How To SaaS

On episode 29 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv interviews Dave Gray, the former CEO of Daxko and current CEO of the Biso Collective. Dave and Shiv discuss how Daxko deployed a growth by acquisitions strategy to scale its business and the importance of focus in growing companies. Dave also shares the vision for his new initiative, Biso Collective, and how he plans on deploying a buy-and-hold strategy to give founders of mission-critical software companies a third alternative to a liquidity event outside of a strategic or financial buyer.

On this episode of How To SaaS, we discuss how to hire a rockstar product manager and what aspiring product leaders need to become to be effective. Your Product leader needs to: 1. Understand the intersection of product management encompasses UX, Tech and Business and be able to serve the needs of each 2. Be market focused to help the rest of the company understand the market needs and pains that need to be addressed. 3. Be able to make important tradeoffs with limited resources to serve and please all the different stakeholders involved. 4. Appreciate growth and all the different levers that can be pulled to take the business to the next level. 5. Be incredibly data-driven and make decisions using an ROI, business case based approach.

Are you trying to figure out your content strategy? Here are 6 simple steps that can help you create a massive content backlog: 1) Who are you trying to help / serve? Ideally, use a real life example. 2) What keeps them up at night? What problems are they facing? 3) What are the negative consequences of their problems? What happens if they don't solve this problem? 4) What is their dream scenario? What are their motivations, needs and goals? 5) What are the checkpoints and milestones between where they are now and their dream scenario? Who do they need to become to achieve the transformation they want? 6) Build content for each step. Focus on the pain points, not the mechanical funnel stages.

Has your company ever missed its quarterly or annual sales projections? This is one of the top reasons why C-Level executives are let go from growing companies. It often happens inside companies where forecasting is treated more like a math exercise and the underlying growth model for the business isn't strong enough. That's why on this episode of How To SaaS, Shiv Narayanan talks about how executive teams can forecast sales projections more effectively, while still setting ambitious targets.

Have you ever been in a meeting where marketing claims that it is generating all these MQLs but sales isn't converting them, while sales claims the MQLs they're receiving are really not that good? On this episode, I talk about how MQLs are completely the wrong metric to use for alignment. Instead Sales Accepted Leads can do a far better job of bringing marketing and sales teams together to work as one unit.

Have you ever tried to get more funding for Content Marketing initiatives or team members, only to have your CEO / CFO / CMO tell you there's not money in the budget for that? On this episode of How To SaaS, Shiv Narayanan talks about how you can go about making sure Content Marketing gets the funding it deserves to help you drive the business forward. Go to the full episode blog post with slides, video and more: https://www.howtosaas.com/blog/how-to-get-more-funding-for-content-marketing

On Episode 28, Eric Thurston (CEO of Personify) and Shiv discuss how to build a platform SaaS company, including the strategy, process, challenges, learnings and personal growth that come along with it. Eric is the CEO of the company that eventually acquired Wild Apricot.

On Episode 27, Rand Fishkin (Founder of Moz and SparkToro) and Shiv discuss how to avoid the biggest pitfalls of being a SaaS founder, Rand's journey with Moz, his book "Lost and Founder" and the 5 things he is doing differently as a second time founder.

On Episode 26, Shiv and Patrick Campbell (CEO of ProfitWell) discuss how to price your SaaS product, including the hot button topic of pricing increases.

On Episode 25, Shiv and Stephen Silberbach (SVP of Global Sales at Clio) discuss how to build a sales machine for your SaaS company, including team structure, roles, responsibilities and KPIs.

On Episode 42, Shiv Narayanan interviews Dev Basu, CEO of Powered by Search, on how SaaS companies can build an Intent Engine to attract, engage and convert prospects into paying users.

On Episode 40, I interview Elle Morgan (VP of Marketing at Woopra) on how to use Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) to close more opportunities. The conversation with Elle is especially relevant for transactional SaaS companies who use a freemium and/or free trial model and do not have access to large sales teams to talk to all prospects 1-on-1.

On Episode 39 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv interviews Bryce Youngren, Managing Partner at Polaris Partners, and they discuss how SaaS companies can expand internationally. Bryce shares 5 ways SaaS companies can go about doing this and uses real life examples from his portfolio companies: 1) Channel Partners 2) Telesales 3) Freemium 4) Local Presence 5) Acquisitions

On Episode 38 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan gives a behind the scenes look of the Wild Apricot acquisition.

