SaaS: Stronger Associates At Scale

Strategies for SaaS Companies to Build Business Relationships

With the blooming of SaaS as a formal market of software solutions, so too has the opportunity for SaaS companies that help other companies do business flourished as well. This business to business relationship (or B2B, for short), helps the now $195 billion industry to more effectively help customers, synthesize with other businesses, and integrate with separately operating platforms. While this is great for companies that already have their business relationships figured out, how can B2B SaaS companies find a spot for themselves and grow in the market?

SaaS companies face a unique set of issues when it comes to integrating different companies across vast digital systems. They need to:

·         Be able to handle data securely, which is no small feat in the digital age

·         Collaborate with other businesses and industries effectively to ensure trust for all participants

·         Both adhere to rigorous, time-proven principles and effectively navigate new trends

All this while also providing world-class service, uptime, and innovating their offering to stay market relevant! Today, we’ll go over how B2B SaaS companies can manage all these different aspects of good business practice, including specific examples of SaaS companies that manage these issues particularly well.

How does a SaaS Company Manage B2B Relationships and Grow New Ones?

When it comes to SaaS startups that already have an established B2B relationship, maintaining a positive channel of communication is the golden key to long term success. While there’s a limit to the time that can be invested in outreach and check-ins with existing customers, efforts to be transparent and collaborate across technological boundaries to make your customers’ needs heard will pay dividends in reducing churn.

A problem unique to SaaS companies is the issue of maintaining good standing on data security for clients. A B2B relationship between a SaaS customer and company necessitates sharing sensitive information and having it be held in servers outs the customer company itself. This represents a risk of security for the customer, who not only has to trust that outside attacks won’t compromise data security, but that your team will follow all possible best practices when it comes to protecting that data as well. This can take the form of:

·         Transparency on how data is stored and protected

·         Compliance with industry standards on protecting sensitive information

·         Third-party audits to ensure that the guarantees a SaaS makes measure up to outside scrutiny

·         Disaster recovery and business continuity planning for the customer’s benefit

Malicious outside attacks on data security happen, on average, every 39 seconds somewhere around the world. Giving your customer peace of mind that their data is protected is the best business promise you can offer. But what about gaining rapport with customers you don’t already work with?

For some SaaS startups, relationships between different companies may come easily. Maybe it’s due to their founders having been business associates in a previous job, or teammates on an interest group who can easily reach out to one another for advice, encouragement, and lucrative business deals. But what if you don’t have that?

The best place to start is to provide value for potential customers. Everyone can easily connect with someone who first offers them something useful, be it a lent pen or new information in a subject that’s important to them. B2B SaaS companies can use this same idea in forming social media content, cold emails, or even free trials or demos of their product. Once the exchange of value has been offered in a way that benefits a customer, it’s much easier to ask for something in return, gently guiding qualified customers to your business.

If reaching out to the world wide web doesn’t appeal to your business, try visiting a conference or events related to the industry your SaaS serves. They’ve already shown interest in the topic so customers would be properly vetted, and it puts a warm smile on your value proposition. It’s a win-win for everyone

Getting in the Loop on B2B SaaS Trends

While there exist popular SaaS companies that have been around since 2004, more recent startups (or those looking to improve their strategies) may look to recent trends for improvement on customer experience. With different SaaS companies being built every day, and top performers iterating to stay fresh, it can be daunting to try and stay on top of exactly what makes a SaaS perform well in the modern market. To make it easier, let’s go over a few more recent trends for SaaS B2B companies.

1.       Personalization: While it may be easy to convince another business that your SaaS platform offers functionality they stand to benefit from, the sell can be much easier if the customer can have specific changes made just for their business. Whether its their branding colors and logo implemented in the system, tailored messaging for their business needs, or customized user interfaces to simplify the use case for their employees to use your system, adding a personal touch to your program for a customer can make a big difference.

2.       Integration: More and more B2B SaaS companies are recognizing the importance of a customer’s existing systems and workflow being able to connect well with new systems to enhance their products and services. Integration might mean ensuring offering APIs and building integrations with popular tools businesses use like Salesforce and Slack.

3.       AI-ification: With the booming success of ai for things like chatGPT and midjourney, more and more businesses are using ai models and machine learning to enhance the products they offer. This can mean suggesting text prompts, predictive analytics, chatbots, or natural language processing available within a SaaS.

4.       Collaboration: Thanks to recent world events, more people than ever were pushed into the world of remote work and all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it. Facilitating collaboration and communication across widely distributed teams is more necessary than ever before. Features that enhance collaboration might come in the form of video conferencing, project management, or team messaging.

5.       UX Prioritization: While basic menus and black text on a white background may have been fine for computer programs in the late 80s, this has been far from the case in more recent years. Ensuring a user can easily access the most common features in as few clicks as possible, and creating a positive user experience across the board with design features can make a world of difference to your customers.

This list of trending features is far from evergreen, but can be a great place to start when it comes to considering improvements for your SaaS offerings.

In Closing

SaaS companies are a good many things, especially when it comes to relationships with B2B companies they serve. Maintaining a good reputation with customers, old and new, will determine the fate of the SaaS company in the short and long term. Ensuring trust, communication, and security for all parties guarantees a happy working relationship for everyone. To stand out from the competition, B2B SaaS companies may consider personalized versions of their SaaS portals, integration with other systems, using machine learning, enabling team collaboration, and making the user experience as pleasant as possible. Not every B2B SaaS will need to use all these tools, but it can serve as a guide for any founders looking for ideas for improvement and reducing customer churn.