The Reasons We Built Slack? Community to SaaS and Software Professionals -
- Global concentration.
- More established professionals and businesses (less students and early-stage startups).
- Moderation by professionals.
- A lesser amount of attention is paid to financing rounds or venture capital.
- A truely supportive group and with zero tolerance for rude or improper behavior.
This is true: Features like a global business focus and experienced expert moderators (that's me!) are things we would like to see on the online forums.
The post discussed what's included for members, specifically as in comparison to other groups that are online.
However, you may still be wondering, "But what's in it to do ?"
It's a valid concern, which I'll address it, due to the motives (plural) the reason to invest in this project may not be as simple as the most cynical people think.
As a business person yourself already, you are aware of how this operates. Companies don't just make investments in programs that help random businesspeople online; they invest in it to benefit their individual business in some way.
Indeed it is true that having an online community is a great way for to expand its brand recognition and maybe even generate leads every now and then.
Marketing is just one of the reasons that we're in this. No matter if you're a client or not, our want members to benefit from the group, otherwise the community won't be successful in any way.
Our Guiding Principle is: Our Software as well as SaaS Community Must Be Good to You for It to Succeed
This is pretty self explanatory however the main point is that if one doesn't feel that our community is a beneficial and stimulating place to hang out, you won't actually go out and about.
So it's key to its success -- both for you and for us -- for us to work hard to create a awesome group to be part of.
(And If you think we might be deviating from that in some way, or if you have any suggestions for ways to make it better, do let us know. More on that in the next paragraph.)
What Has to Gain From Hosting an Online Community
There has to have a reason behind this or we wouldn't be doing this, would we?
Yes, of course. We want our intentions to be forthright.
This is what we'd like accomplish with this project.
Learning What Matters to Your Business
The first thing our Director David Nachman told me during an interview about the mission and mission of the community was that the community provides an opportunity for us to decrease the transactional nature of the relationship we have with customers and other businesses, including software and SaaS business.
There's a valid reason to be concerned: We help facilitate real transactions for online businesses It's not difficult for all of us to slip into the trap of having a more or less a transactional relationship.
We give you a service, we earn you money. You can continue with autopilot.
But allowing that pattern to persist could hinder our ability to develop your B2B business to benefit the success of your firm -- and making sure that online businesses are successful is an important goal for us.
The same is applicable to our current clients, but this is also relevant for companies using software that might be considering making the switch to . If you're uncertain whether this is the best payment system and merchant of record (MOR) for your B2C, B2B or B2C SaaS business, we'd like to hear about any questions or worries you're having so we can consider that the consideration when we build out our features and products.
To hear more about how David is hoping to connect with your company, watch the video interview with his members, where I spoke to him as a member himself:
That's also why we extended our plans for this community , to create individuals who contribute, an executive, entrepreneur and founder membership base -- because we know we'll be able to learn more about businesses (and assist them in a better way) with an array of members.
Our goal to increase the personalness of 's relationship with businesses (and in particular, the people who found or work for them) is also part of our reason to interview our members. In addition to helping members become acquainted with each other and get to know each other, it helps get to know members and their business interests.
Building Customer Relationships
Learning more about your business is an excellent way for us to strengthen the relationship we've established with you regardless of whether you're a client or not.
However, our relationships with customers can be strengthened by giving our members access to the other members of us .
We already have a broad and responsive customer support service for buyers and customers, and we have customer success managers for some of our customers with particularly large or complex business.
However, we are aware that most businesses are able to improve the ways they support customers and further improve their relationships with them.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, out of a hundred, creating an account is the ideal option to seek support. This helps our support staff to properly handle a ticket based on the type or importance of the problem, as well as helps us keep track of your support requirements as time passes.
(That final part helps us get a better, complete understanding of a company's requirements.)
However, it could be helpful to occasionally contact executives directly, especially if someone has a business need that doesn't necessarily have to do with technical issues related to our system. There is a wide range of experts within our community, not just end-user technical support professionals.
Product managers, taxes and payment experts, customer operations pros, and even the occasional sales or marketing manager may be present and are able to answer similar business-related questions. They could even weigh in on what's coming down the pipe for 's platform.
We want customers' experiences will be the kind of positive experiences they're telling their friends about and our belief is that making ourselves more readily available can increase the possibilities. If you're a client that's not having that kind of interaction with us we have a community that is an avenue to let us know that.
Yes, Leads
This is part of the article that we must be completely transparent.
It would be great to have some of our customers who aren't already using as merchants of record to join our service.
It's good news for them that that isn't the sole goal of this community.
Since we have also set the goal of enhancing customer relations and learning all we possibly can on SaaS and software business's needs:
- It's safe to say that signing up for new customers is only one aspect of what we're trying to accomplish in this particular community. Moreover, we're not planning to ask anyone to sign up who hasn't indicated an the desire to us in advance.
- We have much better odds of selling to new users when we're able to meet the two first goals we mentioned above, so we're going to try much harder to reach those goals.
If community members see us taking care of clients and sincerely soliciting feedback, they'll be a lot more interested in the platform as a marketplace for commerce as well as merchant of record -- since they'll see the work we've put into and the attention we give users directly.
If you've thought about before, this might be the ideal time to establish a relationship with us in a more informal way. The community members are able to connect with other customers, read the conversations between customers and , and (remotely) meet individuals who are part of the company it is.
What Can You Expect When You Join This Community
While it did focus on some of the features that are available to members of the GSL community but didn't fully discuss the true advantages gained by joining a group such as this one.
