These are slides used by Suresh Sambandam CEO of Kissflow for the workshop conducted on 1st Dec 2022 at Kovai (Coimbatore) for SMB SaaS Companies that are going after global market. This is a partial reflection of the playbook used by Zoho, Freshworks, Kissflow and ChargeBee. Being shared publicly in alignment with the pay-it-forward value of SaaSBOOMi volunteers.

1. Global SMB GTM
Suresh Sambandam
CEO,

2. Context
10%
Marketing
60%
Sales
30%
Part 0 Part 1 Part 2

3. Part 0 : Background / Context

4. Workshop Scope
Pre-PMF to $50K
$1m to $5M
$5M to $10M
$10M to $25M
$25M+
$50k to $1M

5. SMB
Enterprise
India/Asia Global
SaaS Opportunity Segments

6. Playbook for making Unicorns

7. Source: http://christophjanz.blogspot.in/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html
5 Ways To build your business
Viral Loop
UGC leading to SEO traffic
Referral Loop
Inbound Marketing
Inside Sales
Inbound
Outbound
Enterprise Sales
Wine and Dine

8. B2B Market - Size Segmentation

9. The SaaS Model
Marketing Product Sales
(New / Repeat)
Customer Success
Acquire Engage Succeed Convert
Marketing Product Sales
Customer Success

10. Then = Funnel
Customers as an afterthought
Marketing
Sales
Now = Flywheel
Customers at the center
OLD NEW
Product
Product
Customers
Marketing
Sales

11. SaaS
-
Global
SMB
Market
Flywheel Global
SaaS
Model
Great
Product
Low
Price
High
Volume
Sell
Everyone
Sell
Online
Open Pricing
Try
&
Buy

12. Part 1 : Marketing

13. Positioning
Vs
Marketing Slogan

14. Positioning Statement
For Target Customer that Needs/Cares about ,
Company/Product/Service is a Category/Solution
that Benefit .
Unlike competitor, Company/Product/Service is
Unique Differentiator .

15. Remember!
You are building
2 (Two) Products!

17. Marketing Dimensions
X
Z Y

19. The long list of
Inbound Marketing
Channels

20. SEO is Underrated !!!

21. How increased
organic traffic by 500% in
just 2 years
https://culture.kissflow.com/how-we-increased-our-organic-traffic-by-500-in-just-2-years-1d25d1c391e5

22. Example:
Kissflow
SEO Tracking
Sheet
2014-15

23. 4 Types of User Intent
2. Informational
3. Navigational
4. Investigation
1. Transactional
More details on this in my Blog
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309779

24. Domain
Authority
Topic
Authority
👍
👎

25. Virtual Content Silo
(created with internal linking)

26. 94%
organic
Organic vs PPC Click Share ???

27. Content Marketing
Vs
Marketing Content

28. Why No One Wants to Spend
Time on Our Blog (and why we’re
ok with that)
https://culture.kissflow.com/why-no-one-wants-to-spend-time-on-our-blog-and-why-were-ok-with-that-37964d1ba10a

29. Gallery Airport
Content Marketing Marketing Content

31. Content Marketing
● Authenticity matters.
○ Content idea & first draft is founder’s work.
○ Take-away for audience.
○ Be consistent in content & frequency.
○ Build a subscriber list. And care about what you send to them.
● Stick to a theme. Or not.
○ Just the relevant problems you are annoyed with. ;-)
Lesson learnt
○ Distribution is the key.

32. Distribution
Vs
Creation

33. Team Organization - Chapters & Squads
Chapter Squad
- Organized around Skills & Capability
- Goals improve individuals
- Homogenous members
- Membership: 1 ONLY
- Budget: L&D
- Organized around Topics
- Goals to improve business
- Heterogeneous members
- Membership: 1 to N
- Budget: Marketing

34. Team Structure
HR
Software
Purchase
Software
Finance
Software
Organic
Paid
Email
Tech
Design
Content

35. Customer Profiles Targeted for each of the Squads
HR Software Purchase Software Finance Software
Industry NA NA NA
Company Size (Employees) <= 500 <= 500 <= 500
Job Level
(L2 = Manager,
L3 = Directors)
>= L2 >= L2 >= L2
Department HR Procurement Finance
Geography NA NA NA

36. Adwords
● Needs one dedicated person.
● A specialist and someone with number crunching / finance background.
● Potential Hires can be found at eCommerce companies / Ad Agencies
Lessons learnt
● Focus on fewer countries. Primarily English speaking.
● More trial conversion <> better conversion. Measure revenue return.
● Measure CAC & LTV by channel.

