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I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

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Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#141

Post by shostack »

Spooky23 wrote: post #131
sylens wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanted to reply to this as somebody's who bounced between pre-sales and engineering roles in the past. For #1, what is most likely happening is that they are trying to maximize the use of the pre-sales engineer's time. I can't tell you how many demos I gave as a sales engineer, but I can tell you that the opportunities that progressed past that demo are much less than 50%. After a while, sales engineers can even grow…

I hate companies that do this bullshit, as it’s fundamentally disrespectful of customers. We regularly have to deal with this crap to prospect vendors for tech solutions. Some companies do multiple rounds of qualifications with people punching their KPI cards wasting my time. If you’re recording the calls, listen to the recording and stop wasting my time. If we don’t need the vendor, we ghost you. If we really need t…

Care to share stories of how you got the three sales directors fired?

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#142

Post by Spooky23 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #4
notaclevername wrote: post #2

The advice for sales reps to stop talking and listen certainly rings true in my experience. I see a lot of sales materials that are geared towards a scripted pitch: generic powerpoint decks, exhaustive demos, and boilerplate feature description flyers. There's probably a lot of value in sales teams having access to that kind of collateral, but I would wager that there's even more value in knowing how to step away fro…

I'm in a sales related role for the first time and it seems like half the customers expect and want a 'deck' and the other half balk at a deck. Right now we're tending to stick with just talking on a call rather than presenting glitzy materials.

That’s a technique to throw you off your process and actually provide information.

When you’ve validated that you’re not an idiot, I want to see the architecture or whatever that should be in your deck.

All of these processes are about control.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#143

Post by stingraycharles »

vorador wrote: post #38
zippergz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I wanted to become a customer of a company I had formerly worked at. I reached out via an executive-level friend and former co-worker who made a warm intro to sales. And STILL they first scheduled a call with a brand new to the job BDR who knew less about the product than I did. Not that person's fault, and I felt bad for them, but it was a complete waste of everyone's time.

Sadly that's how incentives works in modern sales orgs – BDRs get paid on the number of calls they convert to the next stage and you were a guaranteed conversion since you already knew and wanted to buy the product.

So that’s a problem with how the incentives are set up I’d say. Not the BDR’s or their manager’s fault, rather a high level incentive problem which should be fixed.

What’s HN’s opinion on sales commissions anyway? I always thought that research showed that any job that requires creative thinking doesn’t make people work harder if they are compensated based on bonuses / commissions.

Have any large organizations ever experimented with getting rid of the whole commission based compensation for sales? If so, how did it work out?

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#144

Post by nextaccountic »

bruce511 wrote: post #132
phpisthebest wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is ironic because often times companies refuse to give budget numbers unless I sit through a damn demo first.... At this point I strongly disfavor companies that do not publish their retail prices. everyone from Microsoft to SpaceX can do it, there is ZERO excuse for companies not doing it today

I'm a bit like you, I prefer published list prices. It really helps me if I know my budget is somewhere near your list price. But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. Fr…

> But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

> In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote.

IOW, if the customer were afforded just a little bit of price discovery the business would tank.

Lots of companies have interactive websites where I can input all my requirements and it outputs exactly how much I'm going to pay, with no human in the loop involved.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#145

Post by robomartin »

seanherron wrote: post #6

I didn't expect to learn much from this article - but it actually really resonated with me. I often am responsible for purchasing decisions and found much of the advice to sales reps really insightful. (1) The number one thing that bothers me is when I reach out to a company to explore their product and I get scheduled with a BDR who's sole job is to "qualify" me as a lead. I know BDRs are in a tough spot - but if yo…

> "qualify" me as a lead

This is very common in the US, almost to the point of being standard. It is incredibly annoying and it gets in the way of doing business. This is particularly true in the hardware front.

Interested in a connector?

No problem.

What's you estimated annual utilization rate? How many product lines is this going into? What's your current usage? What will be your MOQ? How often do you expect to reorder? Etc.

