- If you're building out the growth engine
for your SAAS business,
one of the decisions you have to make
is which button to put on your homepage.
Do you put the talk to sales button
or do you put the start a trial button?
This seems like a pretty innocent choice,
but in reality, these are two wildly different
SAAS sales models, the two wildly different growth engines.
So on this episode, based on everything
that I've learned with building SaaS businesses
and we walking you through the three principles to follow,
to pick the right type of button,
but really pick the right type of growth engine intro
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scale your SAAS business.
If you're building out your SAAS business,
there are two types of growth engines
that you can double down on.
You can go after a product lead,
a marketing lead growth engine.
In that case, you'd probably have a start
trial button on your homepage,
or you can go after more of a sales lead growth engine,
in which case you'd have a talk
to sales button on your homepage.
Now these look like pretty innocent choices
and you may even feel compelled to put them
just right next to each other.
But in reality, which growth engine you go
after actually determines where you spend your money
and how you spend your money and how much money
you need to actually go and fundraise around.
And also the type of ideal customer you can go after.
It means that it actually dictates a lot more
than you realize and doubling down on one of these
can actually help you grow your company faster.
So on this episode I'm gonna walk you through the
three principles that I would follow to actually
make that decision based on everything that
I've learned from taking ToutApp from zero to
7 million ARR selling into Marquetto
and then serving on the executive team at Marquetto
to help do a two year transformation that led
to the exit to Adobe.
If you're excited, dig in,
smash that like button and let's go
into principle number one.
Seriously smash that like button.
It would mean the law to us.
All right, so principle number one is if you can
actually get a person into an a-ha moment,
then actually go with a start a trial button.
What that means is if you have a certain ICP
and this ICP actually uses your software,
you can attract them and they come
to your homepage and you can actually get them in
and the reason they get software or buy any service
sort of software is because they wanna
actually get to a certain result.
Now, you may not be able to get them to that
final result very quickly within the first five minutes.
But if you can get them to some sort of
an a-ha moment within the first five minutes
of signing up for your product and even
five minutes may actually be pushing it,
then you might actually wanna go for a star trial button.
If you can get people to that a-ha moment
through your product quick enough,
that means that you can actually capture
their attention, have them keep coming back,
and that could actually be
a phenomenal growth engine for you.
So that's principle number one.
If you can get them to an a-ha moment
that you wanna go for a start free trial mode,
more of a marketing led growth model.
Now let's just say that you're actually
in a very highly competitive category, right?
It's a very well-defined category
and just getting them to an a-ha moment isn't how
they make their buying decision.
How they make their buying decision is they have
a very long list of features and checkboxes
that need to get checked.
They need to build trust.
They actually wanna a relationship
in this kind of scenario,
the features and the product don't really
differentiate because all of them kind of look the same.
It's really the unique relationship
is the trust that you're building.
It's more of a strategic sale
in those kinds of scenarios,
you can have a giant trial button,
but people won't click it.
What they wanna do is actually talk to sales.
They wanna talk to a human being because
you're in a very highly competitive and well-defined
category and they wanna understand
if you have the right strategic choice.
So in this kind of scenario,
spending money on actually getting a user to an a-ha moment
is actually wasted money in terms of a growth engine
what you wanna be spending money on
is a very well-defined sales process,
a very smart salesforce that can educate the buyer
and talk to them in a strategic ways to build their trust
and get them into your sales funnel.
Now before we go into principle number three,
I'll get to it right in a second.
Let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see how these two buttons
are not really choices in the button and what it says,
these sort of very different growth engines
and the one you go with,
the one you prioritize actually has different
investment levels involved.
So if you go for a star free trial,
you're gonna have to invest heavily
on product marketers and actual marketers
that understand funnels or under product
and R and D so that you can actually build
a product that's truly self service
and that takes an immense amount of investment.
On the other hand,
if you're falling a talk to sales model,
more of a sales led model,
you're gonna have to go after much more smarter
sales reps, much more seasoned sales reps,
and they're gonna have to be able
to be strategic with the buyer
And it's not just about which
one you like better it has a lot to do
with what's expected of you from your ideal customers.
If you started to see that,
let me just get a "yes" in the comments below!
And while you were at it tellme either sales or trial,
depending on which way you're leaning
in terms of your growth model.
Now let's go on to number three,
see these were pretty easy examples, right?
But let's just say for a second that your software
can actually deliver an a-ha moment
and at the same time you happen to be
in a very highly competitive
and well-defined category with a lot more features
beyond just that a-ha moment that people will use
to actually dictate whether they buy your software or not.
In this kind of scenario you're like,
"Well, I've got two groups of users that can deliver
"an a-ha moment to this group of people.
"But at the same time, I've got a buyer
that's really looking for all the features
"and the check boxes to check off in the right way.
"Which one do I do?"
You're proper thing I know,
I'll just put both of those.
Talk to sales and start a trial.
We talked about this.
It's really hard to invest in both.
You can do this, but you'll be mediocre
in either of these and you only have so many dollars
to spend on you go to market motion.
So which one do you actually choose?
Well, the answer is actually simpler than you think.
It depends on who's easier to attract.
If you can easily attract these users to actually
get into your product and get to an a-ha moment,
then you're better off actually targeting these people.
But if it's easier to actually target these folks
and educate them on why your platform is more strategic,
why a partnership with your company
is a better longterm choice.
And while you're better poised after you get
them the results that they need,
then you actually wanna go after this group of people.
And depending on that,
depending on which one is easier to get to
at the very top of funnel,
easier to attract, you get to pick which
growth model you go after star trial
or actually talk to sales.
They start to get this.
So to recap, the three principles, number one,
if you can quickly get them to an a-ha moment,
then you probably wanna go into star trial, right?
If you can't do that, invest,
if you can't get your product
to even get them to an aha moment,
don't even bother with a star trial model.
If you're in a highly competitive,
well-defined space and you probably
wanna go for talk to sales.
If both of these are true,
then you really wanna determine
which one's easier to attract,
whether it's the buyer or the user.
And based on that, you wanna double down
on one of the two growth engines.
Now you know how to pick between these two very
different growth engines and SAAS sales models.
You can go either after a product led model
or you can go after much more of a sales led model, right?
And depending on which one you go with the investment
profile, the amount of money you might need to raise,
your customer acquisition costs could be wildly different.
So now you know how to even start thinking about these.
If you are actually building out your go to market motion,
you wanna make sure it's efficient
and it actually delivers fast growth for you.
I'm inviting you to a 45 minute training session.
It's a webinar that I run every week
that should help you figure out how to build
an unstoppable Go-to-Market machine.
There are a few key things I think about
when I think about a Go-To-Market engine.
The first one I believe in
is you gotta out-teach the competition.
The second one I believe in is you gotta
build authority as a moat.
And the third one I think about is you have
to actually take an all bound approach.
Now I know those are a lot of concepts.
If you're interested in that,
follow the link below to my 45-minute
Go-To-Market training, Go-To-Market secrets
or just go to tkkader.com/SAAS-training
and you'll be able to get right into it.
If you've got value from this video,
be sure to hit that like button.
And also if you're new,
be sure to hit that subscribe button,
that bell icon. (bell chimes)
Next week I'll be talking about how
to actually do product lead rope,
and it's a topic that I'm really excited
about digging more into.
I 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.
(bright electronic music).