SaaS Backwards - Reverse Engineering SaaS Success

In this episode, Matt Trifiro, CEO of Vapor.io, joins host Ken Lempit to discuss the insidious tyranny of artificial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how to fight back against their oppressive hold on SaaS marketing.Long gone are the days when early adopters of advertising platforms could easily dominate their market niche, as the law of diminishing returns has caught up with all forms of marketing, leaving SaaS marketers struggling to find innovative ways to attract and retain customers.But with CFOs and CEOs demanding increased results on yesterday’s KPIs, how can SaaS marketers break free from the shackles of convention and embrace experimentation and agility?Find out in this enlightening conversation, where Trifiro and Lempit explore topics such as:Establishing a culture that’s tolerant of experimentation and agility by constantly testing and iterating.How investing in customer retention is the real determination of lifetime value.Why you should always be asking, “what could I be doing with that money?” Is there a better way to spend it than on 10 BDRs or $100K tools?Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Despite building a great product and amassing close to 1000 customers, LiquidPlanner struggled to continue on the same growth trajectory. Customers expected broader capabilities. Competitors had more money. And as access to capital tightened, the board decided to look for a partner.They found Tempo, a complimentary business that will help deliver better portfolio management capabilities as well as its connectivity to Atlassian’s Jira–something their customers are looking forward to. Even though the acquisition happened a few weeks ago, the focus is squarely on delivering better portfolio management capabilities and confidence to project teams than anyone else in the market.In this episode, LiquidPlanner CEO Ted Hawksford talks about the salesmanship involved with internal stakeholders–and while it’s not the 10X valuation that most startups hope for, it’s the best outcome for everyone involved.Key takeaways:The challenges and concerns that arise when the two development teams are asked to work together before the deal is consummated. Communications with customers about an impending acquisition and providing assurances about the future of product development.The importance of having clean books before entering an acquisition and preparing for every detail to be scrutinized.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

For marketers, breaking through the trust gap is getting harder. Prospective buyers won’t believe it without some third-party validation.So, how can you break through that trust gap in a new and innovative way?That’s the problem Jeff Ernst set out to solve as the founder of SlapFive, a customer marketing solution that makes it simple to engage and mobilize customers to drive growth.In over 2000 interviews with CMOs during his tenure at Forrester, Ernst notes that overwhelmingly, the number one thing that buyers trust and seek out is what their friends and colleagues think and what your other customers’ experiences are. “They want a crystal ball into the life of a customer. They know it’s not perfect and don’t expect it to be--and they can only get that from your current customers.”In this episode, Ernst talks about his journey as an entrepreneur and shares his advice on:How to leverage customers in ways beyond case studies, testimonials, and referrals.How to find an unmet need in the marketplace and ensure product/market fit.And most importantly, what marketers should be doing today to build trust with both current and prospective clients. Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Having spent a decade growing a retail mortgage origination business, Jason Doshi noticed that the movement of funds surrounding the real estate transaction was still very antiquated.A few years later, he built Payments.io, a SaaS digital platform that allows title companies and real estate brokerages to send and receive digital money transfers, saving everyone money and time while reducing the risk of fraud.Doshi recently raised $3 Million and he talks in this episode about their challenges and opportunities such as:White labeling as a strategic initiativeProviding a competitive advantage to customers in a challenged marketSoliciting the customer’s input in establishing your business modelOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Starting his career as a research scientist, Harsha Rajasimha became interested in addressing the issue of clinical trial recruitment after realizing that many promising drugs were not making it to market due to recruitment delays.To better understand the problem, he conducted interviews with 3,000 stakeholders of clinical trials, including patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies and found that 85% of those delays were because of recruitment issues.Rajasimha created Jeeva Informatics, a platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify potential candidates for clinical trials based on their medical records and other data. The platform also helps to match patients with clinical trials that are appropriate for them.The company has had success in improving clinical trial recruitment rates, with some trials seeing a 50% increase in enrollment. Jeeva Informatics is also working to expand its platform to include a wider range of data sources and to improve the user experience for patients and physicians.Key takeaways:Conducting research and gathering insights from stakeholders before building a product is critical in finding product/market fitTechnology, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, can play a role in addressing complex problems and improving processes. Creating a product that is easy to use and meets the needs of users is important for adoption and success. Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

