to fill out
so you can get on a call and figure out if I can help you.
And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business,
but when you are with us,
yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, I'll see you in the next episode.
I'm running out of battery so let me plug this in.
Hopefully that helps.
(laughs)
How do we close on this?