Lean Sales Forecasting for 
your SaaS Business

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Lean-Case Workshops are a much better way than Excel to give SaaS companies the numbers and metrics which they want

The Relevance of Unit Economics impacts every SaaS business

Key Question "Is Customer Lifetime Value higher than Cost of Customer Acquisition?" is rarely addressed

Michael B. Gilroy

Michael B. Gilroy
Canaan Partners VC

One of the most common oversights of a seed stage company (or an innovation project) is not thinking about unit economics at the early stages of their business. Far too frequently we see strong founding teams raise a seed and unfortunately fail to close an A-round because unit economics never came close to working even though they thought they actually were working. These situations are avoidable, and simply require some conversation around the unit economics framework and theory.

... but Business Case Dilemma prevails  ....

Creating the next error-prone spreadsheet only adds to the chaos. 
How to make good decisions based on bad models?

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Bad Business Decisions – No Useful Insights ...Significant Time and Money Wasted ...

... and Lean-Canvas and Design Thinking do not provide any guidance

Methodologies surrender to the complexity of business models and accept Excel dominance

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This is why we built Lean-Case

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It gives SaaS Businesses the ability to quickly model and simulate different SaaS scenarios – accurately and precisely – and present the metrics in a decision maker friendly format.

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The Standard for Business Plannning

I have been extremely impressed at how Lean-Case has allowed the team to deliver highest quality efficiently across a wide variety of business cases in a very short time.Lean-Case will become our standard tool for business planning.

Jürgen Eckel Partner and Managing Director - BCG Digital Ventures, Berlin

Make Planning part of your SaaS Business

Lean-Case combines methodology, expertise, access to benchmarks in an innovative service

CREATE YOUR CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MODEL ...

 AND 

... TURN IT INTO A LEAN-CASE FINANCIAL MODEL

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Let's understand your Customer Lifecycle Model

  • How do you create leads?
  • How do you turn leads into customers?
  • How do you grow your customer bas
  • What are the key metrics at every transition?
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With benchmarks at hand, let's convert it into a Lean-Case project capturing all stages

  • conversion and churn rates between the stages
  • time delays for conversions
  • expected volumes and related cost

Create your Lean-Case in a 3-step process

Faster than spreadsheets, higher chances of project funding, reusable in the future

Briefing and Preparation

Understand status of your SaaS Approach

  • Objectives and scope
  • Concepts, business models, headcount plans, ...
  • Assumptions and Benchmarks
  • Customer Lifecycle
  • Feasibility
  • Learn More

Lean-Case Workshop

Run Interactive workshop

  • Warm-up “Metrics which Matter” incl Unit Economics
  • Review your Business Idea
  • Identify your Customer Lifecycle Model
  • Prototype your Lean-Case
  • Validate business viability
  • Learn More

Refining and Pitching

Wrap up results

  • Validate and refine gaps, assumptions and metrics
  • Clarify funding needs
  • Finalize the Lean-Case Model Create optional deliverables:
  • Sensitivities and scenarios
  • Powerpoint and Excel Pitch
  • Learn More

Briefing and Preparation – Explain your business in 2 charts

Create a Target Segment Overview and sketch the Customer Lifecycle Logic

  • TARGET SEGMENT OVERVIEW
  • Customer Lifecycle Logic
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Briefing and Preparation – Understanding your product and your sales approach

Explain your product and how you get, keep and grow your customers

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Workshop - Align on "Metrics which Matter" 

Understand the Get-Keep-Grow Cutomer Lifecycle and the related key metrics

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Workshop – Discuss Metrics and Benchmarks

Discuss Sales Forecasting Metrics and related benchmarks

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Workshop – Build your own Sales Model

Getting assumptions right – in a reasonable and pragmatic approach

To define the model, we align on

  • Stages
  • Revenue types
  • Go To Market Model

For each stage, we jointly define metrics

  • Conversion Rules and Time Delays between stages
  • Volume Metrics for Marketing, Pipeline Customers
  • Financial Metrics (Revenues, Churn, CoGS and CAC)

Lastly, we create an understanding about headcounts, indirect expense, investments and funding resources


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Workshop – Prototype and Validate your Lean-Case

Validate assumptions and business viability interactively in Lean-Case

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Refining and Pitching – Create Sales Forecast the new way

Share your Lean-Case Dashboard with your project boards & investors

Lean Case Presentation

Refining and Pitching – Create Sales Forecast the old way

Pitching the classical way with Powerpoint and Excel can be sexy and with peace of mind

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Much wiser decisions

In using Lean-Case for our innovation services, we understand the realistic revenue levers and cost drivers much better. What a joy compared to any Excel work! Our financial decisions are much wiser now, our risk of taking bad decisions has decreased significantly.

Ralph Meister COO, Sodexo Germany
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For any startup portfolio

Really enjoyed working with Lean-Case and our latest cohort. A very useful set of tools to help build robust and defensible financial models. Highly recommended for any startup portfolio!

Alex Wrottesley Head of Geovation Accelerator, London
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Loved by Corporate Investors

With Lean-Case, we created a revenue focused, transparent and logical financial plan for our follow up round. Highly professional, super efficient and loved by our corporate investors.

Elmar Eperiesi-Beck CEO & Founder - eperi Software
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Finally Realic Models

Modeling the dynamics of a Customer Lifefycle with conversion rates and time delays in Excel is a nightmare. However, often this is only way to create realistic model. With Lean-Case, we can run customer workshops and visualize the lifecycle online. Our customers are impressed and love our business focus.

Peter Seipp Managing Partner - Atlas Management System
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The Standard for Business Plannning

I have been extremely impressed at how Lean-Case has allowed the team to deliver highest quality efficiently across a wide variety of business cases in a very short time.Lean-Case will become our standard tool for business planning.

Jürgen Eckel Partner and Managing Director - BCG Digital Ventures, Berlin
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Back-of-the-Envelope

Every day, our partners and employees come up with more ideas for product features or innovation projects. With Lean-Case, I can easily create a realistic back-of-the-envelope case for those. We visualize revenue potential and assess business viability in no-time. Our business units and partners love this approach - business focused and collaborative.

Will Bruce VP Controlling - Sage
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Moving to SaaS - A no brainer

We are working with Lean-Case to move our clients from Software Licence to SaaS Business Models. We can compare the models and identify the critical revenue and cash flow gaps. Lean-Case is a must for every Innovation Consultant.

Robert Urban Managing Director - Cloud Partners Consulting
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