Comments on: How Can a SaaS ISV Drive Down Marketing & Sales Costs?

By: Business App Store

Business App Store — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:52:27 +0000

That article was written in 2007 and is still valid in 2010, many of the successful SaaS players have been able to leverage their user base through referrals to scale profitably their business but of them are still struggling with excessive sales and marketing costs. There is a SaaS dedicated affiliation network recently created that will make this feasible for even the smaller SaaS players [http://www.appdoubler.com/] We have posted recently on the subject of Customer Acquisition Cost for SaaS [http://www.getapp.com/blog/are-customer-acquisition-costs-killing-your-software-business/]

By: SaaS Blogs - » SaaS Network Effect - Get it or get left behind

SaaS Blogs - » SaaS Network Effect - Get it or get left behind — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:00:55 +0000

[...] there was a great series of posts (here and here) around how SaaS companies make money that led to input from Sinclair here on SaaSBlogs, and myself on my own personal blog at the time. The discussion ended up with [...]

By: Freshbooks - SaaS Through and Through | Metricz

Freshbooks - SaaS Through and Through | Metricz — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:53:33 +0000

[...] This is one place where Freshbooks REALLY excels, and does one of the things that many of us had talked about last week in the discussion originating over at SaaSBlogs. [...]

By: SaaS Profitability & Globalization

SaaS Profitability & Globalization — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:03:54 +0000

[...] Unreasonable men (with interesting follow-up posts at SmoothSpan by Bob Warfield and another at SaaSBlogs by Sinclair Schuller). The high cost of customer acquisition combined with the long customer ramp [...]

By: SaaS/s and SaaS/v post… | diversity.net.nz

SaaS/s and SaaS/v post… | diversity.net.nz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:23:44 +0000

[...] Over here at SaaS blogs, Sinclair has posted about what he refers to as SaaS with ROF (Regular Old Functionality) as opposed to SaaS with ROF + Value. [...]

By: links for 2007-12-04 « The Adventures of Geekgirl

links for 2007-12-04 « The Adventures of Geekgirl — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:19:04 +0000

[...] SaaS Blogs – � How Can a SaaS ISV Drive Down Marketing & Sales Costs? How Can a SaaS ISV Drive Down Marketing & Sales Costs? (tags: saas isv marketing sales costs pricing) [...]

By: Joe Shmoe

Joe Shmoe — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 06:24:59 +0000

Thank you for this very detailed information.
See also [ http://www.saas-showplace.com/ ]

By: Freshbooks - SaaS Through and Through | Metricz | Drive Success

Freshbooks - SaaS Through and Through | Metricz | Drive Success — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:32:41 +0000

[...] This is one place where Freshbooks REALLY excels, and does one of the things that many of us had talked about last week in the discussion originating over at SaaSBlogs. [...]

By: Bob Warfield

Bob Warfield — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:53:31 +0000

Let’s look at this “free” vs “charge for” issue on the Web 2.0 aspects a little bit differently. Let’s further restrict ourselves to customers and not prospects, because if we’re even considering charging, we aren’t talking about prospects.

Now it seems to me that we can then view these Web 2.0 features as translating some of the normal customer relationship and technical support in self-service.

Now we’re talking about something SaaS is all about. There is the service the SaaS vendor offers, but there is also the reality that SaaS frequently enables self-service to a much higher degree than other models with better results for all.

The self-services I have in mind are basically of two kinds. First, we can use Web 2.0 to enable our customers to help each other and build a valuable community. This will ultimately benefit sales and marketing as prospects become aware of it. Many products are sold on the basis of community. See my post on Web 2.0 Persuasion for more:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/the-psychology-of-saas-and-web-20-persuasion-and-selling/

Secondly, we can enable better collaboration between the SaaS vendor and their customers (and prospects). Take the examples I give comparing Tech Support escalation for SaaS versus On-premise here:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/with-saas-you-are-100-helpless-and-much-better-off/

You can follow along that discussion and start to imagine all sorts of collaborative Web 2.0-enabled features you could add to a SaaS offering to do even better.

All of this will translate to higher customer satisfaction, and that is one reason why the cost to get $1 of SaaS revenue remains quite a bit lower than the cost to get $1 of conventional software revenue.

By: Jesse Kliza

Jesse Kliza — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:05:19 +0000

Agreed Abe.

Free trials are a whole different ball game, and an important component of most any ISVs sales process.