how to handle falling out of product-market fit
In non-SaaS tech trying to modernize news, Samsung announced its B2B SaaS marketplace, AppStack, which features mobile productivity and collaboration tools (in today’s world, that means remote work tools). The marketplace will cater to SMB companies which Samsung considers to be the lifeblood of the economy, and often lack the technical resources to pivot towards fully remote. Customers will be able to manage all of their subscriptions from AppStack’s centralized billing system, a nice touch that perked our ears.
💼 C-suites see more turnover than any other level of business, and a recent study found the position with the shortest tenure was none other than the CMO, where the typical tenure is 43 months. This is in part because of how quickly marketing trends shift, but the statistic does begs the question – “are we asking too much?” In many cases, CMOs are expected to be experts in all aspects of marketing, which isn’t really realistic or sustainable (we find that most are T-shaped marketers). To keep marketing talent in your C-suite and prevent consistent turnover, you need to be realistic about their abilities and build a core team of experts in a variety of areas. It’s the CMO’s job to manage all of those areas, but again, they should not own each.
🐠 We see companies often discuss product-market-fit (PMF) like it is a golden ticket to long-term success, and that once you’ve found your sweet spot, you’re set. While finding initial PMF fit is a benchmark to be proud of, you can quickly fall out of it and it might not even be obvious. One pattern to watch for is retention and customer satisfaction remaining high, but a decreasing number of new deals closed. Getting your mojo back isn’t as hard as it seems – one strategy we recommend testing is going up-market; by increasing your deal size, companies can make up for slowed revenue growth while expanding into new markets. This takes a considerable shift in company mentality, but you might just find a loyal and untapped customer base.
💞 While we all know the retention basics like analyzing customer data, fine-tuning product features, and incorporating customer feedback – we think reducing churn starts with your onboarding process. It’s no secret that customers typically get frustrated with implementation. One way to alleviate this pain point is to create a community for new and trial users through a tool like Slack. By doing this, you’re giving customers real-time access to teams who can solve their problems without having the time lag of regular communication channels like submitting a helpdesk ticket or waiting for someone to respond to their email. As a bonus giving trial users access to these communication channels provides a sense of brand loyalty and increases the likelihood of converting them into paid users.
💡 Innovation can seem second nature to founders and operators as they thrive when coming up with new ideas and getting people excited about them. In Scott Berkun’s The Myth of Innovation, he aims to dispel the common misconceptions about how those new ideas are created and conveyed to audiences. He believes that epiphanies aren’t real, and that there’s no magic lightbulb that goes off in any innovator’s mind. It can often just be a combination of taking an old idea and revamping it so the concept fits within modern times. General takeaway – don’t aim to change the game, work instead on making yourself a better player.