What does it take to be a great product leader and what characteristics should you look for when hiring one for your SaaS company? Given that every SaaS company is a product oriented company, this is one of the most important roles that you're going to find inside your business, so it's very important that we think about it in the right way.

If you prefer audio, listen to the podcast episode here:

You can use these links to jump to a specific section:

• The intersection of product management
• The fourth critical skillset: Marketing understanding
• How do I hire a good product manager?

The intersection of Product Management

A simple way to think about the product management leader is someone who sits at the intersection of user experience, technology and the business. Their job is to drive the customer experience forward so that the product is easy to learn, adopt, and use, to work with technology leaders to ensure that the product is built with the right...

Are you trying to figure out your SaaS content strategy? Are you trying to figure out what type of content you should be creating? I see a lot of companies struggle with this problem. They have phenomenal products, but they just can't seem to figure out what type of content they should be creating, and so their blog looks like a mishmash of different kinds of resources that is not really helping them convert more visitors or prospects into paying users.

If you prefer audio, listen to the podcast episode here:

Here are 6 simple steps that can help you create a massive content backlog for your SaaS company.

1. Who are you trying to serve?

2. What keeps them up at night

3. What are the negative consequences of them not solving the problem?

4. What is their dream scenario?

5. What are the steps in between?

6. Build content for each step

1. Who are you trying to serve?

This is one of those simple questions that often gets over complicated by people, because...

Have you ever been in a meeting where marketing claims that it is generating all these MQLs but sales isn't converting them, while sales claims the MQLs they're receiving are really not that good? On this episode, I talk about how MQLs are completely the wrong metric to use for alignment. Instead Sales Accepted Leads can do a far better job of bringing marketing and sales teams together to work as one unit. 

You can use these links to jump to specific sections:

• Why sales and marketing alignment is important
• How to coordinate sales and marketing
• Using data to increase teamwork
• What about marketing's other contributions?

If you prefer audio, listen to the podcast episode here:

1. Why sales and marketing alignment is important: Marketing and Sales share the same objective

Here is the most important truth of all: both sales and marketing share the exact same objective, which is to increase the amount of revenue that we bring into the business to help the...

Have you ever tried to get more content marketing budget for initiatives or team members, only to have your CEO / CFO / CMO tell you there's not money in the budget for that? On this episode of How To SaaS, I talk about how you can go about making sure Content Marketing gets the funding it deserves to help you drive the business forward.

If you prefer audio, listen to the podcast episode here:

This is actually a very common problem that content marketers face, because the business requires content to be produced across all stages of the funnel, right from top of funnel all the way down through to product marketing, advocacy and thought leadership, so content marketers are often stretched thin, short on resources, and they need more budget to do the things that they need to do to help the business be more successful. Unfortunately, most content marketers can't make a great enough business case to get funding when it comes time to figure out which areas of the...

On Episode 28, Eric Thurston (CEO of Personify) and Shiv discuss how to build a platform SaaS company, including the strategy, process, challenges, learnings and personal growth that come along with it. Eric is the CEO of the company that eventually acquired Wild Apricot.

Notes from the episode:

• Personify's website
• Personify's key acquisition events:
  • Personify acquires a2z
  • Pamlico acquires Personify from Rubicon
  • Personify acquires Wild Apricot
• How To SaaS episode 21, where Shiv talks about the process and strategy behind Personify's acquisition of Wild Apricot

Listen to the episode here: 

On Episode 27, Rand Fishkin (Founder of Moz and SparkToro) and Shiv discuss how to avoid the biggest pitfalls of being a SaaS founder, Rand's journey with Moz, his book "Lost and Founder" and the 5 things he is doing differently as a second time founder.

Notes from the episode:

• Rand's book, Lost & Founder
• Rand's new company, SparkToro
• SparkToro's open-sourced legal documents
• The book Shiv mentioned on the podcast, Small Giants

Listen now: 

On Episode 26, Patrick Campbell (CEO of ProfitWell) and Shiv discuss how SaaS companies can strategically think about their pricing, including the hot button topic of pricing increases.

On Episode 25, Steven Silberbach (SVP of Global Sales at Clio) and Shiv discuss how SaaS companies can build a sales engine that generates predictable revenue growth.

On Episode 24, Shiv Narayanan interviews Dev Basu, CEO of Powered by Search, on how SaaS companies can build an Intent Engine to attract, engage and convert prospects into paying users. 

On Episode 23, I interview Elle Morgan (VP of Marketing at Woopra) on how to use Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) to close more opportunities.

The conversation with Elle is especially relevant for transactional SaaS companies who use a freemium and/or free trial model and do not have access to large sales teams to talk to all prospects 1-on-1.

Elle and I discuss:

• How customer journey data in SaaS companies is fragmented — marketing has access to some journey data in their tools (e.g. Google Analytics, Marketing Automation etc.), while product has access to others in their tools (e.g. Mixpanel)
• Why it’s critical to connect the customer journey across all functions to see the true path to paid status for customers
• How critical behaviours in product can often predict the value of a prospect far better than a lead capture form on a website (e.g. people often download whitepapers from a SaaS company’s blog without any interest in the software)
• How transactional SaaS...