EPISODE SUMMARY
Len Finkle, CEO of Profisee, rethinks the strategies of giving clear value to customers, especially SaaS customers, and how it leads to an exponential sales growth, with Matt Wolach, host of the SaaS-Story in the Making podcast.
Len also talks about the advantages of having constant connection and communication not only with the market, but also with the team that you’re working with and how contrasting opinions benefit each other with the value of diversity in a software company.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: SaaS-Story in the Making
Episode: How To Use Digital Marketing To Scale Your SaaS Company
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Founder, and Investor
Guest: Paris Childess, CEO of Profisee
TOP TIPS FROM EPISODE
Connection is the Solution
Connection with your market is incredible, but have you ever reached out to your team and made them realize they’re doing well? Len taps on this and tells startup founders to communicate to their teams about their plans and how they plan to reach it within a timeframe.
This gives teams a chance to suggest and create a healthy working environment filled with ideas and energy that lives on for as long as there is interest from the founder. It also gives the team a morale booster that their voices are heard, and will boost their productivity at the same time.
Along with it is the introduction of a discussion board inside of the company, asking questions on how to grow the company. There may be some clashing ideas and opposing opinions, but it gives the company numerous opportunities for growth with a large pool of ideas.
Len stresses on this because he’s had success by employing diversity into his projects, and made his team grow exponentially.
Plan Ahead
Nothing beats a planned journey – until the train goes off the tracks. This is part of life, but as a software founder, you’re off to a long haul, and you should find your way back on track. Software is a long term game, keep pushing until you find gold.
Len and Matt share the importance of having a roadmap, complete with milestones and achievements to aim for to avoid the sensation of plateauing in the business, and when you do plateau in this business, you’ll see newer products overtake yours and steal your market faster than you can recover.
Having a great plan and a solid communication with your team makes the ride smoother. Use these to your advantage and grow your software company to its full potential.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Where Does This Go?
Len said: “If you don’t have data that you can trust, which means it’s accurate and it’s the same in different places, can you imagine feeding data to an artificial intelligence engine and have it make recommendations or even decisions more likely, if that data’s not accurate, you’re gonna get some pretty bad recommendations and decisions.”
Matt said: “There are times that ‘we need this number.’ What is it? Are we getting it from the CRM? Are we getting it from the ERB? Are we getting it from our financial system? Are we getting it from the CFL spreadsheet? Which is the source of truth? It was so hard to figure it out.”
The importance of good data management really shines when the numbers come and you don’t know where they’re coming from. You’re unsure of the source of truth. As you’re giving clarity to your prospects, you should also have a clear system in place so the metrics don’t get mixed up.
Accurate numbers benefit your business more than mixed-up, outdated metrics that may lead to misinformation inside the company which will lead to inefficiencies and mistakes.
Priority: Teamwork
Len says: “For us, focusing on the cultural sharing values has helped us so much. In today’s world, you need to be diverse. And it’s not because it’s the right thing to do, which it is, without a doubt. The absolute best decisions, best groups, results come when you have diverse perspectives.”
“If I had a room of 10 of me, we’d be so much less successful as a company. We need different people with different perspectives.”
Matt responds: “When you get the right people with the right values on the team, you can make great decisions. That’s how great decisions happen.”
“A lot of companies try to avoid it, but actually, there have been studies that have come out. Companies have debated, and each of the people fought based on their perspective and their role, and ‘nicely fought’, not necessarily to take each other down. Those companies are actually the ones that got ahead.”
A great team does not comprise the same people with the same roles, but has a diverse roster and one goal. Different people motivated with a single goal will produce far better results than one with the same people with the same mindset and skillset.
Len and Matt gave insightful anecdotes which will greatly help starting companies find the team that will give the company exponential growth.
Planning Provides Clarity
Len says: “Communication is essential. We make our decisions very quickly on what we are gonna do and communicate that quickly. We have a plan for what we’re gonna do so we even tell the employees what we foresee like ‘this might happen’. We let them know, we have a plan in place, some of the things that we’re going to focus on, when and if we’re going remote, we have a plan. It establishes some comfort in people.”
“So by bringing customers in to show and tell our employees what they’re doing with the software, provides that link and engagement.”
“Out of all the things, the most important thing I would say would be providing clarity.”
Matt replies with: “One hand has to know what the other hand is doing. Make sure your team’s communicating. Make sure everybody knows what they’re doing.”
Being calculated will give software founders a great advantage over the competition and thinking ahead and giving clarity is guaranteed to keep the pace ahead of the industry.
TOP QUOTES
Len:
[4:36] “All human beings, we get most concerned by uncertainty. Bad news is bad, great news is great, not knowing is the worst.”
[08:44] “No matter what I do, things I set up, if you don’t have the right people in place that value the thing that we just discussed, it doesn’t matter.”
[16:11] “The number one reason why data management projects fail is the lack of a business plan.”
[17:57] “Anybody that thinks that they should be looking at diversity just because what everyone’s talking about, they’re missing the big picture. It makes you a better company.”
[21:19] “For a company to be incredibly successful, [it] has to use all their resources, especially smaller companies all in the right places.”
Matt:
[07:43] “One hand has to know what the other hand is doing. Make sure your team’s communicating. Make sure everybody knows what they’re doing.”
[20:14] “When you get the right people with the right values on the team, you can make great decisions. That’s how great decisions happen.”
LEARN MORE
Learn more about Len Finkle and his company Profisee here: https://profisee.com/
You can also find Len on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/len-finkle-9465b22/
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/
As part of the founding team in his first SaaS product, Matt owned the sales & marketing processes. But he struggled to sell and gain traction for the company. It took years of learning and tweaking before Matt created The Perfect DEAL Process, an innovative yet easy to implement method for closing more software deals. To find out more, visit https://mattwolach.com/about-matt
