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Are you ignoring the most important B2B SaaS growth component? BisVue.com 48 Views • 9 months ago

⁣Someone has to talk about word of mouth…

First the data…

Research from Jay Baer shows that in B2B, 91% of every sale is influenced by word of mouth in some way
Jason M. Lemkin estimated that when BILL IPO’ed 80% of its customers came from word-of-mouth
Research shared by ThinkImpact shows that 88% of the potential customers of B2B businesses seek word-of-mouth assurance before purchasing

I have long been a big fan of net promoter scores (NPS), but the power of NPS scores is not in the score, it is in the mindset that companies can create an experience that their customers would be willing to share. NPS scores are often discussed as a customer satisfaction metric, but I am more interested in what it literally measures, quantifying how likely customers are to refer a company to a friend or family member i.e word of mouth. Companies don't increase word-of-mouth sales because they implement NPS, they improve because they adopt a mindset that they will do something that people want to share and then enable users to share. Companies can do this without NPS or with NPS, but it starts with the mindset.

Word of mouth is not a simple marketing tactic but we can do things to enable it. There are a few products that I use that demonstrate how to enable word of mouth:

Consistent, strong brand: This is not just about the logo and messaging, it is about how customers experience your brand throughout the customer lifecycle. People won’t refer your brand if they think there is a chance it will be a poor experience. We have referred quite a few of our clients who are relatively immature from a marketing perspective to Hubspot, because, over the years, HubSpot has done a terrific job of consistently creating a brand experience that suits those who are looking for a solution that is relatively easy to implement, use and gain value from.

Wow your customers: A consistent brand ensures that people will be willing to refer others, but an amazing experience will make people want to refer your product. For instance, over the past few weeks, I have had several people proactively recommend Opus Clip because they were amazed at how easily it can create small video clips from a larger video.

Make your product easy to share: Even if customers are willing, referring a product is not top of mind for them, so make your product easy to share. This could come in a wide variety of forms, but here is one example from a product I use, Semrush. By making their reports and data very easy to share, they have enabled many word-of-mouth discussions about their product with our clients.

Make your product easy to experience: People being referred to you should be able to experience your product without significant effort. Bill.com provides a great example. My first experience with Bill.com was when we received a payment from a client. After a simple registration to accept our payment, I was able to easily see the functionality the platform offered.

Mapping the Market Opportunity for High-Growth B2B SaaS Companies BisVue.com 50 Views • 3 years ago

⁣We are going to start with the punchline upfront – most of your go-to-market teams are likely not focusing on the right buyer. To explain what I mean, let’s break your target market into 3 different groups.
Total Addressable Market (TAM): This is the largest of the 3 groups and also the number that gets most of the executives and investors excited. Basically, this captures the universe of potential customers. However, it is likely that your current product offering cannot effectively serve your entire addressable market. Here’s where the next group comes in.
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): This is the part of your TAM for which your current product has strong product-market fit. As a result, your ICP represents the real, immediate potential your company has to drive growth. For B2B software, ICP is defined by firmographic criteria that is shared across your typical buyer. This criteria could be based on industry, geography, revenue, and other qualification criteria.
Active Buyer: An active buyer is someone within your ICP that has initiated the buying process. This means they are at least aware that your product or product category exists and show clear signs of starting down the purchase consideration and/or purchase intent path. It’s important to keep in mind that, at any given moment, it is likely that less than 3% of your ICP can be called an active buyer. In other words, trying to time engagement with a buyer as they become active is like trying to find a needle in a haystack – time-consuming, frustrating, and likely not productive.
It is essential that the go-to-market team is aligned around who falls into your ICP and what signals may indicate that an ICP lead may be moving into the active buying process. Don’t assume sales and marketing are on the same page here. In fact, 9 out of 10 times, in organizations that are just starting to ramp up an inbound motion, we see a sales team that is expecting all marketing-driven leads to be active buyers while the marketing team is working to capture qualified leads of any sort. This results in a disappointed sales team and a frustrated marketing team.
TL;DR
To avoid cross-functional tension and an unproductive situation, establish ongoing two-way communication across the go-to-market team. If you don’t already have a go-to-market team meeting on the calendar, add one. The purpose of these meetings is for the marketing team to provide an update on strategies and tactics and the sales team to offer feedback and insight into lead flow and quality. Keep in mind, as you start to increase top-of-the-funnel volume, it may be necessary to consistently revisit the organization’s definition of an MQL.

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