Daily Archives - Value Inspiration

🔆 How to stand out at a massive SaaS conference?

Ever wondered how to really stand out at a colossal SaaS conference?

I recently had an insightful discussion with a customer facing this exact challenge for an upcoming Cyber Security conference in London.

Here’s a hard truth: Simply replicating your website on a booth won’t cut it.

Remember, you have just 2⃣ seconds to grab someone’s attention. But, the usual tactics like leading with a benefit or a problem? They’re not as effective as you might think.

Here’s why: Attendees aren’t eager to admit they have a problem. They want to appear on top of their game.

So, how to captivate them? Try this: Intrigue & challenge beliefs. ✨

Intrigue acts as a conversation starter and differentiates you from the crowd. Challenging common beliefs filters the wrong audience out while attracting the right ones like magic. ✨

Food for thought: What will be your 2-second stroll stopper at your next SaaS conference?

Be Remarkable

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I’m Ton Dobbe 🔆

Want to discover the hidden gems to create a SaaS business no one can ignore?

Click my name + follow + 🔔

If you’re a B2B SaaS CEO aspiring for predictable traction, DM me. […]

🔆 How to grow the vibe around your SaaS product?

A different approach that’s making waves in the SaaS world

When I asked Jonathan Anderson, CEO of Candu what they do differently to become a SaaS company that people start talking about and keep talking about, here’s what he said:

We publish creator showcases so people can see what you’ve worked on. And what this means is that I have an amazing logo list.

We circumvent the entire case study because we’re not talking about the account; we’re talking about the person and what they’ve made.

They’re posting that on Linkedin, to their network – and they’re happy about it.

Here’s the thing

Too often, we go the complicated route to produce evidence about our SaaS suite: official case studies.

It’s dragging everything; it’s often toned down in terms of the language used, the value created, and the emotions addressed. Beyond that, the process is loaded with red tape around approval.

Until you focus on the individual and make them shine.

You get the real stories that resonate with and inspire your ideal buyers faster process, and it helps you grow your base of true fans.

The question is: could focusing on the people behind the work be the key to creating a buzz about your SaaS business? Drop your thoughts in the comments below

Be Remarkable

Link to the interview in the 1st comment

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I’m Ton Dobbe 🔆

Want to discover the hidden gems to create a SaaS business no one can ignore?

Click my name + follow + 🔔

If you’re a B2B SaaS CEO aspiring for predictable traction, DM me. […]

🔆 Creating a track record of consistently beating expectations

Being obsessed with value is good – the question is – which value?

You have the B2B SaaS CEOs that are talking a lot about

the valuation of their company in two or three years
the value of the funding they just received
the value of becoming a unicorn fast
the value of the people they know
the value of their aspired exit
………………………………….

And there are B2B SaaS CEOs that are talking a lot about

the value they help their customers create

Both are about value – but they say a lot about you and your intent.

What I’ve noticed from my own corporate experience and from working with 100s of B2B SaaS CEOs in the past five years is this:

When you switch to measuring your success (your value) by the impact you help your customers create (their value), value will stream your way in amounts higher than you can ever budget for.

Or as Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, recently dropped in a podcast:

“We’ve created an unbroken track record of underestimating our own potential.”

It’s the mindset I try to live by

It’s the mindset I look for in the people I work with

It’s a choice: Measure your success by the impact you help your customer created

So, here’s a question for you: If you look at the impact you help your customers create? Does it make them proud? What would be needed if all of them did? Drop it in the comments

Be Remarkable

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I’m Ton Dobbe 🔆

Want to discover the hidden gems to create a SaaS business no one can ignore?

Click my name + follow + 🔔

If you’re a B2B SaaS CEO aspiring for predictable traction, DM me. […]

🔆 “What’s holding your business back?”

“What’s holding your SaaS business back?”

This was our topic of discussion in the SaaS CEO Mastermind on Thursday.

The replies varied: Brand awareness…, Slow sales cycles…, our time to implement, and then a recurring theme occurred: Talent

We dug deeper into this and identified some common roadblocks and how to overcome them – and we suddenly hit a surprising conclusion :

The talent challenge indicates a segmentation problem.

Here’s the thing

The art of creating predictable traction for your business starts with identifying those customers that happily prepared to pay a premium.

