EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode, SaaS-Story in the Making host Matt Wolach interviews the co-founder and CEO of Lemlist, Guillaume Moubeche, on his experiences with the company’s rapid success. With more than three years of experience in running the business, Moubeche shares with us the key to the company’s massive growth, the lessons he gathered through the process, and how creating and maintaining relationships contributed to this achievement.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: SaaS-Story in the Making
Episode: Episode No. 186, How Building Strong Relationships Is Key To Scaling Your SaaS Quickly – with Guillaume Moubeche
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Guillaume Moubeche, co-founder and CEO of Lemlist
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Enhance Client-Business Connections through Valuable Content
Great client-company relationships do not happen in an instant. It cannot be acquired by solely having confidence with your product/service—sure, it can be the best in the market—but it is not enough to impress your prospects. You have to prove your credibility through valuable content. It can be a lengthy process but worth all the struggle. Here’s how you can do it.
With all the kinds of content available, choose to deliver those that are doable, preferably the ones you have done before. It can also include the results you have gotten. This will let your prospects feel at ease at trying to recreate your process; you are going to walk so that they can run. This do-able content guarantees a higher chance of success because they already have assessed it up to its results. And they can customize this according to their needs. By providing feasible content, you are already building trust and credibility.
Your clients’ trust in what you can provide becomes the foundation of your relationship. Knowing that you can cater to their pain points, give them solutions, and educate them through content establishes their confidence in you and your brand. This way, they will see you as a guide.
You are in charge of strengthening the connection with consistency. The process should be continuous, and it should be easier for you now that you are leading the way. Maintain this kind of connection by consistently catering to their needs and being in charge of the situation.
Now that your prospects are well educated about the industry and what your brand can do for them, they know they want to work with you. And at the end of the day, it will be easier for you to close these deals.
Create a Community with a Competitive Advantage
Moubeche shared a considerable part of the success story of Lemlist. Like any company, they started small. The success came from the creation of a Facebook Community. With all the clients inquiring at Lemlist, Moubeche created a group to serve as an outlet to answer commonly asked questions on sales prospecting. In time, the members start exchanging ideas, requesting software features, and slowly becoming a community.
Moubeche provided his clients with content generated from their ideas– he gave them actual campaigns for them to try. It was a rare approach back then, he said, “you would never find anywhere people actually share their entire sales prospecting campaign. For people, this was kind of their secret sauce.” But it was adequate for them, and they created a community with a competitive advantage through healthy discussions and established relationships.
The value you are providing to your prospects creates wonders for your connection. Having a community driven by a single goal enriches knowledge generation among people. In exchange, you can also learn from this community and stay updated on what they want you to produce for them. You can now view this community as a whole and take a step ahead to guide your clients.
Just like what Moubeche did with converting ideas to achievable processes, leading your clients along the way strengthens their trust in you. And eventually, it would be easier for them to follow your methods in the future. This becomes your competitive advantage as you go through scaling.
Focus on Your Roots: Empower the Team
What is happening within the team can reflect on the company’s future events. Relationships among the members of the company are one the most important things to invest in. They will be the brand’s fuel. A slight chance of inefficiency can ruin the process of operation.
A struggle that Lemlist encountered was with hiring and defining employee roles. They lacked in creating a system firsthand which resulted in a confusing delegation of tasks and objectives. From the start, there should be a proper assessment of candidates that are well-oriented in their tasks—followed by a concrete system that allows you to evaluate them and the team’s progress. Because when a company struggles with internal control and work dissemination, it lessens the productivity of the members and messes up with the company’s process.
When a group of people creates a brand, there are instances of having different viewpoints as the brand grows. This became another problem for Lemlist. In their case, the fast-growing company overshadowed this area, and conflicts started among the brand’s co-founders. Fortunately, it was resolved through communication. The founders of the team should align their views of the future of the brand. It is understandable to have varied plans. But communication can be a key to deciding on the best way that the company can go.
