In any SaaS business, churn is a reality of day-to-day life. This presentation explores how to measure churn and its impact on MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), how to compare good churn vs bad churn, and how to use your powers of positioning, packaging and pricing, as well as product iterations, to keep churn at bay.

1. POW!
Uncovering your secret SAAS
superpowers

2. Say hi at
janna@prodpad.com
or @simplybastow
Hello!I’m Janna Bastow
You can ask me anything about
SaaS, product management, or my secret identity.

3. Churn

4. Up and to the right
Steady monthly added MRR
gets you a stick straight growth trend

5. Exponential growth BAM!
It’s a unicorn
Of course, stick straight isn’t good enough.
You want a hockey stick

6. Easy to mask
an ugly churn rate

7. The plateau of doom
Ooof

8. Churn is a
lagging indicator

9. look Beyond monthly churn
It’s a borderline vanity metric.
It’s about as bad as NPS.
Is 5% monthly churn bad?

10. It’s complicated….

11. 5% monthly churn
=
45% annual loss!

12. Wait, what kind of
churn?

13. Offset bad churn with good
Customer churn = >0
Net MRR churn = <0

14. Who is churning?
The monthly customer churn number is too non-specific:
- BRAND NEW CUSTOMER?
- ZOMBIE FROM YEARS AGO?
- HIGH PAYING OR IMPORTANT LOGO CLIENT?
- HIGHLY ACTIVE CUSTOMER?

15. Can churn be good?

16. Okay reasons for churn (you can’t win ‘em all)
1. Wrong user
2. Wrong reason
3. Problem solved
4. Outgrown
5. Downsized
6. Dead
7. Not sold

17. Is anyone really ever
fully sold?

18. Segment by cohort
- 30 seconds
- 30 minutes
- 30 days
- 3 months
- 3 years
So long as churn flattens at some point, you’re going to be okay*
*results may vary.

19. Ongoing sales
=
Success

20. Always Be
Onboarding

21. North star

22. Don’t get stuck in a
feature factory

23. Product
Pricing
packaging
positioning
vs

24. Pricing

25. Packaging

26. Positioning

27. Conclusion
TRACK THE RIGHT SORTS OF CHURN
INVEST IN ONGOING CUSTOMER SUCCESS
EXPERIMENT OUTSIDE THE PRODUCT

28. Thanks!
ASK ME ANYTHING
janna@prodpad.com or @simplybastow
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