Posted on

Jump Start Your SaaS Business by Selling to US Market: Learn the Nuts and Bolts from Whodunnit

jumpstart-guid-1Are you a first time SaaS entrepreneur targeting the US market? Learn it from the masters through the Jump Start Guide to Desk Marketing and Selling for SaaS put together by Krish Subramaniam (Chargebee), Niraj Ranjan Rout (GrexIt), Sahil Parikh (Brightpod), and Suresh Sambandam (KiSSFLOW). Aaron Ross launched the guide during the first SaaSx event in Chennai put together by iSPIRT, attended by more than 100 SaaS entrepreneurs.

The following are the take-aways. Use the guide to understand in-depth and develop your strategy to hit $100 million in sales. All the very best!

Marketing

  • There are four different strategies employed by Indian entrepreneurs for customer acquisition: Learn from Wingify, KiSSFLOW, GrexIt, Freshdesk.
  • Free trials don’t work for higher sales value. And prices are not listed publicly by most companies.
  • What is the right pricing? There is no one sutra to it. But get it right before you push your sales pitch. Learn strategies from the hackers who did it before.
  • Have a team in place to handle marketing efforts with clear segmentation of the team: marketing/product/sales. Have clear-cut roles as they often blur.
  • Understand the 10 recommended activities before you start marketing.
  • Focus on building the trust of the customer visiting your product website for the first time. To make it attractive, for example, think of a “Benefits” page instead of listing “Features.”
  • Learn how to build content around long tail keywords for effective SEO.
  • Marketing based on content generation (content marketing) has many dimensions to it. Use all of them for maximum benefits.
  • Social channels ensure better outreach. Make your presence felt on social pages.
  • Retarget your customers who just dropped by your website.
  • You can innovatively market using your product itself.
  • Get a marketing team in place.
  • There are some sales channels you must ignore before starting the SaaS company.

Selling

  • Learn what catching, coaching, and closing mean.
  • Winning the first few customers is the founder’s job.
  • Learn what tools to use for customer development.
  • Develop an effective funnel.
  • Facilitate self-selection and build engagement with the customers.
  • Collect key information during the engagement process.
  • Post-trial offers work for closing the customer.
  • Learn the customer closure techniques to use.
  • Structure your sales team clearly.
  • Doing a great customer service after sales is essential to retaining the customers. Learn the tips.

Download the guide here{link}.

Posted on

Where the best meet the brightest – Announcing #SaaSx Chennai – 26th March

In India’s SaaS startup context, Bangalore and Delhi are the cities spoken of repeatedly as beacons and dens of great innovation and entrepreneurial activity, and deservedly so. But still, there is another city, a rather quiet, unassuming metro that characteristically keeps churning out great companies but remains stubbornly under the radar. The sea blown streets in the old British trading capital of Chennai are buzzing with a different kind of business these days and iSPIRT is proud to play a part in it.

SaaSx_headerOver the course of several weeks of conducting the SaaS roundtable in Chennai, the quality of the ecosystem in city has become evident. And with the idea of leveraging the knowledge for the city’s younger entrepreneurs as a whole, we conceived an event called SaaSx which is now live and will be held on the 26th in Chenna(Venue to be confirmed soon).

SaaSx Chennai will be a one of a kind event organized by SaaS entrepreneurs for SaaS entrepreneurs. Reason being that the knowledge needed to grow SaaS business from zero to $10k to $100k to $1m in MRR is rare, and the only people who can tell you something about it are the people who have done so already.

Which is why we have assembled an all-star team that you can speak to and get advice from, including Avlesh(WebEngage), Girish Mathrubootham(Freshdesk), Niraj(GrexIt), Paras Chopra(Wingify), & Suresh Sambandam(KissFlow). The iciing of the cake will be a talk by Aaron Ross, celebrated author of Predictable Revenue and renowned SaaS guru. Register here, there are few seats and the event is only open for SaaS Founders.

We will also be launching A Jump Start Guide to Desk Marketing and Selling for Mid-Market SaaS. The goal of the guide is: Let the truth be told – SaaS businesses are amazing. Predictable recurring revenue, great margins and inbound marketing. Best of all, the ability to operate from India and sell to the world. Stay tuned. 

SaaSx Chennai will be another milestone event in India’s SaaS community, a batch of entrepreneurs who are making the world sit up and take notice. iSPIRT is delighted to play an integral part in this movement.

See you in Chennai!