In Episode 37 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv interviews Paul Teshima, CEO of Nudge.ai, on how to build a product-led go-to-market strategy.

On Episode 36 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan talks to Zane Tarence, Managing Director of Founders Investment Banking, on the 5 critical factors private equity investors analyze when investing in SaaS companies.

On Episode 35 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan talks to Will Dinkel (CEO of Nova.ai) on how to find product-market fit for your SaaS company, Will's journey through YCombinator and all the struggles involved in the early stages of a startup.

On Episode 34 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews Nicholas Kusmich -- the go-to expert on Facebook ads. Nicholas has worked with all kinds of industry leaders, including Tony Robbins, Robin Sharma, Joe Polish, and many SaaS companies, including SamCart, Zapable and more. Shiv and Nicholas discuss all the ways in which SaaS companies could leverage Facebook ads as a new channel of acquisition. A lot of SaaS companies are leaving money on the table by ignoring low-hanging fruit on Facebook. Check out Nick's latest book: Give - The Ultimate Guide To Using Facebook Advertising To Generate More Leads, More Clients and Massive ROI. You can get the book here: www.givebook.info

On Episode 33 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews Neil Patel, the guru of content marketing. The interview starts with a discussion on how SaaS companies can leverage content as a source of traffic and leads but quickly transitions to Neil's take on whether or not all SaaS companies should be doing content marketing, especially in the early days or if funding is limited, where other channels can likely produce a more immediate return.

On episode 32 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews Lars Lofgren, Head of Growth at I Will Teach You To Be Rich and former Head of Marketing at Kissmetrics. Lars has had the unique opportunity of working with 3 marketing all stars in Hiten Shah, Neil Patel and now Ramit Sethi, so he has a ton of experience and mentorship to pull from. Shiv and Lars discuss how Lars was able to generate 8000 leads per month at Kissmetrics, how to generate millions of visitors to your blog and his 8 simple rules of A/B testing that you and your marketing team HAVE to listen to.

On Episode 31 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews Laura Roeder, Founder and CEO of Meet Edgar, on how to use your brand to say "No" to good opportunities to uncover the story behind the critical decisions that helped grow Edgar to $4MM in ARR in just 3 years.

On Episode 30 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews bestselling author Tucker Max on how to manipulate the media and build a PR machine like Donald Trump.

On Episode 29 of the How To SaaS podcast, Shiv Narayanan interviews Mitch Solway, the former VP of Marketing at Freshbooks, on how to deploy and measure radio ads as an avenue for acquiring customers.

Episode 11 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Adam Fried, CEO of SimplyColorLab and ShootQ, on how to layer a retail business and a SaaS company on top of each other to create synergies and generate additional streams of revenue.

Episode 10 of the How To SaaS podcast features Jon Miller, founder and CEO of Engagio, on how to plan, deploy and measure an Account-Based Everything strategy.

Episode 9 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Heather Foeh, VP of Customer Advocacy at Vision Critical, on how to use Advocate Marketing as a land and expand strategy.

Episode 8 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Heather McCloskey, Inbound Marketing Manager at Uservoice, and we discuss how to run your blog like a product manager.

Episode 7 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Omar Zenhom, co-founder of the $100MBA & Webinar Ninja, on how to bootstrap a SaaS company using content marketing.

Episode 6 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Hana Abaza, VP of Marketing at Uberflip, on pioneering the Content Experience conversation and how their webinar strategy is helping them distribute the message to the market.

Episode 5 features Tim Paige, Senior Conversion Educator at LeadPages, on how to create a multi-channel education strategy for SaaS companies using webinars, podcast, courses and more.

Episode 4 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan features Joey Coleman on onboarding users in the first 100 days of their journey and turning initial experience into an advantage to increase retention and referrals

Episode 3 of the How To SaaS podcast features Jim Williams, VP of Marketing at Influitive, on the strategy behind their Advocamp conference and how it is helping them create the category of Advocate Marketing.

Episode 2 of the How To SaaS podcast with Donald Cowper (Head of Content at ClearFit), co-author of Breaking The Time Barrier and What To Why.

Episode 1 of the How To SaaS podcast with Ryan Anderson, CEO of Filevine.

Episode 0 of the How To SaaS podcast with Shiv Narayanan.