Podcast Summary
Shift from traditional enterprise sales to self-serve options: With the internet and product-led growth, self-serve options have become more prevalent, allowing for a shift towards building great products and engaging with customers to make sales.
The traditional world of enterprise sales involved expensive methods due to the lack of the internet, requiring large companies with significant budgets to afford the resources needed for salespeople to travel and meet potential clients. This led to a focus on organizational sales, targeting larger companies and making comprehensive sales. However, with the advent of the internet and the rise of product-led growth and bottoms-up SaaS models, self-serve options have become more prevalent, allowing for a shift towards getting great products into the hands of users and figuring out how to turn that into a sale. Education and lead generation continue to play important roles, but the focus has shifted towards building a great product and engaging with customers, rather than relying solely on traditional sales techniques.
Sales Strategies for Enterprise Software: Sophisticated sales techniques and extensive marketing efforts were used to secure large enterprise software deals, often without actual product usage in the decision-making process.
Enterprise software sales involved extensive marketing efforts and education to gain the trust of industry analysts and customers, as well as sophisticated sales techniques to navigate complex organizations and guide customers through the purchasing process. Sales teams needed to provide compelling evidence of their product's unique advantages and effectively gather intelligence to understand the customer's organization and decision-making process. This process often involved expensive dinners, golf outings, and other forms of intelligence gathering, rather than the actual use of the product. Despite the lack of product usage in the decision-making process, these methods were effective in securing large deals and achieving sales targets. However, the process was complex and required a high level of expertise from sales teams.
From top-down sales to community-driven product adoption: Companies now value their teams' expertise and seek consultative, problem-solving approaches, replacing traditional top-down sales with community engagement and user feedback sessions.
The dynamics of product adoption have shifted from a top-down sales approach to a bottom-up, community-driven model. Individuals discover collaborative tools like Slack and Figma through word-of-mouth or their own needs, and companies follow suit. Before Figma, design collaboration happened outside the software, but Dylan and his team saw the potential to bring it into the browser with real-time technologies like CRDTs. In the past, sales was seen as a forceful, external process, but now, companies value the expertise of their own teams and seek consultative, problem-solving approaches. Field sales, where top executives meet with CIOs, have given way to community engagement and user feedback sessions. Events like Config provide a platform for both companies and their communities to share news and ideas, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship.
Emphasizing the Role of Community in Enterprise Go-to-Market Strategy: Community plays a crucial role in generating excitement, building brand loyalty, and providing valuable feedback to enterprises in today's software landscape. Figma, a design collaboration platform, has seen great success by making community a core part of their culture and engaging users through user conferences.
Creating a great product and fostering a strong community are key components of a successful enterprise go-to-market strategy in today's software landscape. In the past, software adoption was challenging due to high deployment costs and complex customer environments, making it difficult to trial software. However, with the rise of SaaS, the focus has shifted towards creating user-friendly products and leveraging community to engage customers. Amanda and Dylan, the chief customer officer and founder/CEO of Figma, respectively, emphasized the importance of community in their go-to-market strategy. Figma, a design collaboration platform, has made community a core part of their culture and has seen great success with their user conferences. These events not only serve as a platform to launch new features but also provide an opportunity for users to engage with each other, share knowledge, and build excitement around the product. By involving the community in the content strategy, Figma has seen increased attendance and engagement, leading to a more successful event and a more inspired team. In essence, community plays a crucial role in the funnel by helping to generate excitement, build brand loyalty, and provide valuable feedback to the product team. It's a powerful tool for enterprises looking to create a strong go-to-market strategy in today's software landscape.
Effectiveness of product experience and network effects in retaining customers: In enterprise software, having a loved product and network effects are crucial for retaining customers and gaining market share. However, when users from different parts of the organization use various tools, salespeople must tailor strategies to address unique stakeholder needs.
