The art of building successful saas partner programs

Typeform integrations

Typeform’s integrations are in a word: excellent. With Typeform, you can easily take the data collected from your Typeform and get it where you need it.

Here are some of the popular software that Typeform directly integrates with:

• Mailchimp
• Calendly
• HubSpot
• Klaviyo
• Asana
• ClickUp
• ActiveCampaign
• Salesforce
• Google Sheets

Check out Typeform’s full library of integrations here.

In addition to all of the native integrations that Typeform offers, you can pipe data to other applications using Zapier. From there, you can perform data analysis of your survey results or trigger marketing automation based on Typeform submissions.

Because Typeform integrates with a wide variety of popular applications and offers many native integrations, it makes it easy to get your data to the right place.

When you use Typeform, you can easily collect data and get it where you need it.

How Do I Establish Goals and Mechanisms For My Partner Program?

At a high level, the goal of your partner program should be to generate customers through this new channel (at least) as effectively as your internal sales efforts. To achieve this, you’ll also need to be ready to track the same key metrics in your partner program as you do in your direct efforts (CLV, CAC, payback period, etc.).

Depending on the size and complexity of your partner program, you might want to hire a partner manager, invest in a tiered partner relationship platform like PartnerStack or both. For smaller, co-marketing or affiliate partner programs, you might not need something so robust.

The primary mechanism used to create a partner program must be a model that can be easily communicated to your channel partners and empower them to be working advocates for your product and brand, and rewarded as your company grows (while helping them grow their own).

This way, you can reach their networks as a trusted source and lower your cost of acquisition. If your resellers offer services that complement your platform, your partnership will also act as an outsourced customer success engine.

However, you need to determine internal figures before setting goals for the partner program. Assess your current business performance. Look at past data to understand your growth patterns and forecast based on those goals.

When you’re just starting out, don’t count on the success of your partner program. The infancy of your partner program is not a time to set goals that could make or break your business, but rather a time to start collecting data and creating benchmarks for your program in the future. As it becomes more robust and begins contributing more predictable revenue, then you can start forecasting partner goals for the future.

How Do I Compensate My Partners For Their Involvement?

For the program to be successful, you’ll need to have a clear financial model built out to compensate your agency partners. This model should be built based on your business’s growth goals and align with your direct marketing and sales teams. This way, the partner program is being compared against the same metrics used across the organization.

It’s important to dabble in low-barrier monetary incentives before you implement a full-blown reseller program. For example, if a partner drives a lead to your website and that deal later closes, you could reward them with a flat rate of $200 or a revenue share percentage.

The best part is, these kinds of incentives don’t need to be restricted to your partner network. You could offer gift cards for customer referrals or affiliate companies to generate demand and interest in your partner program as it grows.

How to promote your pre-ordering offer

The whole point of pre-selling your SaaS is to see if there’s any demand for your product, despite it not being ready or even built. So now you’ve set yourself up to be open for pre-orders — it’s time to get the word out there.

This step requires an essay of its own, where I go in-depth about it, but in here I’ll address the big picture.

Everything I explained so far, whether I pointed it out directly or not, was meant to put you in a better position to be «lucky» or successful. Take the «address objections» step: that is an effort to de-risk your business.

What I think you could do to put yourself in a better position to succeed, when it comes to promoting your SaaS business, is to build it with a philosophy.

If you build it with a philosophy, you can write that philosophy down — and it will speak to people who share it. In a sense, this is what major political movements (healthy and unhealthy) do: they set a philosophy and then they have a «call to arms».

Take Stripe for example, since we’ve mentioned them earlier: their call to arms is «We’re increasing the GDP of the internet» — it makes sense, it benefits the world, and it benefits them.

I’m probably not paraphrasing their philosophy correctly, but here’s what’s valuable: I remember some of it. What’s Gmail’s philosophy? What’s Outlook’s?

Not only it’s easier for you to build software if you have a philosophy, but it’s also easier to promote it: the opinions will be more divided, but love doesn’t come without hate. It’s either love+hate or boringness.

