S6E18 – The 3-Step GTM Playbook to Grow Your SaaS from €0 to €1M ARR with Alexander Estner

In this episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast, we sit down with Alexander Estner to talk about how to grow a SaaS company from zero to $1 million in ARR — and why many founders struggle to get there. Alex is a SaaS expert who has helped lots of startups build strong go-to-market (GTM) strategies. He shares a simple, step-by-step playbook that breaks the journey into three key stages: hustle, focus, and expansion. You’ll hear why it’s so important to start with a clear plan, how to avoid common mistakes like trying to sell to everyone, and why it’s better to test and learn than to aim for perfection from day one. Alex also gives practical tips, useful tools, and real-life examples that show what works and what doesn’t. Whether you’re just starting out or already have some traction, this episode is full of helpful advice to move your SaaS business forward. If you’re trying to figure out how to grow the right way, without burning out or wasting time, this conversation is definitely worth a listen.

The Importance of a Go-to-Market Strategy

Alex emphasizes the critical nature of a solid go-to-market (GTM) strategy from day one. Many founders jump directly to tactics without a foundational strategy, which often leads to failure. A GTM strategy involves understanding your ideal customer, positioning, and value proposition. Execution without strategy is like a ship without a compass; it won’t reach its destination. Alex points out that a clear strategy prevents burning money and chasing the wrong customers.

Misconceptions in the Zero to One Million Journey

A prevalent misconception among SaaS founders is viewing the zero to one million journey as a single stage. Alex clarifies that this journey consists of multiple stages, and it’s vital to iterate your GTM playbook. Founders should not aim for a perfect playbook from the start but instead adopt an iterative approach to pricing, positioning, and customer targeting.

The Pitfalls of Being Too Broad

One of the biggest mistakes SaaS founders make is attempting to serve too many customer types and use cases early on. This lack of focus makes it difficult to scale effectively. Alex highlights the importance of narrowing down your focus to achieve scalable growth. Founders should also avoid the mindset of outsourcing their GTM strategy, as it is crucial for at least one founder to own and validate the GTM approach.

Alex’s Three-Step GTM Playbook

Hustle Mode

The first stage, hustle mode, is about validating that your product solves a real problem—this is the problem-solution fit. It involves non-scalable, scrappy methods to acquire and retain the first 10 to 100 customers, aiming for around $100K ARR. The focus here is on finding clients who truly value what you’re building. Success in this phase is marked by recurring clients who see value in your product.

Focus Mode

In the focus mode, the goal is to achieve go-to-market fit by identifying your best-fit customers—those with better product usage and retention rates. Here, founders should analyze their existing customer base to refine their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and revamp their positioning and messaging. This stage is about achieving repeatability in your go-to-market processes.

Expansion Mode

The final stage, expansion mode, is about scaling beyond $1 million ARR. Founders have three options: continue doubling down on what’s working, expand vertically by adding new use cases, or serve different target audiences. However, it’s crucial not to expand too early without having achieved repeatability in your processes.

The Value of Documentation

Alex advises founders to maintain a balance between running tests and documenting their findings. Basic documentation of what works, what doesn’t, and why, along with tracking KPIs, helps in making informed decisions during the focus phase.

Tools and Templates for Success

To aid in executing the GTM strategy, Alex recommends tools like the ICP and Messaging Framework, Sales Tech Template, and Home Page Template. These resources are invaluable for clearly defining and communicating your product’s value to your target audience.

Overcoming Struggles in Real-life Implementation

Many founders struggle with staying too broad for too long. Alex shares an example of a company that successfully refocused its efforts on a specific segment, leading to increased win rates, reduced sales cycles, and higher ACVs. The key is having clarity on your path forward and not being afraid to narrow down your focus.

The Role of Transparency in Modern GTM Strategies

In today’s B2B SaaS landscape, transparency is increasingly important. Alex notes that buyers expect a more B2C-like buying experience, where they can access pricing and product information upfront. SaaS companies should adapt to this changing behavior to stay competitive.

Final Advice for SaaS Founders

Alex’s parting wisdom for SaaS founders is to embrace the focus on narrowing down your market and owning your GTM strategy. It’s essential not to outsource this critical aspect of your business. For those just starting, Alex advises doing non-scalable things like leveraging your network and setting up a referral engine. For companies aiming to grow to $10 million ARR, customer success should be seen as a revenue driver, with strategies to ask for referrals and implement expansion goals.