Having a great product experience and network effects are more effective in retaining customers and gaining market share compared to relying solely on complex sales techniques, especially in enterprise software where there are multiple stakeholders and personas. However, when users from different parts of the organization use various tools, and there's a political dynamic inside the organization, having a loved product is essential but not always sufficient. In such cases, salespeople can leverage the product's entrenchment and usage within the company to win over competitors. The challenge lies in situations where users have already adopted other tools and are unwilling to switch, making it crucial to understand the unique needs of each stakeholder and tailor sales strategies accordingly.
Identifying the right time to involve sales: Recognize when users ask for sales involvement as a sign of growing demand and scale your sales team accordingly, focusing on high-value plans to cater to larger clients.
Understanding when to bring in salespeople is crucial for a company, especially when users start asking for it. This usually happens when the product is gaining traction within an organization and users need help navigating internal processes. For Figma, this moment came when users started asking for sales representatives to assist with IT, procurement, and security. This shift indicated a larger opportunity for Figma to capture a bigger part of the "wall-to-wall" sale. To effectively address this, Figma focused its sales team on its top-tier plan, creating a clear divide between self-service and sales. This strategy proved successful in allowing the company to cater to both smaller and larger clients effectively.
Identifying high-value potential customers in SaaS: By analyzing product usage data, SaaS companies can target high-value potential customers and tailor sales conversations to their specific needs and value, leading to more consultative and effective engagements.
In a SaaS business model, understanding how free users interact with the product can significantly inform sales and marketing strategies. By identifying and targeting high-value potential customers based on their product usage, companies can engage in more consultative, less sales-focused conversations. This approach allows sales representatives to tailor their messaging to the specific needs and value that the product brings to the organization, rather than trying to convince the buyer of its merits. Tools that help enrich customer data and identify product champions can be essential in this process. This shift from traditional sales methods to a more data-driven, consultative approach sets SaaS companies apart from earlier models and requires new strategies and tools to effectively engage with potential customers.
Connecting with CIOs for collaborations: CIOs can facilitate valuable introductions and collaborations for SaaS companies. Figma, a bottom-up company, introduces FigJam to cater to brainstorming and ideation in design process, focusing on a specialized, simple tool for various audiences.
CIOs play a crucial role in connecting startups with internal experts and domain-specific functions within their companies. Impressing CIOs during presentations can lead to valuable introductions and opportunities for collaboration. However, for bottom-up SaaS companies like Figma, identifying and engaging with potential clients amidst a large user base remains a challenge. Despite having more demand than they can service, Figma is introducing a new product, FigJam, to address the divergent use case of brainstorming and ideation in the design process. The decision to create a separate product was made to ensure a specialized, simple tool that can be used by various audiences, allowing designers to involve team members beyond just designers in the early stages of the design process. FigJam is currently free for 2021 to encourage usage and feedback during its beta phase.
Introducing FigJam: A New Product from Figma for Brainstorming and Collaboration: FigJam, a new product from Figma, enhances brainstorming and collaboration through features like cursor chat, emotes, and voice chat. Similarities to Figma allow for leveraging existing sales and marketing efforts.
FigJam, a new product from Figma, is focused on making the early stage brainstorming and collaboration process more enjoyable and human-centered through features like cursor chat, emotes, and voice chat. The team behind FigJam is currently treating it as a standalone product with its own team and go-to-market approach, but they believe that the knowledge and skills from Figma's design tool can be transferred to FigJam. The audience for FigJam is the same as Figma, and the sales and marketing efforts can be leveraged from the existing user base. Introducing a new product, especially when it's on the same product architecture and targeting the same audience, typically doesn't require a different go-to-market motion. The challenges for a company usually come when introducing a new product to a different audience or with a different product architecture, which may require significant channel investments. FigJam's focus on enhancing the collaboration experience and its similarities to Figma make it an exciting addition to the product line.
Aligning marketing efforts between product teams: Use tools like Census to identify and engage users, understand customer needs, and provide support for product champions to expand usage within their organizations.
Aligning marketing efforts between different product teams in an organization can be challenging due to varying goals and priorities. Product-led companies like Figma use tools like Census to identify and engage with the right users at the right time, ensuring effective communication and potential cross-selling opportunities. Successful companies focus on understanding customer needs and providing support for product champions to expand usage within their organizations. Anne, a former colleague of Amanda's and an expert in scaling businesses, emphasizes the importance of addressing the specific needs of companies as they grow, particularly in expanding their product adoption and gaining buy-in from other teams.