1. Build software with a philosophy
2. Write down that philosophy
3. Write about the problems that people with this philosophy will encounter (which is probably what you’ve encountered as well, if you’re part of the audience of your SaaS tool). This is all back to the website plan: articulate a problem, press down on the wound, implicitly promise a better solution (and obviously, aim to deliver)
4. Educate people on what else they can do to fix these problems that this philosophy entails (e.g. good email means less time spent on email OR the internet GDP’s should increase), regardless of whether you recommend your product or not.

This step also ties in with the public persona argument: do this through tweets, blog posts, videos, podcasts — whatever is within your area of do-ability. This, in turn, shows that you’re serious and builds up credibility.

The information in this step is scarce and only top-level, but it should point you in the right direction, so that this guide doesn’t leave you butt-naked with no clue on what to do next. I will, however, address this whole topic in a separate essay.

Typeform alternatives

While an industry leader, Typeform is not without competition.

There are a number of alternative software that provide similar functionality if you’re looking for a form builder or quiz software. Some of these alternative applications include Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and Jotform.

Typeform vs. Google Forms

Google Forms has the advantage of being free with a Google Workspace subscription, and the software is structured more like a traditional survey. If all you need is to create forms and collect data from respondents, Google Forms might be a good option.

However, if you want a more visually pleasing experience, Typeform allows you to create much more engaging surveys.

Typeform vs. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a popular polling software that focuses on helping users with creating surveys with ease. SurveyMonkey is better suited to enterprises and large organizations that need to collect a huge volume of survey data.

While SurveyMonkey has a robust set of tools that make it a great fit for Enterprise, Typeform wins when it comes to user experience.

Typeform vs. Jotform

If you’re looking for a form builder with more features than the free version of Typeform, Jotform is a good alternative.

Jotform and Typeform are both software that allow you to create surveys, questionnaires, and other forms. They both have a wide range of features, but there are some key differences.

Generally speaking, Typeform is more user-friendly, but Jotform’s pricing is much more affordable. If you’re willing to put in a bit more effort to get over the learning curve, then Jotform is a great alternative to Typeform.

Recurring revenue

The benefits of SaaS are well understood. Building a company around recurring revenue versus one-off or infrequent purchases creates a healthier business model, given that it’s less reliant on new sales. By 2023, Gartner has predicted that 75% of all direct-to-consumer companies will offer subscription services, but only one-fifth of those will “succeed in increasing customer retention.”

Thus, reducing churn and keeping customers is important for any SaaS business to thrive. This is why Paddle’s report identifies the “outliers” from its survey — that is, software companies that “continued to thrive through the slowdown.”

Specifically, the report points to three core “growth levers” that are shared by the most successful SaaS companies. One of those constitutes embracing new growth models, which includes exploring a more dynamic pricing ethos — 40% of companies that regularly change their pricing reported a 25% higher increase in annual recurring revenue versus those that didn’t. And the survey also found that 20% of companies haven’t changed their pricing in the past five years.

Without experimenting on prices, companies — particularly those in the early-stages of their journey — are more likely to undercharge for their product, or simply miss the mark on their product’s true value. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all SaaS model, which is why businesses need to play around with their pricing and figure out what gets maximum revenue with minimal churn.

According to the report, the most popular SaaS pricing structure among those surveyed was tiered pricing, which is usually something like “basic,” “business,” and “enterprise,” with each tier offering incrementally more features.

What is your pricing model? Tiered pricing leads the way.

But companies probably don’t want to pay for software that they rarely use. And if they end up using the software more than they anticipated, they may end up getting saddled with so-called “overage” penalties for exceeding a pre-agreed limit. This is why consumption or “usage-based pricing” has grown in popularity in the SaaS sphere — it makes more sense that a company pays for what they’re actually using, rather than a set monthly or per-seat fee that may have extra “hidden” costs.

Just a few weeks ago, a usage-based billing platform called M3ter exited stealth with $17.5 million in funding, with the promise of a metered pricing engine that helps SaaS companies work around the “operational headaches” of consumption pricing. Paddle, in fact, was a launch partner, integrating M3ter into its own product in recognition of the fact that its customers might want to dabble with different pricing models.

What Are SaaS Sales?

Salespeople are everywhere. From cars to real estate, even the cell phone you might be browsing on as we speak. However, these are physical products. The sales strategies in place for products like these vary drastically from those used in selling SaaS products.

So how do SaaS sales stand out from the crowd?

