So you've validated your offer, closed your first handful of clients, and you can consistently book yourself sales meetings. The next question every founder asks is the same: how do I scale this?
The instinct is to simply do more of what got you here: more outreach, more meetings, more spend. But scaling prematurely is one of the most common ways early stage companies burn themselves out. Before you pour fuel on the fire, there are four components of your business that need to be in place: retention, delegation, efficiency, and presence.
Retention
Before scaling, make sure that you're able to retain at least 90% of your existing clients on a quarterly basis.
In order to achieve this it's important to work closely with your first few customers and collect as much feedback as possible. This will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of what parts of your platform (or service) are providing value and what parts need work. Encourage your clients to be as honest with you as possible, and don't be afraid to ask difficult questions. Use this feedback to build a compelling offering that keeps your customers hooked.
This is important because finding new buyers is significantly more difficult (and expensive) than maintaining and upselling existing relationships. Higher churn rates will drive up customer acquisition costs, eating away at your revenue and limiting growth. If you ramp up sales and marketing activities before getting a handle on this, you run the risk of scaling up an inefficient or unsustainable business model.
Delegation
As a founder, spending hours every day on manual repetitive tasks is not the best use of your time. Delegation will free you up to focus on fundraising, branding, improving your offering, and building teams, all of which are vital for the long term growth of your company.
A great place to start with delegation is at the top of the funnel. Tasks such as prospecting, personalization, email sequencing, LinkedIn activity, managing replies, and booking meetings can easily be handed off to a team of virtual assistants. Plenty of talented and hardworking candidates can be found in Facebook groups (just search "virtual assistants") or by creating job postings on sites dedicated to matching companies with international talent (such as Hubstaff).
Eventually you'll be able to hire full time employees to manage lead generation and handle more complex growth tasks such as closing and content creation. The problem with starting with employees is that it becomes a costly mistake if they don't end up working out. The risk of this happening is high, particularly in the early stages when you don't have your process mapped out, making it harder to ramp incoming sales reps.
Delegating to virtual assistants is a lower risk alternative if your company can't survive a few bad hiring decisions. You can start making the transition towards employees as your VA team ramps your outreach efforts, giving your business more financial stability so that mistakes aren't too damaging.
Efficiency
Ideally you should get to a point where deals in the $10-50,000 ARR range close in 45 days, and deals $50,000+ close in 90 days. The longer your sales cycle takes, the less profitable each closed deal will be (especially when you have salaried employees).
In order to solve this problem you'll have to create better informed buyers. Educational content in the form of one-pagers, webinars, and blog posts will help you accomplish this. These assets allow your buyer to gain a better understanding of what you do without taking the time to have a conversation with you (or one of your sales reps). This will cut your prospect's learning curve and help them when trying to convince other decision makers.
Case studies will help you use social proof to shorten the time it takes for your buyer to trust your company. Video testimonials are always the most effective when it comes to persuasion, but written testimonials and screenshots are effective as well. Always be constantly generating case studies, as they'll be critical in building your brand.
Presence
Last but not least, it's time to start thinking about generating inbound interest. In order to accomplish this you'll first have to understand where your prospects are spending their time and what they're paying attention to.
A few examples of this would be:
- LinkedIn, Facebook, and Slack groups
- Websites that they frequent
- Other companies that they interact with
There are dozens of LinkedIn, Facebook, and private Slack groups that are filled with engaged and qualified buyers. In order to stand out in these groups you'll have to become a valuable contributing member. Providing expertise, information, and insight in the form of written articles (such as this one) or short videos is a great way to begin getting noticed. Alternatively, you can connect with prospects on LinkedIn or Facebook and start posting content in your feed if you're struggling to find established groups.
Getting your company listed on various review sites can also be a good way to generate a few extra inbound leads. G2, GetApp, and Capterra are all examples of sites that have comparisons and reviews of different SaaS platforms. Thousands of decision makers visit these sites on a monthly basis, and getting listed is a great way to introduce your business to potential buyers.
Establishing partnerships with other companies is a great way to get a steady stream of warm introductions to potential buyers. Simply make a list of companies that have a product or service complementary to yours, and then reach out to them via LinkedIn or email. Most companies are receptive to this type of arrangement, especially if they're an early stage startup themselves.
Conclusion
Hope this article was helpful in showing you what to focus on as you enter the early stages of scaling your growth strategies. Feel free to message me if you have any questions!