The theme shared today is: SaaS (software as a service) for trading from 0 to 1.
Trading SaaS from 0 to 1 is nothing more than three things: one is to do a good job in products; the other is to do a good job in services; the third is to do a good job in sales.
I will share with you based on past experience: what is the development path of a good SaaS and some pits that have been stepped on in the past.
1. Development path of B-end products
From my own point of view, I am more concerned about what the product life cycle of an industry or company looks like; the difference between To B (enterprise-oriented) products and To C (individual-oriented) products is that To B's products are fast No.
To C products such as Toutiao or Pinduoduo can achieve three-year listing and five-year annual revenue may exceed 100 billion, but To B products are basically impossible to achieve.
Any To B business needs to go through four stages.
1. The first stage: 3-5 years of basic product improvement period
The entry point of a business often starts with "solving some people's problems", and this stage can be defined as: the improvement period of basic products.
This stage needs to meet the needs of all core scenarios, and needs to continuously stack functions, stabilize the system, and improve services.
For example, when your product is a merchant-oriented transaction type system, you must ensure that the payment process is smooth, and you need to help customers solve problems during use.
2. The second stage: 2-3 years of in-depth period of industry products
This stage means that the individual needs of key customers in this industry need to be addressed. For To B (enterprise-oriented) products, the country email list needs of every customer are real.
If you want to win customers and get them to renew in the future, you need to pay attention to every customer need.
We can influence potential users by providing more customer success stories for users through deeper industry solutions, and at the same time, we need to improve the customer service system.
3. The third stage: ecological construction period of 5-10 years
Frankly speaking, few To B (enterprise-oriented) enterprises or SaaS (software as a service) companies in China have entered this stage.
A person's power is always limited. During the ecological construction period:
To open up the platform to allow more service providers or integrators to join in;
When your product enters the customer's enterprise, allowing your product to penetrate deeply into the organization means that it can well meet all the individual needs of the customer;
Open up the service ecosystem, formulate industry-specific operation methods, and output practical cases, so that other participants can serve your customers with you.
4. The fourth stage: Fractal replication of value-added services
If we look at foreign cases, it is basically "buy, buy, buy": buy the ability that the original product does not have, and buy the customers of competitors.
By the tenth year, it was basically relying on investment.
A good business development path mainly consists of these four stages, and each stage needs to focus on different priorities:
During the improvement period of basic products, pay attention to the renewals in the process of doing a good job of products and services; the renewals after the products and services are completed can at least prove that your products can solve some of the problems.
The in-depth period of industry products means that large-scale deductions can be made. At this time, it is necessary to do a good job in marketing and sales, and focus on profits and customer conversion rates.
During the ecological construction period, some standardized products should be formed in the industry.
Fractal replication of value-added services requires a comprehensive consideration of operational efficiency.
2. How to make B-end products?
How to make B-end products? We analyze the problems encountered in the early and late stages of the product respectively.
Three major problems that will be encountered in the early stage of the product:
1. How did the trading SaaS product grow gradually?
An underlying logic is: a single-point breakthrough forms a positive cycle. Any solution must be imperfect in the initial stage, so we need to see what problems the new product can solve for users and find the breakthrough point.
Cut through this point and make your customers successful, you will have more intersections with your customers, and you will have a deeper understanding of the industry. Even the leading customers in this industry will bring you with you. Play.
As your understanding of the requirements becomes more profound, the degree of completion of your solution will also be better, so it is a positive cycle.
Here is an example of Youzan's development path. At present, Youzan's overall scale is about 10 billion US dollars, and its annual revenue is about 800 million. It seems that it is doing well in China. In fact, it has also gone through several stages:
In the first stage, in 2013, we built a CRM (customer relationship management) tool for Tao-based merchants. At that time, many merchants were converting traffic in the WeChat ecosystem. This CRM tool could manage merchant users well. Solved their pain points at the time.
Later, Taobao merchants could not do all kinds of sharing and fission in the WeChat ecosystem, but at that time, it was obvious that the merchants used your solution in the hope of creating a complete closed loop in WeChat.
In the second stage, we established an independent station with transaction capabilities in 2014, so that merchants in the WeChat ecosystem can also achieve a complete closed-loop transaction.
In the third stage, in 2016, we released the first paid marketing plug-in "Multiplayer Group"; Pinduoduo was very popular at that time, so the whole solution of Youzan was still free, but the plug-in was charged.
Youzan has also passed this stage of verification: the entire solution is fully commercializable, and merchants also have needs in this process.
In the fourth and fifth stages, we launched large-scale customer acquisition and released new products such as Youzan Retail, Youzan Industry and Youzan Catering.
In 2018, Youzan Guarantee was released to provide credit guarantee for social shopping, and Youzan Finance was established in 2019 to establish a financial system in the field of merchants.