Although we've got big goals regarding Global SaaS Leaders -- and we're constantly creating community -Here are some of the advantages we've already provided for software developers and SaaS leaders, founders and entrepreneurs, as well as marketers, engineers, developers, and more.
Connect with Software Experts from All Over the World
If you're a SaaS marketer looking to boost your SEO by the region, or a people and culture director who's concerned about meetings and onboarding for international customers, or a SaaS founder looking for tips about selling in specific countries Accessing those in the international community makes "going international" significantly simpler.
As of now, we have member representation from over 50 countries over 17 time zones.
Discover New Markets You Want to Enter or Expand Within
A particular advantage to being part of a global network is being able to get advice from it when you're working on breaking into new market.
There is a place to post on the community, asking people from certain countries to help you out, or you can get in touch with me, principal moderator, and I'll connect with relevant members in your name.
Keep your eyes on the discussions within the community to find previous discussions that are relevant to SaaS markets you're working to expand into.
Or you can look at our profile videos for members recorded regularly with members who'd like to participate (like our example above featuring CEO David Nachman).
One of the most common questions we ask interviewees in general is "What's that people aren't aware of regarding selling software in your nation?" The goal of the question is to assist you to understand the cultural as well as business differences which may affect how easy it is to sell software there.
Learn From SaaS Company Leaders and Experts
Although our members are spread across various roles and seniority at different levels, we do have several executive, SaaS founders, and department heads within Global SaaS Leaders who are willing to share their knowledge with other members.
Some members are software and SaaS founders with numerous SaaS businesses, others have worked for internationally recognizable businesses, while others entrepreneurs have switched into different industries or careers and possess many years of experiences to inform their advice.
In addition, several executive and leadership positions are available, such as the Chief Executive Officer, our Global Tax Director as well as our Vice Chief of Global Customer Operations. The community is awash with them because they want to help the members in any way they can.
(For additional information from Kurt on this topic, check out his in-person seminar on SaaS pricing strategies that work: how to design an Optimal Pricing Model at SaaStr Europe earlier in 2022.)
We're happy to respond to such questions, and we're delighted to offer a space where topics like this can be discussed among international peers.
Make yourself appear as an expert
If you're already known for being a SaaS industry influencer or specialist, congratulations! We'd love to hear from you contributing to the community as you expand your personal and professional image through knowledge sharing.
If you're developing your personal brand in the first place, participating in professional forums is an excellent option to start. We don't all have to become SaaS founders to be experts in our own areas, and active sharing of that expertise with other people establishes us as being not just competent, but also likable and gracious. this is a fantastic public image to build.
Form This Community As It Develops
The software was launched and the SaaS community in the month of March 2022 and have seen it grow steadily. However, because we'd like to create the perfect place to allow users to basically "hang out," this community is flexible and open to new ideas.
For example, a member has recently suggested that we create a channel for a specific type of use case.
We then turned that request into a survey asking the members to share their thoughts on the channels they'd like to add to Slack's workspace.
If you'd prefer to vote in a quiet way on community updates or confidently suggest your own, we're open to suggestions!
If you're interested in specific forums, services recommendations for providers, LinkedIn and social media connectivity opportunities, a podcast Facebook group, meetings in person, webinars, templates, or just more software and SaaS development hacks all over the world and beyond, let us know about it.
Share Your Thoughts
There are other methods for members to share their opinion than only with regard to the group, however. One of the recent questions we asked members to tell us which benchmarking statistics and other metrics they'd like be able to see released.
Having these kinds of measures can aid software and SaaS business owners better formulate strategies for increasing their ARR.
We want to offer relevant and helpful data to developing and successful software and SaaS businesses, we reached out to the community directly to ask what benchmarking data we might want to collect next:
A few of the answers included retention rates for a particular industry, MRR growth in a specific sector, failed payment indicators (unintentional churn) as well as churn and conversion rates across different regions.
It is important to note that this poll was open to members of all kinds regardless of customer level.
As we mentioned above, knowing what really matters in software or SaaS businesses is important to , and we want to create the Global SaaS Leaders community to serve as a place where you can share what you really need for your company to reach the highest level.
Use the Community to Learn More About (If you're interested)
This poll was made public in the -specific channel of the community. This channel is so discussions about (as in contrast to more general business-related conversations) can be made available in the channel, and remain out of general feeds.
That's because we don't want members -- especially members who aren't customers -- to feel like we're constantly advertising . We've already mentioned the software and SaaS community has to have something you get value from to be successful We believe that excessive salesmanship can cause this to be a space it do not want to be.
With that said, if you're not a current customer, however, you've been thinking about visiting us, signing up to GSL is an excellent way to find out more about our company by viewing customer interactions with our leaders, looking at what kinds of queries and feedback people have on GSL, and much more. The -specific channel is open to everyone who is a member.
If you don't have any desire to read ? It is fine to go away from the channel that you are interested in unread. There are lots of activities to take part in in the community without seeing posts about a platform you have no interest in.
Join The Global SaaS Leaders Community
We're extremely proud of the Global SaaS Leaders community already and are proud to offer an international network and discussion space that includes features like live interviews and member introduction videos as well as a variety of expert opinions.
In the future, we will be focusing on building communities, and as our membership grows, we plan to add more features. We'd like to facilitate many more individual networking opportunities, launch a podcast, hold more events in real time, and have social media tie-ins as well.
However, if you sign up today, you can influence what it grows into, too.
In order to ensure the highest quality of membership and to ensure that I personally review all new member applications -- there are no automatizations that let spammers in or bots. This is why sending your LinkedIn link is so important. Thanks for your patience as I review your application, and don't hesitate to reach us by email if have any questions before applying!
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