Why We Created Slack? The Community for SaaS and Software Professionals -
- International orientation.
- Professionals and businesses with established careers (less students, and even young stage companies).
- Moderation by professionals.
- Less focus on the round of venture capital or funding.
- An extremely supportive group with no acceptance of disrespectful or unethical behaviour.
It's true that features such as a global perspective on business and experts as moderators (that's me!) are the things we prefer to see on forums on the internet.
The post discussed the features available to members in particular, in relation to other groups on the internet.
You may be wondering, "But what's in it to do ?"
Valid question, which I'll answer as reasons (plural) that we've got for investing into this scheme might not be as easy as those who are less savvy believe.
As a business person who is a businessperson, you are aware of the way the process works. The business doesn't pay for innovative software designed to assist random people online, they utilize the software for their own firm in a way.
In fact, having a strong online community is an excellent way to boost the visibility of your business and bring in some prospects every once in awhile.
Marketing isn't sole reason for us to be in this. In case you're a member, or not, we'll make it our primary desire is for all members to be an integral part of the community, otherwise the community won't achieve anything.
Our Guideline Principle is: Our Software as well as SaaS Community Must Be Good to You to Be Successful.
The explanation is fairly straightforward however the main point is that if not feel that our community is a useful and stimulating location to be in, you're not going to hang out in our community.
It's crucial for its continued success both for you and ours -- that we work to create an incredible group to be a an integral part of.
(And If you feel that there's a chance that we'll diverge in any way, or if you have ideas on how we can make it better Please let us know. The discussion will follow later.)
What are the benefits of hosting an online Community?
There has to be some reason to this else we wouldn't have to do this do, wouldn't we?
Naturally. We would however like our objectives to be clear.
In this article, we'll outline the goals we'd like to achieve through this endeavor.
Knowing What's Important to Your Business
One of the most important things our Chief Executive David Nachman shared with me during one-on one discussion about our goals and purpose of the community is that our community offers an opportunity to lessen the amount of transactions that occur in the relationship we have with our customers as well as other businesses, both software and SaaS businesses.
There's a legitimate reason to be concerned: We help facilitate literal transactions for online businesses and it's very easy to get everyone into the rut of having a well, transactional relationship.
We provide you with a service that earns you money. then continue with autopilot.
If we allow this to persist, it could hinder our ability to develop Our B2B service to directly assist the success of your company, and making sure that online companies achieve their goals is our main goal.
This is of course true for our clients who are already our clients but this is also true to software firms that may consider using . If you're uncertain if is the best payment method or merchant of record (MOR) for your B2C and/or B2B SaaS-based business, we'd love to hear about any questions or worries you're facing so that we can consider that our assessment as we build our products and features.
To learn more about the ways David wants to get familiar with your company, watch his member interview video that I recorded on behalf of a fellow participant himself:
That's also why we expanded the scope of this community , and created an individual member base, including executive, contributor and founders membership baseas we believe we can gain insight into businesses (and aid with their needs in a more effective way) when we have an array of members.
Our goal to increase the level of personalization of relations with companies (and evidently, with people who are employed by their companies) is the primary reasons we conduct interviews with our members. In addition to improving how members get to know their colleagues and become acquainted with one another, it aids in getting to know the members' business interests and the members.
The Building of customer relationships
Learning more about your business you operate can assist us develop a better relation with you, whether you like it or not.
But, our relationship with customers can be improved by giving our members greater access to members working on behalf of us .
We already provide a variety of friendly and quick support to clients and buyers as well as customer success managers for some of our customers with particularly large or complex companies.
We are also aware that most businesses can always improve the way they serve customers, and enhance the relationship they have with their customers.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, out of 100, submitting an inquiry is the most effective option to receive help. That helps our support team effectively route requests in accordance of the severity and type of the issue, as well as we can to keep track of support needs in the course of time.
(That last part also helps us to have a greater knowledge of the requirements of companies.)
