Top 3 Tips on How to Secure and Strengthen Your B2B SaaS Business in a Down Economy

Global economic growth slows amid gloomy and more uncertain outlook. High inflation is triggering a tightening of global financial conditions. News blogs say we could be in a startup recession. And startup founders wonder how B2B SaaS Businesses can have just enough money to pay their debts and continue operating these days.

Every business is different, and each has its own risks and strategies. There are no set rules to follow for survival that work with guarantees. Some useful advice that applies across startups includes making sure they audit the most important employees, avoiding a sacrifice of quality, inventorying and prioritizing the stuff, making sure the business has ready access to cash, and looking at the big picture.

But let’s take a look at some non-obvious practices on how you can become a startup who will grow rather than leave the market. Below are three tips to stay afloat in a crisis.

Tip #1. Shorten your sales cycle stages

Those who take new action, look for new tools, and create a better experience for their customers win in a downturn economy.

• One of the ways to shorten a sales cycle is setting your sales on autopilot. Implementing automated and triggered emails will let you create a booster for your conversion funnel and sales cycle stages.
• Enhance customer experience. Review your user onboarding process to find weaknesses and fix them.
• Using such tools as a BNPL payment method could also help your customers make a purchasing decision faster. It is easy to integrate into your sales process. It serves as an additional leverage in a hand of your sales team. Now, in a downturn economy, some B2B BNPL companiesallow you to offer an installment plan even if your average bill is below $5k.

Tip #2. Change your marketing strategies

Often, marketing and advertising budgets are first to be reduced, as they are viewed as a discretionary cost. But maintaining and strengthening marketing in times of crisis is important. Quality over quantity in marketing essentially means choosing tools of high standard.

• It’s important to be in touch with your audience.

Your clients may be in a difficult economic situation as well. The routine creates a sense of calm, so you should not abandon your social networks or stop sending out newsletters as soon as something goes wrong.

• PEOPLE DON’T STOP BUYING.

People continue to make purchases. Needs and desires have not gone away with favorable times. If you are selling a service or product, then you need to understand that there will always be a consumer. The main thing is to help the buyer find your product.

• Reliability.

Tell your clients that you are not leaving the market during this period, show that your company can cope with difficulties. While many businesses cut off their expenses and stop publishing content and responding to people, you should do exactly the opposite to make their customers feel that they are not abandoned and so that they can attract their attention to your offer instead.

• Set priorities.

With competitors leaving the market, your competent marketing communication will help you create an attractive company reputation, convey relevant key messages to customers, make a product or service as interesting as possible and stand out from others.

• Proper marketing strategies decrease churn rate by 50%.

In a time of crisis, competitors start saving money on advertising and paid media, and the CPA (cost per action) goes down. Think about it, maybe it makes sense to hit the gas and take advantage of the moment when the ocean is no longer so red?

Another thing, not everyone understands what the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment method is and what business growth opportunities it gives. Comfi allows you to strengthen your marketing with ease. If you are now scaring your customers away with high prices, here’s how you can attract new customers. Put up Comfi BNPL communication elements on your pricing page and clearly highlight how much your customers can potentially save on an annual plan while still paying monthly.

The user will see Comfi communications on:

1. Pricing plan page.

2. At a checkout as one of the payment methods they can choose from.

Tip #3. Focus on customer retention and upselling

To run a successful business, both your acquisition and retention programs have to run in parallel. Client retention is the key to making any company profitable. Your existing customers are your best source for growth.

Improving retention and monetization has 2–4x the impact of focusing on acquisition.

To improve it:

• Know your numbers. If you don’t know where your money is leaking out, ultimately you are not going to know how to fix your business.
• Quantify your buyer persona. Go to your customers, talk to them, ask them about where the value is.
• Implement a customer development process, be customer focused.
• Improve UX. Implementing different payment methods, introducing a BNPL payment method could let your customers stay with you longer, and commit to annual subscriptions.

BNPL apps let you upsell your existing customers purchasing month-to-month subscriptions by offering them annual subscriptions with the opportunity to keep paying month-by-month while enjoying discounts you offer with annual options. As a result, more customers will commit to you for longer periods which will be your chance to make them your evangelists.

• Read more about the benefits of offering Comfi vs. other payment methods for SaaS B2B vendors.

Key takeaways

Growth and progress have been determined by circuitous development, by ups and downs, crisis and prosperity. All the planning in the world cannot control what’s to come. It’s too soon to say what the startup sector will look like, how small businesses will adapt — and what their customers will seek from them. But what we may do now is to prepare a crisis plan for ourselves. The more adaptive we become, the more chances businesses will have to stay afloat.

We all know that in a crisis, not only the risks grow, but also the opportunities. The global pandemic has presented difficulties for entrepreneurs, but it’s also given them a chance to do what they do best. Now, again, we need to adapt quickly and look for solutions to survive. Even well-funded startups slowly move away from the strategy of growth at all costs these days. Our primary goal is to stay afloat.

At Comfi, our mission is to help B2B SaaS companies by giving their customers the opportunity to split the payments for annual subscriptions and purchases and immediately enjoy the products and services and also benefit from the discounts for choosing annual subscriptions. We help you get paid immediately while your clients preserve their runway during uncertain times. How does that sound?

• Read more on how we help early-stage startups, small, and mature businesses scale up, double revenue and drive conversion rates even in the times of uncertainty.
• Contact us for demo: https://calendly.com/comfi_amal/30min

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