The Forget The Funnel Podcast

You operate in a crowded market. How are you going to stand out? That's what Claire and Georgiana discuss on this week's episode of the Forget The Funnel podcast.
Differentiation is essential in helping cut through the noise and bring in more best-fit customers. Yet, many SaaS companies try to compete by obsessing over their competitors' strategies and messaging.
We can tell you from experience... it never works.
Drawing on real-world examples from their work with "landscaping.io" and "hiring.io", Claire and Georgiana share practical advice on how to switch from being competitor-obsessed to customer-obsessed and unlock the differentiated value you can offer your customers.
Discussed:

• What are the challenges of building a SaaS company in crowded and commoditized markets, especially regarding "me too" messaging and positioning?
  
• How two SaaS teams went deep with their best-fit customers to uncover their differentiated value.
  
• How did this new understanding impact their product messaging and acquisition strategies to stand out from competitors and win customers?

Key Moments:

[2:07] Georgiana and Clare discuss how SaaS businesses often struggle to cut through the noise.
[5:10] Claire shares responses to a survey from Peep Leja, which showed that Saas businesses often have difficulty with differentiation.
[6:26] Claire talks through the example of a landscaping business that Forget The Funnel is currently working with, which was looking to redevelop its messaging while not risking a small window of seasonal sales opportunity.
[16:02] Georgiana speaks about the importance of focusing on what your customers want instead of what your competitors are doing.
[18:58] Claire shares another example of an international hiring company running an outbound sales strategy that looked the same as their competitors - and how they got close to their customers to understand that professional services were a key differentiator.
[31:23] Both Georgiana and Claire wrap up this episode by saying SaaS companies need clarification by thinking that developing robust and differentiated messaging is a marketing exercise when it's not.

• Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/
  
• Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/

Not all customers are created equal.
Increasing conversions with the right message to the right person at the right time is a pipe dream for most teams. The problem is that you haven't figured out how to meaningfully segment your customers to do it yet.
We got you.
In this episode of the Forget The Funnel Podcast, Claire and Georgiana deep dive into the de facto segmentation tools that have so many teams tripping over themselves – Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP), Personas & Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD).
Walking through real-world examples, we break down when it's mission-critical to get segmentation right; your founder's intuition won't scale, your marketing and messaging are falling flat, and your product-led experiences need to pull their weight - AKA when you need to grow.
Discussed:

• The differences between ICPs, Personas and JBTD - and when to leverage each in your decision-making.
  
• Why founder intuition doesn't scale and how a systematic understanding of customer segments is necessary for scale.
  
• How the promise of 'right message, right person, right time' is achievable and will help you grow more efficiently across marketing, sales and product.

Key Moments:
1:58 - Claire and Georgiana outline some of the questions that are being asked at the executive-level around the use of customer segmentation tools like personas, ICPs and Jobs-to-be-Done.
3:06 - Georgiana clarifies that no one customer segmentation tool is necessarily better than another; they all have their uses in different contexts. But getting a clear understanding on what these tools mean for your business is key.
5:38 - Claire and Georgiana share their definition of customer segmentation and give a real-world example of what this means in the context of a Forget The Funnel customer, SparkToro. They then break down their definitions of ICP and personas.
9:37 - Georgiana asks Claire to unpack the nuance between the customer research done by teams using personas versus the customer research done using Jobs-to-be-Done.
15:02 - Georgiana unpacks in what situations ICPs are the most useful tool for SaaS product and marketing teams, and when personas make more sense.
18:25 - Claire share one of the main takeaways from the episode - that founder intuition does not scale. You can intuit your way to getting the right person, at the right time, with the right message in the early days, but eventually you hit the point of diminishing returns - where you’ll then need to look at customer segmentation tools to unlock the next stage of growth. Claire shares the example of Attune to illustrate this.
25:55 - The pair finish the episode by talking about the opportunity cost of failing to understand the different segments your product services - even during an economic downturn.

• Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/
  
• Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/

One study found that 70% of people who sign up for a product log in once... and then never again.
That’s why customer-led KPIs aren’t just about measuring when someone becomes a “customer” — they’re about measuring the critical customer outcomes that lead to high retention. To do that, you must focus on genuine customer value: getting them from their first moment of value to value realization, continued value and beyond.
So, how do you define your own customer-led KPIs? You need to know what “job” your customers are hiring your solution to solve for them. You need to understand what matters to them to map that value to the specific parts of your product that deliver that value.
In this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast — the second of two episodes on customer-led KPIs — Claire and Georgiana share how to build your KPIs around moments of value for your customers. They explain how to map the customer experience, share examples of customer-led KPIs, and explore how to rally your team around your new KPIs.

Discussed:

• What your customer journey map isn’t telling you and how the three phases of the customer experience will help you operationalize growth.
  
• The critical importance of getting the evaluation phase KPIs right and how to leverage Jobs-to-be-Done to measure value realization.
  
• How to rally your team around customer-led KPIs and maximize their impact on growth.

Key Moments:
1:47 - Claire and Georgiana explore the difference between customer journey mapping and customer experience mapping.
3:31 - Georgiana shares why the evaluation phase of the customer experience is critical for setting customer-led KPIs — and how many teams get it wrong. She also breaks down the importance of first value and value realization at this stage.
7:09 - Claire asks Georgiana to talk through examples of customer-led KPIs, and Georgiana walks through a hypothetical example of how to tie a particular product feature to a moment of value.
9:52 - Georgiana defines value realization (AKA reaching true product engagement) and what a corresponding KPI looks like.
11:10 - Before your customers get to value realization, your only job is to help them hit those value-focused KPIs — so you shouldn’t be throwing every possible feature at them. Georgiana explains that once they’ve hit value realization, you can shift to helping them get additional value through additional features or expanding to other team members.
14:06 - Claire asks Georgiana to speak about how to rally people around customer-led KPIs instead of letting those metrics sit on the shelf. (Hint: Customer-led KPIs are way more motivating than transactional measures of success.)
16:27 - Another way to embed customer-led KPIs for your team? Evaluate your current customer experience and figure out what’s misaligned with your new KPIs, which will open new opportunities.
17:48 - Claire finishes the episode by sharing advice for more mature and nimble companies to gather data to implement and track customer-led KPIs.

• Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/
  
• Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/

From competitive analysis to NPS surveys to UX research, research can help you grow your business and revenue.
But you're wasting your time if you jump into those research types without a foundational understanding of your ideal customer and what they’re trying to accomplish. You’ll end up down unhelpful or misleading paths that leave you with more questions than answers. As they say, you’ll be ‘missing the forest for the trees’.
Starting with qualitative customer interviews—conversations with your best customers about what led them to your solution in the first place and the value you’re driving for them now–is the gold standard for a reason.
Customer interviews are how you reverse engineer their experience to find and acquire more customers like them.
In this episode of the Forget the Funnel podcast, Claire and Georgiana get super tactical about the art of interviewing customers. They explain what it takes to interview well, the critical elements of a Jobs-to-Be-Done interview, and the pitfalls to avoid when you’re new to customer research.
Discussed:

• How to pick the right customers to interview and the skills that make someone a great customer interviewer so you can choose the right team member to run them.
  
• The elements of an effective Jobs-to-Be-Done style interview and questions to ask.
  
• Mistakes you should avoid in customer research, how a question script can help, and how bringing in an outside expert can be an advantage for deeper learning with the added benefit to the team.

Key Moments:
1:32—Georgiana asks Claire to clarify why you would choose customer interviews over other customer research methods. Claire shares how learning from your ideal customers is the foundational research that helps you make strategic decisions.
5:02—Claire explains how one client with a broad customer base chose the right customers to interview: They started with a survey to gather key data points and identify who had embedded a critical feature into their workflow.
9:27 - Claire explains the “unfair advantage” some of your team members may have for customer interviews: a knack for active listening and navigating unpredictability without getting flustered.
10:10 - Georgiana asks Claire to break down the elements of a Jobs-to-Be-Done-style interview, and Claire shares about guiding the customer to explain what their life looked like before they “hired” your solution.
17:21 - Claire breaks down the pitfalls to avoid if your team is new to customer research. She recommends having a question script (one you adapt as you go) or outsourcing customer interviews to an expert.
19:22—Georgiana talks about why sensing a customer’s energy makes interviewing a task that AI won’t be able to take over for humans anytime soon.
22:20—The pair finishes out the episode with their advice to founders about outsourcing customer interviews: You get the benefit of external expertise, and someone from your team can ride sidecar to upskill and do it themselves in the future.

• Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/
  
• Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/

If you’re building a racecar, friction is bad news. But when you’re building an onboarding experience for your software product, things are a little more nuanced.
This week, we’re dialing into why the pervasive push for a frictionless user experience in your product onboarding isn’t just overrated—it might be undermining your growth potential.

At some point, SaaS founders and product managers started taking for granted that friction in the user journey was always a bad thing. But that so-called “best practice” isn’t always the best because it doesn’t account for your potential customer’s context. And as we know, context is everything when it comes to their decision-making process.

In fact, your customers often *need* friction to convince them to keep using your product.

How can you tell good friction from bad to make sure your users get to key moments of value, educate your potential customers, and unveil what really matters to them?

On this episode of the Forget the Funnel podcast, Ramli John shares why “remove all friction” is a best practice we should forget. Georgiana and Claire also share why friction gets a bad rap, when to add it in or remove it, and how customer insight unlocks how to add profitable friction for your SaaS.

Discussed:

• Why “remove all friction from your product onboarding” became a best practice and why it’s not actually helpful advice.
  
• The difference between unnecessary friction and useful friction and how good friction can help users keep going in your product, including real-life examples.
  
• Why customer intel is essential to getting new users to moments of value when you’re adding and removing friction.

Key moments:

1:56 - Ramli John shares his favorite flawed best practice: “You have to remove all friction from the user journey.” This advice isn’t universal — friction can be helpful and add value to the user experience.

5:31 - Georgiana and Claire second Ramli’s take and break down what friction is, why it gets a bad rap, and why it shouldn’t (at least, not always).

8:29 - Claire describes “Exhibit A” of unnecessary friction: a lengthy demo form where sales don’t actually use all the information gathered. The questions may be intended to create a better experience, but it’s a chore to fill out — and the friction’s unhelpful.

11:47 - Georgiana walks through examples of products where friction is good, like Canva’s approach to catering the product experience and Wave asking for the user’s logo to show what an invoice would look like.

15:26 - Sometimes “best practices” are in direct conflict with what customers want, which is why customer knowledge is critical. Georgiana shares an example of how Bitly introduced friction to educate customers based on Jobs to Be Done research and the resulting use cases.

20:27 - Claire shares how it can hurt you to remove friction when you shouldn't, using an analogy from IKEA. If it’s the user’s first time using your product, you need friction to show them the steps to take based on what’s valuable to them.

24:58 - The key to avoiding bad friction is to get clear on what parts of your product matter to your best-fit customers. You have to validate that for them when they get in for the first time and keep the good friction that gets them to moments of value.

29:30 - The pair wrap up the episode by sharing how you might implement knowledge about your moments of first value with good friction that drives retention.

• Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/
  
• Check out the Forget the Funnel website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/