SaaSiest Diaries Case Study

A heart-to-heart with Membrain

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In a fiercely competitive industry, the gentlemen over at SaaSiest are modern day Robin Hoods, challenging the monopoly on knowledge with their vision of democratizing B2B SaaS knowledge. Unlike Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity, Daniel and Thomas work in harmony with those that possess valuable knowledge. It’s this spirit of collaboration and paying-it-forward that has led to a thriving community of B2B SaaS professionals that flock annually to SaaSiest - the biggest “meetup” in the Nordics. 

In keeping with their authenticity, Daniel and Thomas want to take you behind the scenes of their operation and share from their heart what it’s been like to hunt for and implement SaaSiest’s very first CRM.  

It was our honor to interview these wonderful guys. Enjoy. 

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We are big Membrain fans. Since the most important aspect of a CRM for a community based operation like ours is managing contacts, you could say that Membrain is the heart of our operation.
Thomas Sjöberg, Co-founder, SaaSiest
Sparks Fly



Sparks Fly

Entry 1

When the podcast Thomas and Daniel had started as a hobby project quickly evolved into a substantial business, it became obvious they’d need a CRM to help stay on top of managing their fast-growing community. With decades of sales experience to pull from, the guys definitely knew what kind of tool they needed. But after discarding the major players in the arena, the perfect match didn't show up until they met Membrain’s CEO, George at SaaSiest 2022.

Upon testing Membrain, it became evident that its superior user experience would enable these ambitious men to navigate their daily operations at a faster pace. As a small but quickly growing business, eliminating significant pain points - such as the frustration of excessive clicks that often plagues other systems, was crucial. 

SaaSiest-Thomas-och-Daniel-002-1

 

It's about saving that extra click. Because in many systems it's so annoying. You want to do a little thing, and then you click, click, and you need to click again. In Membrain, what I think is amazing is, the user interface allows you to do a lot of things with just one click. And since you're using it all the time it makes all the difference. 
Thomas Sjöberg
Swiping Right



Swiping Right

Entry 2

The Solution

The Challenge

With a community-based operation like theirs, the most important function of their ideal CRM was effective management of people. Whether that’s sending the right email to the right person at the right time or tracking interactions, they needed help effectively managing the thousands of relationships in their community. 

For these event gurus, the data captured from their different types of events, collaborations, podcast participation and executive network memberships was overwhelming before Membrain. Listing around 100 formal sales opportunities annually, it became impossible to know who attended what and how to tailor their communication to specific demographics and interests.

The Criteria

When implementing major changes to account management or refining the master flow, they wanted the power to control their future narrative and felt Membrain's intuitive design allowed them to effortlessly twist and turn and adjust master fields without breaking anything.

"This autonomy was a deciding factor for us," stated Daniel, "as flexibility was a key requirement."

Although they were SaaStified that their main criteria of flexibility and intuitive design was met, it was Membrain’s attentive customer service that sealed the deal for them.

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“We’re a small shop and it was important for us to get the support we needed to grow quickly. It's important in a new relationship that you feel seen and recognized. Whenever we reached out and asked a question we got an answer. You guys are there.”

Daniel Nackovski, Co-Founder, SaaSiest
Wedded Bliss



Wedded Bliss

Entry #3

Set Up

Transitioning from Google Sheets to a CRM like Membrain was incredibly easy, as they were able to make adjustments independently, without external consultant interventions. With only one other full time employee outside of Thomas and Daniel, the 2 minute Loom video they created for Filip made his onboarding a breeze. 

They didn't need any implementation help, because they knew what fields and values they wanted. "The intuitive design and flexibility made adding things in the data model a few times a month really easy," according to Thomas.

Despite wearing many hats, Thomas and Philip live in the back end, setting up labels and fields, so Daniel can do what he does best and more efficiently manage the sales projects on the front end. 

Productivity

With their main goal of improving productivity, Daniel was happy to learn that Membrain wasn't asking him to go through 58 steps to get something done.

