SaaS Feedback Lifecycle: Listen to all. Act only on consensus.

By Katie Burns

Aug 01 2019

Even experienced leaders can easily forget that one voice shouldn’t drive change.

I try and write from recent inspiration and this post is far from an exception. Over the last few weeks, several of the CEOs we work with have all reinforced the problem of the lone voice driving change, which is a symptom of mismanagement of the SaaS feedback lifecycle. These are experienced business leaders who know better but can still get caught up in reacting to a single opinion. And it’s prevalent across disciplines too, with my recent experiences including salesmarketingproduct road mapping, investor relations, and customer success.

SaaS companies that react to lone voices can have a hard time staying a course. They may also have fractured identities resulting from too many cooks in the kitchen. Mismanagement of the SaaS feedback lifecycle often manifests in product roadmaps that cater to a customer’s perspective rather than market need. This is probably most common in startups who listen to whale customers more than the market.

LISTENING AND ACTING ARE DIFFERENT

In SaaS, listening to feedback is critical to rapid iteration and growth. So we’re conditioned to listen to everything. We set up systems and processes to capture as much market feedback as we can — from prospects, from customers, from employees, from investors, from advisors, and so on. That’s perfect. We need to listen to everything. That’s easy.

But disseminating and acting on what we hear needs to be more discerning. This is where the SaaS feedback lifecycle gets dicey, even for seasoned pros. It can be hard not to act on a single voice, especially if we’re fragile on the topic, or nascent in our thinking. We get an input, perhaps from a very respected source, and we’re prone to execute against that perspective. But if it’s still only one, let’s think about how to validate that a bit more before acting.

THINK LIKE A JOURNALIST

The college for my advertising major at the University of Florida was journalism. So my core classes, before I got into my major, were journalism. Fact checking is the most basic of journalistic principles. If you can’t validate a fact with an additional source, it’s not a fact. We can apply that same standard to feedback we get.

If the lone voice is validated, by at least one, preferably two additional sources, then and only then is it worthy of consideration for action.

EVEN SURFACING THE LONE VOICE CAN BE DISRUPTIVE

One thing it feels like we’re often reluctant to say — because it feels blasphemous — is that feedback can be just plain wrong. You can hear something from a lone voice and capture it. But if that voice automatically gets elevated in a staff@ message it gets credibility. If it’s wrong, it just planted a bad seed. So even widely disseminating all feedback can be disruptive. It’s about considering your audience. The leadership team should be able to handle everything. But to share everything with everyone in the company can be confusing and distracting. I’m all about transparency, but we need to strategically guide our organization through curation.

Three Rules of the SaaS Feedback Lifecycle

To summarize, I like to think about the SaaS feedback lifecycle in the following three stages.

1. LISTEN TO EVERYTHING

Methodically capture feedback from everywhere.

2. CURATE BEFORE SURFACING

Validate perspectives against your strategy and point of view before sharing with the whole company. Share everything with leadership, if you like.

3. CORROBORATE BEFORE ACTING

If you hear a voice that you respect, work to reinforce it before acting. Look for more than two aligned perspectives prior to even considering a change.

Why does this matter?

OPPORTUNITY COSTS OF LONE VOICE REACTIONS

The bottom line is that acting on lone voices wastes resources on small opportunities rather than large ones. Since we’re in the business of executing against massive growth, that’s a path to mediocrity that we can’t afford to take.

Content by Beacon9 SaaS Business Advisory

Related Posts

The Power of SaaS Storytelling Versus Storymaking

Jul 18 2019

A lot of SaaS marketing is made up. The best marketing is not. And the reasons for that may be way deeper than you think. Yes, this is another post espousing the value of authenticity in SaaS marketing. But it’s much more than that. Storytelling in tech marketing is critical because what we’re marketing is often […]

Read More…

5 Takeaways From ’17 Reasons Your Company is Not Investment Grade’

Feb 22 2019

This past Wednesday, SaaSOptics hosted a fantastic conversational webinar with SaaSOptics’ Tim McCormick and Founders Advisors Managing Director and recurring Silicon Y’all mentor Zane Tarence. This 1-hour webinar focused on the 17 top reasons SaaS companies are not investment grade, and consisted of Tarence and McCormick swapping sage advice on overcoming each of the pitfalls mentioned.It can be hard to summarize a presentation this […]

Read More…

The Power of Employee Incentives

Jul 30 2019

At our recent Silicon Y’all SaaS and Digital Media Summit, Matt Hamilton of Summit Partners shared insight into employee incentives as a great method of motivating employees to achieve desired business results. There are various types of incentives, each with its own unique way of influencing employee behavior. When used effectively, these incentives can have […]

Read More…