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One interesting thing is that money invested into a good onboarding flow is money saved by saving salespeople's time. Companies with minimal onboarding flows ne

by cm2012 7y ago

One interesting thing is that money invested into a good onboarding flow is money saved by saving salespeople's time. Companies with minimal onboarding flows need a very active sales force to actually close b2b customers. You need some sales regardless, especially for closing big companies, but you need less with solid onboarding. Source: I've worked with the marketing teams of 15+ b2b SaaS companies (https://twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/1222261672636710913?s=20 https://twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/12222616726367109...)

mikesabat 7y ago
Please expand on the logic here? Do you mean for low $$$ products, if users can onboard themselves they won't need to talk to sales?
- cm2012 7y ago
  Yep. Basically, business owners are super busy. They see your ad or a mention of you, Google you and sign-up in the form. But - they only become paying customers if they take the time to actually use/test your product in the trial/freemium period. Really good automated onboarding can get them to actually set the product up for their business. Otherwise you need sales reps to walk them through it which is time consuming.
ehfeng 7y ago
Spending engineering time to save sales time is only viable at very sales-oriented but lower ACV products and even in that case, onboarding is generally focused on very core product functionality. Because sales deals have to be >$10,000 ACV to be worth it for the business, sales generally spends it time on C-suite focused features (SSO integration, security controls, auditing). Not to negate your point: having a good onboarding helps sales, in the same way it helps customer support. But in practice, I wouldn't use that argument to measure whether or not the onboarding flow was doing it job. Nor should the sales team be able to blame the onboarding flow for low quality leads. Money invested in a good onboarding flow should pay off in onboarding/engagement.

by cm2012 7y ago

mikesabat 7y ago

Please expand on the logic here? Do you mean for low $$$ products, if users can onboard themselves they won't need to talk to sales?

cm2012 7y ago
Yep. Basically, business owners are super busy. They see your ad or a mention of you, Google you and sign-up in the form. But - they only become paying customers if they take the time to actually use/test your product in the trial/freemium period. Really good automated onboarding can get them to actually set the product up for their business. Otherwise you need sales reps to walk them through it which is time consuming.

ehfeng 7y ago

Spending engineering time to save sales time is only viable at very sales-oriented but lower ACV products and even in that case, onboarding is generally focused on very core product functionality. Because sales deals have to be >$10,000 ACV to be worth it for the business, sales generally spends it time on C-suite focused features (SSO integration, security controls, auditing). Not to negate your point: having a good onboarding helps sales, in the same way it helps customer support. But in practice, I wouldn't use that argument to measure whether or not the onboarding flow was doing it job. Nor should the sales team be able to blame the onboarding flow for low quality leads. Money invested in a good onboarding flow should pay off in onboarding/engagement.