It could be helpful to regularly make contact with the leaders personally specifically for those who have a specific company-related need that doesn't involve a technical question about our platform. There's a variety of professionals on our platform, it's not only technical support to end users specialists.
Product manager, tax and payment specialists, customer operations pros, as well as one or two may be the room and be able to answer business questions. They may even talk about what's happening on the platform.
We hope that the experiences our customers have are the type of experiences that they'll tell their acquaintances about, and we believe that being more readily accessible can improve the likelihood. And if you're a customer who's not enjoying that sort of satisfaction, we've got an online community way to inform us of your experience.
Yes, Leads
This is part of the document that must be completely transparent.
It would be great for our members that do not currently have an approved merchant to sign up with our service.
They're fortunate that it's not our sole goal for the community.
Also, we have the goal of increasing customer satisfaction and understanding everything we could about SaaS and the software needs of business:
- It's safe to say that the process of registering new customers is only one aspect of what we're trying achieve in this particular community. Additionally, we won't solicit anyone who hasn't expressed the intention to do so in advance.
- The odds are higher in terms of reaching new customers If we're able to meet those two objectives were discussed earlier and that's why we'll work harder to reach them.
When community members can see our attention to our customers with a sincere desire to get comments, they'll be much more impressed with our function as a commerce platform and merchant of record -as they'll have the ability to see the work that we've made as well as the care that we offer our members in person.
If you've considered it before, it could be a good place to establish a relationship with us in an informal manner. The members of the community are able to communicate with customers from other areas and read the conversations taking place among customers , and (remotely) meet those who run the business that it.
What can you expect from the Membership in this Community
While it did focus on the various benefits of the GSL community, it wasn't able to explain the true benefits gained by joining a group such as this one.
We've got big plans for Global SaaS Leaders -- as well as constantly creating communities -- here are some advantages we've provided for software developers and SaaS CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs, as well as marketers developers, engineers, and more.
Connect with Software Experts All Over the World
It doesn't matter if you're a SaaS marketer who is trying to increase the SEO of your the region, or you're a people and culture director who's looking for meetings as well as onboarding of international clients, or perhaps a SaaS creator looking for advice about selling in specific countries or regions, having the ability to communicate to the individuals that make up make up an international network makes "going international" a lot easier.
Our members come from from more than 50 countries across 17 time zones.
Find New Markets You'd like to expand or enter Within
One of the advantages of having one of the world's largest networks is that it is possible to receive guidance from it during the process of breaking into new markets.
You can make a post in the community asking people who are from certain nations to help with your request. You can even contact me, who is the main moderator. I will reach out the appropriate members under your name.
You can also maintain the discussion on the forum for questions previously asked that are relevant for the SaaS market you're trying to grow into.
We also have videos of members, which we're recording in a continuous method with people interested in joining us (like the one we posted earlier, featuring CEO David Nachman).
One of the most common questions that we typically ask our interviewees is "What's something people don't understand regarding selling software in the country you live in?" The goal of the inquiry is to help you to understand the both business and cultural differences which might affect how easy it is to offer software to customers in your country.
Take a look at SaaS Company Leaders and Experts
Although our members are spread across various roles and seniority level, we do have several senior executives, SaaS founders, and department head in Global SaaS Leaders who are eager to impart their expertise with other members.
Some members are software and SaaS founders who have multiple SaaS startups, some have been employed at internationally-known companies, and some are entrepreneurs who have shifted careers or industries and have many years of knowledge to provide recommendations.
In addition, several top executives and managers are available, including the Chief Executive Officer and the global Tax Director and our Vice Director in charge of Global Customer Operations. The community is a good place to be since they're eager to assist our members any way they can.
(For further information and details about this issue, please contact Kurt regarding this topic, take a a look at his in-person speech on SaaS pricing strategy that Work: How to Design the most optimal pricing model at SaaStr Europe prior to 2022.)
We're happy to respond to questions like this, and we're pleased to offer an area where subjects such as these are able to be discussed with world-class colleagues.
