I’ve nerded out to over 1,000 business books. Of course, there’s the *obvious* classics like Traction, Scaling Up, and Good to Great. But there’s also this little-known, underground classic that I REFUSE to let any of my private coaching clients do without. It’s so *under the radar* that at last count, it had a whopping total of 9 Amazon reviews (all of them 5 stars by the way...)

“How’s your company doing?” It’s a simple question. Yet one that freezes so many SaaS founders in their tracks. Why? They have no freakin’ clue how to answer it. Do you mean churn? Do you mean new leads? Do you mean expansion revenue?

Back when I was growing Clarity.fm, we were getting a TON of organic traffic. At its peak, we were clocking in at over 100K unique visitors/month. Which on the surface sounds like a number worth fist-bumping over. Problem was… Barely any of those visitors were actually converting into free accounts or paid calls. About 2% to be exact. (I can’t believe I thought that was OK) And it’s not like the leads were bad either.

“Facebook ads don’t work for B2B SaaS” Raise your hand if you’ve heard that one before (or have been the one to say it). I hear some spin on that one multiple times per week. Usually from a jaded SaaS founder who went “all in” with Facebook only to burn through their Amex card with nothing but a stack of air miles to show for it. There’s a reason that Facebook is such a polarizing channel in the SaaS world.

Nothing makes me facepalm harder than getting an email from a SaaS company with a subject line that says… “Dan, your free trial is about to expire” *grabs an ice pack for my aching forehead* If you’re using email marketing as a notification tool (and not as a 24/7 salesperson who doesn’t take holidays or call in sick after a Black Mirror binge fest)...

A Mclaren F1 tops out at about 650 hp. A “street legal” Camry screams its way to 200. Both have engines. Both have 4 wheels. Both are technically “cars”. So what accounts for the difference in velocity? Simple:

25%. That’s the magic number you gotta obsess over. At least when it comes to your trial to paid conversions. If you’ve yet to have a virtual drink clink with your team for hitting that benchmark…

I was recently working with a SaaS Academy client who had a serious churn problem. So serious that he was letting 18% of his accounts disappear without a fight. Couple that with skyhigh acquisition costs and flatlining expansion revenue… and let’s just say that this company was playing with some serious fire. “Scale” wasn’t a word you could use with a straight face. Make no mistake…

A SaaS Academy client recently asked me what SINGLE metric I would look at if I had to bet on the future success of a software company. It all comes down to this…

What’s your churn? If you don’t know this number, get it. Better yet, do you know why they’re churning? When I was building my company Flowtown, we had a 12% monthly churn. Not good. That meant that after only 8.3 months we had lost ALL of the customers we had worked so hard to attract & convert? Just so you know, that makes for a HORRIBLE business. Your goal should be 8% PER YEAR (for B2B SaaS)! So if you’re