Kick SaaS Podcast

How to Pitch Your SaaS Company to Investors

Jono Landon — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 19:17:00 +0000

Have you started a Software as a Service (SaaS) business and need to raise early-stage capital, but don’t know the best strategies to do so? Today’s episode features a panel discussion with SaaS influencers sharing their advice on how to pitch a SaaS company to investors.

Panelists include Jonah Midanik, founder of Limelight Platforms and managing director of the Acceleprise Accelerator Program; and Mikael Dia, founder and CEO of Funnelytuics.io. The panel discussion is hosted and moderated by Jono Landon, founder and CEO of Hubbli.

Topics Include:

Funnelytics.io: Funnel analytics company that helps marketers turn traffic into profit
Limelight Platforms: Offline marketing platform evaluates events, sponsors, and shows
Acceleprise: SaaS-only accelerator program provides capital to companies with products in market to avoid problems
How to select investors? Build momentum, gain traction, and find investors that fit
What is haute to fundraise? Venture-backed startups don’t always correlate to success
Pitch Deck vs. Narrative: Share a story that resonates with investors to get buy-in
Mistakes Made: Thrown out of investor offices and not doing stage-appropriate pitching
Pre-Seed Pitching: Is the market big? Are you good? Do you know how to get there?
United States vs. Canada: Risk tolerance is different and product of your environment
Work/Life Balance: Time, energy, attention, love, and patience is fixed resource
Pre-Revenue Advice: Talk and listen to customers without trying to position your product’s solution to a problem
Proof of Concept: Positioning generates revenue and system attracts same buyers
Wow Moments: Combination of expertise, traction, and no attribution of offline marketing
Leading Indicators: List, learn, practice, and improve to be successful with investors
Early-Stage Price Model: Tweak, test, and play with pricing regularly

Links and Resources:

Hubbli

Jono Landon on LinkedIn

Toronto Software as a Service (SaaS) Meetup Group

Jonah Midanik on LinkedIn

Limelight Platforms

Acceleprise Accelerator Program

Price Intelligently by ProfitWell

Raising Capital for SaaS Startups

Jono Landon — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 18:55:00 +0000

Are you struggling to raise capital to sustain your Software as a Service (SaaS) startup? If you want to raise money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. Today’s episode features a panel discussion with founders from two early-stage SaaS companies in Toronto.

Panelists are Roy Pereira, founder of Zoom.ai and mentor at Techstars, and Wes Moon, co-founder and COO of Wisely. The panel discussion is hosted by Jono Landon, founder and CEO of Hubbli.

Topics Include:

Elevator Pitch: Future plans and ideas from SaaS startup founders
Wisely: Started with a prediction engine to help charities raise more money
Zoom.ai: Targets mid-market companies with AI-powered meeting scheduling assistant
What makes a safe (enough) bet for investors? Take money from friends or angel investors, but not family members—for now
Team vs. Traction: Attributes depend on phase and problem to be solved by right people
What KPIs and metrics drive SaaS companies? Stage sets story to make metrics
Practice makes Perfect: When trying to raise capital, seek advice on what matters
Lead Gen Ratio: It’s a numbers game; don’t give up on finding investors to raise capital
Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series Fundraising: Who to ask and how much money to request
How much time does it take to raise money? Go all in with complete focus and understanding because you don’t choose your venture partner, they choose you
U.S. vs. Canadian Investors: Know your audience’s perspectives on deal flow and funds
Accelerator and Roadshow Programs: Worth giving up equity to grow and gain validation
How to start fundraising? Warm vs. cold call, network referral/intro vs. unscheduled visit

Links and Resources:

Hubbli

Jono Landon on LinkedIn

Wes Moon on LinkedIn

Wisely

Roy Pereira on LinkedIn

How to Scale a SaaS Sales Team

Jono Landon — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 18:54:00 +0000

How do you drive sales? Set territories, pricing, metrics, and quotas? Build a team? Be a leader? Today’s episode features a panel discussion on Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and scaling hosted by Jono Landon, founder and CEO of Hubbli.

Panelists include Cheryl Fearon, Zensurance sales director; Bram Belzberg, KEV Group CEO; Jordan Grant, Zafin head of business development; and Nick Kozmin, Salesprocess.io founder.

Topics Include:

What is sales? Mastering a craft, learning every day, figuring out what works, and how to make it better and easier for customers and team members
KEV Group’s growth lifecycle due to product, pricing, and positioning innovation
Salesprocess.io started to help SaaS startups scale successfully through product-market fit, lead generation, selling, and closing
Sales Strategies and Metrics: Selling hasn’t changed, but marketing technology and tools make an impact
Sales Sprints: Implement weekly, monthly, and yearly goals and action items to achieve
Successful Strategies to Scale: Hiring practices and personality tests to find top talent that fit with a company’s culture and onboarding process
Ideal Customer Profile: Required characteristics of potential prospects include asset size, interviews, and value of solution
Conducive and Compelling Candidates: Competencies, hard work, and diligence may not be enough or make someone worthy of position
Art of Sales: Customize, interpret, develop, and deliver message to get customers
Content Marketing: What should you do to solve your problem? How can you solve the problem by purchasing a solution?
Salary, Commissions, Compensation, and Bonuses: Different business models that generate motivation and participation

Links and Resources:

Hubbli

Jono Landon on LinkedIn

Cheryl Fearon on LinkedIn

Zensurance

Bram Belzberg on LinkedIn

KEV Group

Jordan Grant on LinkedIn

Zafin

Nick Kozmin on LinkedIn

Salesprocess.io

Toronto Software as a Service (SaaS) Meetup Group

Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross

Trello

Caliper Test

Salesforce

Salesforce Methodology

Quotes/Tweets:

“Sales is like mastering a craft. It’s about learning every single day on what works, what doesn’t work, and how do you make it better and easier for your customer and your team.” Cheryl Fearon

“Selling hasn’t changed, but marketing has changed to make an impact.” Nick Kozmin

“Solve one problem for one person.” Jordan Grant

“Any good sales leader is going to be...agile. They will try and test a million different things.” Bram Belzberg

Lead Generation Strategies

Jono Landon — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 19:09:00 +0000

Today’s episode focuses on Software as a Service (SaaS) lead generation strategies. From Audience Ops to Zapier, many tools and plugins are available.

