Business Development for SaaS Services: Strategy Design Design

Sergey Ryzhikov (1C-Bitrix)

There is such a dirty word - business development. We can often see him on business cards from our Western colleagues. In fact, I really can't even explain in Russian what business development is. Before this conference, I tried to rummage around. In the Russian version you will not find a normal explanation of what it is. There is a western definition.


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I do not think that it defines everything to the end.

It seems that this discipline is not very often with us. In general, if you look at the topic of the report, I still have design and design there. What, after all, will be discussed? I will talk about business development, in general, and try to explain how I understand why it is important.



In my understanding, this is a kind of symbiosis of various disciplines and a kind of role. A person who stands between everyone provides both technological competence, and business, and strategy, and internal pumping of competence. We often say, this is the task of Gender. In principle, perhaps in some situations, but not always.

Business development is a bit more. Without being obsessed with this term, let's talk about software in general. I called it “talking about SaaS”, but in my view, today everything is SaaS. I believe that more software in the usual sense, just software, which is set and all, almost do not write. At least a new one. Basically, if it is mobile apt, that is, the server part; if it's a web part, then it also has a mobile desktop. Whatever it is, in any case, we can directly say that it is SaaS - software as a service in its various presentation options.

And, in general, there is a big crush in this segment. Most companies have already understood - this stage, when everything is just beginning, you grab any idea and start to cut it, it has already passed. In client services very closely. In B2C, frankly, considerable density. B2B is still relatively free, although if you look at market participants there, then, in general, you will not find it enough.



And even those who are now B2C sometimes say: “And now we also want to work, and we want to get a company.” In any case, the situation worsens, it becomes more difficult. Most of the players, speaking of any terms of recoupment, are not satisfied with the concept of recoupment on the first transaction, i.e. there LTV is considered for long periods, and competition is intensifying.

I often communicate with people and say to them: “If you want to discuss something, I can share everything I know.” Once upon a time many people shared with me who said: “You are doing bullshit,” sometimes it’s just plain obscene. In general, those who gave the most practical advice, they were terribly cursing, strange people. And now, when I discuss things with someone, I suddenly find myself finding that I start to use foul language, because sometimes some things surprise me.

But let's see how the software, service, idea is usually born today?



We did something “for ourselves” or drank some problem for the client. Suddenly another client wanted, and now there are already three or four of them. You sit like this and think: “It seems that this is above all. And not to anyone, ”you say to yourself,“ but to everyone. Everyone needs this thing! ”

Let's take a look at this life situation on the example of a Task Manager. After all, everyone knows that not a single Task Manager is suitable for you, and hundreds, thousands of them are written in the world, considering mortality, and none is suitable (I have a whole theory on this subject, but not at this conference). And the development team (most often it starts with this) tried this one, tried another one, sat down, rewrote and made Task Task Manager. Six to nine months of programming, and suddenly there is a beta version of the product. Even the first fans appeared, because when you personally meet them, you are very convincing. But this is in person.



In fact, the sale is not carried out by the product, but by your visual part, by your faith in this product, and you sincerely believe. And so you sold it.

The first bell comes at a time when you need to make a website for your beta version. What to write on it? What to write on the site? You start thinking: what should I write on the site? Well, you can not write: "We are another Task Manager." In general, some nonsense is obtained. You sit and think, you start looking at other sites. And suddenly you realize that there are a lot of sites with Task-managers to guys. But you write: "I am the perfect task-manager." And you look at this site and you understand that this is stupid. Because there is, firstly, who does not suit, and secondly, someone has already told you that you are not a perfect fig at all, but there is this one, it is even more perfect than you.

Even more dramatic are the meetings with those who are already writing the same Task Manager, they are also sure that they are perfect. But you say, “Okay, fine. Your dream Task Manager. Also not a ride.



After weighing all the pros and cons, you realize that the phrase “I am a convenient and simple Task Manager” sounds quite adequately. These theses, like, sound like a unique selling proposition. In general, quite often this situation occurs. “A convenient and simple Task-manager” - you sit, look at the site, - “in principle, OK, we open the site”.



In general, users of the site do not read, they immediately go to look at the product, but I always read the site in order to understand what the developer wanted to say. Then I open the products and am terrified, because there is nothing there that is written on the site.

