What are the most effective strategies for building a strong team to support a new SaaS product?

Building a strong team for a new SaaS product involves several key strategies. Firstly, ensure you have a clear vision and communicate it effectively. Hire individuals who align with this vision and possess the necessary skills. Encourage collaboration and diversity, as varied perspectives can lead to innovation. Invest in ongoing training and development to keep the team's skills sharp. Lastly, foster a culture of accountability, open communication, and adaptability to navigate the evolving SaaS landscape effectively.

In my experience, a strong SaaS team starts with the customer in mind and then works backwards to the product. Assuming you have a strong software development team that can build the product, a critical function is the go to market team which should have defined use cases, messaging, potential proof of concept customers willing to try your product and give feedback. Continuously experimenting and incorporating customer feedback into the product development cycle will a stronger product. No need for perfection but it should solve key customer pain points in its first iteration and can look elegant later.

Use the OKR framework to set a visionary objective and back it up with clear key results. Example: Objective: Become the #1 provider for CRM for SMBs KR: 10K Client subscriptions KR: 100% of users use our CRM at least X times / week KR: 100% of users use our CRM to contact all their customers. KR: x.xx CSAT Score KR: 4.5+ Rating on Peer insights & Capterra This provides clarity to the team on what the vision is, and what to focus on while giving them autonomy on how to achieve it in a fast paced SAAS environment

The number one principle is a Customer DNA. All SaaS software (even non SaaS) GTM teams are built around one center, the customer. Not just customer centricity or "focus", its a lot more than that. Successful GTM teams see things through the eyes of customers, offering value, true partnership, a real proactive support and CS service and a true understanding of customers' needs and their own KPIs. It is much deeper than centricity. Its a real organizational DNA. This is the key to land and expand and the success of any SaaS service.

Vision and goals are definitely important, but people get their motivation from understanding the WHY behind things. Once a strong team understand the WHY and has clear goals there is a good chance they will be able to deliver the expected results. Of course there are more obstacles to overcome such as finding the "right problems", great GTM plan, but understanding they WHY is probably high on the list

Diversifying the team by recruiting members with a range of experiences is crucial. For instance, sourcing talent from both small and large companies, spanning various industry verticals, enriches the team with diverse perspectives and insights.

Prioritize hiring team members whose values and work ethics align with your company's culture and vision. Emphasize the importance of shared values, collaboration, and a commitment to your product's mission.

Once you have a plan in place that delivers on the desired outcomes, you can assess what skills you need to ensure that you deliver in a timely and efficient way. If you have a realistic view of what skills are available within the company, you address the gaps by either hiring externally (the right people) or train some smart internal engineers. This gap assessment needs to be done across functions to ensure that the entire company is prepared for a SaaS product launch.

Hiring the wrong person does far more harm than passing on a potentially great candidate, but exceptional teams can identify those great candidates quickly and confidently. Those teams: 1. Define the expectations of the role specifically and succinctly. This is especially important when you're not sure what you need to rigorously evaluate what you do. 2. Screen for "value fit, culture add". Great hires are intrinsically aligned to your values yet complement your team with new lenses and approaches. 3. Make every interaction with the candidate count. Your team and the candidate should learn something new about each other with every round; very lengthy or one-sided interview processes are signs you're not sure what you're looking for.

Carefully consider the balance of skills required between industry/functional SMEs and those from product management process SMEs. It doesn’t need to be 50/50 and instead should reflect whether initial success will come from disrupting the client industry or disrupting the existing software solutions serving that industry in an otherwise non differentiated way.

In my experience you need decide whether product value or timelines and metrics are more important to you. If you answer value then you should organize as a product driven organization. Allow the product manager to be the top of the chain for the product and sales, services, ops, marketing and engineering should utilize product as the chief decision maker on how and what decisions are made and prioritized.

Illustrate the significance of creating a feedback-rich environment within your team. Ongoing iteration based on feedback can enhance product quality and relevance.

One thing I've found helpful is to ensure that implementation people present the product to customers in a simple, understandable way. SaaS products are going to get very complex over time as more features are developed, but many of the features are not things that each unique customer will be using. Treat each customer as unique, learn their business process, and show them not what the software can do (this was already done pre-sale) but rather what they should be doing with the software to get value out of it.

There is no perfect model. Constantly evolve your alignment as you grow. An approach that has served me well is goals > users > product lines > features. Be careful not to focus too small because strong product leaders need space to thrive.

Establishing clear roles and responsibilities is one of the most critical aspect while building the team for a new SaaS product. Even though every team member has dedicated roles they need to be aware of the overall picture! Ownership is the key, establish clear ownership to every aspect of the overall goal even across different teams (financial, technical , business …do on)

Time zones and cultural differences can be barriers to communication. Invest in tools that facilitate asynchronous communication. Regularly hold cross-regional meetings to foster a sense of unity. Encourage team members to spend time in different regional offices to understand the local challenges and build relationships.

The most important voice in a team building a SaaS product is the voice of the customer. As a leader, one of the best things you can do re: communications is model customer advocacy in meetings and internal chats. Ask where the data is, as for the verbatims, ask how features will be tested; if a promising feature goes unused, ask how marketing and customer success are helping to drive awareness and adoption—don't take things for granted or allow opinions & anecdotes to be elevated to the level of customer feedback. The 2nd best thing you can do? Pick a comms practice and STICK TO IT. When updates are parked across Trello comments, Slack channels, and emails, things get lost. And the 3rd best thing you can do? Be human.

