Hi experts,
We are looking to offer our PaaS Mento...
# ask-a-growth-questionc
Chris M
07/06/2022, 1:05 PMHi experts,
We are looking to offer our PaaS Mentoring Solution to Universities and Institutions.
I have no idea how to start the DemGen and Marketing plan, any ideas?
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Saïd
07/06/2022, 1:13 PM1. What problem is the mentoring solution solving?
2. Who are the end users of this PaaS solution? Faculty, undergraduates or both?
3. Do you have beta users? What do they do? Are they decision makers or buyers?
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Chris M
07/06/2022, 1:20 PMHi Said,
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Saïd
07/06/2022, 1:34 PMHi @Chris M
Looks like your reply was truncated, no?
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Chris M
07/06/2022, 1:36 PMyes, will write it again, sorry
Chris M
07/07/2022, 3:16 PMHi @Saïd
Platform is called Mentorice.com and the idea is to take all the pains of using various platforms from the Mentor.
Mentoring Plans, Live Sessions (11/1many), Certificates, Content Library, Payments, Feedback, Follow profiles, Mentor Search and more.
End users of the PaaS solution are educational institutions, Consulting firms, Corporations and smaller companies, everyone that wants a Mentoring platform for their internal or external ecosystem.
We have been running several pilot programs and they have been quite successful.
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Saïd
07/07/2022, 4:29 PMHey @Chris M
I see. When you characterized your firm as a PaaS, I initially thought you were targeting developers because PaaS is often used in the context of cloud computing. It’s rare for a consumer-oriented service to call itself a PaaS.
Anyway, your website makes it clear you are not selling to developers. You guys are more like a white-label SaaS business.
Looking at the website, the landing page copy targets two types of personas: mentees and mentors but the intro video targets only the mentee persona.
Based on your explanation above, your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) includes higher institutions of learning, consultancies and enterprises with a need for an integrated mentoring experience.
When starting out, you want to be ruthlessly focused on a single customer segment you understand really well rather than spread yourself thin by trying to serve every customer segment that could potentially use your service.
For instance, if the participants in the pilot you mentioned were drawn from consultancies, you want to focus solely on their needs first.
After you’ve gained significant traction then it might make sense to branch out to larger organizations with very long sales cycles. In general, enterprises & universities are slow moving so it can take months to years before you can close a sale, especially if the purchase price is large.
Saïd
07/07/2022, 4:39 PMThe term mentoring is often used interchangeably with coaching, but regardless, your SaaS is in a highly competitive market, so you want focus on how you are different to stand out from the competition.
I think dwelling on being a white-label mentoring platform is one way to stand out when compared to competitors like Together or Paperbell.
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Chris M
07/08/2022, 4:07 PMThanks @Saïd for the valuable insights.
There is one video for Mentors, please check here:
The platform is focused on Mentors as the customer, and I think the main differentiator is the social nature of the platform.
I would be happy to demo it to you in a 15 minutes zoom and maybe you can give me some of your advice.
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Saïd
07/14/2022, 10:17 PM@Chris M
A quick FYI that I’ve been busy, which is why I haven’t been able to give you a substantive response 🙂.