Even though they had set up Membrain to streamline lead tracking, but they quickly fell in love with its ability to personalize communication capabilities. 

On top of the personalization features, Membrain makes it really easy to build relationships by tracking things like SaaSiest attendance. Now, the guys can avoid awkward encounters by using Membrain as a “cheat sheet” of data on attendees. 

KPIS

KPIs are a crucial focus for SaaSiest, with closed deals being their primary metric due to resource limitations. While they don't track metrics like progression rate or touchpoints per deal, they do track whether they have complete contact information such as LinkedIn URLs, emails, and categorization by industry and country. 

Thomas believes, "having a single source of truth for all the member data gathered in one place", really empowers their outreach efforts.

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Since we manage the people in the community through Membrain, it’s vital to be able to slice and dice our communication in the right way. Whether its one-to-one or group outreach, Membrain’s personalization features makes this really easy to do. It also saves us a lot of time.
Thomas Sjöberg, Co-Founder, SaaSiest
The Outcome

An Unexpected Perk

As a storied revenue leader, Daniel is no stranger to the universal fact that salespeople hate to log their data into a CRM. He believes the key to motivation is providing them with a smooth and intuitive interface.

Thomas can attest to this because what motivates him to log sales opportunities and close them, is to see them reflected in the dashboard as revenue from year to year. 

Daniel

Instead of feeling like ‘Oh my God, don’t force me to do this admin work’, Membrain motivates me to log my data. They’ve done a good job of almost gamifying the act of logging data, by making the reward worth it. Now I can see which deals I need to focus on and I get friendly reminders about following up on cold accounts.
Daniel Nackovski
Better Together



Better Together

Entry #4

Daniel and Thomas are eager to tap into the deeper data insights Membrain offers. While Daniel yearns to let go of his time-consuming system of scouring his notes for contract dates to identify any trends, Thomas is tired of guessing how their business compares from year to year. Membrain’s power user features they’d like leverage:

  • Identify any types of sponsorship cycles between SaaSiest years 
  • Analyze sales volumes and contracts 
  • Assess efficiency and pace of their operation compared to previous years
  • See more demographic and audience segmentation data from their events

Accessing deeper trends and insights through Membrain’s dashboards will allow them to answer questions such as:

  • Is this a Nordic B2B SaaS Company?
  • Is this an agency or an investor?
  • Are we closing faster or slower? 
  • Are we ahead or behind schedule?

Despite having a modest 20 sponsors at their latest Malmö event, these types of instant data insights are how businesses trying to compete in the B2B tech space get ahead.

In a small three-person business aiming to scale, time is a precious commodity for learning new technology. Fortunately, Membrain's support specialists heard this cry for help and helped the guys get these trend flows set up before you could say Bob's your uncle. 

One thing that would ease my mind is the ability to easily analyze data, such as the number of closed booths or sponsorship amounts on specific dates like the 14th of February across different years. Right now I have to manually look up my notes to see when contracts were signed. 
Daniel Nackovski
Advice



Advice

Entry #5

Their advice to those considering Membrain is straightforward: prioritize data logging. Thomas suggests giving it a test run to explore and see if it's the right fit while Daniel believes the power of Membrain lies in how you use it.

He says to get the most out of Membrain, make sure you set up clear frameworks and user expectations to ensure consistent data entry.

Looking ahead, they envision expanding their business with more events and offerings, focusing on automation rather than hiring additional staff. 

Now that they have found a tool to keep the heart of their operation beating strong, get ready for a bigger and better SaaSiest.

Saasiest guys

 

Here's my advice: log everything. It's tempting to make exceptions for what seems irrelevant, but every detail matters. Log the meetings that didn't happen, or the ones that shifted. Eventually, you'll leverage this data to gain insights. People might forget touchpoints that didn't go their way, but every interaction holds value. So, log, log, log. 
Daniel Nackovski
What's Next
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I believe Membrain’s secret is that it’s built by people passionate about sales. This really shines through in how easy it is to make things run smoother and save clicks.
Thomas Sjöberg, SaaSiest

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