Creating an environment where people have a sense of psychological safety will facilitate collaboration and communication. You didn't hire your team of experts to have them unable or unwilling to express their point of view. Encourage healthy dissent, acknowledge all voices and re-frame mistakes as learning opportunities.

Leaders don't build culture, the team does. Leaders define the principles, set the context and goals, and then lead by example to foster a culture where all team members feel valued and engaged. For remote teams, this is especially critical. Have a daily team meeting that is more than a standup - where leaders share positive events from their personal and work life, as appropriate, to foster openness and engagement where each team member brings their whole self to the team and strong bonds can form between the team, beyond the typical role interactions. Employee engagement is the key indicator of high-performance teams, whether the team culture is quiet or like an Italian family dinner, the team builds a culture they all fit into.

Establish and maintain open lines of communication. Encourage team members to share their ideas, concerns, and feedback. This can be achieved through regular meetings, project management tools, and even chat platforms. The goal is to create an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts.

I had a very smart engineer walk into my office and ask me to train him on SaaS - he was a sysadmin for our on-prem datacenter servers. My investment in his training paid off (big time) as he learned new skills and helped optimize our cloud deployments as well simplify the infrastructure we were deploying. Cannot stress enough, the value of training your own team(s) as you move forward.

Training needs might vary across regions due to differences in market dynamics and customer expectations. Customize training programs for different regions while maintaining a core curriculum that ensures product understanding and company culture consistency. Consider local mentors or coaches to help new hires in international locations integrate faster.

The truest measure of a leader is at the end of their tenure are those they led better, more self-actualized, more fulfilled people? Coaching is not optional and any leader looking to serve others has to focus on coaching and employee growth, period.

Providing comprehensive training and support is essential for nurturing a skilled and motivated team. By offering comprehensive training, coaching, support, and recognition, you can empower your team members to excel in their roles, contribute effectively to the success of your SaaS product, and grow their careers within your organization.

An example of training to support a SaaS team might involve setting up a comprehensive onboarding process that includes workshops on the latest cloud computing technologies and Agile development practices. Additionally, offering access to online courses on platforms like Coursera or Udemy focused on advanced programming languages, cybersecurity for cloud applications, and customer experience optimization can empower team members. Regular coaching sessions with industry experts and internal mentorship programs can help team members overcome challenges, enhance their skills, and feel recognized for their growth and contributions.

Using agile software development frameworks, such as scrum, gives you a built-in feedback loop when you present the team's work to customers and stakeholders at the end of a sprint and solicit their feedback during sprint review. Always allow time in your delivery plan to receive and incorporate feedback and be sure to highlight how you have acted on that feedback during subsequent sprint reviews.

Soliciting feedback on a new SaaS product? Keep in mind that not all feedback needs to lead to product changes. Also, not all feedback is explicit: watch usage patterns and track adoption at the user-level (not just the account level) to find out where users find the most value. When using feedback to make adjustments, consider your positioning (how you set customer expectations) and onboarding/service (how you support customers post-purchase)—often, those are much less expensive levers to pull, and lead to insights that can refine your understanding of your target market(s) & the ideal customer profile(s).

In my experience, solicitating feedback from customers is vital. The louder ones will give feedback and suggestions unsolicitated, but get feedback from them all. Then create a process to track that feedback and roll it into product enhancements.

Defining a purpose and vision is the easiest task in a journey. The difficulty task is to take people with you. It is not about you. It is about a purpose that other people connect with and it is meaningful and fulfilling to them .

Don't underestimate the critical roles of DevOps and Support teams in SaaS success. Exponential adoption hinges on market fit, but keeping customers happy and operations smooth requires the expertise of both teams.

I'm not really sure what SaaS has to do with it. These same 7 things would apply for a perpetual licensing model. If you are one of those people who misuse SaaS to mean "hosted", I still don't understand how this has any effect on this topic. You would do these same things with a client/server, desktop or on premise product. Aside from pricing and some technical know how for CI/CD, there are no real differences in building teams to deliver good products. Stop looking for people with "SaaS experience" and start focusing on people who deliver high quality products with a good user experience and customer retention.

It's essential to understand that building a team goes beyond just assembling the right people—it's also about implementing the right processes. A well-designed process not only provides team members with clear priorities, ensuring everyone is aligned and focused, but it also brings clarity to each person's role within the team. This clarity promotes accountability since everyone knows the next deliverable they're responsible for. Moreover, an effective process divides the work into manageable chunks and is backed by a roadmap. This helps in setting both short-term and long-term goals, ensuring that the team remains on track and aligned with the larger vision of the SaaS platform.

Building a strong team to support a new SaaS product requires a combination of strategic hiring, collaboration, and skill development. Start by identifying the key roles needed, such as product managers, developers, customer support, and marketing professionals. Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation to encourage knowledge sharing and problem-solving. Provide ongoing training and development opportunities to enhance the team's skills and adaptability in the dynamic SaaS landscape.