There’s a tendency for entrepreneurs to believe that the motivations for starting a company is the fame and fortune. But as Aseem Chandra, co-founder and CEO of Immersa explains, “That's the absolute wrong reason. You get into a startup because you love the problem, and you can't wait to see what that solution's going to turn out to be, and you're willing to give 10 years of your life to it.”Knowing that the two biggest reasons for startup failure (they run out of money and irreconcilable differences amongst the founders) Chandra first made sure that they had the disagreement piece solved before starting. He chose a co-founder that he trusted and could establish a process for working through disagreements positively. The money piece is a bit trickier, especially coming from big company background where many work habits don’t apply in startup world.In his transition from big companies into startup world, Chandra operated as an entrepreneur in residence with Global VC Fund Mayfield to take the time needed to “unlearn and re-learn” how to run a startup. Today, Immersa has raised over $10M in series A funding, and with a relatively small staff, they’re positioned well for growth.Key takeaways from this episode:Choosing the right partners and executive team and how to operate on trustHow an “entrepreneur-in-residence” might be a good pathThe customer research involved in ensuring product-market fitOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

While working for a large manufacturer in the film and broadcast industry and visiting over 200 Film and TV studios, David Kaszycki spotted a big problem.Engineers had to stay up to date with updates, critical security patches, general maintenance and accessing manuals and documents for over 10,000 different pieces of technology.With his partner, Kaszycki started Beam Dynamics to build a common interface platform that would bring all of it together. Engineers can upload or connect their inventory list and access the data on thousands of manufacturers. Now with incredible potential to expand in multiple industries such as stadiums and arenas, hospitals and houses of worship, Kaszycki has opted for the profitability path instead of pressured expansion from VCs.Key takeaways from this episode:The unforeseen advantages of building a startup in a smaller city. The difficulties of defining a new category where there isn’t a competitive offering.The importance of building a strong team and keeping everyone aligned. Working with large system integrators and resellers as partner channels. Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Is it possible to get to minimum viable product (MVP) in 100 days or less?Our guest this week, Michael Lazor, CEO of SPSoft says it is with the right development partner and the necessary preparation. Easier said than done. SPSoft is a software developer specializing in healthcare and telehealth and in this episode, Lazor talks through his methodologies for:Choosing the right development partner (lots of pitfalls to avoid)Combining internal and external development resources The research and prep work required for building your MVP, and……should you even do an MVP at all? Lazor shares his experience developing products no one bought, and what you could do instead to minimize investment losses.Other resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting. ---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Why do 90 percent of acquisitions fail for the buyer? According to Ari Kahn, President and CEO of Bridgeline, a big reason is because they’re not leveraging the customer base to create greater lifetime value (LTV), so they don’t adequately recover the original customer acquisition costs (CAC). Bridgline Digital has acquired its way to a suite of SaaS solutions that bridge the gaps between marketing, content, commerce, social and insights to grow online revenue for its customers. Kahn’s secret acquisition sauce comes in evaluating targets that make sense both from a selling perspective (getting new logos) and by enhancing customer lifetime value for its existing customers by bringing appealing new technologies.In this episode, Kahn shares his stories and specific methodologies for bringing companies into the fold, including:His first acquisition during the dot com bustUnderstanding the CAC to LTV ratioStrategies for dealing with “the cash flow trough”How providing multiple paths for customer solutions leads to greater LTVOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting. ---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Like most SaaS companies, Brandon Metcalf, CEO & Founder of Place struggled with the outbound sales model. Out of necessity, they started looking at why companies weren’t buying their products. They found that over half bought nothing. In other words, no decision. So they decided to flip the script and educate prospective buyers on what could happen instead of finding the people whose arm they could twist a sales conversation. They put a lot of work into messaging, revamped their website to let buyers self-serve, they started a podcast, and focused heavily on LinkedIn content.Less than a year later, they saw a flurry of inbound activity, and for the first time had more revenue from it than any other source.If you’re struggling with the outbound sales model and don’t know how to fix it, this episode is a must listen.Other interesting topics include:Building products on Salesforce – the pros and consRecruiting the right people by getting specific on the askHow to use podcasting to stay in touch with your customersOther resources to check out:Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publish a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting. ---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.