Why We Created an Slack Community to SaaS as well as Software Professionals -
- Global concentration.
- More established professionals and businesses (less students ) and companies in the early stages).
- Moderation by experts.
- There is less emphasis on venture capital rounds.
- A truely supportive group and with zero tolerance for rude or unprofessional conduct.
That's true: Elements like worldwide business focus as well as experienced professional moderators (that's me!) are things we would like to see on an online forum.
The post discussed what's included in the membership, especially compared to other online groups.
Perhaps you're thinking, "But what's in it to use it for?"
It's a valid concern, and I'll be discussing the motivations (plural) for which we need to spend on this project might not be as simple as people who are the most skeptical consider.
If you're a businessman yourself, you know how it operates. Companies don't put money into innovative programs that aid the business community online. They do it because it serves their individual companies in a certain way.
A successful online community can be an excellent way to expand the recognition of your business and get some leads once in a while.
However, marketing is only one reason we're doing this. No matter if you're a client or not, we wish our members to be part of the community, or else it will not achieve its goals.
We have a Guiding Principle We think that our Software as well as SaaS Community Must Be Good to You for It to Succeed
It's a simple explanation but the key point is that if you don't believe that the community we live in is a beneficial and enjoyable place then you'll never be hanging out in our neighborhood.
So it's key to its expansion -- for you and for us that we at strive to create an awesome group for you that you can be part of.
(And In the event that we seem to diverge from this in some way, or if you have ideas on how we can improve our service Please contact us. The discussion will continue in the next paragraph.)
What can you gain from hosting an online Community
There must be a reason about this or we'd not do it, right?
Of course. But we want our goals to be straight and unambiguous.
We're going to outline what we'd like to do for this particular project.
Find out what is important to your Business
One of the most important things that our Chief Executive David Nachman said to me in an individual meeting about the goals and the mission of our community was that the community provides an opportunity to reduce the transactional nature of the relationship we have with customers , and SaaS companies.
This is an issue that's legitimate. We offer literal transactions on behalf of online businesses It's very easy for anyone to get into the trap of having an extremely well, a transactional connection.
We provide you with a service and we make you money. It is possible to repeat the procedure in autopilot.
But allowing this trend to last for too long could make us ineffective at enhancing the quality of our B2B solutions to benefit your company in ensuring that businesses online are effective is an important goal for us.
The same applies to our existing customers, but is also true for software companies that might be considering making the switch to . If you're not sure which payment method or merchant of record (MOR) for your B2C and/or B2B SaaS firm, we'd love to hear about any questions or worries you're having to take these into consideration when we begin creating new features and services.
To learn more about how David is looking forward to meeting your business and you listen to his interview with members video, that I conducted on his behalf as a member:
That's also why we've extended our plans for this community , to establish the individual contributor, executive, entrepreneur and founders member base, as we feel that it is easier to understand the business (and help them more effectively) with different layers of community members.
Our goal to increase our personal relationships with businesses (and particularly, the ones who create or work for them) is the primary why we conduct interviews with our members. Apart from helping members meet one another, it also helps get to know members and their current concerns in business.
Building Customer Relationships
Understanding more about your business is an excellent way for us to establish a more solid relation with you, whether you're a client or otherwise.
Our relationship with our clients could be strengthened by granting our members greater access to those who work with us .
Our company already provides a broad and responsive customer support service for customers and buyers, and we have customers success specialists for a few of our clients with big or complicated businesses.
We know that businesses can improve the way they assist their clients and improve the relationship they have with their customers.
99% of the time from 100, submitting an inquiry is the most effective option to receive help. That helps our support team to properly handle a ticket in accordance with the nature or importance of the problem in addition to helping us to keep track of the support requirements of an organization over long periods of.
(That last part also helps us to gain an in-depth understanding of the needs of an organization.)
That said, it might be helpful to contact the leaders in person especially if there is an issue with their business that doesn't necessarily involve issues with our technical system. Our community is comprised of experts in the community that aren't just technical support specialists.