Recently, one journalist asked me for a recommendation on one Task-manager. I honestly wanted to put screenshots, but my marketing said that “you just openly sneer.” I removed. Sorry, that would be really unfair and unfair to the guys. But you read the site, and it says there that they are not just a Task Manager, they manage business processes in organizations, and there are a lot of things, and so many beautiful words are right ... You open the site, and there’s not even a Task Manager yet. Not yet a Task Manager ...

I, in fact, understand the gap between the site and the product, but when the developer is faced with the site, he begins to redo the product. Because he looked at others and realized that he needed to somehow get rid of it - either to change the design, or to add some kind of chip, which no one else has, or some other thing ... And, by the way, at that moment Most often, the developer understands that everything is on the market for 5-10 years, if we talk about most services.

And you do not think that I sneer, I myself went along this path with CMS. We also made a CMS, sat down to write a site and suddenly realized: what will we write? that we have another CMS? As one of my business coach friends said: “You are like this because you have never studied in business schools.” In principle, he is right.



Did something even flew. But when we start promoting, there are difficulties. Real expenses are just beginning. Those. all that has been associated with the development of all nine months is nothing compared to starting promotion. You can not do any stretching, and no one understands why you are special.

A very big competition for keywords, for SEO words, for a whole lot. Closely already on the market. Moreover, you are sure that others do not have a product, but garbage. But for some reason they persistently buy your phrases, drive this traffic to themselves, and you have to compete with them. And I just want to shout to them: “May you stop already, you cannot convert it into money!”. And they still do it.

Great competition in all channels that you know, and they are all known. And everyone lies about viral marketing. The market is full of legends, it is filled with heaps of stories that "they did like this, and therefore took off." Actually this is a legend. In fact, more often than not, they either do not understand the reasons for the launch of a particular product, or do not tell.



And what I have called awakening arises — a certain perplexity. You ask yourself if you went there, do you need it or not? And you begin to really understand that those who are just starting to dig into the theme of the Task Manager, they’ll generally have a simple click and a couple of clicks to make it happen. Those who are already monsters, experts, they need 140 checkboxes, because they drive this car like a military plane.

You understand that journalists, in general, are not interested in anything about your product, they are interested in, who put some other nonsense in you, i.e. they are interested in pop, the fact that the title can be pulled. And they ask you: "What are you special?". And you say: "But this is about the other." They: "Who invested in you?". You: "Yes, we ourselves, for our own money." They paused and put everything in the bedside table.

All competitors are the most comfortable, the most beautiful, the most functional and the most similar. And this is difficult because you have to live and work with it. And it is not clear, but for some reason, if you are stubborn, something moves ... You are disappointed, but for some reason people register (I consider a positive story, because quite often everything ends, but I want a little more positive).

Probably the most interesting thing that I would like to talk about is that if everything works out for you, then you will encounter real competition. But this is an ambush.



The real competition is when you hit a healthy monster at full speed, or by your size it seems healthy to you. This is when you were noticed, when a major player looked at you and said: “So, something is stopping us.” And strange things start to happen.

Many of our companies went through this period. For example, Kaspersky encountered this when it was called “AVP Protection”. Entering the American market, they ran head-on with American players. And they rolled back two years, because they had to go through the whole story with patent protection, a bunch of other things.

When entering the American market, we ran into Citrix, which says: “Something the word Bitrix is ​​very similar to Citrix. We are such: “No, what are you? One letter is different. ” They say: "It is very similar, and it seems to us that these should be incompatible things." There are quite a few similar stories.

1. The most frequent scenario - a major player suddenly made your piece a part of its product. For example, I included Task Manager in Office 365. And you are paralyzed. Those. they saw that it was a topic. Or, for example, Dropbox released, then all of these: “Something seems to us that we need to release our drives”. And Microsoft and Google, Apple - everyone started to produce drives.
   
   
2. You look at it, and this is a tragedy! “But, fortunately, its functionality is weaker,” you think so. For example, in the Task Manager he can have one person in charge, and in your two and even more, 10 people in charge can be for the task. And you begin to believe for yourself that this is your unique advantage, and you can explain it to others. And it is all, most importantly, need.
   
   
3. Another illusion, when faced with real competition, we see that a major player, for example, has lost $ 10 for his Task Manager. And you say: “I will now put the price at $ 1 and say, I have 10 times better. This is an argument for sale. ” But, unfortunately, this is most often not an argument. We appeal to this circumstance, hoping that by this we can slip real competition.