The difference with Chinese suppliers could not be greater. I can't remember the last time a Chinese supplier interrogated me this way on first contact. They are often eager to do business with anyone and have no problem selling sending you samples or selling you a small quantity for testing.

Not sure what that's about. I truly detest dealing with companies that size you up like that.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#146

Post by nobody9999 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #139
nobody9999 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HIPAA applies specifically to covered entities under its law. Its basically health care providers and health insurance companies. If you aren't one of those covered entities and youre not telling that info to a covered entity, there is no PHI. An excellent point. Which is why I don't share my Fitbit data (uninstalled the app after set up, no syncing of data) with Fitbit (now Google) and will (assuming it works as ad…

I get what you’re saying but that data isn’t meaningfully protected by HIPAA, and is pretty trivially derived based on available data. Data brokers for pharmacy have your prescription data, your doctor is not protected information and other aspects of your care are available to many entities for purposes like insurance subrogation that also create data products. HIPAA protects you from gossiping clerks at health faci…

>If you want that type of information to be private, don’t collect it or don’t share it with 3rd parties in an accessible form.

Yes. Absolutely.

I thought that was what I said. Perhaps what's in my head didn't make it to the comment?

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#147

Post by bostik »

Kamq wrote: post #62
duxup wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Offer to send some swag to the implementing team at your customer - not just your champion. This seems weird to me. I guess if it works to send some trinkets to people you do it… but if it makes a difference to them I’d be kinda judgmental about that fact ( not really related to the sales process). Personally I don’t want more trinket crap in my life but maybe other folks feel differently.

The devs integrating with your solution are going to hate it at a certain point. This may or may not be your fault (underlying technical limitations you've papered over will look like your fault from the outside at a certain point). Devs hate basically everyone else's code. A t-shirt (or jacket, or water bottle, or whatever) is a surprisingly cost-effective way to turn "I hate this" into "Sure it has some quirks, but…

> Devs hate basically everyone else's code.

Including their recent selves'.

The gentle way of expressing this is well known: if you are not embarrassed by code you wrote a year ago, you have not improved at all.

As far as I am aware, coders and artists are the only two groups of people who routinely describe their own creations as "shit", "crap", "garbage" or "disgusting". How could one even begin to appreciate someone else's work when the primary feeling we have of our own is self-loathing?

(If you haven't looked at a piece of code, gone "what kind of idiot...?" and discovered via git-blame that it was you, you have not been in this profession long enough.)

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#148

Post by brabel »

nextaccountic wrote: post #144
bruce511 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit like you, I prefer published list prices. It really helps me if I know my budget is somewhere near your list price. But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. Fr…

> But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. > In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote. IOW, if the customer were afforded just a little bit of price discovery the business woul…

But then, how can they overcharge you if they realize you're a noobie?

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#149

Post by azmodeus »

ayewo wrote: post #54
HectorComtura wrote: post #50

I was just reading this article and noticed that they were talking about salesforce data hygiene. So, we take transcription and use it to empower the reps to update salesforce to fix this (Comtura.ai). One of the things we noticed from user interviews was that they'd actually just be ctrl + F'ing through gong or zoom transcripts to find the right information. Whilst the overlay (Dooly/SP) is something we offer. We ac…

How do you compare to Fathom.video?

This is Chris, co-founder of Comtura.

Fathom allows you to leave bookmarks in parts of Zoom calls and push information based on these bookmarks.

Comtura makes suggestions based on what our AI thinks you should put in Salesforce. We also integrate with more WebEx solutions such as Zoom, MS Teams, Gong.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#150

Post by rwmj »

bruce511 wrote: post #132
phpisthebest wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is ironic because often times companies refuse to give budget numbers unless I sit through a damn demo first.... At this point I strongly disfavor companies that do not publish their retail prices. everyone from Microsoft to SpaceX can do it, there is ZERO excuse for companies not doing it today

I'm a bit like you, I prefer published list prices. It really helps me if I know my budget is somewhere near your list price. But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. Fr…

And yet I can buy a car from a website even though cars are hardware that can vary in price by 5x or more.
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