Product managers, taxes and payment experts, customers operational experts, and occasionally, a sales director or two may be these positions and will be able to address relevant concerns in the business. They may even provide insight on the future to the company's platform.
Our goal is for our customers have one of the happy ones that they'll be telling their colleagues about, and we believe that being more readily accessible to them will enhance their possibilities. For those who's not experiencing that type of happy experience, then the community is also a location to let us know about your experience.
Yes, Leads
This is the part of the article in which it is imperative to be clear and honest.
It's amazing if our members that aren't using as a merchant of record to join our service.
This is a good thing for them that it's not the primary purpose of the community.
Because we also have the goal of enhancing the customer relationship and discovering as much we can about SaaS and software business's needs:
- It is safe to know that the process of signing up as a new customer is only one aspect of the work we're working on to support the community. Additionally, we won't solicit any person who's not expressed their desire to us in advance.
- It is more likely in securing new users by meeting the first two goals we talked about earlier, and that's why we're going to work a lot harder on achieving these objectives.
We're sure that if the community sees us being attentive to our customers and earnestly asking for comments They'll become more interested as the platform for commerce and a merchant of record because they'll witness the hard work we've put into and the attention we give our customers in person.
If you've considered before that this could be the ideal spot to begin your journey to us in a more informal approach. Participants in the community have the opportunity to connect with customers from different companies, participate in the dialogues between customers and (remotely) get to know the people responsible for the operation the company.
What are the benefits of Signing Up To This Community
Although it focused on specific features provided by the GSL group, the article did not really highlight the true advantages you gain by joining an organization like this one.
We have big plans regarding Global SaaS Leaders -- and we're constantly developing initiatives to build community. Below are some of the benefits we've already provided to software developers and SaaS CEOs, founders and marketing professionals, engineers and developers as well as many others.
Connect with Software Experts from Everywhere Over the World
There's no difference if you're an SaaS marketer looking to boost your site's SEO or a culture director concerned with meeting-ups and onboarding international customers, or someone who is a SaaS business owner in search of recommendations on how to sell into certain countries, having easy access to people in the international community can make "going international" significantly easier.
So far, we are represented by members from more than 50 countries, that span 17 time zones.
Find out about new markets that you are interested in Expanding or Introducing Within
One benefit having a global network is the ability to tap into it for advice as you work to break into new markets.
You can post in the forum to request people from certain countries to assist you. you may also reach me, principal moderator, and I can connect with relevant members under your account.
You can also keep your eyes on the discussions in the forum for prior questions that are relevant to SaaS market you're trying to enter.
It is also possible to view the profile videos we've made for our members which we're creating on a regular basis, for people who would want to be involved (like our earlier example of our CEO David Nachman).
One of the common inquiries we get from interviewees general is "What's an aspect that isn't recognized by the people marketing software to your nation?" The purpose of this kind of inquiry is to help you understand the culture and business standards that may affect how easy it is to sell software within the nation.
Learn from SaaS Company Leaders and Experts
Although our members are spread between different roles and positions at various levels, we do have many executive SaaS chiefs and department head in Global SaaS Leaders who are willing to share their knowledge with fellow members.
Some members are software and SaaS founders with numerous SaaS businesses, others have been employed at internationally-known companies, and some entrepreneurs have switched into different industries or careers and possess diverse experiences to inform their suggestions.
Additionally, multiple executives and leaders are also on hand, like the chief executive officer and our Global Tax Director as well as our Vice President of the Global Customer Operations. Our community is filled with people who want to support members as best they can.
(For further information about the subject, read Kurt about this issue, take a look at his stand-room only presentation on SaaS pricing strategies that are effective: how to design the most optimal pricing model at SaaStr Europa earlier in 2022.)
We are always happy to address such questions, and we're delighted to offer an environment where topics like these can be discussed with world-class peers.
