Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I started working with a B2B SaaS client as a freelancer, we faced the same challenge every SaaS struggles with: getting client testimonials. You know the drill - your product works great, clients are happy in calls, but getting them to write it down? That's another story.
Most founders obsess over building the perfect product while completely ignoring the fact that distribution beats product quality every time. I learned this the hard way when I discovered that a manual review outreach system I thought was "solid" was actually bleeding hours for minimal results.
But here's where it gets interesting - the solution didn't come from within the SaaS industry at all. It came from watching how e-commerce businesses had already solved this exact problem years ago. While SaaS founders were still debating the perfect testimonial request email, e-commerce had automated the entire process and moved on.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why cross-industry learning beats industry best practices
The automated review system that works for both digital and physical products
How to escape your industry bubble and find proven solutions elsewhere
The specific tools and workflows that transformed manual hell into automated success
Why distribution planning should start with studying different industries
This isn't about following your competitor's playbook - it's about finding distribution strategies that already work in other markets and adapting them to yours.
Industry Reality
What most businesses get wrong about distribution
Most businesses approach distribution planning like they're reinventing the wheel. They look at their direct competitors, copy what everyone else in their industry is doing, and wonder why they're stuck in the same mediocre results.
The traditional approach to distribution planning follows a predictable pattern:
Industry Research - Study what successful companies in your space are doing
Channel Replication - Try to copy their distribution channels
Best Practice Following - Implement "proven" industry standards
Incremental Optimization - Make small tweaks to existing approaches
Competitive Benchmarking - Measure success against industry averages
This conventional wisdom exists because it feels safe. Investors understand it, team members can reference case studies, and there's a clear roadmap to follow. Most strategy frameworks are built around industry-specific analysis because that's how business schools teach distribution planning.
But here's where this approach falls apart: when everyone in your industry follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. You end up competing in a red ocean where the only differentiation is execution quality, pricing, or features.
The real problem isn't that industry best practices are wrong - it's that they're incomplete. They represent the collective knowledge of businesses solving similar problems in similar ways. But the most effective distribution strategies often come from industries that have already solved your problem more elegantly.
This is why I started looking outside the SaaS bubble for solutions. While SaaS companies were still manually requesting testimonials, e-commerce had already automated review collection at scale.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The situation started simple enough. My B2B SaaS client had a solid product, happy customers, but their website looked empty without social proof. They needed testimonials, case studies, reviews - anything to show potential customers that real people were getting value from their solution.
I set up what I thought was a sophisticated manual outreach campaign. Personalized emails to satisfied customers, follow-up sequences, carefully crafted templates asking for testimonials. The approach looked professional and felt thorough.
The reality? We got some reviews trickling in, but the time investment was brutal. Hours spent crafting emails for a handful of testimonials - the ROI just wasn't there. Even worse, the process wasn't sustainable. Each testimonial required individual attention, custom follow-ups, and manual coordination.
Like many startups, we ended up doing what we had to do: strategically crafting our reviews page to look more populated than it actually was. Not ideal, but we needed social proof to convert visitors.
The breakthrough came when I was simultaneously working on an e-commerce project - completely different industry, right? Wrong. That's where I learned my most valuable lesson about distribution planning.
In e-commerce, reviews aren't nice-to-have; they're make-or-break. Think about your own Amazon shopping behavior - you probably won't buy anything under 4 stars with less than 50 reviews. E-commerce businesses have been solving the review automation problem for years because their survival depends on it.
I realized I was looking for solutions in the wrong place. While SaaS companies were debating optimal email subject lines, e-commerce had moved beyond manual processes entirely. They'd built systems that automatically collected, verified, and displayed customer feedback at scale.
This wasn't just about reviews - it was about fundamentally different approaches to distribution challenges based on industry requirements and market maturity.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After testing multiple tools in the e-commerce space, I discovered something that changed my entire approach to distribution planning: the most effective solutions often exist in adjacent industries that face similar challenges.
For the review automation challenge, I landed on Trustpilot. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, their automated emails are a bit aggressive for my personal taste. But here's the thing - their email automation converted like crazy because it was battle-tested across thousands of e-commerce businesses.