You quietly cut further, but someone despicably continues to buy all the advertising. And most often, this is the biggest competitor, or someone else. And there are a lot of circumstances.



It's a shame when you see that some unworthy product to live raises 100 times more money than you. And you understand that he just starts to pour them on the market, without thinking. Hires the best people, you poach, etc. Moreover, the one that sells for $ 10, spends $ 9 on advertising, and you are absolutely sure that this is mean. He is a reptile in the ninth degree! This is not fair!

Even worse, when he had a client base, and he begins to convert his old clients into you, and you yourself say: "He is growing, because he had an old client base." And this is also a real competition.

The most insidious situation, of course, is when your competitor, big or small, starts giving away a chip for which you are betting for free. He starts to give her straight. He says: "Yes, you take this Task-manager, I still have this, this, this, this is, and the Task-manager as a gift to you."

You know, in offline life, competition is sometimes very diverse. As one comrade told, absolutely not from the IT business, he says: “My rival of beautiful girls put my flyers near my store, and they take customers from me. I drive traffic, and it’s before every advertising campaign ... And you can't beat girls, and you can't get rid of them, and how can you work in such competitions? ”

It can be different - from an IT-company they told me that a competitor stole their videos, hung up their leyba, they had no videos with them, there were cases with customers, how awesome they implemented a product. Competitors hung their bun and showed customers. Will you sue him? And time is very expensive. And this is all real competition.



How does it all evolve? In a normal situation, we come up with an idea, developed a product, began to think about positioning, the site, returned. They again came up with the idea, developed the product, passed the positioning and began to promote it. Suddenly they understood: yes, we must change the product, we must give something for free. Returned, changed the design, again slipped, and faced with real competition. So often everything is arranged in life.

What happens next?

In general, we see a lot of cases about the beginnings of history and we rarely see stories about what happens next. Either sale or closing. In general, the real competition is not so simple. Not always, when they publish “this service was sold to this company,” it looks like a happy ending.

Recently, we were sorting out a case with business 365. It seems to be a beautiful story, they sold a jar of some kind, oh, who would know what is inside this whole story. Therefore, I am here, after a bit of mockery, I said that it would be enough for one holiday or the second, in different formats.

There are successful deals. There are sales. But generally, it should be a strategy. This should be a preparation for real competition.



In short, I want to say that real competition is the biggest problem. This is what almost everyone breaks down on. This is something that you never think about at all previous stages. And what is losing. There are a lot of examples when a major competitor declared a war to a competitor, completely failing to understand his retaliatory steps.



At one of the marketing conferences, I spoke after colleagues from one wonderful company who talked about glazed curds. I'll tell you now about the glazed curds, as I heard it. This is also a legend, but I really liked this story. From it, by the way, it is clearly seen that adults are businessmen. Those. they are not what we program the program. They need production, a factory, something else, cheese to release ... And then bam! - they are not for sale.

They do the opposite. They realized the problem that ordinary curds sell poorly, sales are all falling and falling. They are small, small package, they choke, it is inconvenient to spread. They made a list of why cheeses sell poorly. And they decided that “we will take them and pack them in a container, it will have a frame, they will not choke, we will shove six of them there and we will sell”. And they immediately segmented the market and immediately four brands prepared in advance in different price groups.

They did everything right, with focus groups, etc. We do not know how. They made four brands, and only two were brought to the market. I ask him: “Why are there two?”. He: “Now competitors will answer, but we have two ready, we will fill the entire counter. We will fill it in all price categories. We will be ready to answer a competitor. "

They know these competitors in advance. They understand their strategy and production capacities, they know in advance that they are preparing a new production line, and they release the product to the market in advance in order to spoil competitors' lives.

Another example you may know. "Eldorado", remember, corporate identity changed? They did it as a Media Markt corporate identity. That same son of a bitch! What happened at this moment? Yakovlev, in my opinion, was then the General Director and owner. When it became clear that Media Markt, the largest European retailer entering the Russian market, at one point they changed their corporate identity to Media Markt and paralyzed a huge giant company. They: “Well, we cannot enter the market with the same corporate identity, there already is an Eldorado. Can not". It took them two years to adopt a new corporate identity. How is that? Guide on the top: “Russia? Will we look different? For two years they claimed everything before they came out with a new corporate identity.

