It’s needless and wrong to try and price-cut your way to success. You can make the sales you need to make without having to compete on price.

A lot of SaaS founders start cutting prices at the first sign of diminishing traffic.

They run away from price in the face of price-resistance—-real or perceived.

Instead of impulsively cutting your prices, try to test other aspects of your offer, message, and targeting. You might find the price was not the root cause of the slow traffic after all.

Here’s some questions SaaS founders should make when it comes to their pricing

1.) Are You Selling to the Right People? 

Let’s take an example of Joe. He runs a SaaS company that provides a web app tailored to and focusing in the animal health space. Historically, Joe’s software primarily served veterinarians and animal clinics.

But if Joe tries to sell his web app to human dentists, and says “We do online scheduling, we do appointment booking, we do appointment reminders, everything you need to run a dental clinic!” 

The dentists will likely hum & haw and talk about how expensive Joe’s app is.

Why? Because human dentists are probably already using a similar app provided by another company.

They don’t need Joe’s product.

These dentists were the wrong target market for Joe .

But price was an easy way for them get out of the whole discussion.

2.) Are You Dealing with Cheapskates ? 

You want to sell to people who buy for value, not price.

Value-shoppers tend to pay for results and are mature enough to trust in your expertise.

On the other hand, price-shoppers (a polite term for cheapskates) will stick around with you only long enough until a competitor of yours comes along and offers something cheaper.

Also, cheap clients are a headache to work with.

Price-shoppers will be more likely to send you 30 texts and emails a day asking for status.

Value-shoppers will check in occasionally to see how things are going.

The upshot: Unless you want to be the Walmart of SaaS companies, avoid the price-shoppers.

3.) Are You Too Scared To Experiment? 

Pricing is a game all of its own. There are way too many variables at play that depend on you, your product, your brand, your marketing, your financial goals, your ballz , your long -term strategy, to name just a few things.

So I can’t give you a cookie-cutter template on pricing.

But I can advise that you experiment with price like you’d experiment with any other variable.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/ 

When you were growing up, I bet you read about Seven Wonders of the World — these wonders were things humanity has created that are considered examples of our greatest feats.

Let’s be honest, though. You probably don’t give a pupe about the The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

What you do care about is making sales and getting a profitable return on your marketing.

So let me present to you the 7 Blunders of SaaS Marketing:

1.) The Wobbly Pyramid of Weak Market Research 

I remember seeing seeing data showing 50% of polled founders blamed the lack of product-market fit was the reason they failed.

These SaaS flounders built businesses without doing the necessary research into the customers they wanted to sell

Every business, SaaS or otherwise, needs to thoroughly research their prospects and competition.

You need to know everything about your prospects: what they read, what they watch, their loves, their hates, their buying behaviors, etc.

When you know your market, you can position your business for maximum sales.

When you don’t know your market, you’ve built a pyramid on quicksand.

2.) The Wilted Gardens of Untested Advertising 

Most businesses don’t spend enough time testing different promotions, ads, designs, and offers.

Let me quote the late John Caples, one of the greatest advertising minds in history, to drive the point home: “Test everything. Doubt everything. Be interested in theories, but don’t spend a large sum of money on a theory without spending a little money to test it first.”

But at the same time, you don’t want to go crazy and literally test every single thing. Tough to run a business like that.

Instead, test the major elements of your marketing.

What are major elements? Things like headlines, images, product positioning, pricing, etc.

What are trivial elements? Font type. Different shades of pink in the background.

In summary, test things in your business but don’t “major in the minor”.

‘Nuff said

3.) The Porta-Potty of Marketing Constipation 

Look, if a prospect signaled to you that they have an unmet need….

And if that prospect opted-in (e.g. signing up to your email list) to hear you talk about solving that unmet need…

Then you have their permission to do unlimited amount of follow-up as long as your content is relevant to that unmet need.

Remember, your prospect always has the option to click that unsubscribe button if they lose interest.

It’s so basic but too many SaaS companies are very infrequent in contacting their prospects.

Infrequent contact with qualified prospects is the worst kind of constipation.

Clear up that content blockage and make your flow regular again, pronto.

4.) The Statue of the Fake Marketing Guru 

Look, there’s nothing wrong with listening to the advice and experience of other people.

But be careful who you take information from.

If a coach, guru, or consultant shows up on your social media feed and promises to teach you “how to live your dream life from just your laptop”, he’s probably a fake marketing guru.

So stop wasting time with Tai Lopez’s “67 Steps To Become a Millionaire” and do something useful to grow your business.

5.) The Mausoleum of The Content Castrati 

Content is not king.

And I say this as a guy who produces a lot of content.

Content is a servant. What, then, is the king of marketing?