37. Freemium
Vs
Free Trial

38. Key metrics to watchout Caveats of freemium model
- Top of the funnel - trial conversions
- User Engagement
- Monthly Active Users / Any other
relevant transaction metric
- Free to paid conversions
- It’s a forever promise to keep
- Could turn out to be very costly in
support vs ROI
Free Trial vs Freemium

39. Cross Functional
Contract
8%

40. The Absolute 7 Marketing Metrics
1 Impressions CPM
2 Visitors CPC
3 Signups CPS / CPL
4 Valids ---
5 MQL ---
6 SQL ---
7 Customer CAC / LTV / Payback

41. Top Level Measures
CPS CAC LTV
Payback
Period

42. Monthly
Metrics
Review
● Conversion Ratio
● Organic Traffic Growth w/wo spikes
● Conversion through Paid vs Organic
● Conversion by Online Assets
● Organic Traffic by Source
● Signup Trend Paid vs Organic vs Source
● Paid traffic by Source
● CPS for Paid and Overall
● CAC fully loaded
● MRR Growth with New and Repeat split
● Customer Count and User Count growth
● A-ARPA trend 12 months

43. Cost Per Signup - Exploded View

44. Kissflow Pattern : Who buys across SMB & Enterprise?
As on 2017-18

45. Kissflow Pattern : Region Share!
As on 2017-18

46. Multiple languages
Lessons from Kissflow
1.
Stayed with
English for 12
months.
2.
Then Spanish
based on demand.
3.
Then Brazilian
Portuguese.
4.
Now we support
more than 10+
languages
This might be different for your product!

47. Channels we ignored initially
Events
Reselling
Partners
Referral
Partners
Affiliate
Marketing
Road
Shows

48. Part 2 : Sales

49. Founder(s)
Vs
Hiring Sales Head
Initial Sales Team

50. Product Defines Your Sales Team
○ Application
○ Platform
○ APIs
○ BDR
○ SDR
○ AE
○ Account Manager
○ Product Consultant
○ PreSales

51. Sales team needs one tool
Shut out the excuse department.
● Pick a CRM & stick to it.
● Put all the data necessary in one place.
● No excuses for data hygiene.
● Define a clear lead stages process and write it down.
○ What is a qualified lead?
○ When would you assign 30% vs 50% vs 75% probability for opportunity?
○ Contact => Lead => Opportunity definition in your choice of CRM.

52. Define a sales process that works for you
This is extremely important
Learn from others but define your own sales playbook based
on the dynamics of your product, team, strengths and
weaknesses.
Many companies try to ape the sales process of someone
else and struggle miserably.

53. Motto “Target the one which could be opened”
What we need What we get What we are gonna do

54. F3 F2 F1
F4 F4 F2
F5 F5 F4
Form Attribute / Engagement Score
Class
Attribute
/
Lead
Score

55. Account Types
Size / Effort Low Medium High
Mega
Large
Medium
Small
Cash cows
Treasure
Chest
Teaser
Potholes

56. Opening the communication
● ‘Welcome Email’
● https://kissflow.com/marketing-processes/ditch-your-welcome-email/
Kissflow is *not* for everyone!!!

58. Sales compensation
● Mistakes to avoid in compensation
○ Not defining and enforcing variable payment from early days
○ Not transparently writing down variable calculation formula
● Fixed + Variable
○ 80:20 / 50:50
● % based compensation with accelerators for annual
● Quarterly accelerators to catch-up ⇒ helps focus on pipeline building

59. Product Analytics
Product Experience
SEO
Chat
Project
Day Planning
Notes
Product
Collab
(Mockups, Brainstorming,
Strategy Notes)
Email
Website (HTML5 is good
enough)
Design for Media
Writing
Social Media
Feedback
Social Media
Scheduling
Social Media
Intelligence
NPS
Daily Read
Reminders
Video
Review
Team Chat
Design
Coding
Cross-browser
testing
API
Sales CRM
Community
Blogging
Payment
Automation
Cloud

60. Thank You!