The Johnny Grow SaaS Growth Strategy
Summary
- Software-as-a-Service business growth recommendations without supporting data are just somebody's opinion. The Johnny Grow SaaS Growth Strategy is built on evidence-based best practices and backed by industry specific benchmark data. The data shows what the highest growth companies do differently than their peers, and how they do it.
- This Software as a Service business growth framework draws on industry research to surface and replicate the most influential revenue growth strategies and best practices proven by the Best-in-Class performance archetype (e.g., the top 15%.)
- Software-as-a-Service research findings show the right mix of best practices and supporting technologies to create a repeatable growth model and eliminate speculation and guesswork.
A 3 Step SaaS Growth Strategy
We work with Software-as-a-Service and other as-a-service companies to solve a common challenge – how to achieve significant and sustained revenue growth.
To bring speed and predictability to the challenge, we apply the Johnny Grow SaaS Growth Strategy Framework. It's a proprietary 3-step model that brings simplicity and data-driven direction to systemically grow company revenues.
There are dozens of things you can do to grow revenues and every one of them delivers a different result. Executives don't want to experiment over prolonged periods to figure out what works. They want to quickly find the shortest route to revenue maximization.
The SaaS Growth Strategy models, forecasts and compares best practices and financial levers to quickly prioritize those that maximize business growth. It's a precision approach and alternative to pursuing company growth by investing in wishful strategies, best guess explorations or unsupported methods.
Here's how it works.
Step 1 applies Predictive Revenue Analytics (PRA). These are pro forma financial models built with company data and industry benchmarks. They identify the evidence-based best practices that will deliver the desired revenue uplift. These predictive models forecast, compare and rank the financial impact of revenue growth best practices so that the company can select those that deliver the maximum revenue in the least time, cost and risk.
Step 2 is a Revenue Growth Playbook. Guided plays provide executional instruction for revenue growth best practices. Many times, they are operational execution plans with sequenced tasks, progress milestones, phase gates, performance metrics and exit criteria. Other times they are brief but pointed recommendations such as a next best action.
Step 3 is the Growth Analytics that measure progress and flag variances in need of swift remediation.
Here's a drill down into each step.
Prioritize the Best Practices that Drive the SaaS Growth Strategy
Industry research shows that the highest growth technology companies design an all-of-company revenue model whereby every revenue producing department applies data-driven methods that achieve predicted outcomes.
Revenue goals are broken down by contributing department. For example, the top marketing goals include growing marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline, forecast and earned revenues. Top sales goals include maximizing sales force close rates and accurately predicting revenue generation. Service goals identify customer revenue uplift opportunities, customer retention strategies or a wholesale shift of customer service from a cost center to profit center.
The SaaS Growth Strategy saves time by first reviewing the goals and methods that drove the biggest revenue gains for the highest growth as-a-service companies. When you repeat the actions that most drive revenue growth for the industry's top performers you can realize comparable results.
The goals and their supporting best practices are compared by using predictive revenue analytics to forecast revenue and profit impact.
A recurring theme among low growth technology and software-as-a-service firms is that they are unsure of which methods deliver the biggest financial returns. This most often results in managers pursuing what they know instead of what is most effective. It also results in preserving the status quo.
A better approach is to apply data and predictive analytics to forecast the least cost route to measurable revenue growth. This predictive modeling allows us to rank the best practices by revenue impact, so they can be ranked, and the company can pursue the most appealing revenue uplift opportunities first.
These predictive models also use industry benchmarks so that executives recognize where the company stands relative to peers. Management can then apply What-If analysis or compare different growth scenarios to see how they deliver different revenues and profits.
This first step is your business growth strategy. It defines what to do.
It shifts your actions from experimenting with unsupported growth initiatives based on good intentions or best guesses to data-driven best practices that calculate outcomes based on research that shows what the industry's top growth firms did; and how they did it.
If you skip this step, your methods become suspect, your execution becomes aimless, and your measures of success are unclear.
Use a Technology Playbook for Repeatable Outcomes
This step moves from precision planning to prescriptive execution.
The Playbook is a collection of prescriptive plays that make best practices repeatable.
In the first step we define the most strategic goals to make sure we are doing the right things. In this step we define execution to make sure we are doing those things right. Or put another way, step 1 shows what the company should do to deliver the biggest financial impact, and step 2 applies an operational Playbook to define the best ways to do it.
Evidence-based best practice plays deliver clear guidance and recommendations at exactly the points where they can be applied to achieve defined business outcomes. They are not loosely defined suggestions. The are the roadmaps that sequence the necessary steps to achieve goals in predictable ways.
Plays bring guidance and measurability to execution. They orchestrate best practices to deliver the maximum revenue growth in the minimum time.
The above Playbook Blueprint is an example of how we use a one page Play to clearly show the execution to achieve the company's growth goal.
Plays support targeted revenue goals with evidence-based best practices that include process instruction, integrated technology, measurement metrics and forecasted payback.
Key performance indicators are displayed in dashboard and use pre-configured alerts for real-time variance notifications.
Apply Analytics to Measure and Adjust
The thing about growth plans is that they often don't go according to plan. That's why real-time analytics are needed.
We use performance dashboards to display the most important metrics in an easy to consume visual interface. These dashboards identify variances and trouble spots so staff can quickly intervene with timely course corrections.
Most growth reporting displays historical data. Better reporting shifts from lagging to leading indicators. And the best reporting enables KPIs to be interactive, so executives can perform What-If modeling and scenario planning.
An interesting thing about effective dashboards is that employees spend less time searching for data and assembling information and more time applying the information to make more frequent updates to their operational execution. That's the sign of successful analytics. If the information is causing operational changes to be made, it's working.
See the 3-step revenue growth strategy for Software-as-a-Service companies.
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