Conclusion

This episode is packed with practical insights and strategies for SaaS founders aiming to grow from zero to $1 million ARR. Alex’s three-step GTM playbook provides a clear roadmap for achieving scalable growth. For more in-depth discussions on related topics, check out previous episodes with industry experts. Don’t forget to follow Alex on LinkedIn for daily insights and subscribe to his newsletter for valuable templates and frameworks. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with other founders who could benefit from these insights.

Key Timecodes

• (0:38)-Guest Introduction: Introduction of Alexander Estner and today’s topic
• (1:34)-Why Go-to-Market Strategy is Important: Alex explains the significance of a go-to-market strategy
• (3:05)-Strategy vs. Execution: Differentiating between strategy and execution in go-to-market
• (3:39)-Misconceptions in SaaS Growth: Discussing common misconceptions about reaching $1 million ARR
• (5:23)-Iterative Growth Approach: The necessity of an iterative approach in SaaS growth
• (6:41)-Common Mistakes in Go-to-Market Strategy: Alex shares frequent pitfalls founders encounter
• (8:49)-Owning Go-to-Market: The importance of founders owning their go-to-market strategy
• (9:05)-Three-Step Go-to-Market Process: Introduction to the hustle, focus, and expansion modes
• (13:27)-Documentation in Hustle Phase: Importance of documentation to ease the transition to focus mode
• (15:54)-Expansion Mode: Options for growth beyond $1 million ARR
• (17:02)-Tools and Templates: Recommended resources for executing go-to-market strategies
• (18:22)-Real-Life Implementation Challenges: Where founders struggle in real-life execution
• (21:07)-Immediate Actions Post-Episode: Steps for founders to take immediately after the episode
• (24:32)-Who to Work With: Identifying the key players in executing a go-to-market strategy
• (26:04)-Transparency in Go-to-Market: The importance of transparency in pricing and product information
• (29:18)-Summarizing Go-to-Market Advice: Key takeaways for founders
  (31:12)-Advice for Early-Stage Founders: Tips for growing to 10K MRR
• (32:15)-Scaling to 10 Million ARR: The role of customer success in driving revenue
• (34:21)-Summary of Key Points: Recap of the three-step process and key advice

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Alex

The only way to grow to the one million in a repeatable way is doing less and saying no to a lot of things. It’s definitely not about scalability. It’s really about finding clients who value what you’re building. So you have confidence that you built something that’s more for them to pay money. So you found problem solution. You don’t need to serve more clients or more use case Maybe it’s just doubling down. That’s option one.

[00:00:38.080] – Joran

After the solo podcast from last week, where I shared our story of our field acquisition, we’re back with a guest today. A topic which is related to many listeners. My guest today is Alexander Estner. Alexander is a hands-on GTM advisor that focuses on helping SaaS founders build and execute their go-to-market foundation, going from zero to $1 million ARR. And that is exactly what we’re going to talk today. We’ll dive into his three-step GTM playbook to grow your SaaS from zero to $1 million ARR. Alex has been an entrepreneur himself. Right after leaving university, he joined a company as the first hire and founded a company himself before making the jump and becoming a consultant and mentor in 2021. If you do want to get this knowledge without paying him, of course, listen to this show, but he shares a lot of knowledge daily on LinkedIn, and he runs a bi-weekly email newsletter which has over 4,500 SaaS leaders subscribed. Let’s just dive right in. Welcome to the show, Alexander.

[00:01:34.660] – Alex

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:37.220] – Joran

We’re going to dive right in. To start with a super basic question, why is getting your go-to-market strategy right from day one so important for SaaS founders?

[00:01:48.780] – Alex

Not sure if it’s a basic question, but I think it’s important to understand when I talk about go-to-market strategy, what is strategy and the execution part? Because I think a lot of people I have not a clear distinction between what strategy and what’s the execution and the tactical piece of go-to-market. When I talk about go-to-market strategy, it’s the foundation getting clarity on who’s my ideal customer, what’s the right positioning, how do we communicate our value proposition to the client, that it’s really resonating, what’s your messaging. I believe that strategy is then important because execution will not work without strategy and vice versa, of course. But what I see is that a lot of founders jump directly into tactics. They think about, Okay, what’s the perfect LinkedIn post? Or what’s the best way to run Google ads? Or how do I do outreach on email or call calling? This is all important. This is the execution part. But this won’t work if your strategy if the foundation is strong. If you don’t know how to position your product, who’s your ICP, what they care about, how do I communicate all the cool features and capabilities that our product can do in a way that our target audience understand that, then all the execution most likely, will fail.

[00:03:05.040] – Alex

That’s why I believe it’s important from day one to also think about the strategy part, but not solely the strategy. It always goes hand-to-hand. You need to test different things. You need to be on the execution side, being in the trenches, run different things in order to validate the strategy and also vice versa. If you skip that early on, you will waste your runway. You burn money, you chase the wrong customers, you do probably things that they are unscalable and just burn money. I think getting clarity on your go-to-market playbook on your strategy part is quite important from day one.

[00:03:39.990] – Joran

It’s not that you create your entire go-to-market strategy from day one, and then that your strategy going forward. You need to keep iterating and making sure you do the right things. One other question, what is the biggest misconception SaaS founders have about going from zero to 1 million ARR?

[00:04:00.000] – Alex

I believe there are two main misconceptions I see when I work with founders. Number one being that they believe the zero to one stage is just one stage. It’s like either I’m on zero or on one. That’s the next milestone I need to achieve. I do believe it’s multiple stages. It’s not zero to one. It’s at least three stages. I think we will cover that later on. What are the three stages? But the resulting misconception of that is that they believe they need to have the perfect go-to-market playbook from day one. They see the growth as something linear. It’s zero, it’s one. I rather believe it’s multiple milestones. The benefits of that is that you don’t have the conception that you need to have the perfect playbook from day one on. I see go-to-market very iterative. I prefer to have, let’s say, the perfect ICP from zero to 10 clients, from 10 to 100 clients, maybe from 100 to 1,000 clients. Same for pricing for positioning and messaging. It’s fine to think about, Okay, what’s the perfect pricing? What’s the perfect messaging? What’s the perfect ICP from zero to 10 clients? What do we need to hit then to get the next 90 clients to hit 100 customers?

[00:05:15.260] – Alex

I think it’s fine to have it iterative. Pricing one, pricing two, pricing version three, and so on, and same for all the other parts of go-to-market.

[00:05:23.900] – Joran

Yeah, that’s interesting because we went through many of these things you just mentioned, like pricing. We started with a premium model, then we dropped the premium model, then we brought back the premium model. We, I think, increased our pricing three times in the last two and a half years. Keep iterating and see, I guess, what works.

[00:05:40.920] – Alex

It’s also quite stressful for a lot of founders. We all follow the big players, like the notion mirrors and Sanos of the world. Then we look at the pricing page, for instance, if you continue the pricing discussion, and we do believe, Oh, shit, we need to have this perfect pricing plan from day one on because that’s what the market requires. That’s stressful. I think if you flip it and say, Okay, maybe it’s just a simple pricing, as you said. That pricing, €50 per month for the first 10 clients, it’s not about optimizing margins early on, or it’s more like validating problem solution It fits.

[00:06:16.830] – Joran

For people listening, we have been going into depth regarding every topic we mentioned, pricing, positioning. We had April Dunford, Walter from Unium. Today, we’re going to talk about your three-step process, how to get from zero to one. We’ll definitely cover a couple of things. If you want to dive deeper, check out the other episodes. Before we dive into your framework, what is the common mistake founders make with their go-to-market strategy?

[00:06:41.780] – Alex

Again, I see two mistakes that happen a lot. Number one is being too proud, too early. What I mean by that is serving too many clients at the same time, different ICPs, different channels and tactics they try to do, even on the products covering too many use cases, too early on, meaning without having the relevant resources that you need to execute all those things in parallel. I believe one of the main reasons, especially if it’s we see funded companies, that they talk a lot about the big term, the total addressable market, and they need to be the big player in order to get funded, which is true, but when you go on the execution side, really from zero to one, being too proud, too early, It’s almost never possible to execute. That’s definitely something I see happening quite a lot. The problem of that is, or the resulting problem is that when I ask them, what is the product doing and for whom? It’s really hard for them to explain it in one sentence. It takes me not hours, but at least a couple of minutes to really understand and a couple of questions to really understand what the product does and for who the product is and why it’s better than maybe the alternatives in the market.

[00:07:59.080] – Alex

The problem of that is they’re too broad, too early. Another common mistake more on the technical side, if I talk to technical founders, is the outsourcing go-to-market mindset. They don’t want to own go-to-market. They don’t want to do sales. They want to be on the products side, on the tech side. They have the mindset that, Ideally, we want to hire you, Alex, or another sales agency. Very early on, please fix the go-to-market for us. We focus on the product. I think that’s not possible. I think at least one of the founders need to own go-to-market. When I say own go-to-market, it’s fine to bring someone like me in, and they help them to do it, but I’m not doing it for them. They need to validate all the things that are important in the early stage.

[00:08:49.460] – Joran

Build it and they will come. It’s definitely not going to be true in this case.

[00:08:53.620] – Alex

Sure.

[00:08:55.100] – Joran

We’re going to dive into the three-step process. Can you just walk us through the three-step go-to-market What are the steps? And then we’ll dive into every specific stage after.

[00:09:05.180] – Alex

When I talk about zero to one, I see three stages. Stage one is hustle mode, stage two is focus mode, and then the expansion mode is stage three. When we dive into the hustle mode, the goal is to validate that your product is solving a problem. I call it problem solution fit. How you do it is you will test different things. You will validate your hypothesis. You go out, talk to clients. In order to get and retain the first 10 to 100 customers, I think this depends on your ACV, but roughly, I would say the goal is to hit the 100K ARR. How you do it? Non-scalable things, hustle mode. You reach out to your network, you go on conferences, you ask your first clients for referrals. All the scrappy things that you can do in order to get first clients. It’s definitely It’s actually not about scalability. It’s really about finding clients who value what you’re building. You have confidence that you build something that’s worth for them to pay money. You found problem solution fit. And success of that phase is, as I said, you have the first recurring clients, they stay, they use the product, you hit the first 100K ARR.

[00:10:28.000] – Alex

If you’re sales-led and you are on sales calls, yet prospects, not ahead and say, Yes, I understand what you’re doing. So you get first signals of message market fit. That’s nice as a founder, too. You pitch a product and, oh, yeah, this is really solving a problem for them. That’s step one. But the problem of that is you will most likely end up with different customer types. Maybe they use a product in different use cases. You acquire clients through different sources, different channels, maybe even with different sales motions like product led versus sales led. That’s definitely not ideal to scale because each of them require a lot of resources. Then it’s really important to sit down to acknowledge that this is hard to scale. This is great. You found product solution fit, but now you need to narrow down. That’s the only way to grow to one million. Actually, that’s a problem that I see in the market that founders ignore that and try to continue doing that and running multiple ICPs multiple use cases, multiple go-to-market motions at the same time. It’s hard to scale. Stage two is then, I call it the focus mode.

[00:11:38.460] – Alex

Your goal is to hit go-to-market fit. You want to go beyond your initial customers. The way how you do it is you sit down, you try to analyze your customers that you have in order to find your, I call it the best fit customers. Customers that show better product usage, that maybe have a better cultural fit. You want to work with them. They maybe have better win rates, better higher ACVs, better retention rates. There are different ways to identify your best fit customers. But your goal is to find them because, as I said, you need to narrow down to one use case, one ICP. Once you have that, you should adapt your go-to-market motion or strategy to that, meaning revamp Reramping your positioning for this specific best fit customer, revamping your messaging that really speaks to those clients, maybe narrowing down that your product is only for this use case. Also, in the beginning, you test a different channels. Now it’s about focusing on one or two channels that are the best channels to acquire those clients. Your goal is to get repeatability for this specific segment of the market in order to reach the one million.

[00:13:00.640] – Joran

One question here. We had the hustle mode where you just did whatever you could, then we’re going to go focus. Is there anything you would recommend people document in the hustle phase to make focus easier? If you’re going to do everything right, especially in hustle mode, at one point, you don’t know where the clients are coming from, or you’re like, Oh, I can’t remember where I actually spoke to this person first, or how did they got in. Anything you can do to make, I guess, that transition easier.

[00:13:27.960] – Alex

I’m a big fan of documentation, but of course, it needs to be in a good balance. You can’t document everything, and you shouldn’t spend more time on documentation than running tests. But having a basic documentation definitely makes sense. When you test different things, that you take conclusions, that you have a summary of what worked or what didn’t work, and also why didn’t it work. Also, let’s say, the KPI metric side, that you set up some basic things from the beginning on some. I’m a big fan, for instance, for self-reported attribution, that you ask people on the signup process or during the discovery call, how did you find us? That’s a good way to analyze what channels are working. Same that you start from the beginning, having a good system for tracking churn reasons or lost reasons, why you’re not winning deals. I think all those things help you to be more efficient in the focus mode.

[00:14:22.960] – Joran

Nice. Then we found our best fit. We’re going to narrow things down. Now we’re going to go to the expansion, right?

[00:14:30.000] – Alex

Exactly. I roughly see the end of the focus mode hitting product-market fit and the 1 million ARR because you found problem-solution fit in stage one, you found go-to-market fit in stage two, and now it’s about you want to grow beyond one million. I do believe you have three options to do that. Either you just continue what you’re doing. If the time is big enough, just double down. Maybe that’s enough. You don’t need to serve more clients or more use cases. Maybe it’s just doubling down. That’s option one. Another one is expanding vertically. You still serve the same ICP, but you’re adding new use cases for those personas or companies or vice versa. You stick to the same use case that your product is very good at, and now you’re adding other target audiences. But I think that’s very important. When I work for founders, they also tell me, Yeah, now it’s working. Can Can we now build new use case or can we now add another target audience? You shouldn’t do that too early. It’s really important that you have this repeatability and predictability in stage 2. When you look into your monthly reporting, one good signal for that is if you, let’s say, do sales led and you measure MQLs or signups, if you’re more product led, that there’s repeatability.

[00:15:54.740] – Alex

Maybe in January, you have 50, in February, you have 55, then 60. That’s repeatability. Small growth, next month, you probably will hit the same amount because it’s repeatability. Versus whenever I work with founders and they want to scale too early, maybe they have in January 50 MQLs, but then five in February, and then maybe 10 in March and then 100 in April and then again 20, which maybe at the end is still good because you grow, but it’s not repeatable. And that’s not ideal to jump into expansion mode, which is also the phase when you hire your first go-to-market team, bring in marketeers, sales teams, and so on.

[00:16:33.260] – Joran

Yeah. Do you have peaks because you’re running all these experiments, and sometimes you figure out something which works, and then maybe the next month it doesn’t work anymore. But indeed, as you mentioned, you need repeatability to be able to actually continue from there. Yeah. Nice. Let’s dive deeper. This is already a framework or a process, but are there any other tools, templates, processes you would recommend for founders to execute How does this approach?

[00:17:02.400] – Alex

My goal of the newsletter that I’m running is basically exactly that, sharing a lot of free templates and frameworks for zero to upon stage. My personal favorites are ICP and messaging framework because that’s what everyone needs. One document that clearly says, who is my ideal customer? How do we communicate with them? Why is our product better than direct and indirect competition? That’s something I do with all founders I work with. And then we try to turn that into sales tech and home pages. To answer your question, probably there are four templates I do really love. It’s ICP, Messaging Framework, Sales Tech Template, and Home Page Template.

[00:17:44.040] – Joran

I know you run them on mirror, right? We’re going to add the links in the show notes so people can find it. I took inspiration from your home page template to create a SaaS affiliate program landing page, where I took inspiration from it and I turned into our own template. So thanks for that.

[00:18:02.820] – Alex

Great for you.

[00:18:03.880] – Joran

If somebody is listening to this podcast and 0 to 1 million ARR, we now made it sound super simple. Three steps, just do it. But if you zoom out, where do most SaaS founders struggle when trying to implement or even going for your framework in real life when they’re trying to do this?

[00:18:22.860] – Alex

It’s staying too broad for too long, meaning being too long in the hustle mode phase. As Especially if it’s working. Adding new clients on a monthly base feels good. But what I see is that people stay there too long because it’s counterintuitive to say, now it’s time to narrow down and saying no to a lot of things because it’s working. I’m adding new clients, channels are working. But as I said before, I think the only way to grow to the one million in a repeatable way is doing less and saying no to a a lot of things. This sounds in theory, I understand, super logical. Of course, we need to focus. That’s the way to do it. But when you’re in the trenches and you build your product and customers love it, it’s hard to say no. I remember one of the first conversations with a founder. He said that this was one of his toughest conversations because they executed well. They had clients from different use cases, different target audiences. One of the first things I told them is, If you want to grow, we need to stop serving them. We need to stop being everything, everything for everyone.

[00:19:31.950] – Alex

It took them one or two months until we finally took the decision to do that because it has a big implication. You need to probably revamp your website. You maybe change your pricing. You do discovery demo calls differently because you fully focus all your attention to one specific use case in ICP.

[00:19:53.220] – Joran

Yeah, and just to be clear, it’s only for new clients. To the clients you already had, who will remain them. They’re not going to drop the ALR. It’s just acquiring new clients, putting it into repeatability process. I have to focus purely on those. Exactly. I don’t know if this one is going to be easy to answer, but let’s see. If a SaaS founder is now listening and they think, Yeah, I definitely want to do things right, I guess, to move forward in my go-to-market journey. Is there a thing they could do? Probably figure out first where they are in the three-step process. What else would you recommend? You often see typical questions, probably a Being conscious and analyzing where we are in the journey is my next milestone problem solution fit.

[00:20:40.120] – Alex

Do I want to validate my idea? Is it about go-to-market fit? The next milestone? Do I want to find repeatability in what I’m doing? Or is it more like scaling already because I found problem solution fit, I found go-to-market fit, now we need to double down? That’s probably one of the things they can do immediately immediately after listening to the episode, sitting down, looking into your metrics, and then being conscious about what’s your next milestone.

[00:21:07.100] – Joran

Are you struggling to find a cost-effective and scalable marketing channel? Check out where it is. We help you to have other people recommend your SaaS, and you would only pay them when they deliver you paid clients, making it a very cost-effective and scalable marketing channel. Want to learn more? Go to getReditus. Com. Let’s go into a fun question. You just gave an example where you help somebody to focus, right? So they switched their focus from going from everything to everyone to fully focusing. What happened after? Were they able to put things in a repeatable process? Can you give us some best practices?

[00:21:41.180] – Alex

Let’s continue with what I said with the company. To give some context, they built a research management solution. In the beginning, they were very broad. They had companies using the product, but also the public sector using the product, even like spot clubs using the product because they had multiple use cases for that. At the end, a resource could Could be multiple things, could be a hall, could be co-working spaces, could be public resources. And once we identified that the public sector is the best fit customers, and we fully focused on that, we saw way better win rates. Sales cycle decreased, win rates increased. We even doubled the ACVs. We saw way better net revenue expansion. So we saw that customer success can really upsell, expand clients over time. So everything just made click, right? So In the beginning, all of them worked okay-ish, but average win rates, rather low ACV, super long sales cycles. Once we narrowed down on the public sector in that case, we revamped everything. We We went the website, made the messaging clear, adapted our sales process, so how the sales team do discovery demos, we revamped their CRM, adapted the pricing.

[00:22:53.560] – Alex

Basically, everything for this specific segment, the results were quite good, all metrics went in the right direction. I think that’s quite important, more on the qualitative side. Clarity. I think clarity is something that we are not talking a lot about because metrics is one thing, but how clear is it for me as a founder or also the team to execute things? When you do so many different things at the same time, it’s hard. You’re missing the clear path. Now everything becomes super clear for them, even like they revamp their vision because from being a broad tool, now they’re fully focused on digitalizing the public sector in the European market. Different vision, different mission coming out of that.

[00:23:37.460] – Joran

When you do these transitions, so you did this transition in this case, who do you work with? Is it purely the founder? Are there people from different departments?

[00:23:48.020] – Alex

Yes and no, or both. My main contact person is definitely one of the founders. Why? Because I believe the founder needs to own that, own the go-to-market. So I can help them, enable them, but they need to be behind the decision. Let’s imagine if I would work with the marketing lead only or the sales lead, and we want to change big things, as I mentioned before, this is not possible without the buy-in from one of the founders because it has drastic implications on the whole business. They were very early stage. They want not to be a lot of big teams. It’s one of the founders. It’s my main contact person. Sometimes sales or marketing is joining those sessions.

[00:24:32.640] – Joran

Got you. When we look at go-to-market, there’s a lot of beliefs out there. What is a popular belief you’ve seen, maybe on LinkedIn or anywhere else, where you completely disagree with?

[00:24:46.220] – Alex

I remember two or three weeks ago, I had a good discussion on LinkedIn with Björn, a Björn chef, a go-to-market advisor, on exactly on my three-stage approach. One of the things in this three-stage approach is that product-market fit is the combination of problem solution fit and go-to-market fit. Basically, you need to have problem solution fit first, then go-to-market fit. If you have both, you have product-market fit. I like this definition. I saw this from Anthony Pierry from FLECH PMM. Björza, I disagree with that. I believe product-market fit comes before go-to-market fit. I think there was a discussion of what is product-market fit, basically. I understand a There’s an advantage of both definitions, but for me, it made more sense to say product-market fit is the combination of I found a product that solves a problem for a specific target audience, and I know how to acquire and retain them. So go to market fit. And there was a… Maybe we can link it to a LinkedIn discussion, but there was a lot of discussions around what’s the right definition on product market fit.

[00:25:54.800] – Joran

I imagine that LinkedIn both kicked off as well.

[00:25:59.300] – Alex

I think it was not my post. I commented on someone else, but yeah, I think it was quite some good impressions.

[00:26:04.680] – Joran

When we look at the go-to-marketing as a whole and trends, there’s a lot happening right now with AI agents. Is there something SaaS founders aren’t paying enough attention to right now or they should be paying enough attention to certain things right now?

[00:26:22.120] – Alex

I think there’s a lot. Maybe I could take an example of the last two weeks, two times that came up. So maybe that’s a good indicator that this is something they ignore, and I believe they should pay more attention to this. Both are sales-led companies, and maybe that’s important. My sweet spot is ACVs from 2000 to 20K products, so no pure PLG products. And a discussion I have quite a lot is how transparent should we be in our go-to-market? Meaning, should we publish our pricing, for instance, on a website? How much content should we share about how the product works? I do believe there’s still a lot of founders out there who believe it’s better to hide pricing behind OkaDemo or we don’t want that our competition knows exactly how our product works. I’m a big believer that the B2B buyer behavior is changing. People are more self-educating. They expect more B2C-ish buying experience so that they get a lot of content, that they already know the pricing before before they jump on a call and get a demo for the product. If it’s the right approach, I don’t know. I think the future will show.

[00:27:36.430] – Alex

I believe there are strong signals. This is the future of B2B SaaS that you need to be more transparent about what you’re doing. Because if you’re not, your competitors are and buyers will acknowledge that.

[00:27:49.120] – Joran

I personally always hate it. If I go to a site and I can’t find pricing or I have to talk to somebody to see the product, I often go away and look for something else.

[00:27:58.710] – Alex

I also do believe that pricing, for instance, especially, is a good way to position yourself. Because I think if you go on the pricing page and probably you and me, we have immediately an understanding, is the product for me or not? Just because of the price point. Could be the same features, like two products, two companies, same features, same use cases, completely different pricing. The result of that is positioning gets clear. I think one product is maybe then more for up market enterprise. The other one is more for the SMB market or prosumers. What I want to say is basically being transparent can be an advantage for your whole go-to-market strategy.

[00:28:37.940] – Joran

Yeah, and depending on what your pricing is, determining how transparent do you want to be and what is going to be the best for your conversion rates. But you do think the more transparent, the better sometimes.

[00:28:50.000] – Alex

And also, don’t get me wrong, I’m really talking about the 2-20, 30K ACV range. If you be really enterprise, six-figure ACVs, I have no clue about that, to be fair. I think there are advantages to hide the pricing because it’s very complex such product.

[00:29:08.120] – Joran

Maybe even the most trickiest question of the day, if you had to summarize your go-to-market advice for founders in one or two sentences, what would you say?

[00:29:18.860] – Alex

Being okay to narrow down. Maybe in combination with staying close to the customers and don’t outsource go-to-market. This mindset, as I mentioned before, outsourcing go-to-market. Probably the combination. It’s okay to be narrow in the beginning to niche down. Plus, please own go-to-market yourself and don’t outsource.

[00:29:42.700] – Joran

Yeah, nice. If we’re going to take things wider in the final two closing questions. If we talk about growing a BTB SaaS in general, what advice would you give a SaaS founder who’s really just starting out and trying to grow to 10K MRR?