Sales, baby.

Too many SaaS leaders have been talked into “Give, give, give, and don’t expect anything in return”

Bad idea. Every piece of marketing content must have a call to action.

If you don’t have a clear offer in every promotion, your marketing will be castrated.

But your marketing doesn’t have to be a eunuch.

Always combine an offer with your content and your bank account will thank you for it.

So will your customers.

6.) The Colossus of Costly Branding 

If you are a SaaS founder reading this, you’re likely running a small to medium sized business.

You are not Coca-Cola. You are not Microsoft or Apple.

Your budget is limited-you don’t have the option to play around with millions of dollars of shareholder money.

Making a funny Super-Bowl commercial is not an option for you.

In addition, if you’re a startup, you’ll need to get profitable fast and quickly grow to survive.

I don’t know your specific situation, but you probably have around 2 years to grow after you raise seed money.

If you have investors, they expect a solid ROI on marketing spend.

So make sure your marketing budget is devoted to getting response from customers (sales, leads , and profits).

7.) The Broken Lighthouse of Unclear Instructions 

A common mistake in sales copy is presenting the prospect with a confusing offer.

The most common way to confuse the prospect is by giving them too many options to choose from in a single promotion.

Keep it simple. Your marketer might want to impress people with complex promotions but buyers want simplicity.

Don’t make buyers work hard to understand your promotions.

Alright, that’s all for now.

These are the 7 Blunders of the SaaS Marketing World

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/ 

Let’s talk about the so called “content-marketing” movement.

What is it?

It’s a loose group of marketers who believe that the best way to attract customers and clients is through creating & spreading valuable, relevant, and consistent content.

Content marketing is a great way to get leads-I use it myself & for clients

But as with anything, people can go to extremes.

One of the extremes associated with the content marketing movement is the idea of “Give, give, give, and don’t expect anything in return”

It’s as if many of these content marketers lack the ballz to make a direct pitch to make you sales.

It;s like they’re castrated or something.

You know what? I hereby dub content marketers who are too scared to make money for their clients with this label: Content Castrati

Anyway, Content Castrati mislead SaaS leaders into thinking that an endless output of white papers, long interviews, and articles will magically attract hordes of leads.

You might get leads, I admit. But you likely won’t get enough qualified leads to justify the investment in all this content.

In addition, these Content Castrati hate frequent promotional emails. They think frequent pitching is gross and self-centered

If you’re a SaaS leader, take what the Content Castrati say with a grain of salt. Otherwise you might end up in a prospect’s “friend zone”.

Sure, a prospect might give you enough attention to take advantage of the free stuff you put out (”were just friends, right?”) but they’ll be buying from your competitor who actually has the confidence & competence to sell ( “Chad drives me crazy sometimes, but I think we’re gonna get engaged.”)

Ouch. But the first sign to solving a problem is admitting you have one.

So, if you have this general mindset, you might want to consider changing your approach: “I don’t expect anything, I just enjoy spending time with you, really… I’d love to pick out your outfit for a sexy date with your boyfriend, but don’t you think you can do better, he’s kind of a jerk?… Sorry, I’ll shut the hell up and pay the cashier.”

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/ 

Imagine you have a prospect who is curled asleep on a soft bed.

Then, all of a sudden, the prospect’s phone rings. .

“Is it a family member?” they wonder.

Nope. Some dude’s face your prospect doesn’t recognize pops on their phone wanting to talk.

It’s one of YOUR sales people cold FaceTiming the prospect to sell your SaaS platform.

Look, salespeople are seen as annoying, intrusive, pushy.

But it’s not their fault (usually). Most salespeople are victims of a system where there is extreme pressure to meet quotas.

A lot of time, that means doing things that aren’t very efficient and sometimes downright harmful to your organization’s reputation.

I’m not saying cold Facetiming won’t work. It will probably work as well as cold calling, cold emailng, and cold texting.

The tech might have changed but it’s really the same principle as knocking on prospect’s doors to sell steak knives.

What a waste of time.

You’ll get some sales but wouldn’t it better if you had a system that attracted qualified leads to you?

Wouldn’t you rather use your salespeople’s time to talk to prospects who’ve already raised their hands to learn more about your product?

I don’t know about you but I’d rather attract qualified leads than be a digital door-knocker.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/

You might get a kick out of this.

I wanted to talk about what court jesters can teach you about increasing sales.

You see, at times, your prospects need to be told uncomfortable or unpleasant things.

Sometimes, your prospects will ignore what you have to say.

At other times, some of your audience will get tRiGgErEd and want to punish you.

You can either retract, apologize, and sound like everyone else-which is not good for your sales or for your customers.

Or you can use humor to go on the offense.