SaaS Sales Definition

To put it as simple as it gets, SaaS sales are all about getting your SaaS products or services into the hands of your leads generated from your SaaS marketing strategy.

Similar to SaaS marketing, SaaS sales present their own list of challenges to overcome. Simply knowing what SaaS sales are isn’t enough to be successful in converting those leads into paying customers. Even those companies who have found great success in SaaS marketing their services can tell you that. After your marketing strategies have brought a lead to the buying table, it’s up to the sales team to convert that lead.

SaaS Marketing	SaaS Sales
Identifies target market	Turns leads into customers
Creates inbound or outbound strategy	Upsells where possible to maximize revenue
Generates potential leads	Follows up with paying customers

Success in SaaS sales is all about demonstrating the value your service can provide the customer if nothing else.

Take Airbnb, for example. They went from selling cereal based on the 2008 presidential election to fund their startup to a company valued at over 30 billion dollars. They didn’t accomplish this by slacking in the sales department!

SaaS Sales vs. Regular Sales

As you already know, SaaS sales differ greatly from regular product sales. It’s nothing like selling a used car at a car lot!

Regular Product Sales	SaaS Sales
Don’t usually have a trial period	Rely on trial periods to convert
Typically one and done sale	Lifetime customers
Little to no upsell potential	Huge revenue boost from upselling

Understanding the key differences between the two and capitalizing on the advantages of selling a service rather than a physical product is what will boost your revenue to the next level.

For example, while many salesmen who sell products that are one-off sales typically don’t follow up with their customers, the follow-up is vital to SaaS sales. Especially during the trial phase when your prospect is deciding whether or not to upgrade to the full version!

Getting started selling SaaS

You’ve got your fundamentals down — a well-defined sales process and a realistic sales cycle. Now what? 

You’ll need to choose a SaaS sales model. 

A SaaS business model will help you decide how many people you need to hire, how you’ll progress customers down your sales funnel and the steps needed for your company to evolve. 

There are 3 SaaS sales models you can choose from: 

1. Self-service model

A self-service sales model works best when your team is small and your average selling price is low because it’s more affordable and a good option for selling lower-priced SaaS at a higher volume. This model uses free trials to encourage users to sign up without the help of a sales rep. 

If you’d like to incorporate the self-service model, you’ll utilise B2B marketing to promote your solution and its value. 

2. Transactional sales model

A transactional model is the most common sales model as it’s the most scalable. The SaaS solution is normally higher with a larger sales team to encourage a more personalised selling approach. Outbound lead generation teams will reach out to small and medium-sized businesses to encourage a sale on a tiered pricing model. 

If you’d like to include a transactional model as part of your sales strategy then you’ll need an aligned sales and marketing team, provide in-depth SaaS sales training and encourage discounts to convert more hot leads.

3. Enterprise sales model

The third and final model is enterprise SaaS sales. This model is the most expensive and requires the most customisation and sales support. There are more than your average amount of decision-makers resulting in a longer SaaS sales funnel but the incoming revenue is well worth it. 

If you want to include an enterprise sales model in your SaaS business then you’ll need your product marketers, salespeople, accountants and engineers to be aligned for better customer service, better client relationships, more signed contracts and invoices sent. In other words, you’ll need a whole RevOps team to ensure a streamlined selling process. 

If you’re looking to move into a new market model, you’ll want to look into how to set revenue projections and targets that work with a go-to-market strategy. Press ️ for advice from sales leaders at Cognism and Bombora.

Address objections

All these steps you’ve done so far line up the purchase process for your pre-orders. Everything should be working, assuming people know you and they trust you.

But most people don’t know you nor do they trust you. So what do we do? Aid these problems as much as possible. To do that, what you’ll want to do is think of, and then address objections.

How you do that will be up to you, since you’ll know your audience better than I do, but I can tell you what I did for mine.

Write an FAQ

Write this FAQ and as soon as a question arises from your prospective customers more than a few times, add that answer (along with the question) in the FAQ. Feel free to draw inspiration from the two ways I’ve done it, along with the questions and the answer themselves, if you feel they help.

Have a public persona

If you’ve got a public persona, it’s time to make use of it.

If you don’t, start building that now.

