Hi everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Rob Nelson, the CEO of Grow. Grow is a business intelligence tool made for SMBs.
Tune in to hear about Rob’s early struggles with his first company, how he realized the importance of onboarding, and how they focus on customer feedback for high retention rate.
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: The 1 Thing Rob Nelson Did to Grow His Business Intelligence SaaS Company from 12-110 Employees in 2 Years TRANSCRIPT PDF
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:38] Before we jump into today’s interview, please leave a review and rating and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
- [01:38] Rob had a company prior to Grow, where they had all just stumbled into the business.
- [02:05] They brought in a management consultant that helped them figure out their KPI’s and helped them “move the needle”.
- [02:15] Through that process, they made the business more data driven.
- [02:30] From there, the company grew more organically and work became more fun.
- [02:50] Throughout the process, Rob became frustrated with spreadsheets.
- [03:22] A bigger company came in and made a good offer, which is when Rob made his exit.
- [04:12] Hindsight is 20/20 when you leave a company.
- [04:40] Everyone came up with different metrics in each department to figure out their KPI.
- [05:00] However, Rob wanted a change from spreadsheets to a real-time scoreboard-like tool.
- [05:35] Grow is a SaaS subscription model and the cost is $500-600/month to start.
- [05:45] Once you get to 20 employees, it’s harder to track updates and reports.
- [06:45] Upon launch, they made it a self-serve type product at $49/month.
- [07:08] Early customers found it didn’t solve their issues and that they needed more support.
- [07:30] In order to help their clients be successful, they had to increase the price.
- [07:45] This allows more customizable options for customers.
- [08:15] Pricing scales up based on the number of reports they track per customer.
- [09:27] They raised $1.5 M before launch.
- [10:55] They knew they had something special, but it was hard to do for $49/customer/month.
- [11:37] The self-service pricing is $49/month, whereas the greater price is more personalized and comes with white-glove customer support.
- [12:25] They’ve gone through 2,000 on-boarding sessions with clients, so they have the process down.
- [12:50] Early on, with the self-service model, they had bad numbers (10% a month).
- [13:15] After they worked out the kinks, floundered for a full year, they updated a lot of their services and they did a lot better after that.
- [13:45] They now have 110 employees.
- [14:30] It took them a minute to realize the importance of on-boarding.
- [14:54] There is a trend of upping the price to match an actual solution.
- [15:14] Grow is a great example of this.
- [15:30] Grow uses a program like Survey Monkey or Ask Nicely that integrates with SalesForce costs $600, but it works better for them as a company.
- [15:56] It helps Grow’s workflow to have this solution in place.
- [17:15] Grow has a referral program in place and users get a percentage.
- [17:47] Rob recommends SalesForce. Grow began using it within the last year and it has enhance their business functionality.
- [19:18] Rob found their sales people through their first client success worker.
- [19:51] The client success worker recruited through his network.
- [20:03] Rob recommends the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Resources From This Interview:
- Grow
- SalesForce
- Must-read book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
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