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How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

entrepidpartners.com

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Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#11

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

> I have zero patience for abundant sales processes

What? You forego the steak dinners and golf outings?

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#12
i've worked with Tyler and Entrepid across multiple of our portfolio companies at Axiom Zen and been super impressed every time

ZenHub wouldnt be where it is today without Tyler (we have dozens of Fortune 500 companies as customers)

Tyler is a close friend so at this point i am biased, but Entrepid has built a team of humble, holistic thinkers with deep expertise in sales and high-touch growth strategy

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#13

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal. If they’re a good salesperson, they will find out if you are a decision maker. The high touch salespeople have a few hard jobs — match client to solution and figure out WTF makes a decision. A lot of times, the big mouth in the room is just loud. They need to balance keeping you happy with selling a far more lucrative solution/vision to the guy with the money. I usually…

>When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal

I don't agree with that. I also don't have any patience for tedious sales processes. If I'm talking to vendors, it's because I at least want to buy something, and I always talk to a few of them. My goal in talking to them is only to get the information I need to make a decision. Being expected to sit through a sales script before my questions are answered is very frustrating, and usually sends me a "our product doesn't actually do what you want" signal.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#14

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

Main goals of a salesteam include building accurate pipeline, and closing that pipeline as quickly as possible.

In B2B, level of touch definitely depends on the size of the deal. Excellent discovery + qualification done quickly is super important for larger companies.

E.g. signing up for Dropbox for my 2 person company is (and very much should be) self service, with transparency around price and what it will look like as I grow in the short run.

Signing up for Dropbox for an enterprise company for thousands of licenses, each with different apps, permissioning, environments, infrastructure, etc should be a much in depth conversation. Typically enterprise clients with volumes also expect to have discounts due to their scale (they know they're worth $$$), and in order to have a properly managed negotiation, a sales team needs to full understand who they're selling to, what they care about, what levers can be moved, decision maker, timing, etc. All of these attributes are typically much more distributed in large companies vs leaner entities with 1 decision maker.

First call closes are great, what I can say is that I've never heard of a $1mm deal close on just one call.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#15
post #2

Nice guide for high-touch sales. I'd love to see something similar for low-touch/no-touch sales SaaS.

"Low touch / no touch" sales is also known as "marketing." I don't know you or your intentions so this may not be directed at you, but I've found that most people looking to develop a low-touch sales engine are really saying "Ew...sales...I don't want to have to do that. Maybe if I blog enough and my site looks good I won't have to actually, you know, TALK to potential customers."

I also find that anything above about $70/month MRR is going to require talking to the person. $70 is a limit that most companies will allow to be expensed without much question. MAYBE you can get that number to $100 in the right market. Above $100? Good luck. And if you are selling a $100+ product with no-touch then you are really missing out on TONS of business that could come your way if you just put in some actual sales effort.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#17

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much everything I've ever sold in 20 years.

High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big purchasing decision. Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting. But it's also for the benefit of the company courting you. Making sure there is no charge-back and that the client is set up for success is a big part of being a successful salesperson.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#18

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

SaaS founder here. I share your preferences when I'm on the receiving end, but some of our customers have taken months to bring onboard, including a couple of our lighthouse customers. It's my decision to accommodate onboarding cadence from minutes to months, primarily because this fits our GTM strategy. You're being alienated by process, and it's not impossible that in some cases that's a deliberate choice to segment a market by customer culture.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#20

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doi…

Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much everything I've ever sold in 20 years. High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big purchasi…

I understand your point, and you aren't wrong, but you are short-sighted. You may only sell to big clients now, but you are also leaving a lot of money on the table for yourself, not your company, yourself.

You've been selling for 20 years? How many of your customers have you had for longer than 3?

Now I can hear your mind churning, 'but I'm at a different company now! I don't sell the same thing!'. It doesn't matter. Sales is sales. And the best sales people foster relationships for years before they really sell the big bucks. And can go back to those same clients and sell different products and it's easy because those clients know them and trust them.

Ever get that little pang of jealousy wondering why that guy you know in sales plays golf every day with clients and doesn't seem to do much else? It's not because he's just that good. He's not. He might even suck. It's most likely bc he has been building relationships with those clients for years and they would buy a cactus as a new pillow if he asked them to.

This attitude of telling the little guy to piss off bc he isn't your type of client might make for some ok sales now, maybe you even have a shiny BMW, but it doesn't make for long term relationships with people who trust you. Once those people at that big company move on to bigger and better things, you'll be stuck grinding it out with whoever they replace them with.

I take it you work hard. You're certainly passionate. But after 20 years in sales, you shouldn't have to be working hard. Whether you changed companies and products every six months or still work for the same company, you should have been building relationships.

Instead you are content writing off the little guy as a waste of your time. The same senior management you grind it out to sell to now who was a little guy 20 years ago. And the same little guys who will be senior management in 10 - 20 years.

I imagine you'll still be grinding it out every day then also, instead of playing golf like you should be.

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