Plugging Leaks in SaaS Businesses

In a recent account call with a SaaS firm, I had the privilege of  meeting with an inspirational CEO who shared how they had grown (profitably) from 2 people to over 30 people in just a couple years.  They have been focusing like a laser beam on customer adoption, and have given that metric more attention than top line growth.  His staffing reflects his convictions with a more than 4:1 ratio of support specialists to sales.  While the ratio of support to sales staff will vary by firm,  the take away is avoiding a terrible treadmill situation where subscribers are dropping as fast as new subscribers come in.  Based on observations working with other SaaS firms, here are some ideas  that will help boost net subscriber growth:

• The most successful SaaS  firms focus on creating value for their clients.  If your customers feel the business value, they will stick around, and you can survey them to validate that you're on track.  Even better, you can ask for referrals, and a yes answer is a good sign. 
• Clients and colleagues have articulated that in SaaS, you're always selling, and its valuable to keep that in mind.  In the same way firms have acquisition funnels to initiate new accounts, there should be funnels throughout the customer life cycle.   If you're using Marketing Automation, its easy to execute work flows for on-boarding,  retention, and saving accounts at risk.  A combination of digital and phone based communication is ideal.
• Implementation funnels can define the touch points and milestones required for a customer to begin deriving business value, and the objective can be to have the shortest possible time to value.  The  CEO inspiring this article shared that they systematically touch their customers more than 10 times in the first 6 months. 
• Leveraging usage data is critical.  Customer's not using key features are  customers at risk.  Customer success/ account teams can tag these accounts and initiate workflows to bring users into web based training or other means to address lack of adoption....before receiving a cancellation notice.
• Another risk factor is turnover.  You might have certified or trained an employee of a customer who has terminated employment.  When that happens, a quick response to train up the new replacement will maintain adoption momentum.

SaaS firms who measure and create widespread  internal awareness of  attrition rates, time to adoption, time to value, and other retention related metrics are probably the firms with the happiest customers.  The overflow benefits of happy customers are happy acquisition sales reps who can share the results and value they create for customers with their prospects.  That's a happier way to grow.