Remember, there was still such a bike that he, as everyone said, stole the “Best Buy” design for the Eldorado site? There was such a story. Gendir "Eldorado" said to release an online store. And the meeting went on for two hours, a bunch of tops "Eldorado" ... Two screens - on one screen the design that is proposed is displayed, on the other something else. Gendir listened, listened, then went out and said: “On the second screen output the“ Best Buy ”design. He is taken out, he says: “I don’t care why he looks like this, why this area is green and, in general, I don’t care. By September 1, the Eldorado website should look like this. And I'll take a ruler, crawl here, and if the pixel is different, I'll fire you. ” And left. Paralysis, tears, "we have no right!". What happened next?He saved a huge amount of strength of his company, which could not produce websites. They came out on time, and only a few weeks later the people learned that he took two Best Buy directors on staff who went to work at Eldorado, something else started there, and Best Buy never entered the market. . Or maybe he therefore did not enter the market? What people took, and the design became, and in general all the ideas stolen? I dont know. .



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, ? , , , , – . , « Companies. What is your product for? The usual answer is: “We are for any company.” It does not happen. Those.if they say “for any”, something is wrong already. The need must be real.

Another example.Our company buys five SaaS services. We think we need an aggregator for SaaS services. And 10 aggregators for SaaS services appeared on the market. And there is a real need or not, no one asks. People: “C'mon, what’s there, I entered the card, and I have no problem. And in Russia, an accountant, 10 payments, 110 payments, who cares about it at all? ” This is not his problem. The problem is not solved.

It happens that the feature is good, but they are not ready to pay for it, i.e. ready to speculate, but not very willing to pay.

Well, do not be afraid of competition. Those.if you see a very dense segment, no matter how many there are, it is important whether they have a strategy. Do these guys have an idea where they are going, or are they digging like that? That's exactly what you need to think about. This is a real competition. From this we must begin. In fact, this is the search for a niche.

What is thinking about real competition?



First, we are not afraid of them. Secondly, you must understand the business strategy of competitors. That you should know even better than your logic. You physically need to understand them –– their opportunities, problems, weaknesses. And each competitor:

1. there are drawbacks
2. what seems to you an advantage is actually a disadvantage.

And I will teach you to see it.

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Sometimes, analyzing the real competition, we write out some functions and write them down to a disadvantage. For example, we look at a competitor and say: “Something has a shitty design.” We can do awesome, and it will be a great advantage. But you have to estimate the response time, i.e. response is possible? Is possible. How long will it take them? This advantage, you surely use it, but you will have a log for half a year or a year. And then this competitive advantage will stop working, because, most likely, they will play this story. But, in general, this is a strategy. The only thing is to understand how long this will be enough for you.

The real competition that you need to make for yourself after this analysis?

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3. And you should have a list of your potential allies. Those. enemies of those who disturb you.

Let's go to the promotion. So, suppose that you have analyzed and estimated the picture for yourself. Once again, it can be quite vague or very clear, but in general, some physical idea of ​​where you are going should arise.

Next moment. Your promotion strategy should interfere with the business strategies of your real competitors. Those.you must develop your promotion strategy in such a way that, for example, if they rely on Office, you should give it for free. What does Apple do when distributing its Office from its OS and tablet? Those.they shoot at the knee.

In general, in the market the price of promotion is growing fantastic. Sometimes in some markets you can see a slow-motion model of how the market develops.

I'll tell you the story in the game segment. Mobile games. The Store appeared, everyone started pushing any games, everything they managed to do. Put the price of $ 1, the client was attracted to the installation for 10 cents. Super!10 cents, 90 profits, all pret. The number of applications is growing, and you are no longer over 10, but over 90 are attracted to the installation ... And now it has reached, and you have begun to attract for $ 1.10. Well, you raise the price to $ 3. But inevitably, as a result of competition, the price for the installation reaches $ 3. What to do next?Do not go to the coffin. Invented free-to-play. Why is he needed so wonderful? Because there the installed client manages to reach $ 20. Those.A lot of people just play, but those who start paying pay $ 20. As a result, you can buy everything from the market for $ 10. No one understands why you are making $ 10 traffic, how you pay it back ... You are already starting to appeal with numbers, LTV, model, conversion. Everyone says: “But you are doing games, what are you doing?”. And today such a gaming market. These premium games, for $ 1-3, can not be said to die, but they cough strongly. A free-to-play pret. And then everyone rushes to free-to-play, and now free-to-play coughs.

