4 Ways to Improve SaaS Profitability

It turns out that services hold the key to most profitability moves for SaaS. Here’s my short list, inspired by Thomas Lah’s keynote presentation at the TSIA conference in October, 2023.

Monetize services. This includes professional services (for sure), tech support (the premium plan, often keeping a “free” basic plan), and some aspects of customer success (e.g. value-add business reviews).

Use partners for services. This is true for professional services and possibly managed services, especially for smaller, less strategic customers.

Focus sales on landing new opportunities. Migrate renewals to a dedicated team or to the CSMs. Focus the sales team on acquiring new logos and new opportunities with existing customers (the latter can be uncovered by the success team).

Pump up organic growth. This is a combination of data-led detection and old-fashioned account management moves. Identify those use cases that are most likely to renew and expand, encourage customers to adopt them, and reap the benefit. I would go as far as assigning an expansion quota to CSMs for organic growth.

Which of these strategies are you using already? Add a comment to describe your experience.

And we can help you identify and implement the best moves for your organization.