Description
The opportunities for using software to optimise business processes are endless. Any process can benefit from being digitally supported, enabled or even automated.
When times are good, companies want to innovate and expand production, distribution and revenue generation capacity. When times are bad, they want to conserve costs and improve productivity. No matter the situation, software is always a core part of solutions to the various challenges that companies always have.
Therefore, the demand for B2B process optimisation software is steadily increasing – in good times and bad.
The market for B2B software has low and decreasing barriers to entry. A couple of bright people are all it takes to bring a product to the market.
The SaaS delivery format has lowered the customers’ purchase decision threshold. It’s easier to sign up for a subscription that you can terminate on short notice than make a significant investment that turns up on your balance sheet.
Together, the market for software-based solutions continues to grow and offers attractive opportunities for new and existing companies.
Shrinking technical barriers of market entry, where it only takes a couple of bright people and some computers to launch a product, has created hyper-competition.
As a result, the window of opportunity for software companies keeps getting shorter.
With the introduction of cloud delivery and the as-a-service subscription format, the revenue profile of a B2B software business has changed. It now takes longer to build the revenue stream required for profitability.
Short windows of opportunity and slowly evolving revenue streams represent a toxic cocktail.
The abundance of information provided by the internet and the influence of social media make buyers of B2B software prefer to do their research and form their perceptions without talking to vendor representatives. Getting through to potential customers with traditional company and product-driven messages has become ineffective.
Under these steadily evolving conditions, B2B software vendors must find new and less expensive ways to make enough potential customers acquainted with the value of what they do and convince them to sign up, subscribe and stay before they run out of money. And those that have made it to profitability must find ways to scale with steadily decreasing customer acquisition costs.
The book offers a framework of methods for navigating these market conditions. It helps design a revenue generation process on a slim budget that continuously fills the pipeline with qualified leads and develops them into happy customers and ambassadors.