This is how all the markets evolve. And the SaaS market is no longer 10 cents, as in mobile phones. He has already approached the stage when it is not clear how, for example, under CRM they attract 20 euro per click. You really don't understand: “Have you ever considered money, guys? Can you provide a conversion? ” No, they can not. They decide a different strategy.

In my opinion, there are two big promotion strategies, about which it is also important for yourself to answer before developing a product:

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2. And the second strategy is just about money. Then there are no free-to-play plans, then you build a sales department, a 30-90 days trial, an internal sales department and marketing are oriented only towards those who pay. What does "marketing oriented" mean? He throws out everything that does not give active or paid, and leaves only those channels that do it.

And you will have to get ready for this.

Why is it important to discuss before developing?



Positioning In fact, we came up with an idea, thought out a real competition, thought up how we would sell this business, and even wrote our tariff plans. Why should we have problems with positioning? Because it is very difficult to speak the language of customers.

You are already so deep in the subject that you already begin to speak the language of competitors. Those.you write your site in terms of how competitors write. And then you show your wife, and she: “What are you doing?”. She does not understand what you are releasing. And then you say: "Yes, I wrapped something." Your competitor knew for sure that you would disturb him. And your visitor has not yet understood what you want to make the product. Generally, it is difficult. This stage is difficult, precisely because you need to learn to speak the human language.



And now about the development. Now, you can sit down with the design and design. What is there to think about? It seems to me that some of the most important strategic decisions should take place here.

If you choose free-to-play, then you must provide a free plan so that it is at minimal cost. So you have to find such architectural solutions, autoscaling, scaling, ruby, php - who cares about that at all? The main thing is that you have a small price of a spree.

I can say that for Bitrix24 we planned that we should have $ 20 a year price. We thought that this is the price of advertising, and that we are ready to spend $ 20. And the technical problem was formulated task and price criteria. You tell him: "Not more than $ 20 per year." They leave and think. And they begin to design the architecture so that in the end we even got $ 5 there, and we got an advantage over the rest.

If you chose the interface in the previous steps, then you run into the interface. If you have chosen mobile phones, you are resting on mobile phones. If you have some moments, for example, remember how Google rested on the search speed. They even showed the speed of the search. Now it does not matter, that stage has passed. Everywhere they showed: "0.001 seconds and we found the answer to your question." And even for us, as for visitors, they dragged this figure forward, although this is a technological solution.

Unfortunately, for IT people, architectural and technical solutions are not chosen from personal preferences and not from the desire to experiment with new technology, but solely to win.



So, the task: to come up with an idea, evaluate the real competition. Initially we are planning a strategy. Nothing prevents each time to return to the previous stages. Skip the promotion, if possible, formulate, and then begin to develop the product.

Some tips:

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In conclusion, the story, so that you do not have the feeling that you can not start.

When robotics developed, there was such a competition. The premises, inside which there are chairs, tables, and the robot must move in this space as long as possible. The winner is the one who moves more. The conditions were so, and survived, those robots that had increased memory won, they completely created the geometry of this whole space, and then they walked between these chairs like living ones.

And then they decided to move all this - complicated the conditions. And those who knew how to think were hiding somewhere in the corner. There was nothing around, and they stood in hysterics, fighting because they remember that something was standing here. And those robots that hit their head survived: “Aw, something sucks,” right to the right, once to the left and gone.

Don't be very smart, be smart enough. Remember, but so. The market is changing, it looks more like a Brownian movement.



And speaking of the Brownian movement, imagine yourself one of these points - a participant in this movement. If you just hang out without a strategy, you will still have many conflicts, i.e. you are mistaken that they will not call you, they will not call you, they will not blame me. Actually, if you are afraid of collisions, then you will occupy a place in the market where you least interfere with others. Most likely, even then leave from this market. If you have a strategy, you want to get to the right corner from the left corner, and you move along this strategy, you will have collisions. But they will not be more than if you just hang out in this barrel. Anyway, they will accuse you, do something else. Only, a strange thing, but after some time, everyone will say: "The boys came where they wanted." And they themselves will sit somewhere in an incomprehensible place, where they least of all interfere with everything. Win!

Contacts

» Facebook.com/rsv.bitrix
» Rizhikov
» 1C-Bitrix company blog

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