Your product won’t sell itself – in the beginning anyway.



The simple truth about software products is that most of them don’t sell themselves. But many people in the SaaS space think that they will build something it and customers will come. This myth has been and is still being dispelled due to transparency as founders are willing to share more about what it takes to create a profitable company but in the early days, it requires a lot of brute force to get things going. The market is so saturated with different products you simply can’t release something based on a few differentiated features and hope to capture market share.


The simple truth about software products is that most of them don’t sell themselves. But many people in the SaaS space think that they will build something it and customers will come. This myth has been and is still being dispelled due to transparency as founders are willing to share more about what it takes to create a profitable company but in the early days, it requires a lot of brute force to get things going. The market is so saturated with different products you simply can’t release something based on a few differentiated features and hope to capture market share.


Consumers end up benefiting more from more SaaS apps in different verticals. More competitors = lower prices. Increased competition = harder for you to exist and thrive.


Just because the competition is high doesn’t mean you can’t carve out a niche for yourself. And this is why direct sales are so important. As a quick aside, I want to point out something very prominent that Nathan Barry from ConvertKit mentioned.


If anyone finds the talk please email me with the link but he sums up how frustrating it is asking other founders how they grew and they say “Word of mouth”.


Nathan: “Oh let me just go pull the word of mouth lever to grow my company”.


I found this both hilarious and true because when you are just starting out you don’t have word of mouth. Stewart Butterfield from Slack on Masters of Scale mentioned this problem as well. They had rapid adoption within organizations but cross-organization adoption was poor. They have obviously solved this problem to a degree which is apparent in their current valuation. 5.1 billion dollars.


Since even the best companies don’t have word of mouth growth initially, there has to be more of a focus on direct sales and sales processes. You can make sales funnels as complex as you wish but on the surface, for SaaS companies, there are typically three stages:


Pre-Trial: Your (potential) customers have the problem but don’t know you exist or know you exist but have yet to act.

Mid-Trial: Your customers have the problem your company solves and are currently evaluating your solution.

Post-Trial: Your customers have finished their trial and are evaluating if your solution is the right one.


Trials can be free, or paid and will also vary in duration depending on your company and deal size. Jason Lemkin from SaaStr broke down a rough guide on how fast your sales cycles should move depending on deal size.


1. Deals < $2,000 in AVC should close on average within 14 days.
2. Deals < $5,000 in AVC should close on average within 30 days.
3. Deals < $25,000 in AVC should close on average within 90 days.
4. Deals < $100,000 in AVC should close on average within 90-180 days (depending on the number of stakeholders and gates). 5. Deals > $100,000 in AVC should close on average within 3-6 months.


SaaS apps/companies primary goal is to optimize each stage as the customer moves through Pre-trial Mid-trial and Post-trial to then convert into customers.


Pre-Trial

Depending on the stage of your company the steps in this stage can vary but it will always be evolving as customer priorities change. What this stage boils down to is how many conversations or interactions can you have with prospective customers to convince someone to sign up for a trial of your product. SaaS is pretty much all try before you buy which is great for customers because it is low risk and commitment so depending on the simplicity of the product getting people to sign-up is relatively easy once the proper structure is put in place.


Since the main goal is creating as many touch points or interactions with your prospective customers, defining exactly who your ideal customers are is incredibly important. Write down as much detail as possible. Close.io has a post outlining a template you can use to fill in all the information you will want to understand about your customers which you can view —> here.


Understanding who your ideal customers are can be derived from a number of ways. Who your competitors serve, commonalities between your first 10 customers, or your most successful customers.


Once you have your buyer personas defined I’m a big fan of brute forcing conversations. Brute force can look like cold calls, cold email outreach, and cold message outreach within forums. Basically hustle as hard as you can to get to a place where you have enough customers so this can be perfected.


The key is – how many people can you talk to. As for tactics on reaching out to people, there are plenty of resources already online. Alex Berman does a great job of explaining cold email outreach on youtube. The key here is volume. Ideally, you are talking to as many qualified prospects as possible.


I am a big fan of starting conversations by asking for advice. An example of this could look something like this:


Hi Kimia,

I’m reaching out because I’m a big fan of Ghostit and your content production flow the amount of consistent content your company produces is amazing. I am currently building a SaaS app that helps companies better understand their production workflows and publish deadlines so they can be more productive and produce better results for their customers. Since the app is still in beta stages I would love your feedback on a few things to see if it would be valuable when we fully go to market.

How does Ghostit keep track of its deadlines right now?
Do you have any burning pains with your project management software?

If you have some time to jump on a call your feedback would be invaluable to our company.

Best regards,

Kimia Hamidi


The reason why I like asking for advice is that everyone has opinions and are usually more than happy to share them. What you really want to tease out of these conversations is one of the following:


Do you help them make more money?
Do you help them save money?
Do you solve any burning pains?
Do you increase their productivity?
Do you increase their customer success/happiness?


