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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

#161

Post by noirbot »

fian wrote: post #138
noirbot wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, maybe not a shirt, but hell, send them some nice coffee or some snacks or something. My current job is probably at least 50% implementing stuff my company bought, and for one of them, they had an on-site meeting about the implementation/proof of value stuff and they offered to buy everyone coffee/tea/whatever at a coffee shop by our office before the meeting and that definitely helped me be a bit less grumpy abo…

A few companies I have worked for have had a strict no gifts policy. Many of our customers had similar policies, to the point that we couldn't even pay for a customer's coffees if we have a meeting at a cafe. These policies are aimed at preventing even the whiff of bribes or favoritism wrt purchasing or awarding of contracts. Mostly this was in the Oil and Gas industry. We had a few mining clients that were less stri…

Yea, definitely depends on the industry, but even at that point, just a very nice note thanking the implementation team feels good.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#162

Post by mixmastamyk »

chopete3 wrote: post #77

>> these calls are FULL of insights for product direction. >> There’s a good chance almost none of these insights will reach product and engineering I am head of engineering at a small Enterprise Saas company. During COVID, I ran the pre-sales for the company. I joined some SDR calls too. It changed my perspective on what direction really means for products. We not only increased our revenue but our go-live time went…

> It changed my perspective on what direction really means for products.

I didn’t understand this part.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#163

Post by bruce511 »

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…

The problem is that some customers pay 20k,some pay 2m. The range is too broad to make it as simple as filling in a web form.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#164

Post by sylens »

fphhotchips wrote: post #121
rocmcd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies drastically by the business but I would say that it’s more on the magnitude of 10% or less (for enterprise sales, IME). If you’re getting a 50% conversion on your demos then either your sales org has _really_ dialed in the target persona (qualifying everyone else out early) or your market is very wide.

I would suggest that there's a subtle difference between "progressed past the demo" and "converted". 50% progression past the demo is reasonable. 50% conversion would be amazing.

Yes, this is what I meant. I would say that for over half the demos I gave, that was my last time talking to that prospect. For the rest, some of them would go a few more meetings and fizzle out, and some would convert to actual sales.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#165

Post by holografix »

nxmnxm99 wrote: post #158
holografix wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence but you clearly have never worked for “the vendor side”! Do you know how many thousands of time wasters you get a month? People comparing you to the competition, trying to get a master class from you so they can pose as a consultant for your technology, learning from you so they can apply for a job… the list goes on and on. Give them all swag…?! Hahahaha there would be people lining up to waste your time a…

Weird comment. Tough shit? That’s sales. The OP is just telling you what works if you actually want to sell. We do most of what he said because it works. So what if you have to humour some dick? Don’t be a sales rep then.

You missed my point. I’m telling you it _doesnt_ work.

If you’re a small startup and no one knows you, sure, give everyone a demo, but it’s not scalable.

For people that want to see a demo and just wanna know price there’s the website and recorded demos.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#166

Post by benjilb »

azmodeus wrote: post #151
benjilb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what Gong does too - syncing talking points back into Salesforce

This is Chris, Comtura co-founder. We aren't a Gong competitor, we also integrate with Gong ourselves. Gong does provide a Salesforce integration. We interviewed 10 users of this feature who mostly ended up copy pasting parts of the transcript into Salesforce. Key differences between the Gong Salesforce integration and Comtura: 1. Beyond Gong we also support Zoom and Microsoft Teams 2. We have built specific machine…

Interesting. We're about to implement Gong - i'll have to review your tool.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#167

Post by bagels »

manv1 wrote: post #61
bagels wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone who is not a health care provider even bound by any PHI rules?

Yes. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg... Note that this is a high-level summary.

The Privacy Rule, as well as all the Administrative Simplification rules, apply to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and to any health care provider who transmits health information in electronic form... covered entities...

I think this just means health care industry and those who build systems for health care information?

Going to keep researching, but I don't think that it applies to literally every workplace.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#168

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

psteitz wrote: post #104
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

Just thought the call out for "Protected Health Information" was weird, and it's wrong . If you're just having small talk with someone on a zoom call and you say "Yeah, that last COVID booster really wiped me out, I was in bed for 2 days", that doesn't mean the call contains "PHI". First of all, you shared it. The whole reason for protecting PHI in the first place is limiting what others can do with your information,…

I think you're kind of missing the point. The author was just pointing out that lots of personal health-related info was being recorded in the calls. When you know a call is being recorded it is kind to steer the conversation away from content that the person you are talking to may not want broadly shared. Prospects may be told that the calls are being recorded but they may not realize the implications of that.

Note the author updated his post in response to my comment. It originally said "protected health information", which is what I was reacting to. PHI is a very specific thing in US law, and increased legal exposure when handling PHI only applies to very specific entities.

The reason I commented is because there is a ton of misunderstanding in the real world that confuses "Joe isn't on the call today because he's got COVID" with the legal responsibilities that, say, your doctor has when sending you your COVID results.

To be honest, I think there is a lot of unnecessary concern over health information due to this misunderstanding. Obviously there is a ton of information that people prefer to keep private, but in those cases, they keep it private, or would at least tell you not to tell anyone. Due to the misunderstanding about PHI, I think people mistakenly confuse any banal health information as inherently requiring a higher level of protection/discretion, and this isn't really true. Frankly, there is a ton of other info that people probably want to keep more private than whether or not they had COVID (these days, who hasn't?) or whether someone is pregnant (usually makes itself self-evident in any case).

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#169

Post by leaflets2 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #143
vorador wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I'd like to know, too:-)

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#170

Post by vorador »

stingraycharles wrote: post #143
vorador wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I think at least from sales orgs, bonuses are very easy to justify. Sales orgs are very data-driven – typically their CRMs measure everything from the time it took to close a deal to how much each rep brought in a quarter. If just paying a regular salary worked to motivate reps enough, you'd find lots of companies doing that, but they're pretty rare.
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