- If you're working on scaling your SaaS business, but something in there is holding back your growth. You're not quite sure what it is. On this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the three principles that you absolutely need to know to diagnose and transform the health of your SaaS go-to-market strategy.
And when you follow these three principles which are battle-tested from the trenches, you will be able to accelerate the growth of your SaaS business. Intro. (logo whooshes) (energetic music) (logo beeps) What's up, everybody.
Welcome to Unstoppable. I'm TK and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now, if you're new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So, be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon. That way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community, if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs, (chest smacking) my people, it's really awesome to see you over here. So, over the last 15 years, I've started and sold two SaaS companies. Particularly over the last 18 months, I took everything that I learned from being in the trenches and I started this YouTube channel, and I started to share actionable principles and strategies.
And through that, I've actually started my coaching program. In my coaching program, I work with over 250 founders on helping them with their go-to-market strategy to actually accelerate their growth. Through all of that, I've started to see one cool thing.
I started to see the patterns that exist. I've started to be able to pattern match across all these founders and all these SaaS companies on what really holds back the health and the growth of a SaaS business. So, on this episode, based on my experience of helping over 250 founders, based on my own experience of being a founder and being in the trenches, I'm gonna walk you through the three principles that's gonna help you transform the growth of your SaaS business, so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did or these other founders did.
So that you can actually reduce your execution risk. If you're excited again, go ahead and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, and let's go to principle number one. So, principle number one is you gotta measure the quality of your go-to-market strategy.
A lot of times, when I'm talking to founders, they're saying, "Okay, we're generating this many leads," or "This much pipeline. " And very quickly, I have to actually say, "Okay, cool, got it. " But how many of those leads are getting into demo calls, or how many of these leads are activating in your product?
How many of these leads are turning into opportunities? And how many of those opportunities are closing? The percentage difference between the leads to the opportunity, or the leads to the activated users.
And then those users and opportunities to actual close, are the percentages that matter the most. That's what measures for quality. And what happens a lot of times is founders and maybe an agency they hired that's run by an X pizza Boy, that's never done this before.
They're saying, "Look at how many leads we've generated. " Right, but what they're not measuring is quality and quality is what really helps you understand if all the activities that are happening in your SaaS business, if those activities are yielding the right quality. And it's very easy to get stuck on, well, we generated this much revenue, but all the stuff in between, those conversion rates in between, is really what helps you understand, is that revenue a good number or a bad number?
Because you have yielded a lot more, given the number of leads or given the number of opportunities, or activated users. And it also helps you understand what area of the business you need to really focus on. Measuring quality is principle number one because so often, we get caught up in the vanity metrics, the number of leads, or the amount of pipeline, or the number of registered users.
And then we look at the end result, which is the revenue. But we don't look at these percentages in between which really measure for quality. And if you really wanna understand what's holding back your SAS business, or your go-to-market strategy where it's broken, where it's unhealthy, you wanna look at is the quality of the activities, and what's flowing through the funnel.
That's Principle Number one. Once you start thinking about the quality, the second principle that you wanna think about to turn your go-to-market strategy to a healthy one, to a scalable one, to an effective one is to think about your differentiation. A lot of times, companies get pretty good at getting attention.
They get at attracting the leads. They get pretty good at getting people into the product or into a demo. But where they fail in their go-to-market syringe, and I've seen this and I've suffered with this, and I've seen other founders suffer with this and we have to work on it, is they don't think about how they differentiate.
The way you differentiate in the market, determines whether all these people that are interested and maybe have this urgent important problem you're solving, go with you versus maybe they're a default case scenario which is to do nothing, or an Excel spreadsheet, or your direct competitor. So principle number two is to really think about how do you differentiate and how are you communicating that differentiation? One way to differentiate is to have a different message, or have a different narrative.
So, when they're meeting with you, they're like, you know what, this company is solving my problem in a whole different way. And they really, really get me. Another way to differentiate is to have a differentiated product.
You can still compete in the CRM space if you take a wildly differentiated approach in how you build your CRM. And companies are doing that right now, even though Salesforce is a behemoth. Differentiation is one of the biggest reasons why your go-to-market strategy may not be working effectively because you may be doing a lot of activities and driving poor quality.
And then on top of that, you're driving an undifferentiated product or message. And those two combined, is basically yielding lackluster growth, or maybe even nothing. Crickets, if you will.
If you start to think about quality and differentiation, first two principles, you'll already be able to identify where the choke point might be in your SAS go-to-market strategy and how you can actually transform it to make it healthy and grow a lot faster. Now, before we go to principle number three, let me just pause here for a second. You start to see the power in this?
Instead of just thinking about, well, how do we just do more leads, or how do we just get more opportunities, or send more outbound emails? If you can take a step back and really think about quality and differentiation, these are the strategic things that really bring you leverage in whatever activities you're doing in your go-to-market. If you can step away from the day-to-day execution, think about these two things.
Just these two things. Think about the difference you can make in everything else you're doing in your go-to-market. If you're starting to see the power in this, can I just get a yes in the comments below?
Also, smash our Like button for the YouTube algorithm. It really likes it when you do that. Now, if you wanna work with me to revamp your go-to-market strategy and apply some of these principles, you should also, check out my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching Program.
