How to build a profitable software product without selling out your vision in order to scale

Have you been trying to answer this question? We know the profit equation, but how do you make it happen for your SaaS business? Here are the keys you need in this high-velocity marketplace, to stand out with impact and profit.

Key #1

Build products people love! Before you glaze over, this is the MOST important thing to focus on. The purpose of your business is to provide a viable, and eventually exceptional product for your customers.

Why you ask:

✅It increases word-of-mouth people. When customers love your product they will let everyone know.

✅It reduces the cost of goods sold or in digital speak (CAC) customer acquisition costs. great reviews and results lower the cost for you to acquire a new customer.

✅Increase recurring revenue from current clients. MRR / ARR is monthly recurring revenue and annual recurring revenue the whole basis of building a software product is requiring revenue that’s why we use these metrics.

✅Bottomline SELLING is easier and we know that is the lifeblood. 😍

Key#2

Obsess about your customers and facilitate a culture that promotes a growth mindset.

This sounds like two, and it is, when you obsess over customers you will be asked to evolve and If you don’t have a cultural/mindset of growth nothing will happen.

How to do it:

✅You should always be collecting customer usage data and feedback

✅Appropriately prioritize these so your ideal customer profile or ICP continues to get the best value and can help you build on key #1.

✅Let customers know that you really care about them with thoughtful and frictionless experiences

✅Execute on a growth culture by getting employees, business partners, and others to understanding your ethos. Agility is paramount.

✅Structure your business to support customers i.e. invest in an excellent customer success function that offers the right level of support, if and when something goes wrong. See Zappos on delivering happiness.

Key #3

Know your numbers to measure key 1 and key 2 in addition to the marketplace. measure what is working best not just what people say, but what people DO this includes looking at how they move along a funnel whether it’s a buying journey or recurring revenue journey any customer journey that you have in place is an excellent place to start looking at an understanding how to optimize your numbers. This requires you to have focused on your product and on a growth mindset within your business.

✅Doing this also puts you in a position to future-proof your business.

Key #4

Stand out in a way that customers care about. This comes down to branding, in order for market domination your brand has to stand out. Not only by marketing all the time and by having customers talk about you but by giving a reason for people to believe or reason for people to join the movement and to be a part of your “tribe” and community.

✅Have something that connects you to them and them to you, and them to each other. This is how communities thrive. So know your role in the community and know how people will engage with your brand values, vision, and mission. (Geico knows we hate thinking about insurance and hate paying for it just as much. But it is a necessity. So they tell us… “15 minutes could save you 15% or more in car insurance”! Ummm, yes, please. And I’ll tell my friends and family too.

Key#5

Have Clear vision and values. Knowing what you stand for and what “people like us do” not only helps at the beginning with early adopters, it also helps when people are considering why they should switch from a competitor to your brand.

✅Results show that even when there might be a logical reason not to switch, a bigger emotional reason will get someone to switch to your brand from competitors.

✅This is frankly where how you get into market domination. see Nike. see Amazon. See Chase. For Amazon, customers care about getting things done fast, seamlessly and intuitively without friction how are you delivering that in a way that gives your brand personality or makes your customer the hero? Need a last-minute gift almost guaranteed to arrive in 3 days or less? Amazon prime anyone?

Obviously, I could have linked to multiple blog posts, podcast episodes and books to buy to further make these points, but chances are you would have already read all (or about a ton) of the books.

Chances are you’ve already listened to lots of podcasts, and if you see anything like my very human and very high-achievement focused clients, chances are you haven’t been able to apply this successfully to your business, even though you know it’s what needs to be done. That’s where my 10+ years of strategy consulting and implementation experience becomes useful.

🎒Which of these keys do you need to focus on most?

When you’re ready to get into execution mode, I invite you to send me a message to see how I can help your situation. I have a very specific process that will walk you through how to build a profitable software product and remain your own boss i.e. bootstrapped or only taking very minimal funding. Let’s talk.