Growth in the Subscription Economy

1. Sell Simple - Sell Fast
A journey across the Subscription Economy - Fessal Rahman
1

2. Subscription Economy
We are facing an unprecedented change in customer consumption
preferences, and companies across all industries are affected by the shift to
the subscription economy. A total addressable market of nearly 7 billion
subscribers across multiple channels. Take a pause and reflect on that.
And each company will have its unique TAM to target.
As customers demand more at a faster pace, we need to ensure we are
meeting this new expectation with a strategy which is both simple and
consistent across all channels but more importantly dynamic enough to
change fluidly. Let’s look at a few areas we can all embrace and be able to
execute with speed.
2

3. The Informed Customer
• 80% of customers are part way through the purchase cycle prior to 1st contact.
• Customers know about your products, prices & competitors before any engagement.
• How we predominantly sell is not aligned to to our customers buying practices.
• Either we self disrupt or someone else will, the only constant we can rely on is change.
• Our customers are demanding more, build a strategy which relates to the informed customer.
3

4. Levers for Growth
• Customer acquisition is paramount to any business, sell simple.
• Customer retention, if this isn’t a priority you wont succeed.
• Increase ARPU, requires total dedication on customer experience.
• Maths of SaaS, understand the metrics and measurement of success.
4

5. Customer Acquisition
• Less is more in the SaaS world, sell simple, deploy and scale faster.
• Pricing & packaging which is simple and flexible, allowing customers to move up and down as
business requirements change.
• Bundle products & features which make it simpler to adopt high value functionality, improve
cLTV. Move away from the product silo culture.
• Focus on business outcomes, from Product to Sales and Marketing activities, question how the
offering will address real issues.
• Consistency across all channels, when your building your PoV, brand or differentiation, a
simple consistent message everywhere is critical.
5

6. Customer Retention
• New revenue is costlier than improving the customer experience of existing customers, a
happy engaged customer buys more, and more frequently.
• A high churn rate requires an equally high new sales growth rate just to stand still, keep
customers engaged, and move them up the value curve.
• Increase the stickability of your offering via customer adoption of new features and functionality
which address real business outcomes.
• Focus on customers which stay, and make them an integral part of future development and
release activities. Understand customer value levers.
• Exponential growth overall relies on achieving world class metrics across all growth levers,
equality in focus, and execution strategy.
6

7. ARPU
• Growth is a necessity in SaaS, and growth from within is less costly than new business sales,
this activity requires a high priority and strategy.
• Whether you increase prices directly or by refining tiers and moving customers up to a higher
value package, do something.
• Up sell and cross sell are more common tactics, and the best companies will continuously
innovate and provide their sales teams with more to sell.
• Ensure pricing and packaging is scalable, as your customers grow and increase their
consumption and value, this should drive additional revenue.
• ARPU is a great way to not only improve cLTV but also to reduce churn and improve retention
rates and retention $. Be obsessed with improving the CX.
7

8. Maths of SaaS
• Define what success looks like and how its measured, share the health of your financials and
customer success through transparent dashboards.
• Enable everyone in the organisation to understand the KPI of success and how we measure,
allowing all parties to make smarter choices.
• Ultimately we need new business, but equally important is to understand customer acquisition
costs & cLTV, not all revenue is good revenue.
• Focus on KPI of acquiring, retaining and monetising customers continuously, if you cannot
measure it you cannot improve it.
• Bottom line is don’t get overwhelmed with too many metrics, limit to a select few and then focus
on speed of execution against these.
8

9. Own the future
9