Balancing user experience and discovery in PLG: PLG companies need to ensure a great user experience, facilitate discovery, collect user feedback, and extract valuable insights to effectively understand and address the needs of their expanding customer base.
In a product-led growth (PLG) world, understanding and catering to the needs of various customer personas, from individual users to account administrators and procurement teams, is crucial. PLG companies need to ensure a fantastic user experience at every stage of growth, from small teams to large enterprises. The balance lies in making the product intuitive while facilitating discovery of new features. User feedback is essential and should be collected from various sources, including sales, research, marketing, and support. The use of tools like Slack can help in sharing and acting on user feedback across the organization. Ultimately, it's essential to extract valuable insights from the data on how users interact with the product to identify the right time for human engagement. Companies like Figma, which have reached consumer-like scales, have shown that this approach is effective in understanding and addressing the needs of their expanding customer base.
Identifying Engaged Users for Targeted Communication: Track user engagement metrics like active usage, frequency, and consistency to identify 'champions'. Reach out to them with targeted communication and trigger user research. Consider pricing and billing strategies for B2B companies to minimize friction during adoption. Figma is an example of effective engagement strategies.
Understanding user engagement and adoption metrics is crucial for both B2B and B2C companies. By tracking active usage, frequency, and consistency of product use, businesses can identify their most engaged users, or "champions," and reach out to them with targeted communication. Additionally, user research can be triggered based on these engagement signals. A specific metric mentioned is the number of days out of a month that a user engages with the product, which can provide insights into user demographics and usage patterns. For B2B companies, it's essential to consider pricing and billing strategies that minimize friction during adoption, especially when expanding across teams and organizations. Figma is highlighted as an example of a company that has effectively addressed this challenge. Furthermore, providing a seamless self-service payment experience is essential for a positive customer experience and fostering long-term relationships.
Prioritizing organization-wide adoption with consumer strategies: Successful SaaS companies adopt consumer strategies to remove barriers, provide flexible payment options, and optimize retention through data-driven understanding of user behavior.
Successful bottoms-up SaaS companies prioritize driving organization-wide adoption by removing barriers to expansion and providing flexible payment options. They follow the consumer and ecommerce approach of being data-driven and understanding user behavior to optimize retention. Companies like Figma have found success by being transparent and fair, avoiding discounts, and focusing on creating healthy customer relationships. While this approach may not be easy to implement for larger deals or in more traditional enterprise sales, it saves time and resources by eliminating the negotiation process. Ultimately, product-led companies are increasingly adopting consumer and ecommerce strategies to better understand and cater to their users, as exemplified by Figma's model.
Go-to-market strategies: An ongoing process: Successful go-to-market strategies require constant attention, adaptation, and a data-driven approach. Stay agile and focused on the customer to optimize and drive growth.
Key takeaway from this discussion on go-to-market strategies is that there is always room for improvement. As we identify and address one challenge, another issue arises. It's an ongoing process that requires constant attention and adjustment. A successful go-to-market strategy is not a one-time event but an iterative process. The speakers shared valuable insights into various aspects of go-to-market, from understanding the customer journey to aligning sales and marketing efforts. They emphasized the importance of clear messaging, effective targeting, and a data-driven approach. However, even with these elements in place, there may still be areas for improvement. For instance, sales and marketing alignment may not be perfect, or the messaging may not resonate with all customers. It's crucial to identify these areas and address them in a timely and effective manner. Furthermore, the speakers emphasized the importance of staying agile and adapting to changing market conditions. The business landscape is constantly evolving, and a successful go-to-market strategy must be able to pivot when necessary. In conclusion, the key takeaway from this discussion is that there is always more work to be done when it comes to go-to-market strategies. It's an ongoing process that requires constant attention, adaptation, and a data-driven approach. By staying agile and focused on the customer, businesses can optimize their go-to-market strategies and drive growth.