Humor is a powerful tool of persuasion. You’ve probably heard the saying, “many a true word is spoken in jest”.

Comedy, at it’s best, is a tool to criticize the powerful.

In many cases,it was the court jesters who’ve been the only people to not get beheaded for speaking truth.

Let’s take a look at Dave Chapelle’s recent special on Netflix.

People have been talking about Dave for over a month because he said that only women can give birth.

The Purple-Haired Woke Inquisition did not like this, apparently.

I personally don’t think Chapelle said anything hateful. On the contrary, he ended his special with a call for compassion and understanding, even for lifestyles that he might not agree with.

Still, there are Woktivists looking to get him canceled.

But here’s the thing: Chapelle is too funny and his fan base is too large for him to get canceled.

Anyway, Chapelle was able to get his message across about the absurdity of woke activism because he was funny.

Imagine it was a politician or religious leader trying to make the same points but without the comedy-wouldn’t have been as effective as Chapelle.

So try to inject some humor in your marketing .

I’m not saying be a clown all the time.

But realize that your prospects will only read so much dry analysis about the wonders of your VoIP product before getting bored.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/ 

Picture this: It’s the holiday season and someone you know sends you this complaint:

-Today, after I’d mailed my friend her Christmas gifts since we can’t see each other, she called me ranting because the gift I sent her dog only cost $5. According to her, that means I must not really care as her dog is her “baby”. I bought gifts for all 5 of her kids. 

Yes, this really happened. But I share this to make a specific point–which is that the psychology of ungrateful receivers of gifts is the same in business and marketing.

But first, a little context behind why gifts are so important in getting clients/customers.

You want to position yourself as “a welcome guest and not an uninvited pest”–if I can quote Dan Kennedy.

What this means is that you can get customers in one of two ways-either be a version of a door-to-door salesman (cold calling, cold emails, cold LinkedIn messaging, etc.) …

….Or you can attract people with some sort of lead-generation gift.

Generally, it’s better to attract clients instead of hunting for them. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with people “slamming doors” in your face all the time. You’ll have an awful experience relying on cold calling and prospecting. It’s just better to position yourself as someone your prospects hope to hear from.

If you created your lead-gen gift well enough, your target customer will be appreciative and be open to hearing more of what you have to say.

But some prospects are freebie-seekers and tire-kickers. They will complain about the free gifts you give them–just like the lady in the above story is complaining about how her friend’s gift to her DOG isn’t good enough.

If you get customers like this—great. You now found a low-cost way to clearly see why you shouldn’t do business with them.

This advice is gift to you. Your welcome.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

 Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/

Marketing automation is like ice-cream.

It adds a certain ease & sweetness to life.

But the problem is that too much ice cream will kill you.

Same thing with automation-too much will kill your sales.

Look, it’s great that you have robots and AI to make previously tedious marketing tasks easy.

After all, we see some companies doing automation correctly and making lots of money.

The right places to automate are tasks that are repetitive, prone to human-error, or time-sensitive.

But many companies are doing automation wrong and they’re losing money.

How does this happen?

SaaS founders who don’t know what they’re doing (I call them “SaaS Flounders”) get talked into paying vendors for automation technology without putting much thought into how prospects will react.

Let me repeat, automation through AI or any other kind of technology isn’t a bad thing in itself.

But you can’t let canned AI messaging take the place of establishing a real, human relationship with prospects.

So, the top 3 things you can do to avoid losing sales with automation is to make sure you’re content (emails, LinkedIn posts, etc) has:

1.) Personality

2.) Empathy with your prospects

3.) A benefit to solve your prospects most urgent needs

A human has to write this content, whether you like it or not.

Either you can find the time to craft the content yourself or you can save hire an expert.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/

Let me tell about why science rules (and can make you lots of sales) : Back when I was growing up in the 90’s, I’d watch cable TV . And, at times, I’d flip the channel and pay attention to a nerd in a blue lab coat and bow tie. This fella was Bill Nye the Science Guy. Using the persona of a cartoonish mad scientist, Bill would teach scientific concepts in a fun way way that kids can understand.

He’d encourage us kids to replicate his experiments. Some of the experiments were kind of gnarly, like lying on a bed of nail.

To further add to the entertainment factor, each episode would throw in a popular 90’s music video (e.g. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) and replace the words with lyrics related to whatever it was Bill was talking about in that episode (e.g. air pressure).

For those of you who read my book-Business Baroque:An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Cashing In On Creativity-you’ll recognize this as a great example of “conceptual blending”.

Bill Nye’s currently has a reputation as a smug know it all who dismissively mocks people who hold different views.

But his show in the 90’s was different. It’s entertainment and educational value was such that it lasted for 5 seasons.