I'll link to it below, but let's go to principle number three, right now. Principal number three is Iteration. This is a question that I get asked in almost every call I'm on, or my team is on when we're talking to founders looking to work with us.
They're like, "Hey, what makes for a founder that's successful and what makes for a founder that's not? " And immediately, now that I've been at this for long enough and I've seen success, and I've seen people that have struggled and then turn it around, there's one thing that makes a difference. That's iteration.
What happens a lot of times is founders will do some of the work on their go-to-market. So, they'll go in, and maybe they'll build an ideal customer profile but like a simple one and make it a list. But instead of like the detailed stuff that I like to do Maybe they'll create a manifesto which is their strategic narrative or their value prop, or their messaging.
Maybe they'll run a Broadway Show, which is a consistent set of activities in sales and marketing and product to drive your manifesto to your ICP. Maybe you'll do some of these things but what happens a lot of the times when things aren't working is they fail to iterate. What they don't do is they don't go back to the ICP, to the manifesto, to the Broadway Show, to all the components of their go-to-market and say, "Cool, what have we learned?
What does the data say? Is it quality, are we differentiate? How do we iterate, based on everything we've learned?
" You don't do that loop. And a lot of times it's not founder's fault. I've struggled with this too.
It's because there's just so much information out there. Sometimes, you just get confusing. You don't even know what to iterate on because you're not tethered to an actual framework.
And so, that's the third principle that I've seen to really help you break through whatever rut you are in or if growth is not happening if it's unhealthy in terms of go-to-market. How do you actually iterate? What components can you iterate based on the data you're seeing and how do you keep iterating based on the new information?
This is super powerful because when you combine these three principles, you will be able to take everything that you know and everything that you've learned, and transform your go-to-market to that next version, and that next version, and you get better, and better, and better. If you ignore these three things then you'll essentially be doing the same thing. You'll be driving volume but there's not gonna be any value.
And the revenue numbers aren't going to change. But the people in between are gonna say, "Look, we're generating lots of leads. " "Oh, look, we worked all these opportunities but deals are on closing," and you'll be like, "I don't understand what's happening.
" And that's the power in this. So, recap principle number one, to transform your go-to-market is to measure the quality. Measure the quality of each of the parts of your go-to-market strategy and see which one you need to fix.
Principle number two is to look at differentiation. What aspect of your go-to-market can you actually drive differentiation on it? Are you sufficiently differentiating from the rest of the market when you're engaging with everyone that are prospective buyers.
And number three is iteration. Are you actually iterating on the components if you go-to-market, based on what the data's telling you, based on the market's you, based on what the competitor dynamics are? If you combine these three, you can actually get exponential growth in your go-to-market, because each of these points compound on each other to actually help you scale your go-to-market.
And that's the power in this type of thinking. If you got value from this video, please smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm. And also, if you're in this stage where you're building out your go-to-market strategy, you're iterating on it and you're wanting to grow, you're wanting to scale your go-to-market, then I invite you to work with me inside of my SaaS Go-to-market Coaching Program.
Inside of this coaching program, we actually help you develop your go-to-market strategy and then execute on it, and then scale it. And it breaks out in three parts. First, we really flash out your ideal customer profile.
Then, we help you, actually, build out your differentiated strategic narrative. We call that a manifesto. And then, we help you run your Broadway Show which helps you bring your manifesto to your ICP in a consistent basis across your key teams.
This is an incredible program. I started it a little over 18 months ago, we've had over 100 founders just in this program alone. I run other programs where I have one program for greater than 3 million in revenue for scaling.
I have another program that's pre-revenue. But this go-to-market program is specifically for founders that are at the seed stage. They have some revenues and they're like, "Look, we need a much more scalable go-to-market machine to actually drive growth.
And that's what this go-to-market program is all about. So, if you're interested in working with me and following this framework, so that you can actually accelerate the growth of your SAS business, then I invite you to check out my go-to-market program. Just go to tkk.
com/gtm. tkkader. com/gtm, and on that page, you'll get all the details about the program, how it works, what did you get, and you'll just fill in a little form to apply, to join.
The reason we do the application process is what I've found personally, is the better the fit, the better the results. So, we wanna make sure we get on call and make sure that, "Hey, this makes a ton of sense given where you are in the business. " Why answer all questions you have, and then, we'll get you into the program if we feel like we can actually help you drive the growth that there's a real fit.
So, just go to tkkader. com/gtm for all of the details. Lastly, if you got value from this video, please smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm.
My team and I put a lot of love into these videos. So, we wanna help as many people as possible. And when you hit that Like button, YouTube gets really happy and then they share it with more founders out there.
If you have a fellow founder, or a team member that would get value from this video, please share it with them as well. It would just mean the world to us. And lastly, I drop a video every single Sunday with actionable strategies from the trenches, having been a founder, doing exactly what you're doing and then, helping 250 more founders, doing exactly what you're doing and what I did.
So, be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon, then you'll get notified, the next episode that I drop. And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode, or inside of the Go-To-Market Program. Link is below. (energetic music) So, oh, that's principle number two.
Don't include that.