It’s not about their demographics or their firmographics
It’s about describing the triangle of three things:

1. identifying what they aspire, care about, stand for, or value most
2. crystalize what’s most critical to them, and then
3. narrow down to where you can uniquely exceed expectations

The same is true when it comes to hiring.

Remember – everyone B2B SaaS business in the market is after the same Talent with the same characteristics on paper, i.e., the things you can search for on Linkedin (i.e., demographics and firmographics).

Even if you find 10000 people – that doesn’t mean they’ll choose you.

We’re dealing with people – and people decide with their hearts.

And that’s your opportunity: hit the right nerve. Win their heart.

You don’t have to be Google to become a magnet for the right Talent.

So, here’s a question for you: Do your job profiles resonate with your ideal candidates? Do they make the candidates exclaim, “That’s me! They get me – this is my destiny!”

Be Remarkable

___

I’m Ton Dobbe 🔆

Want to discover the hidden gems create a SaaS business no one can ignore?

Click my name + follow + 🔔

If you’re a B2B SaaS CEO aspiring for predictable traction, DM me.

[…]

🔆 Making outbound work via Linkedin

🔍 Week after week, I engage with #SaaS CEOs, addressing a common pain point: How to grow #outbound on LinkedIn predictably and authentically?

Building genuine relationships isn’t just a game-changer, it’s also incredibly hard. 💪🤔

We’ve all been tempted to find shortcuts: outreach campaigns that lack heart or rushing to sell as soon as someone connects. Spoiler: They don’t work. 🚫

So, what does work? Building meaningful relationships! Using social media to, well, socialize. It’s just like building relationships in real life. 🌍💼

I’ve tried Sales Navigator, creating engagement lists, scanning feeds – all too noisy, unfocused, or time-consuming. Until I discovered a tool called Aware. 🕵️‍♂️🛠️

Aware enabled me to engage precisely with my target audience without the clutter of LinkedIn. It’s not just time-efficient; it also prevents missed opportunities. What’s the result? I’m building valued and meaningful relationships more effortlessly than ever. 🚀💡

Inbound growth? It’s on the rise. Because when you invest in authentic relationships, people notice.

So, remember, there are no shortcuts in building remarkable relationships. But with the right tools, we can make the process focused, manageable, and even fun. 🎉😃

Now, let’s get interactive! On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the quality of relationships your team is building on LinkedIn? And what if it could be a perfect 10?

#Networking #BusinessGrowth #LinkedInTips

________________________

I am Ton

Follow me to discover the hidden gems to build predictable SaaS traction. Or simply subscribe to my list (link in 1st comment).

[…]

🔆 How to fuel a dependable demand for your SaaS product?

As you’ve likely noticed over the past weeks, I’ve tried to answer the question: How to fuel a dependable stream […]

🔆 Creating fans, not just users

“Fundamentally, we’re changing the way that a SaaS business thinks about building its product.”

This is the essence of my interview with Jonathan Anderson, CEO of Candu.

We explore what’s holding a lot of software vendors back from shipping products to market and achieving high adoption rates

Next, we dig into the challenges he had to overcome to build traction and what it took from a product investment perspective in terms of first principles, focus, and grid.

Key takeaway: Let’s stop thinking about the world of Enterprise SaaS as either ‘no code’ or ‘fully coded.’

Beyond that, what makes this interview a must-listen-to

His approach to convincing a user/ buyer Candu is exactly what they need.
How to approach getting users to start using your product and become addicted
Their approach to turn their user base into their best sales force
What Candu did differently by giving their ideal customers a ‘name’ that makes them instantly recognize if it’s for them or not

The link to the interview with Jonathan is in the 1st comment

What would be the most frustrating usability problem you’d solve if you had a tool like Candu?

Ps – want to discover the hidden gems to become a SaaS business no one can ignore? Subscribe to my list (link in 1st comment).

[…]

🔆 Creating energy at all levels of your Sales funnel

“It feels like everything is dragging in our SaaS pipeline….the urgency seems lacking…”

I heard this same line (in slightly different words) twice last week.

And it got me thinking

And since I’ve written a number of times about Demand Creation in the past weeks, I wondered – what we can learn from demand creation and in particular, Narrative Design to spark action in the pipeline.

Here’s my reflection:

Narrative Design gives you a framework to communicate your unique point of view on the market and grounds how your SaaS product will help people achieve it.