The implementation process became my template for cross-industry distribution planning:
Problem Identification - Define the core challenge without industry constraints
Industry Scanning - Look for industries where this problem is more critical
Solution Analysis - Study how mature markets have solved the problem
Adaptation Strategy - Modify the solution for your specific context
Implementation Testing - Deploy and measure against your previous approach
What I did was essentially implement the same Trustpilot process for my B2B SaaS client. The automated review collection that was battle-tested in e-commerce translated perfectly to B2B SaaS with minor modifications.
The system worked because it addressed the fundamental distribution challenge: how do you systematically convert satisfied customers into advocates at scale? E-commerce had already solved this with automated post-purchase sequences, conditional logic based on purchase value, and sophisticated follow-up workflows.
I adapted their approach by:
Triggering review requests after successful onboarding milestones instead of purchases
Personalizing outreach based on feature usage rather than order history
Creating different review flows for different customer segments
Integrating with CRM data to optimize timing and messaging
This experience taught me that distribution planning should start with studying industries that have already mastered your core challenges, regardless of whether they're in your competitive landscape.
The same principle applies to other distribution challenges. Need better content distribution? Study how media companies amplify reach. Struggling with customer acquisition? Look at how consumer brands build awareness. Want to improve retention? Examine subscription businesses outside your sector.
The key insight: every industry has unique pressures that force innovation in specific areas. Your job is to identify which industries have been forced to excel at solving your exact challenge.
Problem Mapping
Map your distribution challenge to industries where it's more critical and solutions are more mature
Solution Adaptation
Modify proven solutions from other industries rather than building from scratch
Testing Framework
Compare cross-industry solutions against industry-standard approaches using specific metrics
Systematic Scanning
Build a process for regularly identifying distribution innovations in adjacent markets
The impact went beyond just recovered testimonials and reviews. The automated review collection system became a customer engagement touchpoint that strengthened relationships rather than just extracting value.
Within the first month, we saw:
Customers started replying to the automated emails asking questions
Some completed additional purchases after getting personalized help
Others shared specific issues we could fix site-wide
The review collection became a customer service channel
But the bigger result was changing how I approach all distribution challenges. Instead of starting with industry research, I now start with problem research across industries. This has led to breakthrough solutions in areas like SaaS growth tactics, content distribution, and customer acquisition that wouldn't have emerged from industry-specific thinking.
The automated system continued working long after implementation, generating consistent social proof without ongoing manual effort. More importantly, it established a systematic approach to finding distribution solutions that could be applied to any business challenge.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The biggest lesson? Most businesses are so focused on their niche that they miss proven solutions from other industries. While SaaS founders were debating the perfect testimonial request email, e-commerce had already automated the entire process and moved on.
Key insights from this experience:
Industry Blindness is Real - Staying within your competitive landscape limits solution discovery
Market Maturity Matters - Industries under more pressure develop better solutions faster
Adjacent Industries Hold Gold - The best solutions often exist one industry over
Distribution Patterns Repeat - Core challenges are similar across industries, solutions are transferable
Automation Scales Differently - Manual processes that work for 10 customers break at 100
Cross-Industry Learning is Competitive Advantage - While competitors copy each other, you're implementing proven solutions from elsewhere
What I'd do differently: Start with cross-industry research before looking at competitive approaches. The most innovative distribution strategies come from studying how different industries solve similar problems, not from optimizing existing industry practices.
This approach works best when you're facing systematic challenges that other businesses have already solved. It's less effective for truly novel problems or when your industry has unique regulatory constraints that don't exist elsewhere.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS implementation:
Map your distribution challenges to subscription-based industries beyond software
Study how media companies, streaming services, and membership businesses solve similar problems
Implement automated workflows from e-commerce for user engagement and retention
For your Ecommerce store
For E-commerce implementation:
Look at service industries for relationship-building strategies that apply to customer lifetime value
Study SaaS onboarding flows for improving post-purchase engagement
Adapt B2B sales processes for high-value product sales and customer development