Reconciling Freemium Model and Adoption for B2B Technology Companies
July 24th, 2014 by Matthew Rosenhaft No comments »Interesting trend that we have seen lately – B2B SaaS software firms who are dealing with an adoption problem despite their freemium offerings. It seems that they have a huge drop-off from the sign-ups on the freemium version to their paid version. Not surprising that there is a drop-off, but many feel like the drop-off is bigger than expected given the value that they provide.
We have seen this before with a client that we worked with so I feel confident that I can guess at some of the root issues:
- Sales Team – They are selling a somewhat complicated solution without a direct sales force substituting a free experience for sales management. For many less complex, consumerized applications this is an appropriate model as the cost of sales does not support the cost of the application.
- Adoption – For the more complex applications, the challenge for the larger organizations is getting people to buy into the application – intellectually, emotionally, and operationally. Freemium does not mean it does not have a cost to the buyers. Continue reading “Reconciling Freemium Model and Adoption for B2B Technology Companies” »
10 Common Market Adoption Issues That I See in BtoB Technology Companies
July 16th, 2014 by Matthew Rosenhaft No comments »- Inability to drive effective/qualified sales opportunities through marketing
- Difficulty explaining to target companies that our technology is best @ solving particular business problem that they are experienced. We cannot differentiate between visible “pain” and underlying “problem” that you actually solve for the buyer.
- Heavy emphasis on generic business value and deep technical differentiation in messaging.
- Difficulty within lead generation activities to reach “senior executive” decision makers in target organizations – forcing sales to sell up through organization. Continue reading “10 Common Market Adoption Issues That I See in BtoB Technology Companies” »
Defining a Core Business Problem for Technology Companies
June 24th, 2014 by Matthew Rosenhaft No comments »It has been a while since we wrote a post, so I thought I would outline why I think that you, as a technology vendor, probably have a unique technology, but have an adoption problem. What you think is a technology adoption problem is really a buyer adoption problem.
As a buyer, I bet if I read your website or marketing materials, I would not be clear on what strategic business problem that you solve or what changes in behavior are required of the buyers to adopt your approach. But I can hear you say:”Wait. You don’t know what I do. How can you say I have a problem without looking at my stuff?”
I know because this is the core existential problem for almost every technology company and because adoption is so difficult to overcome quickly. Technology by definition is change. Newer is better, different. If it ain’t new, it ain’t technology. Even “old” technology is referring to something that was new at the time and now is obsolete. So, the business of technology is the business of change. Continue reading “Defining a Core Business Problem for Technology Companies” »
4 Leading Questions
April 22nd, 2014 by Matthew Rosenhaft No comments »- What is the difference between adoption and marketing? Difference between product adoption and problem adoption? How does this change the idea of implementation, staging adoption, customer experience, project success?
- As a buyer, How do you go about identifying underlying root problem causation from visible pain? What is the hardest thing about diagnosing problems within your organization? How do good vendor partners assist in that process? How do mediocre vendors hurt that process? In a couple of words, what is the difference between selling and decision support? Continue reading “4 Leading Questions” »