Jono Landon is the founder and CEO of Hubbli, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and SaaS company that works with private schools find prospective parents to grow enrollment. Jono describes Hubbli’s use of lead generation tools, software, and strategies.

Topics Include:

Hubbli generates sales leads via target audience, cold calling, products, content, education, and paid traffic funnel to schedule demo
Webinar Elements: What’s the roadmap to reach a buying decision?
Infomercials are ridiculous, unless you’re the person needing a solution to a problem
Sales Metrics: Results show drastic increase in price point and shorter sales cycle
Webinar: Way to engage audience, improve attendance, and offer real value
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Build trust to get people to part with their money
Tools to Try: WebinarJam, Audience Ops, Infusionsoft, Leadpages, Zapier, and more

Links and Resources:

Hubbli

Jono Landon

Jono Landon on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Google Ads

Google Boomerang

Callbox

SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham

Targeting a Niche Marketing For SaaS

Jono Landon — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 18:34:00 +0000

Why focus on targeting a niche market for Software as a Service (SaaS)? What value comes from it? Today’s episode features a fireside chat between Margie Ramos, sales and marketing coordinator at Block 64, and Jono Landon, founder and CEO of Hubbli.

Hubbli is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and SaaS company that helps small private schools find prospective parents and engage them throughout the enrollment process. Jono shares his experience with niching down to accelerate growth at Hubbli and empower school leaders to deliver education through its easy-to-use technology and marketing platform.

Topics Include:

Why create Hubbli? Solve communication problems and prevent liability issues that lead to lawsuits in education sector
Parent Engagement: Positively impacts students’ outcomes
Why call it Hubbli? Serves as “hub” for communication management tools
Multiple channels of non-relevant and repetitive communication makes lives difficult
Revert to Paperwork patchwork? Offers consistency and standardization of information
Public vs. Private Schools: Target niche market to develop strategic partnerships, relationships, and investments
Marketing Metrics Make Money: Focus on niche to improve conversion results
Stay or Go: How long should you stick with a niche market, before moving on
Disadvantages of not defining or targeting your niche market
Hubbli’s niche is CRM for private schools; and uses beachhead marketing strategy
Avoid natural instinct to be broad; narrow your focus to one customer with one problem
Product vs. Marketing Niching: Grow a healthy business by not outpacing product sales with onboarding customers
Entrepreneurs: Start your own company; do it yourself, if you don’t believe in others
Competitive Edge and Lead Gen: Cold calling to schedule demo for decision makers
Different Demographics: Parents and school administrators have different expectations and experiences with communication tools
Skills and Drills: Narrow scope of product and marketing being offered to be successful

Links and Resources:

Hubbli

Jono Landon

Jono Landon on LinkedIn

Block 64

Margie Ramos on LinkedIn

Toronto Software as a Service (SaaS) Meetup Group

MailChimp

SurveyMonkey

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Shutterstock

Doodle

The Lean Startup by Eric Reis

SaaS Sales and Customer Success with LinkedIn's Julie Federman

Jono Landon — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 16:50:00 +0000

What is customer success? Is it customer support? Glorified training? A precise definition doesn’t exist, but Julie Federman describes customer success as a resource that helps customers align with core business objectives and priorities through measurable results.

As a customer success manager at LinkedIn, she would know. Julie shares tips and tactics on combining software as a service (SaaS) sales and customer success. Her tagline on LinkedIn is: “Driving success and a love of learning through leadership consulting and education.”

Topics Include:

Customer Success Manager Role and Responsibilities: Consulting, change management, deployment, enablement, and training
Account Manager Role and Responsibilities: Maintains commercial relationships to renew, upsell, and cross-sell current customers
Buying Committee: Opportunities for collaboration between sales and customer success
Who does what when making a decision? RAPID Decision Making Model: Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide
How much time and energy should you invest in upselling clients to bring in additional revenue? Pareto Principle: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers
Success Criteria: What does success mean to your customer?
LinkedIn’s customer success support varies across business-to-business (B2B) lines
Reasons for Conflict: How to have meaningful and productive work relationships
Show Benefits of Service: Stories, surveys, measurable metrics, and other options
Structured Communication: Create deliverables that succinctly resonate with certain populations and audiences
What metrics make a healthy account? Existing internal metrics that indicate success to motivate team and help customers
Change Happens: Maintain and mitigate churn, rotation, and retention
LinkedIn’s Levels of Merit: Leadership, leverage, and results from performance reviews
Potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to predict churn
Client-facing Community: Chat, connect, and comment to provide feedback on products

Links and resources:

Julie Federman

How to Work Well With Others

Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning

Microsoft buys LinkedIn

RAPID Decision Making Model

Pareto Principle

Lemonade Insurance Company

Salesforce

IBM Watson