The Reasons We've Created the Slack Community for SaaS as well as Software Professionals --
- A global orientation.
- Professionals and businesses with more experience (less students, and even early stage startups).
- Moderation by professionals.
- A lesser amount of attention is paid to venture capital or funding rounds.
- An extremely supportive group with no tolerance for disrespectful or unprofessional behavior.
That's true: Elements such as a worldwide business focus as well as experienced professional moderators (that's me!) are what we like to have on the online forums.
This post touched on the benefits to be found for members in particular when compared with other groups on the internet.
You may be thinking, "But what's in it for?"
A valid question and I'll try to address it, due to the motives (plural) that we've got to invest in this project might not be as straightforward than the most skeptical of us think.
Being a professional already, you are aware of how this is done. The companies don't simply spend money on new software to help random businesspeople online; they invest in it to benefit their own business in some way.
And yes that having a successful online community is an excellent method to increase its brand recognition and maybe even bring in some prospects every once in awhile.
But marketing is only one of the main reasons why we're doing this. No matter if you're a client and/or not first want members to benefit from the community, or the community won't be successful in any way.
Our Guiding Principle is: Our Software and SaaS Community Must Be Good for you in order for It to Be Successful
It's pretty straightforward The bottom line is that if you do not consider our group to be a helpful and enjoyable place and go out and about.
So it's key to its growth -- both for you and for us -- that we strive to create a amazing group to be member of.
(And If we appear to not be following that standard in any wayor you have any suggestions for how we can make it more effective, let us know. We'll discuss that further in the next paragraph.)
What Can You Benefit From Hosting an online Community
There has to be something to this otherwise we wouldn't do it, right?
Yes, of course. But we want our goals to be clear.
Here's what we'd like to achieve with this endeavor.
Learn What's Important for your business
A key point our Chief Executive David Nachman said to me in one-on-one discussions about the goals and mission of our community is that this is an opportunity to lessen the nature of transactions in our relationships with our customers as well as other software and SaaS companies.
There's a valid reason to be concerned: We help facilitate real transactions with online businesses, so it's easy for all of us to fall into the rut of having a -- very well, a transactional connection.
We give you a service, you earn money, then Repeat the process on autopilot.
However, allowing this pattern to persist could make us unable to enhance your B2B services to benefit the success of your company in making sure that online businesses are successful is a priority for us.
It's the case for our customers who are already customers, but it's also true for software companies that are considering employing . If you're uncertain which method of payment and the merchant of record (MOR) for your B2C, B2B or B2C SaaS firm, we'd like to know about the questions and concerns you have so we can take them into the consideration when we build new features and services.
For more details on how David wants to meet you and your business, check out the member interview video where I spoke to him as a member himself:
We also broadened our scope of this community to have individuals who contribute, an executive, entrepreneur, and founders membership basesince we are convinced that we'll be able to learn more about businesses (and help them more effectively) with a diverse layering of community members.
This mission of increasing the level of personalization of relationships with business (and in particular, the people who found or work for them) is also part of the reason we conducting interviews with our members. Apart from helping members get to know their fellow members as well, the interview also allows us to in getting to know the members and their current concerns in business.
Building Customer Relationships
Knowing more about your company is a great way for us to strengthen the relationship that we share with you whether you're a customer or not.
But our customer relationships can be strengthened by giving members additional access to those of us .
We already have a broad, responsive support team for customers and their buyers We have customers success specialists for a few of our clients who have big or complicated businesses.
We know that businesses are able to improve the ways they help their customers and strengthen those relationships.
Ninety-nine out of hundred, submitting tickets is the most effective method to receive help. This helps our support staff effectively route requests based on the type or importance of the problem, and aids us in tracking your support requirements as time passes.
(That final part helps us get a better, greater understanding of the company's requirements.)
That said, it might be beneficial to periodically reach out to leaders in person particularly when someone is in a position to address a business need that doesn't necessarily have to do with technical issues related to our platform. We have a diverse group of experts on our platform that aren't just technical support experts.
Product managers, taxes and payments experts, customer operations pros, as well as the odd sales or marketing manager may be in there and can answer relevant business issues. They might even be able to weigh in on what's coming to the's platform.
We'd like our customers' experience are the type of positive experiences they're telling their friends about and we think making ourselves more readily available can increase the opportunities. And if you're a customer that's not having that kind of experience with us yet we have a community that is the place to let us know that.
Yes, Leads
This is part of the post where we have to get completely open and transparent.
It would be great for our members who don't have an authorized merchant would sign up for our services.
Luckily for them, that isn't the only thing we want to accomplish in this community.
We also have goals of strengthening customer relationships and learning all we possibly can on SaaS and the software needs of business:
- We're confident that the process of registering for new customers is only a small part of what we're trying to accomplish in this particular community. Moreover, we're not going to ask anyone to sign up who hasn't indicated an the desire to us in advance.
- Our chances are much higher in securing new users when we're able to meet the first two goals that we discussed above, which is why we're going to work much harder to reach them.
We know if community members see us taking care of customers with genuine concern and asking for comments, they'll be significantly more interested in our role as a platform for commerce and merchant of record -- because they'll be able to observe the effort we've put into and the care we show our users in person.
If you've thought about before that this could be the ideal time to begin your journey with us a bit more casually. Members of the community can interact with their fellow customers, listen to conversations that take place between customers and , and (remotely) get to know individuals who are part of the company.
What you can gain When You Join This Community
However, while the article focused on some of the features that are available to members of the GSL community however, it wasn't able to cover the actual advantages you gain when you join a community such as this.
While we have big plans to build a community of Global SaaS Leaders -- and we're continually working on community building -- here are some of the advantages we've already provided for software and SaaS founders, executives, entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, developers, and many more.