Make yourself appear as an expert
If you're already recognized as a SaaS expert or industry figure Congratulations! We'd like to see your contributions to the community. You can also continue to establish your professional and personal reputation through sharing your knowledge.
If you're working to create your personal brand in the first place Participating in professional forums is a great method to begin. We don't all have to be SaaS founders to have an grasp of the specific areas that we're experts in. However, engaging in the sharing of our expertise with others makes us appear not just well-informed, but also friendly and gracious . And it's an ideal image to create.
The Community will develop in the course of its expansion
We started this program and SaaS community around the month of March 2022 and have seen it grow quickly. We want it to be an ideal space to enable you to simply "hang out," This community is adaptable and open to suggestions.
For example, a member last week suggested adding the channel to address a certain kind of usage.
This suggestion was changed into a poll that asked users to take part in a vote regarding the channels they'd prefer to be added to the workspace of Slack:
Therefore, whether you'd like to vote in a quiet manner on updates to the community or confidently make suggestions of your own ideas, we'll be happy to hear from you!
If you're looking for specific channels for forums, services provider suggestions, LinkedIn and social media connections, podcasts or facebook groups in person, webinars, templates, or any other software and SaaS growth hacks in general, we'd like to know about it.
Share Your Thoughts
There are plenty of options for members to express their views than only with regard to the community. The most recent requests we asked members to tell us the kinds of benchmarking data and other metrics they'd like to have released.
Such measures could help software and SaaS business owners better formulate strategies to increase their ARR.
In order to offer useful and valuable data to the growing and lucrative software and SaaS businesses, we stepped in to this community to inquire whether we could collect benchmarking data that we want to collect for the future.
The answers were retention rates for the specific industry or industry, growth of MRRs in an industry specific to it and failed payment measures (unintentional the of churn) as well as churn conversion and rates across diverse regions.
This survey is open to all, regardless of their customer status.
We've mentioned before that knowing what is important most in software or SaaS businesses is important to our goal of creating the Global SaaS Leaders community to offer you the opportunity to talk about what you need in order to move your company up to the next stage.
Join the Community and learn more about (If You're Interested)
The poll was released within the specific channel of the community. This channel exists to ensure that discussions related to (as opposed to general business-related discussions) may be accessible in this channel, but stay separate from the main feed.
We don't want our users particularly those that aren't customers to feel that we're always advertising . We've mentioned before that a software and SaaS community should be something that you are able to benefit from for success. And we think selling too much would create this a place it do not want to be.
If you're not currently a customer however you've thought about attending our office, signing up to GSL can be a fantastic way to get to know more about the company, by looking at customer interaction with our managers, looking at what kinds of questions and remarks customers say regarding GSL and more. The GSL channel designed exclusively for GSL can be accessed by everyone who is a member.
What if you do not want to read about ? It's fine to step off the platform that you are interested in and not read. There are plenty of other things to do on the forum without reading content about platforms. There is nothing to read about.
Be part of our Global SaaS Leaders Community
We're very proud of this Global SaaS Leaders community already and are proud to provide an international networking and discussion forum that offers features like live interview events with video profiles of our members and a range of expert opinions.
In the future, we are focusing our efforts on building communities, and as our membership increases, we'll add additional alternatives. We'd like to offer the creation of more personal networking relationships and launch Podcasts. We also plan to host many more live events in addition to integrating social media capabilities in the future.
If you sign up today, you can be a part of how the club evolves, too.
In order to ensure that you receive the best quality service to ensure the highest quality, I personally review every applicant for new members. There's no automated systems that allow spammers or bots. So, submitting your LinkedIn URL is essential. Thank you for being patient as I review your application as well as contact us should you have any concerns prior to you submit your application!
About
Katie Stephan Katie Stephan is the Social Media and Community Manager of the company, and she is also the moderator for the Global SaaS Leaders community. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing and has also been a university instructor of writing.
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