And this makes it the perfect instrument to leverage across all different parts of your funnel – simply because it gets people in the right mindset:

Top of the funnel: here, you can leverage it to talk about the undeniable change in the world. This creates awareness about a problem they didn’t realize they had
High/Middle of the funnel: here, you can leverage it to talk about the winners and losers of the new game created by the undeniable change in the world. This creates interest.
Middle of the funnel: here, you can fuel a flywheel for evangelism, bringing fans of your game who aren’t users of your product into the process. This fuels desire.
Sales process: helping your sales force empathize with how hard it is to do – addressing the pains – and leveraging that moment to optimally position you how you can make the most significant difference for your prospect. This creates urgency and action.

Getting deals flowing again in your sales funnel is about making people realize doing nothing is not an option.

Very often we don’t even realize we have a problem, because we’re just living it. Our eyes need to be opened. Narrative Design is perfect for that.

It helps you get under people’s skin, and hit the right nerve to make them realize it’s ridiculous they’re in this situation – and something needs to happen.

Key takeaway – Stories captivate, open eyes, and spark action. Leverage that.

What problems could you solve inside your SaaS sales funnel if you’d leverage Narrative Design?

Ps – want to discover the hidden gems toward predictable SaaS traction? Subscribe to my list (link in 1st comment).

[…]

🔆 Engineering to spark viral growth

Most SaaS vendors struggle to stand out in insanely competitive markets…

In relation to this, Andy Mowat, CEO of Gated, shared a valuable lesson worth reflecting upon.

A bit of context: Gated was founded to solve a fundamental flaw in email, which is: it doesn’t cost anything to reach you; hence you don’t control your inbox

Obviously, this problem has existed for long, but up to now, not even Microsoft or Google have been able to solve it.

So when I asked him what he’s doing differently, here’s what he answered.

No one’s thinking about sender incentives. Everyone’s thinking, How do I sell you another tool to manage the mess faster or better? What we’re really thinking is, how do we push people to think, ‘Is this relevant to whoever I’m sending it to? – before I send it or right after I send it, do I really want to take that extra step to get that in? The impact of that is dramatically reducing the noise for both sides and what that means is: real connections happen.

Here’s the thing

This approach is the very thing that makes Gated remarkable – It doesn’t focus on the receiver to help them clean the mess – it focuses on taking out the root cause by changing behavior on the sender side.

It’s a trait remarkable saas vendors master. They master curiosity and focus on the essence i.e. they start with the end in mind – and then re-engineer the journey without bias or getting trapped in incremental thinking. With that, they’re creating new value opportunities – and creating momentum from there.

Key takeaway: Don’t make something complex easier – focus on making the problem magically disappear by itself.

Be Remarkable

Listen to the quote from Andy. The link is in the 1st comment.

Ps – Also want to discover the hidden gems to stand out in your SaaS market? Subscribe to my list (link in 1st comment).

[…]

🔆 “Ton,…this is now going to enable hyper-scale….”

Sadly,…far too many B2B SaaS businesses fail to build a scalable SaaS sales engine…

It’s not because their product isn’t good
It’s not because they don’t get enough leads
It’s not because they’re unable to win sizeable deals

It’s something much simpler.

One of my customers reflected on their breakthrough in overcoming this problem on Friday.

“My mind was stuck on the solution.”
“It stopped me from knowing what to qualify out for.”
“It prevented me to figure out precisely why customers bought our product.”

He continued:

From a founder’s perspective, why is it important? Because if you find this, you’ll be able to build a scalable sales engine because you’ll know what to qualify out.

If you can’t figure out why your customers buy your product, what problems are they solving with it from a customer pain perspective, not what solution you’re selling them – then you can’t get to step two. And if you can’t get to step two, you can’t get to step three, which is to nail down the customers that WILL buy your products.

Key takeaway: Crystalize who’s prepared to pay a premium for your solution – and why. Focus there and credibly detract the rest.

The result (Quote): “This is now going to enable hyper-scale.”

Be Remarkable

Do you have any questions?

Ps – Also want to discover the hidden gems towards predictable SaaS traction? Subscribe to my list (link in 1st comment).

Need help to figure this out as well? DM me.

[…]

DailyA daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore.

Daily
A daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore.