Competing in SaaS or VoIP

In this growth hack article, there a number of good points about SaaS companies that can be extended to the VoIP space as well. (Voice is just an app today, right?)

“SaaS is getting increasingly competitive.” You think? Look at all of these marketing apps. How many CRM platforms are there? There are 2000+ Hosted VoIP providers. Teah, you can say it is hyper-competitive. (Partly do to a low barrier to entry today.)

Key: “Make a product customers are always in love with that also gets high retention from them.” If users are not playing with your features or portal, then they are likely not a good fit for your product. It is like selling Hosted UC to a business that just wanted cheap dial-tone or a key system replacement with door buzzer. Not a good fit = churn (or at best low margin to no margin customer.

You have 3 things working against profit: (1) the cost of customer acquisition increasing; (2) the cost of support is not cheap; (3) price compression. You need targeted customers who engage with your product.

“You’ve got to constantly build the best possible solution that ever existed for your customers.” With the rapid adoption of Lync (now SfB) and now the integration of SfB and Slack, VoIP providers cannot stay static in what they are offering. The product bundle has to go beyond just a managed Voice service — or you need to re-brand as just a voice replacement company, an alternative phone company.

The article had a link to this story about the 2016 Sales Stack – and the challenges facing salespeople. One of the challenges is the prospecting and lead generation — and the technology around it. Today, there are web conferences, video calls, email automation, MasterStream, portals and other software that you need to spend time with in order to do the job. That is a lot more than the days of Glengarry Glen Ross.

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Tags: hosted pbx, SAAS, saas, sellecom, selling, UC, voip
Related tags: product, voice, today, customers