Gia Laudi: Why B2B SaaS Leaders Must “Forget The Funnel” and Embrace Customer-Led Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Georgiana ‘Gia’ Laudi, a strategic advisor, keynote speaker, and co-founder of Forget The Funnel, a consultancy focused on helping B2B SaaS companies drive predictable, recurring revenue through a truly customer-led approach.

In this episode, Gia and I will explore why so many companies get stuck throwing “spaghetti at the wall,” instead of researching who their best customers really are. We’ll look at the common pitfalls teams face when relying solely on funnel-based thinking—plus the steps any organization can take to cultivate a thriving, customer-centric culture. Gia will also share highlights from the remarkable work she’s done with various SaaS brands, as well as tips you can put into practice right away.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Two years after drafting up a customer experience map for our company, through the lens of the customer, we grew revenue by 900%. We’d aligned the team and the company, and it facilitated more streamlined conversation, more alignment, more understanding cross-departmentally making things much easier. It gave us a tool and a shared language for operationalising around customer experience.
• A big reason for forgetting the funnel and leveraging a more customer-led approach is through the lens of recurring revenue businesses. Even if you don’t have a recurring revenue business model most businesses agree that customer retention, expanding existing accounts vs finding new customers contains a lot of value. This serves all kinds of businesses very well.
• Customer research is often equated with long, drawn-out projects that are very costly and leave you with more questions than answers. There’s a lot of resistance when we use the term ‘customer research’, we tend to use the term ‘customer insights’. We use targeted, streamlined and intentional research via ‘jobs to be done’ which reveal meaningful patterns from as little as 10-12 people which can identify what leads people to seek your business out.
• Not all customers are created equally, you shouldn’t try to serve every customer, narrow your focus on who really, really cares about the problem that you solve, has a high willingness to pay, deeply understands the value in what you provide and would sing your praises from the mountain tops.

BEST MOMENTS

‘If you orient your operations around the customer experience it becomes easy to make all kinds of decisions.’

‘Existing customers are worth more and are less costly to us as a business vs finding new customers.’

‘Your relationship with your customer does not end with the purchase, it begins with the purchase.’

‘Early stage companies should focus on one customer and do a really good job, later stage companies shouldn’t conflate all customers into a homogenous group but think of segmentation in a meaningful way so you can still provide high-converting and resonating experiences even for multiple segments.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Georgiana (“Gia”) Laudi is a strategic advisor, keynote speaker, and co-founder of Forget The Funnel, a consultancy specializing in customer-led growth for B2B SaaS companies. With over 20 years of experience in marketing and product strategy, she’s helped high-growth businesses such as Unbounce, Calendly, and Sprout Social deepen customer insights, align teams around customer value, and drive predictable, recurring revenue. As co-author of the book “Forget The Funnel,” Gia advocates a practical, step-by-step approach to uncovering why the best customers buy—and how to e