Growth Hacking the Enterprise Sale for B2B SaaS Companies

Growth Hacking the Enterprise Sale

Presented at Alchemist AcceleratorBy Lincoln Murphy

June 19, 2014

Objectives• Clarity on what “Growth Hacking” is• Understand how to Apply Growth Hacking to

your Enterprise Sales Process• Explore some Ideas & Examples to stimulate

imagination• Access follow-on resources to help execution

Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

http://sixteenventures.com/

Agenda• What is Growth Hacking?• Growth Hacking Requirements• Ideal Customer Profile• Growth Hacking Concepts

– Infiltrate their Network– Create a Tool– Random Hacks– The Sale is just the Beginning



What is Growth Hacking?• Lessons from my recent Uber ride• “Hustle that scales”– Automation Analogy

• Goal is to rapidly accelerate the Sales Process• Small Deal Size/Self-Service Model Drives NEED for GH– Doesn’t mean large deal size / Enterprise Sale can’t

MASSIVELY benefit from GH, though



What is Growth Hacking?• Bridges and Tunnels– where they are now where they need to be• Mindset• Engagement• Buy-In (Champion Uplift)

• Exploits Organic Network Effects– Your secret weapon – more on this later



Growth Hacking Requirements• A Culture of Growth Experimentation– Must be OK with false hypotheses (“failure”)

• Organizational Alignment– outbound and inbound must work together– Ability to execute autonomously– as companies matures and silos develop, the required agility

and cross-functional cooperation necessary for Growth Hacking to work tends to disappear



Growth Hacking Requirements• Be Data Driven– Everything starts with your Gut (even when there’s data)– Be able to quickly iterate on the Build – Measure - Learn

cycle• have resources available to make this happen

– Quickly get to a point where decisions are driven mostly by data, less by opinion & ”pretty” designs

– HIPPO/VITO/CEO can't be THE voice for very long if you want to scale



Growth Hacking Requirements• Align Success Metrics with Reality– Commissions on closed deals? MQL, SQL, etc.?– Hypotheses tested? Customer dev interviews?– Change if not appropriate– Example: Take some BDAs and use then for testing.

Comp separately and based in viable success metric. • Roll winning test variants into production processes



Growth Hacking Requirements• Executional Honesty• If you're executing like you have product market fit or you have

everything in order when you don’t, that's dangerous• What if outbound-sourced leads are the way deals will get done

in the early days? Are MQLs a good metric?• What if MQLs aren't turning into SQLs or opps or closing... Who

cares, right?• What if you're early, building a market / category... Are your

success metrics aligned with your stage?



Ideal Customer Profile• Situational– Not the only type of customer you’ll ever do

business with ever• It’s just a hypothesis• It’s absolutely REQUIRED



Ideal Customer Profile• Ready• Willing• Able• + Successful• + Profitable• + Expansion• + Advocacy



Ideal Customer Profile• Ready– They have a problem they need solved /

opportunity to take advantage of– They know they have the problem / opportunity– The problem / opportunity is acute … there’s a

sense of urgency you can take advantage of



Ideal Customer Profile• Willing– They’re ready to solve that problem by taking

action– They’re exploring options to solve that problem– There’s a strong Catalyst: M&A, Investments,

Bankruptcy, hiring/firing



Ideal Customer Profile• Able– They have the means to solve the problem– They have the authority to solve the problem– Know their Buying Cycle / Process



Ideal Customer Profile• + Profitable– This means it’s cost-effective to get in front of

them fully-loaded CAC < (LTV/12)– On-Boarding & Support– Estimated Lifetime– Buying Cycle / Process



Ideal Customer Profile• + Successful– They are likely to achieve success with our product– In the early stages as well as long-term– Consider all aspects of on-boarding, customization,

data seeding/cleansing, etc.– What systems do they already need to have in place



Ideal Customer Profile• + Expansion– "This can be a fight or a dance… never both”– Up-Sell / Cross-Sell– Allows for Immediate ASV/LTV Boost– Enterprise Dept vs. SME, Agency vs. Enterprise,

etc.– Customer Success required here



Ideal Customer Profile• + Advocacy– Intra & Inter-Company Virality– $1 CAC / 2 = $0.50– WOM vs. Use-Based Virality– Of course, ensuring they’re happy is key– Network Effect = Built-in Social Proof– Social Proof – logos that get more logos



Infiltrate their Network• Organic Network Effects

– Who do they interact with on a daily basis• Customers, Suppliers, Co-workers, Peers, etc.

– Internal and external to the company– High-value and Transient interactions– Rare to force / create where don’t already exist

• Intra-company Virality– Sticky– Expansion Revenue– Examples: Yammer, Riskpulse Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.


Infiltrate their Network• Inter-company Virality– Get customers who have your customers as their customers– When they interact with their help system they'll see

Zendesk and want to use it too– Examples: Zendesk, Freshbooks

• Expansion– Land and Expand– Examples: Box, Dropbox, Domo



Enterprise Growth Hack: Create a Tool• Create a tool that helps them accelerate the process for themselves• Doesn’t make the whole process self-service, just the initial touch points• Use this to penetrate personas within the orgs• This can actually be what’s used in the cold-outreach

– Allows the cold outreach process to be scaled much more efficiently through automation

– Not starting a conversation - necessarily - sending them to a destination• Done correctly, this thing is also something that can be leveraged for PR

and other “buzz”



Enterprise Growth Hack: Create a Tool• Exposes Value Potential

– Bridge or a Tunnel• ROI Visualization

– Leverage the tool for persona distribution• Carved Out, Stand-alone apps

– bundles of functions– Land and Expand

• Migration Tools• Integration Tools



Random Enterprise Growth Hacking Tactics

• Outbound First– “Cold” email or calls in the early days– Warm Leads before you Email or Call

• Social Networks, CRM or IP Address Targeting… or direct mail/FedEx• Ads aren’t to drive action – though that may be a side-effect – but are to

get you into their world

• Inbound Second– Your marketing website must back up outbound sales/outreach

effort




• Free Trials– Not just for small deal products– Can be a part of a high-touch, Enterprise sales process– Build Customer Profile over time

• Concierge Onboarding– Build it into the CAC– Lowers the Barrier– Include some work




• “BTW, I believe we’re in a sales cycle with you…”

• “Contact Sales” may show “commercial intent” but how many people DON’T take that action?

• Enterprise Pricing – “… starts at $50k/mo”



Remember…• Closing the deal is just the beginning– On-Boarding / Engagement– Customer Success– Advocacy



http://sixteenventures.com/alchemist





Growth Hacking the Enterprise Sale for B2B SaaS Companies

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Transcript of Growth Hacking the Enterprise Sale for B2B SaaS Companies