[00:29:58.200] – Alex

Do non-scalable things. I’m always surprised if I work with early-stage companies, even if they’re pre-revenue or very early on, so if their milestone is 10K, that they tend to focus on scalable channels too early, ignoring the non-scalable things. When I talk about non-scalable things, have you ever talked to all your investors and asked for warm interest to their portfolio companies? Have you ever talked to all your ex-employees and asked for warm interest to potential buyers? Have you ever talked to all your freelancers or advisors you have for intros and warm recommendations? Network sales on the one side. On the second one, have you ever really established a referral engine? When I talk about referral engine, it could be just purely sales left, meaning, do you, at the end of every sales conversation, ask prospects for interest to other potential buyers? Or if it’s more product-led, you can build an engine for that, asking for referrals. I’m always surprised that they don’t do it. Not all of them, but a big chunk of them never thought about that. If your goal is really to hit 10K MRR, I would just do that. At least I would try it first.

[00:31:12.260] – Alex

Maybe you don’t have a big network, maybe you don’t have partners, maybe you don’t have investors, or your ICP is very special, so it’s not easy to find them. Different thing, but the fast maturity can really grow to 10K without any scalable, fancy channels or executions.

[00:31:32.400] – Joran

The referral engine doesn’t have to be expensive, doesn’t have to be complicated. This is why we even built an in-app referral program. At Reditus, it’s a freemium model. You can implement it and just ask people to start recommending you and only give them money or even in-app benefits if they do the thing you want them to do. So it doesn’t have to be super sophisticated. It can be done, set up within 2 hours.

[00:31:55.840] – Alex

Absolutely.

[00:31:57.780] – Joran

Cool. Then we reach 10K MRR, and we are going to take it one step further than 1 million AR. We’re going to grow to 10 million AR. So it’s going to be a huge step or multiple steps, probably. What would you recommend SaaS founders going from 10K to 10 million?

[00:32:15.340] – Alex

I do believe that customer success can be a big revenue driver. So implementing the mindset of customer success is more than support. So it can be one of your main revenue drivers. And I saw this happening, for instance, for It’s the same company I mentioned before, that now customer success is the main source of new pipeline. They really build in a referral engine. Every time they talk to existing clients, they get one or two referrals for potential buyers, and this is handed over to the sales team. They are number one pipeline source. Same for implementing expansion goals. Don’t see customer success purely to retain clients, but also to drive a new business, or not new business, but expansion revenue.

[00:33:03.000] – Joran

Nice. Let me see if I can summarize. If we talk about why to set up a go-to-market strategy, execution will not work without a proper strategy. If you are going to implement it, keep iterating. You do not have to have a perfect playbook from day one. Common mistakes, going too broad, too early, having different ICPs, too many channels, too many features, and definitely do not outsource your go-to-market. You can hire somebody like Alex, but you have to be in the driver seat yourself. When we’re going to go from zero to one million, there are going to be three stages: hustle, focus, expansion. If we look at hustle, fix problem, solution, fit, validate your problem, threshold could be 100K R and get your message market fit. Do things that don’t scale network sales, set up a referral engine, but don’t stay too long here, even though it is working. When you’re going to move to focus, go to market fit, analyze customers to find your best fit customers, check self-attribution, revamp positioning, messaging, and narrow down use cases to improve your acquisition channels. You will need to build a repeatability here, and once you actually focus, all your metrics will increase once it really clicks with everybody.

[00:34:21.080] – Joran

After that, go into expansion phase, which is often one million plus, ALR. Just double down on what works or and expand vertically. One other thing, customer success can be one of your revenue drivers, ask for referrals, implement expansion goals, so you can really make that an acquisition channel for yourself as well, or revenue channel as well. The other thing you mentioned is we’re going to We are going to link towards the ICP and messaging template, which I think is going to be helpful for every SaaS founder. Any other things we need to link towards, Alex?

[00:34:56.640] – Alex

This was an awesome summary. Perfect pitch in one minute. Feel to follow me on LinkedIn, sharing everyday content about that. Follow me, follow the newsletter, Am I Unlocked? And if you need help, reach out.

[00:35:09.440] – Joran

Yeah, perfect. We’re going to add a link towards your LinkedIn profile, Alexander Esner. I definitely follow you on LinkedIn. I appreciate the content which is coming by, which is sometimes a reminder. Keep focusing and keep focusing on the things which matter. We’re going to make sure we’re linked towards the templates. For people listening on Spotify, we always put a poll to this podcast, so please answer it. So I know if you actually enjoyed this podcast or not, if you did enjoy it, leave us a review so we can boost the algorithms to help more other founders, basically. Thanks again for coming on, Alex.

[00:35:44.020] – Alex

Thanks for having me.

[00:35:44.810] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show. If you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reditus, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.