Which brings me to 2 points:

1.) SaaS companies , no matter how niche their product, are still commodities in this market. Therefore, their marketing has to engage buyers beyond just features and benefits.

2.) The current payment model for SaaS will vanish before our eyes.

This second point is based off a predication by by Mike Scarpelli, the CFO of Snowflake . After his business switched to a usage based model , Snowflake posted 124% growth and went on to trade at 44x multiple on revenues in early 2021. Mike predicts that the usage-based model will be the new normal for SaaS companies because buyers prefer to pay only for what they use.

This is where a Bill Nye the Science Guy approach to marketing is important. The more frequent,entertaining, and engaging your marketing is, the more successfully you’d be able to “up sell” customers in using (and thus buying) more of your software.

Most SaaS companies won’t get this point. That’s one big reason VCs want such an outsize return on their investment when looking at SaaS companies. They know so few companies are going to make it.

You can be one of those few.

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, Baron, but your torture victim appears to be having a wonderful time.” 

— Technician, the Vorkosigan Saga

Cold-calling is as effective for getting leads as cotton candy condoms are for preventing STDs.

Now, some people might get off at the thought of a weird, ineffective tactic that will do nothing but hurt them.

You might have one of these people in your SaaS company right now.

Introducing the SaaS Sales Sadomasochist.

You can find this kinky creature amongst several sales managers with their minds still stuck in the 1980s or 1990s who say cold calling is an effective tactic.

Oftentimes, they know it’s ineffective but it’s just a way for them to keep their sales development representatives busy.

If you’re a SaaS founder, why put yourself or your salespeople through the awkwardness, social anxiety, constant rejection, and low success rate of cold calling ?

I’m not saying cold-calling never works. I’m saying cold calling, for most SaaS businesses, is a wasteful lead gen process.

Cold emailing or messaging might be a little bit better due to the lack of social anxiety but the wastefulness is still there.

To make matters worse, sales reps led  by a Sales Sadomasochist just want to hit their quota and forget about what’s best for the customer

The Sales Sadomasochist might find pain to be an ecstatic experience…

But it does little to help boost your revenue.

Look, consumer behavior has evolved.

It’s evolved to a point that having a Sales Sadomasochist in any kind of leadership role is a liability.

Here’s why–A recent report by G2 on software buyers provides some interesting insights.

One of these insights is a statistic that’s so painful to a Sales Sadomasochist, he can’t help but cry in his leather gimp outfit:

67% of buyers are reaching out to sales reps for the first time only AFTER they made their buying decision.

Apparently this trend is rather clear in small companies and mid-market purchasers

The software buying cycle continues to get shorter, with 55% of customers taking less than 3 months to make buying decisions for $20,000 or more.

So if you needed another reason to make your advertising as agile as possible, there it is

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.  

Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/

If you can master this one skill as a SaaS founder, your business will grow as others get roasted.

Is it being a software architect? Is it learning to code in Python, Java, and React?

Nope.

As a matter of fact, the idea that you need to be “technical” in order to succeed as a SaaS founder is a lie.

Ali Tamaseb, partner at DCVC, explains:

“50.5% of founding CEOs of Billion-Dollar Startups were non-technical. Comparing the unicorns group with the random group (a randomly selected group of startups that raised $3m+ in VC funding), the billion-dollar founding CEOs were slightly more likely to be technical, but still, half the founding CEOs of unicorns were non-technical. Of course, the second-ranking person in the company, who is often the CTO was more likely to be technical.” 

Okay, enough teasing. Here is the #1 skillset both marketers, product managers, and SaaS CEOs need to be successful:

Empathy.

Claude Hopkins, one of the founding fathers of direct marketing, talked about “walking a mile in your prospect’s shoes”-that’s empathy

Now, some might roll their eyes at such a “basic” insight but lots of businesspeople understand empathy at a very shallow level.

But few understand empathy well enough to be profitable.

All of your tech stack, expensive advertising , and carefully crafted roadmaps won’t do squat for you if you ignore the fundamentals of good marketing .

I tell founders to stop fixating on the market as “data points” and start focusing on the small percentage of prospects who will actually buy.

If your marketing can dial in on the pain, traumas, disappointments, and dreams of your target customers, 80% of the battle is already won-even if your product doesn’t have as many features as your competitor.

This doesn’t mean neglecting the technical aspects, of course.

It’s never a good thing to accrue technical debt and produce buggy software.

But technical excellence cannot replace empathy with your prospects.

Your code can be bug-free, but if you don’t establish a relationship with your market, what good is the code?

I like the way former boxer, Ed Latimore, put it: “ You make your money either pimping the problem or selling the solution. But money is made when things are wrong, one way or the other.”

P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.

 Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/