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Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#31

Post by tastroder »

soared wrote: post #30

If you aren’t willing to go through this process, you’re not worth their time. At oracle we didn’t even respond to like ~50% of emails because if we didn’t know who you were, your budget wasn’t big enough.

Sounds like a great way to ignore that student intern / junior in the team doing a vendor review for that person you know that doesn't have time to do it themselves. The intersection of people oracle sales folks in my circle know and those that are actually involved in a larger vendor selection has historically been relatively small.

edit: good point, fair enough

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#32

Post by [deleted] »

tbrock wrote: post #16
bdibs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it works, otherwise they wouldn’t continue using it. It’s a simple way to extract the most value from a customer, as well as filter out customers they don’t deem viable for their business.

That’s a load of crap sales folks tell their leaders. Who’s out there measuring that the value created by this strategy exceeds the value sitting on the sidelines because it grinds their gears? Maybe it doesn’t? I’m sure a lot of people that feel similarly command millions if not billions of budget.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#33

Post by ashtonkem »

tastroder wrote: post #31
soared wrote: post #30

If you aren’t willing to go through this process, you’re not worth their time. At oracle we didn’t even respond to like ~50% of emails because if we didn’t know who you were, your budget wasn’t big enough.

Sounds like a great way to ignore that student intern / junior in the team doing a vendor review for that person you know that doesn't have time to do it themselves. The intersection of people oracle sales folks in my circle know and those that are actually involved in a larger vendor selection has historically been relatively small. edit: good point, fair enough

Of all the things one can accuse Oracle of, an ineffective sales process is not one of them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#34

Post by lowan12 »

> Why is that person employed? This was during the best market in the history of mankind and I was questioning that, and now everyone with a talent more relevant than customer "retention" should be just as annoyed, given how coveted a continual flow of oxygen is now

This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is peak software developer entitlement.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#35

Post by soared »

tastroder wrote: post #31
soared wrote: post #30

If you aren’t willing to go through this process, you’re not worth their time. At oracle we didn’t even respond to like ~50% of emails because if we didn’t know who you were, your budget wasn’t big enough.

Sounds like a great way to ignore that student intern / junior in the team doing a vendor review for that person you know that doesn't have time to do it themselves. The intersection of people oracle sales folks in my circle know and those that are actually involved in a larger vendor selection has historically been relatively small. edit: good point, fair enough

It’s based off your email, so student@apple.com will get a response. CTO@randomTechStartup.com will not though.

I did a project where I looked at the accounts we didn’t support and found their revenue would not be worth the effort. Biggest account I worked on was $70MM/yr with a team of 10ish. Small accounts were probably <$250k/yr and 1 or two people would have like 100 of those.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#37

Post by bdcravens »

lowan12 wrote: post #34

> Why is that person employed? This was during the best market in the history of mankind and I was questioning that, and now everyone with a talent more relevant than customer "retention" should be just as annoyed, given how coveted a continual flow of oxygen is now This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is peak software developer entitlement.

I have no doubt many in the industry will experience a serious reality check, as companies start cutting back and looking at the value proposition of each developer.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#38

Post by rekabis »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #15
tbrock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this actually work? Usually when this happens to me I write off the service and never interact with them again unless I absolutely have to. If I have a gun to my head I’ll make peace with it but otherwise I’m not going to talk to your sales rep to try your product. Period. I had this happen with loggly when we first started out and the first sales rep was pleasant enough. I even felt like I got a deal because he…

Yes. Many customers feel calls with the sales rep are valuable, and would be unsatisfied if a new one didn't offer an introductory call. In my experience, the highest value customers of most SaaS apps want these kinds of calls at least once a quarter.

> the highest value customers of most SaaS apps want these kinds of calls at least once a quarter.

Seriously? Why?? The point of a sales rep is to know me and my needs, and if they can’t get that from the notes on my file, then the company’s internal processes are exceptionally ill suited for sales.

And if I am that high value, repeat/continuous calls like that are a bloody waste of my time. Fine, touch bases with me occasionally to see if things have changed, but if nothing has, that phone call had better be over and done with inside of 120 seconds. I’ve got better things to do than shoot the shit with a sales person.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#39

Post by codegeek »

tbrock wrote: post #12
wheels wrote: post #9

I find these things horribly annoying too, but here’s what they’re for: They’re there so that the sales person can extract a variable amount of revenue from you based on how much value you’re getting from their system, and how much you can afford to pay. Utility pricing assumes that service volume is high and can mostly be recouped at slightly above infrastructure costs. In that case, utility pricing is a win for mos…

Does this actually work? Usually when this happens to me I write off the service and never interact with them again unless I absolutely have to. If I have a gun to my head I’ll make peace with it but otherwise I’m not going to talk to your sales rep to try your product. Period. I had this happen with loggly when we first started out and the first sales rep was pleasant enough. I even felt like I got a deal because he…

Yes this works, for the right customers.

We sell a B2B platform for our business and our price point starts at $499/Month (even though we are considering adding cheaper options but that is a whole diff. discussion). Whenever a trial customer signs up, our sales rep. reaches out and tries to talk to them to understand how we can help them and if we are the right fit. It is not necessarily about maximizing profits but ensuring that we are the right fit for them and vice versa because they will otherwise leave anyway. Our platform is complex which means we also need to ask a lot of questions to ensure the prospect sees and understands the value proposition. It is not one of those dead simple SAAS where you signup and can start using it with just 2-3 features (even though if I could, I would love to be running such business, lol).

Btw, this is something our company battles with all the time on whether to try and reduce some of the touchpoints but for that, we need to do a hell of a lot more work on automated onboarding etc which is difficult for smaller companies with low volumes of leads.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tell SaaS sales people you want a self-serve option?

#40

Post by sarora27 »

duxup wrote: post #25

It depends on the product. I work on a highly customizable SaaS product and onboarding and setup is the real cost. The guy who says "I can do it myself."...is pretty much the worst customer ever, because he probably doesn't know what he wants and doesn't know his own business process. For a lot of our customers just the implementation is an exploration of their own current processes "Well I guess we do that...". Now…

Hey @duxup what does the onboarding process look like for your product today? Does your sales team bake onboarding into the sales process so that certain elements of onboarding are being done as a deal progresses?
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