What I mean by a public persona is essentially anything you’ve done publicly in the last years that can bring authenticity to who you are. Whether you’ve been:

• Writing
• Pushing repos on GitHub for X years
• Writing open-source software
• Tweeting relevant stuff for the industry
• Making videos
• Recording podcast/s
• Answering on Quora
• Whatever else helps people and is public. Bonus points if it’s for the good of the world

— all of these can help prove the fact that you’re not looking to scam folks. It’s not a guarantee, yes, but at least you’ve got your reputation on the line.

If that’s not the case, you can start building it now. How— that may be for another post.

What do you do with your public persona? It will depend on how to position your SaaS, but here are two ways:

1. For me personally, I’ve embedded my public persona in what I do. My name’s on the line.
2. When it comes to others, I’ve seen indie developers take credit for the very SaaS they’re making — sometimes even on the homepage. With a header like «Who made <<Acme SaaS Product>>?», they show a glimpse of who they are, along with links towards their… you guessed it — their public persona.

Social proof

If you know anyone else with a public persona that can vouch for you in some way, make use of the social proof. SaaS companies do that but… you can make use of that as well.

Anything else that you can think of which discreetly says «I won’t just run with your money»

If the public persona is not strong enough, anything else you can think of — make use of it. Perhaps writing alone, if it’s done for a serious period of time, contributes enough so that there won’t be a need for anything else. Maybe a semi-popular open source project gets you the authenticity you need. Perhaps you wrote in a certain publication/magazine.

But regardless of what you do to make use of your public persona, the point is to just prove that you’re not a random who will run away with their money.

Frequently asked questions about Typeform

How good is Typeform?

Typeform is a great tool and it’s earned a high recommendation from me. It’s one of the best form-building and survey-taking applications on the market, and a solid choice for most businesses.

What do people use Typeform for?

Typeform is computer software that has various applications in different industries. Here are some ways people use Typeform:

Lead gen: For lead generation of target audience with little upfront cost to the company so they can get data on their customer.

Business surveys: To find out what customers think about products or services your company offers and to measure customer satisfaction.

Content marketing: To supplement your content marketing efforts with data collection from your audience that you can use to create more engaging content.

Customer feedback: To get feedback from customers about their experience with your product or service.

Research: For conducting research on a specific topic or population.

Is Typeform worth the money?

Most people will find the Typeform free plan too limiting. For businesses and organizations that need multiple forms to generate interest and facilitate their data collection efforts, yes, Typeform is a tool well worth the money.

Can I export my data out of Typeform?

Yes, you can export your data out of Typeform. The paid plans offer a variety of features, including the ability to collect payments, integrate with other services, and perform a data export. You can also download your data as a CSV file.

Which is better Google forms or Typeform?

Google Forms is a great option for those who are looking for a free way to create forms and surveys. It’s simple to use and has all the basic features you need. If you only need a single form, a Google form will probably do.

However, if you’re looking for more advanced features or a more visually pleasing survey experience, Typeform is a better option.

Yes, you can use Zapier to send form completions to Google Docs.

Does Typeform let you make multiple-choice quizzes?

Yes, Typeform is great for multiple-choice quizzes. By setting up a logic jump to take users to the desired result, you can set up a multiple-choice personality quiz.

Can you edit surveys with logic jumps?

Yes, on a Typeform paid plan you can use logic jumps to change surveys on the fly, customizing the experience for each person taking your survey.

Is Typeform the best form tool?

In this review, we dove into the strengths of Typeform as a form tool, quiz maker, and survey software. While it’s certainly one of the best, and I’ve concluded this review with a hearty recommendation, the best software for you will depend on your unique needs.

The Huge Benefits Of Online Surveys!

When discussing Typeform vs Google Forms, the basis is online surveys. They’re both survey tools with quality pros and some obvious cons. But why do you need online surveys for a business in 2024? These benefits are the answer.

#1: Fast & Convenient 

Online surveys are an incredibly fast way to collect quality information that can lead to effective decision-making.

Compared to the more traditional survey methods, it’s easy for your audience to use and respond to and gives them the power to respond anytime. All this doesn’t take over 10 minutes in 99% of the cases. How cool!

#2: Powerfully Accurate

With online surveys, the margin of error in collating and analyzing feedback is zero. It goes without saying that with a paper-pen survey, human error will happen.

Humans are prone to that because they lose focus when performing a repetitive task for a long time. An online survey from a quality survey tool is the only solution to this.

