Onboarding: 5 Strategic Priorities

Customer Onboarding often determines the success or failure of SaaS companies selling to SMEs. Look at onboarding as a strategic priority. Within your end to end sales and marketing process. Experiment and test to find the right tactics. Keep the need to generate sustainable LTV front of mind.

A Golden Opportunity

Another energetic and intelligent discussion in the SaaS Scotland Group two weeks ago. We focused on Customer Onboarding. The founders had a great selection of ideas and suggestions as you can see by looking at the ideas page. The session reinforced a key point. Customer Onboarding is a critical element of the SaaS end to end revenue process.

At this stage a SaaS company has a golden opportunity to do three things:

• Build a proper relationship with new customers.
  
• Engage users and paying customers in businesses with your product
  
• Show the real value your product can create for each and every customer.

Onboarding and SaaS for SME Success

It is rare for companies to achieve this nirvana. Generating leads at low prices is still doable. People sign up for free trials en masse. But then the theory breaks down. Potential customers either don’t convert or don’t even bother using the free product. Those early sign up numbers evaporate before any revenue appears.

Soon the focus turns to onboarding. Startups ask questions like:

• Can we afford human intervention, for example concierge unbarring?
  
• How can we incentivise trial sign ups to start using the process, maybe by adding more premium features to the trial?
  
• Is our automated process too complex or time consuming?
  

Or even, are we signing up the right customers?

The success of startups selling SaaS to SMEs is often determined at this stage of the recurring revenue model. Many entrepreneurs start out with a dream view of the whole process. Generate leads online. Sign people up for a free trial. Build automated onboarding processes. Convert triallists to paying customers at a sensible rate. Add up the numbers and SaaS looks like a great business. 

SaaS Is Not That Easy

5 Strategic Priorities

These are valid and important questions. But they are questions of tactics. The answers will vary by company and by product. There is no repeatable formula for success. Remember some core strategic principles when addressing the challenge:

1. The value in SaaS is in LTV. Growing and sustaining strong LTV means building deep, value adding customer relationships.
   
2. Building relationships in a service business like SaaS is an end to end process. Look at your sales & marketing cost as a whole and spend what you need for onboarding. There is no point pouring in ad spend for example only to create a long list of non paying, short term free trial sign ups.
   
3. Experiment and test to find the right answers. Just as you would for other sales and marketing efforts. 
   
4. Don’t assume you know the model that will work when you set out to build your product. Before you even have your first customer.
   
5. Getting the whole process right and repeatable is the foundation on which you will scale.
   

An Opportunity Not A Burden

In the course of my small business consulting I often hear startups that struggle with onboarding. Sometimes it sounds like teams see this as a burden. Onboarding is a great opportunity to engage direct with your customers. Often it will be the best chance you get. Take the wide view of sales & marketing. Treat onboarding as an equal priority with the rest of your sales and marketing process.