Network With Software Professionals Around the World. Over the World
It doesn't matter if you're an SaaS marketer looking to boost your SEO by the region, or a people and culture manager who is concerned about meeting-ups and international onboarding as well as someone who is a SaaS founder looking for tips about selling in specific countries or regions, being able to connect with the people that an international community provides makes "going globally" a lot simpler.
As of now, we are represented by members from more than 50 countries across 17 time zones.
Discover New Markets You Want to Enter or Expand Within
The main benefit of having a global community is the ability to use it to get help when you're working on breaking into new markets.
You can post in the community, asking individuals from specific countries to help you out You can also reach out to me, the moderator in chief, and I can reach out to applicable members for you.
It is also possible to keep an eye on discussions in the forum for previous questions that are relevant to SaaS markets you're working to grow into.
Also, you'll be able to look at our profile videos for members recorded on a rolling basis with those who'd want to be a part of it (like our previous example with our CEO David Nachman).
One of the questions we ask interviewees in general is "What's an aspect that isn't understood by people regarding selling software in your nation?" The goal of this question is to help you to understand the cultural as well as business differences which might affect how easy it is to sell software there.
Take a look at SaaS Company Leaders and Experts
Although our members are spread across various roles and seniority at different levels, we do have a lot of executives, SaaS founders, and department heads within Global SaaS Leaders who are willing to share their knowledge to other members.
Certain members are software or SaaS founders who have several SaaS businesses, others have worked for internationally recognizable businesses, while others are entrepreneurs who have pivoted into different industries or careers and possess a wide range of experiences to inform their suggestions.
Furthermore, multiple executive and leadership positions are on hand, like the Chief Executive Officer and the global Tax Director in addition to our Vice Chief of Global Customer Operations. They're in the community as they're eager to assist members however they can.
(For further information on this topic, check out Kurt regarding this subject be sure to check out his stand-room only talk on SaaS Pricing Strategy that Work: How to Design the most optimal pricing model at SaaStr Europe earlier in 2022.)
We love to answer questions like this, and we're happy to provide the space in which topics such as this can be discussed among world-class peers.
You can present yourself as an expert
If you're already known for being a SaaS market influencer or an expert, great! We'd love to hear from your contributions to the community while you continue to build your professional and personal image through knowledge sharing.
Or, if you're still trying to create your own brand in the first place Participating in a professional forum is a great way to do so. There's no need the status of SaaS founders to become experts in the areas we specialize in, but being active in sharing our knowledge with other people establishes us as being not just well-informed, but also friendly and magnanimous -- and this is a fantastic public image to cultivate.
Form This Community As It Develops
We launched this software and SaaS community in the month of March 2022, and it's growing steadily. We want to make it the ideal place to allow users to virtually "hang out," this community is adaptable and is open to suggestions.
For example, a member has recently suggested that we create an option for a particular type of use case.
We then turned that request into a survey asking everyone to vote on the channels they'd like to see added to the workspace of Slack:
Therefore, whether you'd like to vote quietly on community updates or confidently make suggestions of your own We're always open to suggestions!
If you're looking for specific forum channels, service supplier suggestions, LinkedIn and social media connection opportunities, a podcast Facebook group, in-person meetups, webinars and templates, or simply more software and SaaS growth hacks generally We'd love to hear about it.
Voice Your Opinions
There are other ways for members to voice their opinion than only with regard to the group, however. One of the most recent requests we asked members to inform us of what kind of benchmarking data and metrics they'd like to be able to see released.
Having these kinds of measurements can assist software and SaaS companies develop strategies for increasing their ARR.
In order to offer useful and valuable data to the expanding and profitable software and SaaS businesses, we reached out to the public directly to find out what benchmarking information we could be able to compile in the future:
Some of the responses included retention rates for a particular industry, MRR growth in a specific industry, failed payments indicators (unintentional churn) along with churn, conversion and rates across various regions.
This poll is open to everyone, regardless of their customer situation.
As we mentioned above, understanding what is important in software or SaaS businesses is important to us, so we would like the Global SaaS Leaders community to serve as a place where you can share what you really need for your company to reach the higher levels.
Join the Community to learn More About (If You're Interested)
The poll above was posted on the channel devoted to the community, which exists for discussions related to (as opposed to general business-related discussion) can be made available in the channel, and remain out of general feeds.
This is because we don't want customers -- particularly those who don't have customers to feel that we're always promoting . As we've said before the software and SaaS community must be something that you get value from to succeed We believe that selling too much would create a negative impression and make it a place that it do not wish to be.
However, if you're not a current customer, however, you've been thinking about visiting us, signing up to GSL can be a fantastic way to find out more about the company, by looking at customer interaction with our leadership, seeing the types of comments and questions people have on the platform, and so on. This channel is available to all members.
What if you do not have an interest in ? Feel free to leave the -specific channel without reading. There are many other things for you to do on the forum without reading content on a platform that which you don't have a stake in.
Join the Global SaaS Leaders Community
We're really proud of the Global SaaS Leaders community already, and we're proud to provide an international networking and discussion area that includes features like live events for interviews and member introduction videos and a wide range of input from experts.
In the future, we will be focusing on building communities and, as our community increases, we'll add additional functions. We'd like to facilitate the creation of more personal networking relationships start a podcast, organize more live events as well as integrate social media features in the future.
However, if you sign up today, you can shape what the organization develops to become, too.
To maintain a high standard of member service, I'm personally reviewing all new member applications -- there are no automatizations that let spammers in or bots. So, submitting your LinkedIn link is vital. Thank you for being patient as I look over your application and don't hesitate to email us if you have any concerns prior to applying!
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