#3: Real-time Results 

When you’re using online surveys for survey campaigns, you can expect responses instantly to make decisions based on what the reporting dashboard shows. Online surveys give you this ability.

#4: Respondents Love It

Yes, respondents love the online comfort surveys bring. They can take surveys from their couch on a mobile device and get rewarded as soon as they submit!

Moreover, the surveys are designed in a way that takes little time to respond to while giving a top-notch user experience.

#5: Ample Features ️

Question piping, skip logic, live analytics, and so much more. No other data-gathering method can give what you get with online surveys now.

Be it market research, customer or product feedback, NPS, or employee satisfaction surveys, you get separate features if you go with the right survey tool. Whether you choose Typeform or Google Forms, it all depends on what your survey goal is.

#6: Value For Money  

Tell us, how much would a paper-pen survey campaign cost? To give a number from our experience, it costs anywhere around $500-2000 to conduct one mid-sized traditional survey campaign.

With online surveys, you can do that with a far better reach for less than $200. So, as a new business or solopreneur, you get more bang for your buck with online surveys.

Taking Your Forms Pro

And then, Typeform’s pricing is equally impressive. There’s a free tier that lets you make unlimited forms with basic features, and then there’s Pro forms that let you add logic jumps and hidden fields to forms, remove Typeform’s branding, and soon will let you collect payments via Stripe, use icons from The Noun Project and premium fonts in your forms, and more. You can pay $10/form to create pro forms that’ll let you access your form data for a month, or you can pay $20/month for unlimited pro forms. Either option is very rarely priced, but the one-time payment option is especially great if you only occasionally need to make advanced forms.

Pros and cons of using Typeform

Typeform is a darling of marketing departments that need to start creating forms and need an easy way to view all the data from respondents.

While Typeform is extremely easy to use and has many features and form tools, there are also some drawbacks to consider.

Typeform Pros:

• Typeform is very user-friendly. Surveys can be created quickly and easily, and there is no need to hire a designer or programmer.
• Typeform offers a wide range of templates and questions, making it flexible enough to use for any type of survey. You can create anything from simple questionnaires to complex forms.
• The paid plans offer a variety of features, including the ability to create custom forms, collect payments, and integrate with other services.
• Paid plans also offer additional responses, storage space, and team members.
• Typeform offers a free plan with limitations, so you can try it out before committing to paying for the software.
• Typeforms typically have high completion rates because they are more enjoyable to use than traditional forms.
• Typeform makes it very easy to get started with their new user onboarding process.

Typeform Cons:

• The free version strictly limits the total number of forms you can create, as well as the functionality that you have access to.
• The biggest disadvantage of Typeform is that it can be expensive compared to other software such as Jotform.
• If you just need to create a single form, something like Google Forms may be a better fit.
• Additionally, Typeform does not offer phone support or direct access to the support team except on the Enterprise plan, so users are reliant on the online help center and email for support.

Программного обеспечения

«Типовые формы» представляют вопросы, которые скользят вниз один за другим, показывая только один вопрос за раз, чтобы пользователи были вовлечены. и может включать изображения, гифки или видео. Инструмент включает в себя «Калькулятор», настраиваемые экраны «Спасибо», «Группы вопросов», которые позволяют добавлять вопросы в разделы или включать подвопросы, и «Логический переход», который настраивает вопросы, которые пользователь видит на основе их выбора. Форму можно встроить в веб-сайт, открыть во всплывающем окне или получить доступ через уникальный URL-адрес. Конструктор форм использует freemium Бизнес модель.

Typeform I / O был разработчиком API который создает формы на основе пользовательских данных. API позволяет пользователям создавать формы, используя код, а не традиционный инструмент Typeform. Typeform.io был автономным сервисом, не связанным с Typeform.com. Эта услуга была прекращена в начале 2018 года.

Typeform запустила платформу для разработчиков в сентябре 2017 года. Ориентированные на разработчиков API и SDK аналогичны функциональности Typeform.io, но теперь интегрированы в остальную платформу.[нужна цитата ] Разработчики могут создавать формы программно с помощью Create API, получать результаты форм с помощью Responses API или Webhooks, а также выполнять расширенное встраивание форм с помощью Embedding SDK.[нужна цитата ]