sahil parikh’s work+life stream

Within the last year we have been fortunate to get really good PR/Buzz for DeskAway and me. This led to increase in traffic on the site, more signups and eventually more conversion to paid accounts i.e. customers. Somehow, one thing led to another and as more people heard about what we were doing (and I believe we are building a SaaS business at the right time) it snowballed into more interviews and blog reviews. Somehow, there was/is no magic formula to get PR (definitely don't hire a PR agency early on) though this article (10 reasons why journalists will write about your website) lays down some important points to keep in mind. I think we just participated - in blogs, social media tools, content creation, industry events, seminars, barcamps, etc.

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On a rainy afternoon I drove down for a sales presentation to a plush office of a large multi-million dollar private company.

Since we moved our marketing online, we have been getting a steady stream of leads from various online sources  (search, adwords, twitter, facebook, word of mouth, blogs etc.) so going for a personal sales visit has become rare. Larger companies are comfortable doing business the traditional way - meeting face to face and knowing who they are doing business with.  That's absolutely fine and I respect the way they do business. Most interesting, I always learn a few new things while leaving the conference room.

[I take a seat in a conference room]

"Well, I have compared your SaaS product with a few others in the market and I have pretty much narrowed down that we will be using your service" the IT Guy said.

At this moment, I was thinking - wow, this is easy. The first sales meeting and these guys are telling me that they have already picked my solution. Can't get better than this. The product had passed the feature and simplicity test and what was left to close the deal was them seeing me and knowing who they are going to be trusting with their data.

The IT guy continued "So, I assume you have adequate backup and retrieval measures for our data, right"?

"Yes, ofcourse. All your data is backed up daily and DeskAway also provides an export/backup mechanism through which you (as the account owner) can download all your project data to your personal computer", I replied.

The IT guy seemed content with my answer. "And what about security? How secure are your servers?" he asked. At this point I told him everything about our security (which is also mentioned on our site) and how we make sure everyting runs smoothly.

Most people here try to negotiate on price (even though its so inexpensive!), but suprisingly it never happened that day. The CEO was looking intently as we completed our conversation. The IT guy was comfortable with what we were offering him. Though he was losing control of the application (since he was outsourcing something to a SaaS provider) he was reducing the cost & not to mention the headache to implement the same solution in-house and then worry about upgrades, uptime etc.

"So, what happens if you sell your company tomorrow. What happens to the service that we have committed to?" asked the CEO.

This question actually threw me off-guard. Obviously, if we do get acquired, the first thing we would take into account would be our customers and make sure they are taken care of with the same level of service and response times. I told him that we would make sure that they would always be in good hands and commitement to client satisfaction is something we take really seriously.

"But, who will train our staff if we implement your solution? he asked. My answer to that was simple. Our solution was built with simplicity in mind and it does not require exhaustive training. Most of our larger customers use DeskAway in a small team first and then expand the team as more and more people get used to it. It's a self-learning, easy to use tool. It's not complex, old-school software. For us, adoption is the key and hence we have tried to mix the right combination of simplicity and feature-richness.

After a few minutes the CEO leaves in a hurry and I am again left with the IT Guy. I knew that if I had more time with the CEO I could explain him a little bit more about SaaS and how things are different compared to on-premise software and what he has experienced so far.

While I was in the car, I gathered my thoughts and here are some points that I jotted down. Even if they decide not to signup as a paying customer, I had learnt a few good things (some points were re-enforced again) about SaaS:

- IT guys are not the always the bottleneck in selling a SaaS solution.

- Larger companies would need a new pricing & sales strategy to get them on board a SaaS solution.

-  Security, backup and business continuity is of utmost importance.

- If you price your app correctly and demonstrate value, you save a lot of headache and time with price negotiations.

- Larger companies could want to pay for your solution by cheque (instead of an online credit card payment).

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Just read a great article on hiring sales people for your startup by Dharmesh Shah - Building Startup Sales Teams Though, we have never hired a sales person yet (only marketing so far) I am hoping we hire our first sales person in the coming months. I will be challenging what I posted yesterday, but it would be worth a try.

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Operating a SaaS business is extremely exciting because you have the chance to be like a true web company. Your software, marketing, support, community building, revenue etc. are all online. You get to keep costs low and stay trim while scaling your business and seeing global customers signup and use your service. There comes a time when people start asking you for personalized demos and multiple rounds of meetings that goes contrary to the way you are marketing and selling your service. Plus, you are managing a high volume, low cost self-service app so the time (and therefore money) spent on closing one offline deal could be spent on getting probably a few hundred trial signups online.