You can present yourself as an expert
If you're well-known for your work as a SaaS expert or industry influencer, you're awesome! We'd love to have you join the SaaS community and build your personal and professional reputation by sharing your expertise.
If you're trying to create your personal brand at the beginning, then participating in an online forum for professionals is a good way for starting. However, it doesn't mean that you have the status of SaaS founders. We are just experts in the field that we operate in. Actively sharing our expertise to others positions each of us as more than just competent, but also attractive and gracious which is an excellent public image to build.
Create This Community as it Expands
The program was launched and the SaaS community in March 2022 and have seen it grow rapidly. However, because we'd hope to provide an ideal place to allow individuals just like you to simply "hang out" it's still a flexible space and open to new ideas.
For example, a participant last week suggested the addition of a channel for a specific sort of usage.
Then, we turned the request into a survey asking everyone to vote about the channels they'd prefer to be added to our Slack workspace:
It doesn't matter if you want to vote quietly on updates to the community or make suggestions of your own We're always willing to hear your suggestions!
If you're in search of specific forums, services supplier suggestions, LinkedIn and social media connectivity opportunities, a podcast Facebook group, online meetups webinars and templates, as well as other software or SaaS development hacks across the globe and further, please let us be aware of it.
Send Your Thoughts
There are many other avenues to members of the group to voice their opinions other than with respect to the community, however. In one of our most recent requests was to ask members to let us know the benchmarking statistics and other metrics they'd like to see released.
Having these kinds of metrics can aid software and SaaS companies develop strategies for increasing their revenue.
In order to provide pertinent and helpful data to growing and successful software and SaaS companies We reached out to the general public directly to inquire about benchmarking information we could put together:
The responses varied from retention rates for a particular sector, MRR growth in a specific sector, failed payment metrics (unintentional churn) along with churn, conversion and rates in various areas.
It is important to note that this poll is open to members of all kinds regardless of the client circumstances.
Like we said earlier, understanding what is important to software and SaaS businesses is important in our mission an Global SaaS Leaders community to be a space in which you can discuss what you need to know for your company to reach the very top.
Join the Community to learn More About (If You're Inquiring)
The poll was posted in the channel dedicated to community. It is a channel where conversations about (as in contrast to more general business-related discussion) can be made available in the channel, and remain out of general feeds.
This is because we aren't looking for customers -- particularly those that aren't customers to be attracted by the constant messages we're promoting . We've already mentioned that a software or SaaS community should be something that users have the ability to profit from in order for it to be successful. We think that selling too much can cause a negative perception and make it a place which they does not would like to be.
With that said, if you're not a customer however, you've been thinking about exploring GSL, signing up with GSL is a great way to find out more about the business, through looking at customer interaction with our leaders, looking at what kind of feedback and questions customers have to have to say about GSL, and so on. This channel designed specially designed for GSL can be accessed by all members.
Do you have an passion for the channel ? Feel free to leave the specific channel you don't want to be reading. There are many more activities to take part in with the community and not see content from a platform that which you don't have a desire for.
Join the Global SaaS Leaders Community
We're satisfied with Our Global SaaS Leaders community already and are pleased to present an international network and discussions area with options like live chats and member introduction videos as well as a variety of professional opinions.
While we focus on building communities and the number of members we have grows We'll add more functions. We'd like to establish the most of one-to-one connections, launch a podcast, organize more live events, and also integrate social media into the near future.
But, if you register today, you can shape what the organization will evolve into.
In order to maintain the highest level of member service In order to ensure that I personally review all applicants for new members as well as ensuring there aren't any automated systems that allow spammers or bots. So, submitting your LinkedIn link is crucial. Thank you for being patient while I review the application. Please don't hesitate to reach us by email if need help before making an application!
About
Katie Stephan Katie Stephan is the Social Media and Community Manager for She is also the moderator for the Global SaaS Leaders community. The woman holds an MFA in creative non-fiction writing, and was also an instructor in writing at the college level.
This post was first seen on here