Choice is more important than effort
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “ToBeSaaS” (ID: gh_66062ec0961b ) , author Dai Ke.
I. T OB’s business difficulties
If counting from the “SaaS first year” of 2012, ToB in China has gone through seven or eight years. During this period, the US SaaS company has created a market value of nearly one trillion US dollars; and there is no domestic SaaS company in the real sense that has been listed or acquired at a high price.
There are many explanations for this question. Generally speaking, SaaS is too difficult in the Chinese enterprise environment, and I deeply believe it.
I did n’t understand until I talked to my American counterparts. In fact, it ’s hard to do SaaS in the United States, even harder than us.
It turned out that the US SaaS entered a stock market, and the industry’s market saturation was so high that there was almost no gap. On the one hand, SaaS startups have to look for opportunities in market gaps (segmentation of business); at the same time, they have to go to hard and software giants and fight for customers, nibble and replace the systems that customers have deployed and used, and have no courage to think about it.
After the success, SaaS companies are also rare and stable. Slack, with a market value of 20 billion US dollars, is also fighting against Microsoft Teams.
Even under these conditions, the gap between us and the United States in the SaaS field has not only narrowed, but has become wider.
Why has the US made SaaS a high-return business, while domestic ToB companies are still wandering around looking for mobile phones?
Two, ToB on the air outlet is actually a fake business
As ToC tuyere pigs fall, tuyere theory begins to spread to ToB. Because ToB is also considered a pig that can take off under the capital wind, ToB does not need to consider what business to start. In other words, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you do, as long as you take the SaaS outlet and tie up your entrepreneurial feelings, your business will open.
Apart from burning money and continuously changing business direction, the entire SaaS field has not achieved substantial development; instead, the more money it brings in, the farther it goes, and it is the advertising industry that makes a lot of money.
Maybe the purpose of fake business is just for financing and enclosing land. However, enclosing land in the ToB field is a trouble. The business loses its first-mover advantage without landing and can only be maintained by continuously burning money.
The tuyere did not want to understand: ToB does not have the Internet effect like ToC. From the accumulation of customers to the growth of revenue, it can’t be solved quickly by throwing money.
From the beginning, this business logic did not consider the principle of supply and demand in the industry market, let alone the closed loop of business. If ToB is not a business, it is also a wonderful business.
3. Can the “track” save ToB’s business?
Although domestic ToB flying pigs did not fly, in the past few years, dozens of SaaS companies in the United States have been IPO or acquired at high prices.
Oh, it wasn’t a blast, it was because the “track” was not selected. Capital changed from the original “gambling outlet” to “gambling track”.
This is indeed an improvement from a business perspective, and at least the track theory has begun to spend more time thinking about the question of “what business”.
So, what we have in the US SaaS, we will benchmark: CRM, HCM, market intelligence, team collaboration, enterprise cloud disk, travel expense control, fiscal and tax services, E-Signature …
These tracks ran down and found that these businesses are still difficult to do; whether the benchmark business is a “right business” has not yet been verified by the business.
The track theory is easy to mislead: The success of the ToB business is related to the track, that is, success must be wagered on the track; this is actually a variant of the air outlet theory.
We have seen SaaS companies in the United States. From the first few tracks to the current SaaS companies that have been distributed on countless tracks. This shows from one side: SaaS company’s success has nothing to do with the track.
The track corresponds to a business direction of the enterprise. From a business perspective, the track is a matter of business choice. To put it plainly, it is to think about what to sell first.
Fourth, let ToB return to the essence of business
We usually think that the product is not good enough, and the business is blocked everywhere. This really needs to think about it: is it a problem of the product itself, or is it a problem of market demand in the enterprise? Corresponding to business: Is it difficult to sell something because of quality problems, or is it that no one needs it at all?
ToB product experience problems generally do not affect customer purchases; it is most likely a product-market fit (PMF: Product-Market Fit) problem, which causes customers to consider it optional or not.
For the SaaS products coming from the benchmark, it must be the market demand of the ToB industry in Europe and the United States; but the domestic market demand of ToB companies is not exactly the same as that in Europe and the United States, at least not completely fit.
Taking the earliest CRM as the benchmark, European and American companies have strict requirements on sales specifications, transaction compliance, risk control, and financial data. Therefore, a system of CRM is required; and the main role given to CRM in China is sales. And manage sales. In Europe and the United States, CRM is a company that needs to be deployed; domestic companies that do CRM may not use it well.
This example shows that for European and American SaaS, not only PMF is established, “enterpriseThe business logic is that the industry is the user.
If a domestic company buys a piece of software for the company, it is possible that no one other than the CIO will catch a cold and there is no user. If the purchase logic of this enterprise is not established, it will be difficult to sell directly. Of course, ToB business is not easy to do.
Whether PMF is completely applicable to ToB is also worth investigating: For consumer products, the market boundary range and positioning are easy to determine. For ToB, Market is a complex business structure that contains many well-defined unit businesses. Your product can only fit with one of them; this makes PMF, although the general direction is correct, it is difficult to achieve accurate fit.
The rise of product-user fit (PUF) in the product field has greatly improved the ToB applicability of PMF. PUF cannot be simply understood as the personalization of what users want; it is the boundary definition process from a few users who have this demand to a large number of users who have this need.
PUF in the ToB field is literally translated as the product fits with the user. What I really want to express is the fit between the product and the user’s business. In this way, “the choice of what to do” is easier to solve.
Because the user-side business has borders, rules, and definables, it is easy to see whether it is fit and to what extent fit.
ToB is essentially an ordinary business, there is no need to talk about feelings and concepts; let alone expect your business or product to “explode”. That is ToB’s delusion.
As with all businesses, a basic business must answer two questions: why did you choose it over others? What are your unique advantages in doing it well?
Choice is more important than hard work. This phrase is very applicable to ToB; because only the right ToB business can grow.
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