If you are trying to create a true web-based global self-service product, what has been your approach to these pre-sales meet-me-multiple-times demo calls?

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Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y” Rule # 8 states "By definition, your sales prospects are online - Savvy online marketing is a core competence (sometimes the only one) of every successful SaaS business. " (BTW, read the other laws as well) SaaS vendors should utilize low-cost marketing techniques to gain market traction and increase user adoption. While old-school software had marketing budgets of millions of $'s and sold by downloads or via CD's, selling SaaS requires an understanding of the web, user behavior and implementing some cool techniques and methods.

Follow these methods and you will golden.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is one of the most in-expensive ways to push prospects to your site. Prospects search for keywords related to your service, your site popups up on the SERPS (search enging results page), they click on your link and ka-ching, you have a lead. It sounds easy (doesn't everything now adays) but there are 2 things you need to do: a. make sure your website is optimized (keywords, content, title tags, alt tags, etc.) b. other highly ranked websites (with a Google PageRank of 4 or more) link to you. The more quality sites that link to you the more "brownie" points you get from search engines. Further reading - http://www.highrankings.com/tentips

2. Pay Per Click (PPC) PPC is where you pay a small amount when someone clicks on your ad on a search engine is paid search. I have personally liked the Google Adwords. You bid on keywords (the one you used on your site) and then have your site show up on the right side of the Google SERPs. Make sure you try this service out with a small budget and a few keywords. Though this method can be expensive for certain keywords (especially if you are competing with everyone around the world), you can get some really inexpensive keywords for each individual geographic location. e.g. certain project collaboration keywords are much more inexpensive in India than N. America

Blog Marketing

Find articles that talk about your service (or complementary services) through Google Alerts and Technorati and then contact those bloggers for a review. Comment on these articles - comments need to be contextual, brief and not spammy. I have tried a few paid blog marketing techniques from reviewme.com, payperpost.com and blogvertise.com but they haven't lived up to their expectations.

Email Marketing/ Campaigns Build your newsletter lists (from website visitors, customers, prospects and anyone you come in contact with) and have an email newsletter go out to them every month. Measure and track open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, forwards etc. This is one of the best ways to keep in touch and let people know about whats going on with your company and service (feature launches, customer testimonials, casestudies..). Further Reading Seth Godins Permission Marketing Writing an effective newsletter

Affiliate Programs Create and promote an attractive affiliate program(s) that provide a win-win to both the vendor (you) and the affiliate with excellent recurring commissions. The brick and mortar industries did this with their distributors networks. Affiliates are one of the best ways to grow your business while you sleep at night. Two of the good affiliate networks that I have checked out and heard of are: Commission Junction Share A Sale I have heard thats its better to create an in-house affiliate network and create a direct relationship with your affiliates. We would love to hear your comments/ views on In-house affiliate Vs. Existing Networks.

Channel Partners/ Marketplaces Over the last year or so I have noticed marketplaces (think a Mall) open up for SaaS vendors (think a boutique shop). Two of the marketplaces I have checked out are Jamcracker and Etelos. Channels are a good way to build recurring revenue (same as affiliates). Channels bring in customers to their marketplace where the customer can signup for multiple SaaS services. If any of you have experience running a Channel program, please post your comment & thoughts. Further Reading ChannelWeb

Social Networks Get yours fans talking about you on Facebook (create a Fan page) and send out sneak previews, discount coupons etc. through Twitter. You can even track who is talking about you on Twitter - great way to build relationships and solve customer service questions.

PR It helps build credibility if you can get some good stories written up on you or your service in an offline media publications.

Free Trials Giving a free trial to your prospects so that they can experience your software and customer service is fundamental to any SaaS initiative. Free trials are low-risk, inexpensive and helps the above sales efforts to become more effective. We will be going in-depth into most of these points.

Remember, everything that happens on the web can be measured, tweaked and re-measured. Now, all you need is an analytic tool (my choice is Google Analytic) to measure and track your success. Good luck!

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For all of those people struggling to understand the Google Auction (Adwords) system, here is how it works. At the end, it all depends on how popular your keyword is - the more popular the keyword, the more people bidding on it and hence the higher the Cost Per Click (CPC) you will pay. Its better to let go of the popular keywords and drill down to niche keywords that might give you less impressions but a higher Click Through Rate (CTR).

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