EPISODE SUMMARY
Being in business often means being busy. For many of us, this means needing to be more watchful over all the company spending. What if I tell you that as much as 30% of your budget is being wasted? But worry not! A little bit of mindfulness and that 30% waste will turn into a 30% gain in no time.
Quolum Founder and CEO Indus Khaitan discuss optimizing spending so that every dollar is used profitably and meaningfully. He also talks about other methods of scaling your business and growth pitfalls to avoid with Host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach. Watch and ensure that your entire capital is truly scaling your business!
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 249, “Software Companies Waste 20-30% of their Spend – Fix It This Way – with Indus Khaitan”
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Indus Khaitan, CEO, and Founder at Quolum
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Audit Your SaaS Spend
It can be easy to get lost in the complexity that comes the more your software business grows. Business owners face increasing demands for our finite time and energy. This is why we usually overlook small-time expenses in our business. However, Khaitan states that we must watch our spending as up to 30% of it is typically wasted.
Let me be clear: you do not have to oversee the spending personally. You can hire a virtual assistant or an accountant for this, but you still have to be watchful of purchase requests. If your salespeople ask you for software, check if you have a license for something similar and if there is a shortcoming. Figure out if it’s just hype for a new product. Then regularly check if some unnecessary licenses or subscriptions are gathering dust.
Never Stop Learning in SaaS
To become successful in a SaaS business, one must be a hardcore lifelong learner. After all, this is how ideas are born. This is also how your current products and services get refined. You keep finetuning your skills and gaining wisdom through experience, then becoming an industry expert. While this may seem obvious to many of us, Khaitan has a unique and brave application of this principle.
While we know that Khaitan became the Chief of Growth at Chargebee, we did not know that what led him to it was his burning curiosity about how SMB sales work in smaller-scale companies. And before founding Quolum, Khaitan had never even seen an accounting system or managed a ledger. Khaitan has a significant risk appetite and an insatiable thirst for learning– something we can all practice to scale.
Establish Trust with Personal Connections
The big questions that first-time software founders have revolve around getting customers, and the quick answer to this is to leverage your existing resources. Suppose you’ve worked at a big company, broadcast that. If you’ve been a founder before, create a marketing campaign out of that. If you’re connected to a reputable individual, mention that.
Your resources involve your connections. But many people need to pay more attention to their existing connections when trying to win their first deals. Ask your connections to recommend people to you. Better yet, try selling your products to them. If they see value in your product, they will likely do word-of-mouth marketing without being prompted.
Market the Product Early On
A common mistake that SaaS founders make when starting a business is finishing the product before doing lead generation or marketing. It is commendable that founders care so much about their customer’s resources by securing the value they would provide, but this kind of thinking also slows growth.
Waiting for a finished product can be detrimental as the company may take forever in product development and get trapped by perfectionism. It will also likely take a while before sales and marketing can take off. It’s advisable to begin raising product awareness now so that when the product comes out, you will already have many closed deals that will secure your capital.
Consider the Niche of Your Connections
Most software founders launch a product based on their passion or what they think will be a big hit on the market. But another way to approach the decision to start a business is to analyze the niche of your network. When you look at your connections on LinkedIn, what segment do most of them belong to?
Khaitan mentioned that if he were to go back in time, he might have gone with another business idea altogether. The reason is that he had the least connections in finance. Regardless of what idea you decide to go with, if you have few connections in the field of your would-be-product, begin forming them. Connections go a long way in lead generation, after all.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Software is Creating Something Out of Nothing
It isn’t a stretch to count those of us from the SaaS industry as genuinely blessed. We get to be first-hand witnesses to the magic that is software development. While manufacturers of physical products also produce value, the software is much more special as it is the art of creating something out of nothing.
All you need to do is spot a problem or a pain, then bring your solution to life with a bunch of 1s and 0s. Of course, the more passionate you are about it, the better the output will be. Just like Khaitan, you can turn a spark of an idea into a million-dollar generating machine. You can even transform it into something new in just a few lines of code.
Up to 30% of SaaS Spend is Wasted
We all know the value of spending money in creating and scaling a business. And while it is understandable to be protective of your capital as a start-up or during a recession, flinching at the thought of spending a couple of dollars is likely to handicap your company when it reaches the enterprise level. This is precisely why CEOs need to bat an eye on miscellaneous purchases.
But when you pause for a moment and diligently account for everything, you soon find that it all adds up to 20% to 30% of your expenses. This money could have been used for R&D, ad spending, or whatever could have scaled your company. There’s nothing wrong with an abundance mindset, but optimizing spending can undoubtedly go a long way in broadening your bottom line.
TOP QUOTES
Indus Khaitan
[6:59] “Software delivered overnight– change the color, change this code, and you have a new product altogether. Lovely.”
[20:20] “That’s what’s happening in SaaS. We do not know how much we have bought. If you have bought it, we have not used it… That’s the biggest issue: Overbought licenses, underused product features.”
Matt Wolach
[6:15] “Software is something you create out of nothing. It’s just kind of an amazing thing. You don’t have to go out and source some plastic for manufacturing or something. It’s pretty ridiculous how we can create this million-dollar idea that Indus has created just because you saw a problem, saw pain, and know that you can create a solution.”
[21:04] “That’s good advice. I think it’s really smart to be able to pick a niche that you’re connected with or at least start to realize– how do I get more connected with this niche.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Indus Khaitan and Quolum, visit:
You can also find Indus Khaitan on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaitan.
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/
