NOTE: These recaps are a bit more for me than you. I’ll skip over stuff, include asides that are more personal notes to me, etc. Your mileage may vary. More detailed/sanctioned recaps will be available at http://microconfrecap.com at some point.

I Thought $575/mo Was Good. Then I Did This and Turned My Side Income into My Job …

Presenter: Andrea Nagar

  • PhraseExpander
  • The old school approach = Build the product and … who else needs this?
  • Forum posts and things, had sales between $500-800/month
  • The only way I could think of to improve things was a redesign or new features
  • Losing motivation. Focusing more and more on the day job. Moved to Singapore for a new job.
  • Figured the side project would remain a side project.
  • Eng Tong Tan, business consultant. Met by chance in Singapore. Had a very different take on business.
  • Always saw business as way to make money, get freedom. Things I could get for me.
  • Eng more focused on business as a way to help other people. Startups as a way to help people solve their problems.
  • Traded business consultation for Italian dinner.
  • “It’s not how you sell. It’s why they buy.”
  • Focus on the people you are helping.
  • Did I build the right product? Am I targeting the right audience?
  • Call customers to understand what was really going on.
  • What was going on in your life when you decided to look for a solution? Discovery: A lot of doctors were customers - using it to create notes and templates, saving three hours per day.
  • How difficult is it to get started with our product? Discovery: Was way too technical and difficult.
  • What specific benefits are getting from using it? Discovery: Being able to spend weekends with family instead of doing notes, avoid getting sued.
  • Collect all them and make them useful.
  • Redesign the software and redoing the marketing portal. Remove technical detail and make the process of getting started very easy.
  • How to resonate with your audience: This was something made just for them.
  • Use the words your customers use to describe their problems and benefits for your marketing.
  • Big jump without paid advertising, just with a mindset change.
  • Was very worried about talking to customers, turned out they were very happy to talk, share the problems they were having.
  • It’s the best time I’ve spent to grow my business.

Sales calls don’t need to be painful

Presenter: Harry Hollander

  • Kitchen countertop installation software
  • Talk on the phone with all customers and prospects
  • Not a salesman, but it’s so incredibly valuable to their company. Been doing it for more than a decade.
  • Seven employees, three with phones, zero salespeople.
  • 100% of customers talk to them before they buy.
  • Successful customers stay “forever.” Pricing makes that work: average ~ $200/month. Not technically savvy,; they need educated on software.
  • Started trade shows, give them a demo (~1 hour), but something was missing. Some would never talk to them again, but other would give us money and we had no idea why.
  • The demo customers needed wasn’t what they asked for. Instead, a conversation about their business, then we can talk about how we can help.
  • Worked so well, implemented a process:
    • Understand your business
      • What are you doing now? “How do you schedule countertop installs right now?”
      • What works?
      • What doesn’t?
      • What’s the consequence of not changing?
      • They describe the value of the software, not me.
    • Show you our software
      • Highlight the points they care about.
      • Hour long software demos suck.
      • How the software lets you keep the things that work and fixes the things that don’t.
      • Ask more probing questions.
    • Discuss what it takes to get started
      • Not closing the deal, adding a dose of reality about getting started.
      • Are we a good fit for our customers?
      • It’s OK to say no to people who are not a good fit for your software.
  • Most of the time, this ends in a sale. It’s obvious what the next step should be. It’s more expensive to not use our software than to buy it.
  • Schedule support ahead of time. It’s a trick, gives them time set aside to set up the product.
  • To get better: Role playing (super cheesy, but better to practice on coworkers than people who might give you money), listen to calls (painful to listen to yourself screw up on the phone, but the good parts keep getting better), write down the entire process (anticipate answers to customer’s questions.
  • Important thing: Let them do the talking.
  • Key thing: repeatable sales process
  • Had a black hole of followup, painful and demoralizing. Now, it takes three hours over course of days/weeks to get same result. And anybody can do it.

Zero to $5M, Blast Beyond Product-Market Fit

Presenter: Drew Sanocki

  • DesignPublic.com, furnishing offices. Sold in 2012
  • Now micro private equity: buying SaaS apps, particularly metrics
  • Highest ROI: Identify the best customers, create more of them
  • Not growth hacking, not more users for the sake of more users
  • Every dollar you spend on retaining best customers does double-duty. Increase value of those customers, and future best customers
  • Identify your best customers
    • Not all customers are created equal. 20% order once, never return, eat up support, don’t add a lot. 60% meh. 20% on premium pricing tier, don’t take up support time. Grow your business around them.
    • Recency, frequency, money in spreadsheet
    • Ranked customers by those metrics.
    • Top quintile: 50%+ of revenue. SaaS = LTV of customer segments
  • Create more of them
    • Retention (keep your best customer)
      • Best customers ordered every 60 days. At 70 days, 90 days and 110 days, they get steeper discount promos. Tripwire marketing.
      • 400% return on marketing spend
      • SaaS version = last login.
      • Extend their lifecycle, reduce churn.
    • Development (take worst, make best) - find your bridges. Hard to do. Customers born, not made. Better off attracting more good new customers. Key feature set to upgrade from freemium to paid?
    • Acquisition (marketing) - account for full LTV. Tie in GA cookie to user records, figure out which marketing campaigns drive the best customers (based on LTV).
  • Job: “Right Solution” to “Right Customers”
  • Focus: Acquisition to Churn reduction
  • Revenue to Cash Flow
  • VC to Bootstrapper or PE

How I built a 6 figure WordPress Plugin Business while working a Day Job

Presenter: John Turner

  • Ultimate Coming Soon page
  • Ultimate Maintenance Mode
  • SeedProd
  • Coming Soon Pro plugin
  • Working on SaaS since college: band website generator. $700/month. No idea how to sell it. Rebuilt in WP.
  • Facebook app, horrible failure as well.
  • Joined Micropreneuer Academy. Step away and try new approach.
  • Build a coming soon plugin. The bar was really low.
  • Build a free version to test the market. 10k downloads first month, write ups in blogs, lots of feature requests. Put theme on hold to build Pro version.
  • Start cheap: Need market, product, static site, way to take payments and deliver the product
  • First month sales $622. Conversation rate 1.16%. Plan was to release theme and focus back on plugins. Discovered quality WP plugins were an underserved market.
  • Test, measure, rinse & repeat. Price testing, package testing, blog posts, marketplaces, AB testing, ads, affiliate programs. Figure out what worked and din’t work.
  • First spike was doubling price. Second was adding packages.
  • Avoid shiny object syndrome. Focus on one product and be the best on the market. If it’s working, stick with it.
  • How to do it with a day job: Quit fucking around. Lunch break, 3-4 hours a night, 8-12 hours on the weekend. Low stress day job, focus and baby steps.
  • Workflowy
  • Find your niche.
  • Release a free version and get feedback
  • Be the best in your space
  • never stop learning
  • Don’t forget to smell the roses
  • Celebrate small wins and enjoy the journey