Product-Led Growth Strategy For Saas Product Managers
Fast-paced SaaS market growth has made product management an essential function for almost every software company. In a fantastic article on TechCrunch, Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot CTO) talks about how the role of product managers at HubSpot is not just limited to driving up demand and usage for their products but also plays a key part in developing new features that drive revenue. He further adds that ‘growth hackers’ need to be supported by ‘product managers who understand the buyer’s journey’.
According to this report by Bain & Company, “in mature markets like SaaS, customer retention is often the key driver of growth. Increasing renewal rates requires winning over customers already using your SaaS product; these are your most valuable SaaS customers.”
In SaaS, to increase retention rates, SaaS companies must try and ensure that their SaaS product delivers ‘more total value’ over time. This means not only adding new or more advanced features but also improving the way these features work together. “This is where SaaS product managers come in,” says Dharmesh Shah. Product managers need to drive this kind of behaviour because product managers are the ones who have a deep understanding about both the SaaS customer’s business problems and how SaaS helps solve them.
SaaS product management is the process of managing SaaS products throughout their complete product lifecycle and successfully completing all scrum product backlogs. SaaS product managers are responsible for the SaaS business’ vision and product strategy model, including being the main point of customer contact. Product management is one component (and earlier stage) of SaaS project management. It is concerned with setting out a vision for the SaaS software development that then informs all future development.
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SaaS based product development is when SaaS product managers act as an interface between their SaaS clients and other departments within their company to ensure that what they build will solve the SaaS client’s business needs. The SaaS manager is a subset of SaaS product product development development.
SaaS product managers are responsible for understanding their clients’ needs, identifying what problems need to be solved, and working with the technical team to ensure that products are developed in a way that will solve these problems. The manager also works closely with other internal departments to ensure the development process goes smoothly. Sometimes this means helping sales or marketing get information they need from engineering so they can do their jobs better. Other times it might mean giving support reps some insight into how certain customer requests should be handled so as not to create negative experiences for those using the product. SaaS managers might work with finance and legal as well if the company sells its product through channels such as resellers or enterprise agreements.
SaaS managers work with product managers to make sure the company is solving the right problems and evaluating any hypotheses put forward by engineers about what might be required to solve those problems. SaaS managers need to be creative in how they get the team to come up with ideas while also being able to tactfully kill bad ones so time isn’t wasted on features that probably won’t help a customer base buy a SaaS product. SaaS managers spend a lot of their time building relationships within an organization and outside it as well because SaaS products need customers just as much as customers need SaaS products. SaaS managers must have interpersonal skills, especially when it comes to working with other departments.
SaaS managers also need to have a great SaaS understanding as well as SaaS management skills. SaaS managers earn an average of about $140,000 a year, although this can vary depending on the SaaS company and the SaaS manager’s experience level.
SaaS managers must be able to help SaaS companies solve problems that engineers might not see or know how to fix. SaaS managers spend a lot of their time working with team members from other departments because SaaS product development is really important to these various areas as well as getting feedback from customers as often as possible in order to improve the SaaS product being developed by the organization.
SaaS managers communicate SaaS product needs and SaaS project updates to SaaS customers. In addition, SaaS managers handle SaaS employee issues, including performance reviews and compensation planning. SaaS managers may also have to negotiate with outside vendors in order to get the best deals on hardware and software needed for SaaS projects.