Once you understand the value you add to the organization or the problems they have your sale is a sale based on solutions to their problems, not features your product has. The best sales are all about how much value can you create for your customer and their organization. If you can create value without being pushy your prospect will sell themselves.


Because you are asking for advice and not trying to be pushy at all try and ask for a commitment at the end of the call. Say that the customer’s burning pain is no calendar view of all my projects, you could easily say “we are actively building out a calendar view, once it’s finished would you be willing to try it for 14 days?”


There is usually one main objection that will prevent your customers from giving you a try. In ConvertKit’s case, user migration was their biggest hurdle to user adoption so they did a manual concierge onboarding to remove this objection and accelerate the flow of pre-trial to mid-trial customers. Find out what your customer’s main objection is and manually solve it. It’s probably not as time-consuming as you think.


Push for commitments as much as possible when exploring pain points. The primary goal of pre-trial is discovery and nudging them down the funnel to give your product a try.


Mid-Trial

Customers have acknowledged that they have the pain and thing that your product can solve it so they agree to give your product a shot. Since we already know specifically what we are helping our customers with (i.e. increased productivity) everything in your trial should be optimized for this main objective.


The perfect trial will differ from company to company but the anatomy remains roughly the same.


Short trials – It’s human nature to procrastinate so shortening the trial will enforce a tighter deadline before they have to make a decision. We see companies pushing for shorter trials moving from “Get your first month free” to “Try it out for 14 days”.


Free or paid? – Again as much of this post, it depends on the business. If you can always push for a small paid trial. At Ghostit our trial is an initial content marketing strategy and first blog post for $1. Ahrefs trial is “full access for 7 days for $7”. Paid trials are great because if they make the decision to enter their credit card information, the barriers to committing to a fully paid account are much lower than running a free trial getting some value out of it then saying “Nah too expensive” or some other excuse because they don’t want to get their credit card out. Paid trials also enforce commitment, it’s not about the dollar amount either. If they have decided to spend any amount of money evaluating if they need your solution it means they really have this pain and are much more committed to solving it.


Remember, if they sign up month-to-month it’s still a trial so do everything you can to deliver the maximum value in the first month.


Follow up – Remember your goal! It’s to create as much value during the trial as possible. A great follow up sequence should look like this for a 14-day trial:


Day 1 – Customer signs up for trial: Call them and help them set up or offer support in getting going.

Day 2 – Send them an email on the basics of getting going (outline the steps necessary to get closer to the goal of your main value)

Day 3 – Send them an email on a hidden feature that might not be obvious but adds a ton of value.

Day 5 – Send them an email with a full webinar/demo of the product. 30 to 60 minutes.

Note: Depending on your comfort you can sometimes combine day 3 and 5 into a day 4 email with both features outlined.

Day 7 – Analytics email/recap. This email is to outline how well they have been doing versus without your product.

Day 13 – Email with your trial is almost ending survey.

Day 14 – Follow up call to see how the trial was – do they need an extension or are there any barriers to them signing up right away.


Post-Trial

Your customers have successfully completed their trial, you have built up rapport with them, and demonstrated the value of your product so that they want to continue using it. Just because they are willing to give you money it does not mean you are finished. Your goal now is to build relationships whether it is with you (your team) or with other customers and the community. Relationships are what will finally build that “word of mouth lever” that you can pull and bring in more customers and makes switching away from your product harder.


Russel Brunson from ClickFunnels did an amazing job with this by creating a community of funnel hackers. It’s an engaged community of a few thousand people who Russel sent them T-shirts when they signed up for his product. The community keeps everyone accountable and teases the most out of your product. They also help sell your product for you.


Just as mid-trial as a basic anatomy there are a few rules of thumb you should follow for post-trial.


Price higher then you feel comfortable charging for – Marc Andreessen has been quoted saying “Price higher than you think you should.” And I agree, charging more than you think is necessary or even comfortable will build a much more profitable business. If you are truly solving a burning pain it is very likely that that business will be able to afford $50/month versus $10/month. Steli Efti mirrors this sentiment by outlining how 40% of your potential customers will think that’s outrageous, 30% will think its worth it and 30% will think its cheap or a good deal. So by pricing more than you think you should, you will grow much faster.


We did this at Ghostit when we started by charging $99/month then jumped to $300/month for less content but higher quality. It brought us even more customers because people perceived it as higher value.


Push for annual plans – MMR over single licenses has been a blessing to the SaaS world and has allowed for much higher multiples due to predictable revenue projections but locking in a 12-month commitment will take you a lot farther. It allows you to work with customers throughout their use of your product so you can increase your value long term to similar customers.


These are the basics of direct SaaS sales. Often times it takes brute force to fill the top of your funnel and move them from pre-trial stage to mid-trial phase. Hustle as hard as you can to get these initial customers.


I will write future essays on each segment but for now, these are the basics from going from 0 to 10 to 100 customers. Once you have passed the 100 mark there will be some flywheel growth that should take place.


I will be writing once a week on sales, marketing, and management so if you want my insights into these topics check out khamidi.com and subscribe to my newsletter.