The document outlines strategies for successfully selling Software as a Service (SaaS), sharing insights from the author's journey in building a startup called Prezly. It emphasizes the importance of organization, following a structured sales system, and using pirate metrics to guide customer acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue generation. The document also provides tactical approaches for content marketing, direct sales, and customer engagement to enhance overall business growth.

1. VISUAL GUIDE
to
$ELLING
SOFTWARE
as a SERVICE

2. hi :)
I’m Frederik,
the design founder of
a startup called Prezly

3. My team is building an online
service that helps brands pitch
stories to their media contacts
Gijs
Developer
Jesse
Strategist
Me
Designer

4. It turns out that finding users
and getting them to part with
their money is no easy task

5. It took my team years to find an
efficient way of getting new customers

6. Now we bootstrapped to a profitable business
with 20% month over month growth.

7. Our hard earned approach
Get organised
Follow a system
Work the sales funnel
1
2
3

8. 1
GET
ORGANISED

9. Our team
is all over the globe
Oli, sales
London
Founding team
Brussels, Antwerp, Leuven
David, sales
Dubai
Thomas, sales
Toronto
Robin, content
San Francisco

10. Working separately sometimes makes it
difficult for everyone to stay on the same track.
Me so lonely :(

11. We use a dedicated chat
system where everyone
that’s working meets.
!
It’s our command center.
!
Seeing that other people
are also working helps me
stay motivated.

12. A SaaS company has so many moving parts
that it can be hard to keep an overview.
Sales
pipeline
Payments
Task
management
Sales
pitching
Customer
support
Social media
updates
Lead
generation
Lead
nurturing
Conversion
optimising
Servers
User
on boarding
Metrics
Public
relations
Advertising
Accounting

13. For each part we use specific other SaaS.
The less we have to build and maintain
ourselves, the better.
Jenkins
Get overview
of all our tools

14. Jenkins
To keep an overview we feed most of these
services in our command center.

15. Updates from our task management tool

16. Tasks and updates in the sales pipeline

17. When people sign up

18. User activity

19. Support tickets and their status

20. Want to save this for later?
Download the PDF

21. That’s the foundation
We haven’t spoken about
getting clients yet… brace yourself.

22. 2
FOLLOW
A SYSTEM

23. There are so many moving
parts in a software company
that we needed a way to
structure the sales process.
!
Pirate metrics was the answer.

24. Pirate metrics
5 key stages &
metrics for
subscription
services
!

25. Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue
!
AARRR

26. It’s a funnel that you need to pull
people through
Acquisition Engaged visitors 60%
Activation Sign up 15%
Retention Trial users come back 5%
Referral Users refer others 1%
Revenue Users pay 2%
Not real conversion data. Your mileage may vary.

27. 3
WORK
THE SALES
FUNNEL

28. We use tactics & tools for each step.
Beware, this is only our approach.
!
I’ll take you through it in the next 70 slides.
Hold on, things might get bumpy.

29. Acquisition
Hundreds of thousands of people don’t
know our product yet. Let’s get them on
our website.

30. Getting leads
Content marketing
!
!
Direct sales

31. Content marketing
Earning the right peoples’ attention via
targeted content

32. Metric:
referral traffic
‣ From social
‣ From other sites
Google Analytics:
Filter out bounces so you only
measure engaged people

33. Our stories are
the main traffic driver

34. We do monthly brainstorms to generate
new ideas. Everyone comes prepared with a
list and we help each other improve.
We separate yes moments and no moments.
Selection of ideas comes afterwards.

35. Meet the
Skyscraper technique
A way to publish content that gets results
1. Find successful stories.
2. Make them better.
3. Promote with people that
would be interested.
Skyscraper guide

36. Here’s an example.
We use to find popular stories in
our niche, Public Relations.
Popular niche site Popular story

37. Popular story
It got shared a lot
Even though the
content is a bit…
Meh…

38. Our ‘improved’
version of it
See it
More examples in this
Skyscraper guide 〉

39. Damn, that sounds
like a lot of work!
It is, and it can be daunting.
!
With every story I get better at
it. What works well is carving
out distraction-free time in
mornings to write.
“

40. Get a
content calendar
It will help you keep a steady pace
Content calendar tips 〉

41. Guest posting
on popular niche sites
That’s giving us a lot of good visitors and signups.
!
Find popular highly targeted places with a high
Google pagerank. Oftentimes they are interested
in running stories by guest bloggers.
Guest blogging guide 〉

42. Build links
Use a tool like Buzzstream to assess the value of
sites and to reach out to the editors.
Link building guide 〉

43. Why would they
listen to me? “
You’re a topic expert or at
least trying to become
one. Do your research.
People are generally
friendly and open to get
guest posts if you did
your homework.

44. Promote
the content
Creating the content is just the beginning.
The hardest part is getting people to share it.
!
‣ Contact the people that originally shared it
‣ Get high profile people on board
‣ Share it multiple times yourself

45. Contact
the original sharers
They are likely also interested in your story.
Find the sharers with the biggest reach.

46. Share it many times
on social media
When you publish
A few hours later
A day later
A week after
A month later
Six months later
Reposting guide 〉

47. Automate & track
Next week
Next month

48. In summary,
this is how we do content:
!
✔ Know & improve the stories that potential
clients love
✔ Tell the stories on a popular niche site
✔ Promote the hell out of the stories

49. “When do you sleep?
At night, just like you.
!
After learning how to do this
ourselves we now outsource
a lot of the hands-on writing
work.

