Planning for 2023: My Best Advice For SaaS Companies In One Place
Many SaaS companies across eCommerce are planning for 2023. I wanted to offer a few bits of guidance for those undertaking sessions like this:
1 - Review Your Ideal Customer Profiles.
Customers priorities change in different times, you may find that you can address segments that you used to avoid, and you should be deprioritizing segments that you used to favor.
2 - Consider Refreshing Your Messaging.
It is highly unlikely that the same message will resonate the same way as it did in the middle of COVID. This is particularly true if you change your target market.
3 - Plan For A Range of Outcomes.
Start with something simple. What if traffic drops? What if it rises? What if conversion rate drops? What if it rises? What if our annual contract value drops? What if it rises?
4 - Look To Pull In Costs.
If you've had growth for the last 4-5 years, there are likely internal efficiencies to rein in. Aim for 25% as a baseline. If you can do better, great. But looking for 5% cost savings will likely get you zero. Look for the hard gains too. It's easy to cut variable costs. It's harder to redesign a process to make serving your customer more efficient and improve that service at the same time.
5 - Think Big.
A big mistake many companies make is when they get nervous, they stop being creative. Sometimes constraints bring clarity. One question I always liked was "If I were to relaunch the entire company from scratch today, what would I do differently?"
Some thoughts for the journey!
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