[SaaS Series] Unlocking B2B SaaS Growth Strategies With Johnny Page of SaaS Academy

Johnny Page is the CEO of SaaS Academy, where he helps B2B SaaS founders overcome challenges and grow their companies. Under his leadership, SaaS Academy has coached over 3,000 founders, significantly impacting the SaaS landscape. Johnny’s journey from being a client of SaaS Academy to its CEO is a testament to his dedication and expertise. He previously held key positions at Silvertrac and Trackforce Valiant, accumulating expertise in customer success, sales, and strategic operations.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:00] SaaS Academy and the services it provides for different growth stages
• [06:15] Johnny Page’s personal journey and the value he found in the SaaS Academy community
• [10:07] Common pitfalls in conducting SaaS product demos and strategies to improve them
• [13:21] Why a customer-success-focused approach in sales can significantly impact growth
• [17:25] The bold career move Johnny made when he joined Silvertrac as a commission-only sales rep
• [26:59] Progression through various roles at Silvertrac leading up to a successful company exit
• [32:08] Johnny shares his journey at SaaS Academy from customer success to CEO
• [39:38] Software as a Science book
• [50:10] The importance of being in a community

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how a company can quickly outgrow its competitors in the cutthroat SaaS world? Imagine a community where SaaS founders meet, sharing insights and strategies to propel each other toward success. Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?

Johnny Page, a B2B SaaS expert, shares his journey from a family security business to leading a premier coaching company for SaaS founders. He recounts his early career steps, pivotal decisions, and the critical support and advice that made him thrive. Johnny emphasizes the importance of customer success in sales and the impact of community and mentorship. He sheds light on the strategies that drive SaaS success.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Johnny Page, CEO of SaaS Academy, about maximizing SaaS business growth. Johnny talks about the services SaaS Academy offers, common pitfalls in conducting SaaS product demos and strategies to improve them, why a customer-success-focused approach in sales can significantly impact growth, and his journey at SaaS Academy.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Johnny Page on LinkedIn
• SaaS Academy
• Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without Losing Control by Dan Martell, Matt Verlaque, Johnny Page, and Marcel Petitpas

Special Mention(s):

• Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell
• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm by Verne Harnish
• Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish
• Extreme Revenue Growth: Startup Secrets to Growing Your Sales from $1 Million to $25 Million in Any Industry by Victor Cheng
• The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building by Matt Mochary, Alex MacCaw, and Misha Talavera

Related episode(s):

• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Leadership comes without a title; it’s about how you think and show up in the business every day.”
• “Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm: the better you understand your customer’s desired outcome, the more compelling you become.”
• “The best executors are those who have walked a mile in the shoes of their client or customer.”
• “Beginning with the end in mind allows for clear expectations and a focused path to achieving goals.”
• “Invest in community early on — by the time you need strong support, it’s vital to have already built that network.”

Action Steps:

1. Embrace the customer-success-focused sales approach: Understanding customer needs and building trust is crucial for repeat business.
2. Conduct focused, problem-solving product demos: Highlighting critical features and seeking immediate feedback from prospects can significantly increase conversion rates.
3. Prioritize one-to-one mentorship and community building: Having a strong community and experienced mentors can provide invaluable guidance during pivotal business decisions.
4. Continually invest in personal and professional development: Reading influential business books and staying current with market trends empowers leaders to implement effective strategies and stay ahead.
5. Begin with the end in mind when planning business transitions: This mindset ensures clarity, goal alignment, and a smooth handover of leadership responsibilities.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Johnny Page, CEO of SaaS Academy. And Johnny before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since we’re gonna be talking about SaaS all the time, some of the good SaaS interviews, one of the co-founders of Pipedrive on, they think they were on when they had 10,000 customers or so. Now they have over 100,000 customers. It was kind of a crazy story of how he moved to the US, had a brain tumor and a bunch of things all happen at once. And that was a very, very interesting and touching interview I had Wade Foster, co-founder of Zapier, he talks about growing to over a million users. I don’t know how many have at this point, but probably a lot.

MailShake founder, Sujan Patel, talks about growing to over 70,000 customers. And then it was interesting. Johnny that one, he was talking about how he’s been buying up SaaS companies, and how he onboards after he purchases it, how he onboards the company, kind of integrates it into the company. So that was very interesting. More on inspiredinsar.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect your dream, relationships, partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Johnny, we kind of are called, people call us the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host, so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and, most importantly, run their business.

Johnny, they have a podcast over SaaS Academy. You could check it out. He’s a huge proponent of podcasting. I saw your post today actually on LinkedIn said, I think people have an unfair advantage when they have a podcast, because you can connect with amazing people. And I always look at ways to give to my network, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should, if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected] we have a lot of free episodes about podcasting that we share, like what software to use, all sorts of questions that we get. So check it out. But also, big shout out, and thank you to Marcel over at Parakeeto. We met because of Marcel, and we’ll be talking about him because they have a book coming up, Software as a Science. He’s one of the co-authors. You can check him out at Parakeeto, the predictable agency, profitability is possible. That’s his tagline. So I love it.

I’m excited to introduce Johnny Page, formerly the CEO of Silvertrac. He successfully helped build and lead that company for seven years before a successful exit to K1 Investments, he actually started as interesting as a SaaS Academy client, working with the founder, Dan Martell and the team. He started working for the company in various capacities, and went on to become CEO and SaaS Academy, Johnny will do a better job explaining it, but helps B2B SaaS founders overcome challenges and grow their business faster. And Johnny, thanks for joining me.

Johnny Page 3:48

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is gonna be fun.

Jeremy Weisz 3:51

Just start off and there is a video piece. I’m gonna share my screen in a second and pull up SaaS Academy. But just tell people about SaaS Academy and what you do?

Johnny Page 4:00

Yeah, yeah. So we’re a coaching and training company for B2B software founders. So purely business to business, purely founders, nothing outside of that. So not business to consumer, and also not to the VP of sales or even other than the founder. We have three programs to address companies at three different stages of the growth journey. So we have our entry level programs called growth accelerator. It’s designed to help the founder get market validation on their software idea, right? So it’s that first $10,000 a month of recurring revenue, not really, finding quite yet product market fit. That’s something that will continue on through all of our programs, but this is when someone’s decided to pay that first dollar and validated that there is a willingness to pay for their product.

Our core program, SaaS Academy Program, is designed for founders going between about $100k in annual revenue to $3 million in annual revenue. And this is the phase of the business where the founder is wearing lots of different hats, and then slowly installing a repeatable process into each one and taking off that hat. So they take off the customer success hat, take off the sales and marketing hat, and start to install a leadership team and processes that where the business comes out of, starts to get out of Build Mode and into Scale mode, which is where our third program comes into places for founders doing between $3 and $30 million and this is where the founder really starts to shift from founder mode into CEO and has to reinvent their relationship with the business and with their leadership team. And so yeah, we have about 500 clients actively enrolled in all of those programs. And I’ve been doing this for about seven years now.

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