50. Direct sales
Finding & convincing leads

51. Why
do direct sales?
‣ Get high profile clients for social proof
‣ Get feedback about the needs of the market
and solution

52. Selling doesn't come naturally to me. I’m more
of an introvert. But after a year of trying it has
now even become fun.
!
I now love the hunt.

53. Create a list
of top prospects
‣ Start sector by sector based on current
references.
‣ Follow them on social media. Interact.
‣ Send personalised email or even better: call.

54. Expose
team activity
‣ Tasks
‣ Pipeline
updates

55. I used to be terrified of
cold calling prospects.
!
What helped get better
was preparation:
- Fake cold calls with my
team members to get
the hang of it.
- Researching the
prospects and getting
on their radar so it
wouldn't be a cold call.

56. Make it a
team sport
‣ Carve out time to cold
call together.
‣ Compare tactics. Listen in.
‣ Track & celebrate successes.

57. Manage sales pipeline
in a CRM
‣ Track the status of your leads
‣ Enrich their profiles
‣ Capture all interactions
‣ Set reminders

59. Create a stellar
sales pitch
I got a lot of mileage
out of this book
‣ Learn how to tell an intriguing
story about your solution.
‣ Get a designer to help with
your sales deck.
‣ Practice, practice, practice,…

60. You love your solution
so it’s tempting to keep
talking about it, showing
every nook and cranny.
That didn’t work well.
Now it’s the other way
around. It’ about the
problems of the industry.
It’s concise. It keeps
them wanting more.

61. Measure &
learn what works
These are just the channels
for our B2B SaaS. Your
mileage may vary. In any
case: measure what works.

62. Activation
People could be reading our blog or
visiting a tour page but might not feel
like signing up yet
Let’s get visitors to try our service

63. Metric:
% signups
A custom Google Analytics report
that lets me track the progress.

64. Activating visitors
Test & improve the signup funnel
!
!
Guide visitors via chat

65. A/B testing
Test & improve the signup funnel

66. Fix leaky
signup funnels
Whaaat?
Only 5% of people that visit the
homepage get to the signup page.
Not good.
The homepage
clearly needs
improvement.

67. A/B test landing pages
& pages in signup funnel
A/B testing guide with examples 〉
50% visitors
see variation A
50% visitors
see variation B
Variation A
Variation B
5%
conversion
9%
conversion

68. An example:

69. It’s easy to forget these tests.
Again, planning helps. Every month we do
status meetings where I present the results.
That’s also the moment when we come up
with new experiments.

70. Live chat
Talk with visitors and learn

71. Be available
to chat with visitors
‣ You’ll learn about their expectations
& questions
‣ You’ll be able to help them
!
We use
It integrates with Skype

72. Retention
People might have signed up but it
might not be a good time for them

73. Metric:
% trial users that return
A cohort retention overview with Mixpanel.

74. Engaging visitors
Behavioural mails
!
Newsletter
Evaluate signups
!
Stellar support

75. Evaluate signups
Find the good fish

76. The whole team used to be responsible for
following up signups.
The result: it didn’t happen.
People thought someone
else would do it.
Now only Jesse does it.
It’s done a lot better now.

77. Get event driven analytics
‣ You’ll see what individual people do.
‣ Define user actions that are important for you.

78. Stellar support
Service is part of the product

79. Again, it’s imperative to respond well and fast.
Jesse, our customer success manager, is
usually the first to help someone out. He
dispatches to the rest of the team if needed.

80. Get a support system
To stay sane managing customer feedback.

81. Get a knowledge base
Oftentimes support questions can be answered
with content from the knowledge base. We try to
put new answers in there.

82. Behavioral mails
Send emails based on what users do
… or don’t do

83. Send users email
to help them along
Signed up
Ask how we can help them
Hasn’t used core functionality
Show benefits
Trial about to expire
Create urgency

84. ‣ You don’t need to build this yourself
‣ Test email variations
Email onboarding guide

85. Newsletters
Keep sharing good stories

86. Every time we send a
newsletter site visits
go through the roof
In the stats you can
discover interested
prospects
Story
Product
Product

87. Referral
The user likes your product so much she
refers other new users

88. Metric:
Net Promoter Score
The number of people who would recommend
your product to a friend.
To many people this is the one true indicator
that your product will be a succes.
We ask it regularly to users via

89. “How likely is it you would
recommend my product to a friend
or colleague?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Detractor Passive Promoter
NPS = % promoters - % detractors
Net promotor guide 〉

90. Revenue
The user pays
Jay!

91. Drawing stick figures is what I do well.
Managing money not.
!
Luckily my colleague Jesse is.
He makes sure we all get paid.
!
Here’s his advice.
Hi!

92. Metric:
Monthly Recurring Revenue
‣ The MRR is omnipresent in our control center
to remind the team of our progress.
‣ Together with Net Promotor Score this is the
main number that we’re working to improve.

93. Accounting & invoicing
gets shared with the team
Good for motivation & to see the behind the
scenes work that’s done by Jesse.

94. Automate billing
by integrating services
Accounting Payments
‣ Use an accounting system with an API.
‣ Automate, but double check manually.

95. In summary:
The pirate metrics approach
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue
!

96. One last thing..

97. Meet the pirate
metrics compass
All our SaaS tools
Download

98. Congratulations!
We made it.
That was the Prezly SaaS sales
story so far.
What do you think?
I’m curious to hear about your
approach.
Tweet us now Contact us

99. VISUAL GUIDE
to $ELLING
SOFTWARE
as a SERVICE
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