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MenuOur SaaS product is ready, but do we launch with simple pricing (15-day trial, 1 plan) or do we do what our competitors do (freemium, 4 plans)?
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I think at this stage there are a couple things to research 1) your audience and their behavior in trying new things 2) Test it out... it's really hard to tell unless you try it and see what works. Most companies are using the freemium approach only cuz it makes sense with their product/service but also it makes sense with their business model.
Where will you get your leads from?
Much more important question. Where are they and how are you determining their quality?
The question itself suggests that to some extent you're thinking about your product as generic, which I'm sure it's not. If your product can meet some of your customer's needs better than competitor products, that's what matters.
Based on my experience, if you position your product accordingly, you could very well acquire subscribers without free trials or freemium plans. Why not get paid up front and offer a satisfaction guarantee?
I would start with one plan. It's easier to add plans than to drop them.
Please call and we'll brainstorm together.
Great question, and pretty common in a new product launch. There are a lot of factors at play which may affect your go to market strategy. In line with Lean methodologies, the simplest approach is the best. You can launch with what you have already and iterate later once you have some feedback and analytics to guide you in what your customers like. It also depends on how you plan to launch. If you are going to run a national marketing campaign and pump lots of money into it, then I would advise doing more research first. Maybe first launch in a small focus group and experiment with various pricing models until you see which one works best.
On the other hand, if you have existing competitors which are not significantly differentiated from your product in feature set, and target the same customer groups, then you can trust they may have already figured out what works, so replicating their model may be the best choice. Happy to discuss more.
While some experts have already share their thoughts, I am excited to share this excellent post by Price Intelligently, at: http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/value-based-pricing
In general, their blog is GOLD for SaaS pricing. I am sure you will make the right decision!
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I started a large SaaS Company for B2B where perfection in code is as importante as it gets. So here is my advice, DON'T CODE until you know what the Saas Really is. First start understanding what the problem REALLY is. Interview people and actually spend 100% of your time doing Customer Discovery. (This sounds easy but it is a skill you'll have to develop far more important than coding). Once you understand what the problem is, come up with a value proposition. Still no code. Then make a sell. If you can actually find things already existing that you can Hack and put it together then use that. Then make another sell. If you can sell it to at least 50 people if you are B2C, or if you are B2B you should have at least 1 customer. Once you do that then start automating some parts of the solution that you have hacked and so on. But THE most important thing is to be in constant conversations with your customers and hot leads. Remember you are a customer making machine not a coding machine, the first one is where the money is. Hope this helped you, if you want to talk more about customer discovery and customer development, just give me a call.JC
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What are the SaaS B2B expectations when paying annually - annual paid annually or annual paid monthly? Is a discount necessary (i.e. 20%)?
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How can I manage my developers' performance if I don't understand IT?
Whenever you assign them a task, break down the task into small chunks. Make the chunks as small as you can (within reason, and to the extent that your knowledge allows), and tell your devs that if any chunks seem large, that they should further break those chunks down into bite size pieces. For instance, for the overall task of making a new webpage, _you_ might break it down as follows: 1) Set up a database 2) Make a form that takes user email, name, and phone number and adds them to database 3) Have our site send an email to everyone above the age of 50 each week When your devs take a look at it, _they_ might further break down the third step into: A) Set up an email service B) Connect it to the client database C) Figure out how to query the database for certain users D) Have it send emails to users over 50 You can keep using Asana, or you could use something like Trello which might make more sense for a small company, and might be easier to understand and track by yourself. In Trello you'd set up 4 columns titled, "To Do", "Doing", "Ready for Review", "Approved" (or combine the last two into "Done") You might want to tell them to only have tasks in the "Doing" column if they/re actually sitting at their desk working on it. For instance: not to leave a task in "Doing" overnight after work. That way you can actually see what they're working on and how long it takes, but that might be overly micro-manager-y At the end of each day / week when you review the tasks completed, look for ones that took a longer time than average (since, on average, all the tasks should be broken down into sub-tasks of approximately the same difficulty). Ask them about those tasks and why they took longer to do. It may be because they neglected to further break it down into chunks as you had asked (in which case you ask them to do that next time), or it may be that some unexpected snag came up, or it may be a hard task that can't be further broken down. In any case, listen to their explanation and you should be able to tell if it sounds reasonable, and if it sounds fishy, google the problem they say they encountered. You'll be able to get a better feel of their work ethic and honesty by how they answer the question, without worrying as much about what their actual words are. Make sure that when you ask for more details about why a task took longer, you don't do it in a probing way. Make sure they understand that you're doing it for your own learning and to help predict and properly plan future timelines.LV
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Does odd pricing turn you off (e.g., $29 vs $30)?
For me personally, no. However, what you really need is a larger data set. Gumroad just did a post on prices ending in "9": http://blog.gumroad.com/post/64417917582/a-penny-saved-psychological-pricing 37signals started with prices that ended in 9: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1287-ask-37signals-how-did-you-come-up-with-pricing-for-your-products ... but they later did research and found it didn't matter (for them). The answer for YOU will likely be to test these things for yourself on your SaaS app.JJ
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