There should be a strong connection between the employees, where they are comfortable enough to attend to each other’s needs and peer review their tasks. Moubeche shared their way of creating this connection through Linkedin Buddies. This way, the staff have space for work and non-work-related discussions. This has become their own space for collaboration on tasks and simply having fun with each other’s company.
The relationship between members of the company can be strengthened through communication. An established connection creates harmony in the operations process, creates a better environment to work on, and ensures the company’s growth. As long as they work together, it stems from the clients to do the same.
When the team is established among their designations, they can be their own industry’s guide. It can go from being a group of employees to a group of guides for the clients. Because they already have a strong foundation for doing well at their tasks, their prospects would see this, which helps establish trust. This is another way of reaching out to candidates through the members of the team. Because of an individual’s credibility, prospects will eventually want to be part of that team.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Celebrate. Document. Scale.
When your company starts scaling at the pace you want, it does not mean that you are staying on that track. As you prosper, there should be processes following through to maintain success.
Companies need to celebrate milestones– no matter how big or small. It is a way to recognize team efforts and hype them up to do better. But having these things remembered is also acknowledging what strategy worked best for the brand.
Moubeche emphasized the importance of documentation when the company is scaling fast. Because it allows you to take note of your procedures, it can be used to assess if the strategy worked and how much impact it had on scaling. From here, you can identify your strengths, the aspects where you need to improve, and those tasks that you can automate.
Finally, when its growth has been adequately assessed and handled, it’s time to scale even more. Getting everything organized before, during, and after achieving the goal avoids a sudden downpour in sales. Because setting a standard requires maintaining the bar to stay up by consistently recognizing and improving processes.
To SaaS Startup Founders
It can be tricky for startup companies to juggle several aspects of SaaS at the same time. It requires time to look through several points and enhance them individually. Moubeche emphasized the two most essential things to consider: know your audience and focus and identify your differentiator among your competitors.
Setting a target market allows you to focus on a single range of tasks and desired growth. Founders should identify their prospects within the bracket and assess their pain points. This will enable you to acquire additional knowledge and experience in the field to provide their needed solution. It also makes a good starting ground in applying your existing knowledge in practice. Staying focused on an area helps in improving your craft as you gain enough experience in the field.
The industry is filled with amazing brands with established expertise. As a startup, it can be easy to copy what they do. But you will always have an edge that you need to recognize and put emphasis on. Do what you are most confident and knowledgeable in. This can also be applied in choosing another set of markets. Since you have established credibility, you are expected to take the lead in that market. And you can use that credibility to gain your prospects’ trust.
TOP QUOTES
Guillaume Moubeche
[02:42] “The value proposition that was coming up very often is, put your sales on autopilot. It makes people dream. It’s amazing. But the truth is [it’s] totally wrong. In a sense that whenever you do sales, you know that it’s all about building relationships; all about personalizing your messaging in order for people to know that you actually care.”
[07:29] “It’s difficult for people to always perceive what value is all about.. They can say, “yeah, I built a great tool. If you use it correctly, it’s going to drive value to you.” But for me, I think it is how you can share and write content that is actionable enough for people to get these best results and become better.”
[10:40] “If you focus on your target audience, you’re going to start connecting with people from your company. And each personal brand will reflect in a very positive way.”
[13:41/14:30] Document everything you do, each step of the way… if you document things, you will be remembered, it will allow you to put complex thoughts that you have in your mind into simple things, and you will gain a lot of clarity.”
Matt Wolach
[07:10] “The number one thing I say is you need to share value, get out, share what’s going to help your target, get them ahead.”
[16:30] “Scale, meaning bringing other people in to do what you’ve been doing [it] doesn’t happen if you don’t have your procedures and processes documented very, very cleanly and soundly so that others can pick up from where you left off.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Guillaume Moubeche and Lemlist, visit https://www.lemlist.com/.
You can also find Guillaume Moubeche on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-g-.
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/.
