How to Get Your First 10 SaaS Clients | With Expert Jim Barnish

Maybe like in the early stages, if some SaaS companies are maybe just starting off, what would you say are maybe some recommendations or some of the best marketing channels Maybe for highest ROI, maybe let's say for the first 10 or even 100 customers to get them in.

Yeah, so I think it depends what 100 or 10 means to you, right? B2B versus B2C and all those things. But if we really boil it down, there's really 6 core ways to drive revenue growth for a SaaS business, especially in your early days. And you kind of matrix it out, if you will, on one matrix from easy to hard. And on one matrix from, you know, the ability to get quick versus slow feedback loop, like the feedback loop attached to it. I mean, you always want to start with easy and quick, right? Because you learn a lot and that's the easiest way to see results, which the easiest quick way is warm intros from existing customers or referral network, right?

Right.

But that's number one. So if we look beyond that where there's a quick impact, maybe a medium effort, it's social media, right? LinkedIn, sometimes Twitter. Depends on the channels that, you know, your customers engage on, but social media is another great one. A little bit easier, but slower for feedback is outbound cold calling, like a real programmatic approach towards email and calling and getting customers in, which typically is a little bit later stage for a company, but can be useful for some companies to get their first initial customers. On the harder side, uh, you know, leveraging platforms and marketplaces, right? If you're a Salesforce app, like the salesforce.com ecosystem is huge, right? Um, and things like that to drive deal flow. Um, and then the final ones are a little bit, you know, more on the harder side— traditional marketing, you know, paid ads and SEO, which can take up to 18 months to really get full force. So you just need to be thoughtful of the way you balance out these strategies from warm intros, social media, Outbound platforms or marketplaces, traditional marketing like SEO, or traditional marketing like paid ads and then SEO. And if you can, you know, kind of do your testing, iterate the right way, you'll find what works for you. And it's usually, you know, 1 or 2 that work the best in your early days.

So, I mean, you guys, uh, obviously, you know, when you approach businesses, you start working with them, you guys are very, you know, data-driven, analytical. So you probably see, okay, like these are 1 or 2 channels that are working really, really well. You guys dig in deep into the business metrics. What, you know, SaaS specifically, what can you share some, you know, business metrics that you guys really like to focus on, you know, especially when assessing the companies and why is that more important to you guys?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, it really depends on the market you're in and the customer you're serving, right? B2C versus B2B versus government, right? Different measures that might matter the most. But what really matters most is the stage or the maturity of the business, right? Are you pre-product market fit? Are you efficiency stage where you're really kind of really trying to plug and play and make sure to minimize customer acquisition costs, right? Maximize lifetime value, things like that. Or are you in your scale stage where you're bringing a lot of other things like channel partners into the equation to help really drive additional scalable growth? So when we look at the stages, of the company. We focus mostly on validation and efficiency stage. So validation is, you know, focus on stickiness and virality, right? Engaging customers in a meaningful way, growing adoption and minimizing churn. So getting the right customers in, those are, those are metrics that matter a lot. As you start to evolve into more of that efficiency stage, you're optimizing pricing and pouring some of that money back into customer acquisition. customer success, efficient operations. And so things like customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, net retention rate are things that really start to matter a lot. And as you look towards exit, right, the whole game changes in terms of what your acquirer is actually looking for on the other side of that transferable value, if you will. But the most common ones are always going to be, you know, ARR growth and profit margin, which is really called the rule of 40. Your EBITDA growth plus your EBITDA margin, or your revenue growth plus your EBITDA margin needs to have 40% when you add the 2 together. That's the most important metric in a lot of cases, and in many cases, a lot of people are looking for a rule of 50, so equaling 50%. And things like sales efficiency, ARR, of course, your recurring revenues is going to be a driving metric. And so I think the, the most important part of metrics and measures conversation is that it all rolls up to a plan, right? And I think it was Dwight Eisenhower that said that in preparing for battle, he always found that plans are useless, but planning process is indispensable. I think— I don't know if plans are useless, but the planning process truly is the most important part of planning, and the measurement that comes out of that planning process is what aligns the strategy and the vision to ultimately all the operational work that the team is doing. And so one big part of that is how the hell do we measure the success of this plan, right? And so the stage you're at, the goals of the company, right, whether exit is a part of this, these are all things that are critical to know when determining what your key metrics are. But it ultimately starts with, you know, what stage of a business you're in and And how you're going to prove out that model to get to the next stage of business evolution.

Got it. So if let's say I'm a SaaS company listening in, or just any general business founder, and I say, come on, I approach Jim at Orchid Black and I want to partner with you guys. How do you guys typically partner with them? How are you going to help them to grow? What can I kind of expect having that conversation and that engagement?

Yeah. So imagine you're a founder. a CEO and you've built a strong company, right? And by all measures, you've achieved a lot of success. You're hitting some targets, but you might be missing others. And ultimately, you're a founder, right? This is what we go through. And the key ingredient is, are you open to someone else who's been in your shoes, who's been there, done that, to help you grow and sell your business? And that, you know, you can align with to make it worth as much as you wanted to do when building this, right? And that's a fundamental switch for some people from thinking like a lifestyle business. And it's got to be up to the founder to make that call and say, yes, I know I need help. I know I'm not growing to the place where I think I can. I know I can hit more targets or better targets and exit for a higher valuation than I would be worth in the market today, but I can't do it myself. And so what we built is a model that serves that problem, that solutions that problem with a very interesting business model that focuses on aligning performance with incentives, and that have a desire to exit in the next couple years. Within the next 3 years is really our core focus. And so we'll align our business model with the companies that we're serving, and in turn, we expect the founders to really dig in and make sure that they're all in on our approach towards driving growth and value creation. And when that happens, we all win, which is really kind of the cool, special part of the model that we employ.

Nice. So can you go a little bit deeper, right? So if I'm a SaaS founder, I'm ready to take that step. I'm saying yes, uh, you know, I'm kind of plateaued. I don't know what else to do to grow my company. I want to partner with somebody who can really accelerate and then, you know, finally go out and and exit together. What is that typical, maybe high level, your playbook, your method and offering look like, and what can they expect there?

Yeah, so we knew there needed to be an objective lens to view a company's true potential in the market. Nothing really existed that looked at an organization from a 360 perspective, if you will. But our challenge was how to create something comprehensive yet simple that founders aren't the people who are going to spend $1 million on McKinsey consultants, right? We needed a way to tell founders what they needed to hear about value in their business in 4 to 6 weeks and do it for a really inexpensive fee. And so we created the Value Creation Assessment or our VCA, which is our proprietary system that looks at a company from every angle, the strategy, the talent, the product, the revenue, the operations, and ultimately is we spent a lot of time figuring out exactly what was gonna make companies worth so much more, SaaS companies. worth so much more based on our experience in those 5 pillars, so that founders didn't have to, because we wish we had it when we were at that stage. So this VCA has become our plug-and-play customization around every tech company that we see that's looking to grow and exit. And sometimes I'm surprised how well it works because it is customized to every company, but it is so configurable, if you will, that diagnoses what a company needs to grow. And maximize the value of the business. And then we leverage our playbook with hundreds of situational blueprints or plays, if you will. Blueprints, yeah. And that's what we operate alongside of founders, or our how. So the VCA has become our what, and the playbook has become our how, working along and partnering with founders. And it's usually about a 6 to 36-month process. Happy to give a few use cases if, if that would be helpful as well.