jasonRmoore

You have probably already guessed that the answer, in my estimation, is no.

You may be able to garner some attention from friends, a few dollars from friends and family, and a decent amount of attention from local media outlets.  But your idea is worth zero without execution.

Below is, in my order of importance, the list of the key ingredients to you achieving success (you define what that is) with a SaaS company.

1. Sales – This is intentionally separated from marketing in this context.  Until you receive money via your product you are still only in possession of an idea.  Selling can be defined in many different ways, though, so it does not have to be a direct sale to a client.

Seth recently wrote about finding 10 people who want/need your product enough to take you up on your offer.  Once you have ten, find ten more.  If you’re lucky, the first ten will be finding ten more at the same time because your product delivers as promised (or more).

Some of you may feel that this is marketing. But that’s one of the main problems with a non-sales culture. People are extremely comfortable when they feel they are “marketing” but icky when it’s called “sales”.  If you have a product that is going to positively impact your potential clients, then you are doing them (and yourself) a grave disservice by not getting it into as many people’s hands who need it.  If you get uncomfortable about telling someone you know about your product, then your sub-conscious may be telling you that you are over-promising.

2. Relationships/Support – the misconstrued dream that many people entering the SaaS world have is that once you build the application and it works well, all your clients will understand it, adopt it easily, hand over their credit card, and never cancel.  Okay, maybe when it’s put like that you deny that you feel that way.  But you’re only lying to yourself.

If anything this group could have been lumped in with sales because as a SaaS model company, your relationships with your current clients is your on-going sales model. This does not have to be a time-intensive process if you implement the proper tools and controls, but it does take effort.

37signals are masters at this.  They have a recent post on exactly how important their customer’s experience is to them.

We had a recent post here about how the relationship goes well beyond your customer service rep.  It is also the responsibility of your billing people, marketing people, collections staff, everyone!

3. Operations, a.k.a. Bootstrapping – if you are going to survive, you better have the purse strings drawn tight on unnecessary expenditures. No matter how good your sales and relationship teams are, the person in charge of your outgoing expenses can cut the jugular at any second.  Once it’s cut; lights out.

NOTE: I am aware that there are a few companies out there like Facebook and Twitter that can bleed money for what appears to be forever. Go buy a lottery ticket instead.

4. Technology/Your Idea – this section does not include all technology involved throughout your company.  It’s impossible to separate any one department from the general term “technology.”  The idea here is that your idea, although the basis of the business being started, is not the most important piece to your future success.  Obviously, you need a viable concept and the development chops to build it (whether on your own or hired), but without the key pieces in place your application is just another piece of unused software… but delivered over the web.

Photo Credit: Kyle May

I am very fortunate to be in a community that has a great entrepreneurial spirit. Being in this community, I get to hear a lot of ideas for projects that people want to turn into businesses.

Outside of the standard requirements for any business to succeed such as revenue model, marketing and acquisition costs, and so on; you also have three key areas where the relationship between your potential clients and your application must work together seamlessly.

As has been pointed out countless times on SaaS model success, the real key is scalability.  The following three attributes of your application will have huge impact on whether scalability is something you will be able to achieve.

1. Self Setup – Self Setup is the most important “feature” that your application will need to scale your business. Once you have targeted beta clients, immediately start working with them to design how they will be able to get running on your application without you. The self setup should start immediately after someone clicks the “Free Trial” or “30 Day Demo” button on your website.

One of the major differences between SaaS and traditional software is that setup process begins prior to your sales process does.

2. Self Signup – As you are getting launched, sales/signups are not as critical to be automated as setup is. If you are manually having conversations with people through the sales process in the beginning, you will learn what the roadblocks are to purchasing your product. The knowledge that you gain throughout this process will be invaluable to writing effective copy and to designing your site’s sales flow to best suit your potential customer’s needs.

This is closely related to self setup because your potential customer’s experience during that trial period will be the first impression that he remembers when making the decision whether to type in their credit card number.

Self signup is the actual transition between trial and paid. If you plan on launching with a freemium model, this transition period will be laced into your application when your customers hit feature/size roadblocks. Offering them compelling reasons to upgrade, and more importantly, an easy way to act upon that decision could decide your success. Once again, automation on this is not a requirement to get started if you are looking for the specific reasons why people are not buying.  But implementing this should be early in your timeline.

3. Self Help – Prior to launching your product to beta and then full production, it is critical to have dead-nuts simple avenues for your customers to reach you.   But you do not need to be in self-help mode just yet. This is primarily due to the fact that you won’t know what problems/questions your varied customers are going to have until they have them.

It is absolutely critical to have the record button pushed at all times. When it comes time to start writing the self-help material for your application, you will be able to quickly reference your real world feedback ensuring the help material is focused on problems that real people have instead of on problems that you “think” they might have.

photo credit: purplepigswithfigs

The raw video footage of PodCamp 2009 sessions are now available.

Before you visit the page, though, there are a few notes (some good, some not).

–All recorded sessions are here. 

–If the session is not in the right hand scroll bar, then unfortunately it was not recorded for various reasons.

–The sessions that were on the main stage have completely blown out audio because people were controlling the speaker volume through the audio board instead of the volume controls on the speakers.  (This pretty much sucks)  They are watchable, but you have to have some patience with them… and turn your speakers DOWN.

–If you want the raw footage, comment here or DM me, and we will discuss the details of you can have access.

Thanks for everyone’s patience on this, and I hope there is some value in these being made available.

Click here to view the PodCamp 2009 videos

Enjoy!

StudioNow, a Nashville-based video creation and distribution company, has generously offered to allow PodCamp Nashville 2009 to use their services to get our massive amount of video online.

How it works: StudioNow allows for crowdsourcing of video editing and distribution.  This means that we will be uploading all of the raw footage from PCN09 to the cloud making it available for you to cut, edit, and transform it into anything your magical little hands can muster.  Then share it!

Bottom line: WE NEED YOUR HELP!  If you enjoyed PodCamp Nashville 2009 and took away more value than you paid (reminder that it was free), this is a great opportunity to contribute to the Nashville technology community.

If you are interested in helping out, please leave a comment here or send me an email with your contact information by clicking the this Contact Info link.

Are you interested in the idea of podcasting for your business or personal endeavors?  Me, too!!

This coming weekend PodCamp Nashville will be help at Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management.  #PCN09 is a free event based on the BarCamp model of user-generated content sessions.

So you’ve never recorded your own podcast and have no idea where to start?  Come with me to the following sessions that sound like they’re just right for us!  Some of these are about social media and not specifically podcasting.

From Prep to Post, The Podcasting Process by Justin Davis

A Slice of Cake: The Secret to Podcast Listener Loyalty by Dave Delaney

Your Site Sucks! by Kate O’Neil (not much about podcasting, but how can you pass this one up????)

How to Use A Chainsaw Without Cutting Off Your Leg by Bill Seaver

Podcasting and WordPress – Like Digital PB&J! by Mitch Canter (aka studionashvegas)

Outside of the sessions, PodCamp will be a great event to meet other people in your community.  And outside of networking and learning, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved!!!  Volunteers are needed for various levels of time and skill sets.  If you are interested in attending, presenting, or volunteering go sign up now!!

www.podcampnashville.com

Volunteer here!