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How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

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Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#31

Post by confiscate »

goatherders wrote: post #25
StaticRedux wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure your post was meant for me even if you think it was. I dont write off the little guy, I write off the person that just wants to know about price price price. My churn rate is low precisely because I take time to learn what they want then provide what they need. I work with clients that are a good fit in both directions and got out of the "anything for a buck" game years ago. I work hard building my busin…

agreed. Whether someone cares only about price, is a separate trait from whether that person is a big/little guy

in the very original comment, it said "I do expect to hear about pricing on the first call, otherwise there won't be another call. Disclaimer: I have zero patience for abundant sales processes."

this person isn't asking about price because he/she is "little" and can't afford it. Even if the person is a big guy with a lot of $, he/she will still haggle you on price, because that's his/her worldview.

besides, it's unclear that a little guy with a "zero-patience policy" that fixates on price price price as a principle, will likely become a big guy some day.

Even if they did become a big guy some day, you would still have a lot of problems making money from them.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#32

Post by DeanWormer »

I found this ~20 page guide Fog Creek put out a few years ago and it got me excited about switching from a technical role into sales. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a high level understanding of Enterprise sales.

https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-co...

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#34

Post by anoncoward111 »

goatherders wrote: post #15
sparrish wrote: 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 abou…

If I could offer some perspective from someone in the sales trenches:

Cold calling does not work. No matter how good your script is, your email, your personality, your talk track, your data sources, your persistence, cold calling does not work. It is a poor ROI.

All real sales are made either through the customer opting in to communicate (response to an email blast, inbound lead from the company phone, a referral etc)... or through nepotism and cronyism and ivy league networks of multi millionaires. Hint: this is how Oracle is alive to this day.

If I was in charge of selling a product over $100, I would create the most awesome, viral content you would ever see about our product. I would release a free version to 99% of the world that is truly usable and awesome.

This is what join.me did to compete with Webex and Skype for Business and GoToMeeting.

Remember: if you don't have an existing network, you don't have any business.

Start marketing before you start selling.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#35

Post by gurglz »

StaticRedux wrote: post #20
goatherders wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sounds really good in theory, but unfortunately it's just not true.

There are sales reps that play golf with clients. They've been selling to CxOs for years at some of the largest companies like IBM, Oracle, and now Google. They have the relationships because they've worked with the CxO before, selling another massive piece of software. It is not because they immediately shared pricing and cow-towed to whatever the prospect said at the very first meeting when the CxO was a Devops eng or a FTE without budget.

The majority of sales is opportunity cost and focusing your resources on the deals that matter. Working hard and fulfilling every wish of every prospect is a waste of time and the easiest way to fail in sales.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#36

Post by wazoox »

throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #21

This actually scares me. I want to bootstrap an SaaS company focused on enterprise / b2b soon and being bootstraped I can't afford to hire an sales rep/ account manager (or be one myself while working on the product) for what looks like a long process. This is definitely a scary thought in my opinion. Fingers crossed, I hope that's a good problem to have.

As Joel Sposky said, even the best, most necessary product doesn't sell itself magically. Setting up a website, selling on Amazon basically won't make you close a single sale.

You must devote a day or two a week to sales and marketing, making noise on LinkedIn and a blog, and awesome videos, then connect to people and propose them a demo of your service. That's crucial to market fit, you must have at least some prospective customers to be sure your products solves an actual pain for them.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#37

Post by bharris315 »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #34
goatherders wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 abou…

If I could offer some perspective from someone in the sales trenches: Cold calling does not work. No matter how good your script is, your email, your personality, your talk track, your data sources, your persistence, cold calling does not work. It is a poor ROI. All real sales are made either through the customer opting in to communicate (response to an email blast, inbound lead from the company phone, a referral etc…

Bryan from Entrepid Partners here... we find that highly targetted, outbound cold emails are actually the best place to start prospecting.

In our experience, if you do the extra work to personalize the email and focus in on why your product/service is relevant to the buyer's pain points, we've seen response rates as high as 30% with the majority of those replies turning into an intro call with the buyer.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#38

Post by bharris315 »

consumer451 wrote: post #24
throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #21

This actually scares me. I want to bootstrap an SaaS company focused on enterprise / b2b soon and being bootstraped I can't afford to hire an sales rep/ account manager (or be one myself while working on the product) for what looks like a long process. This is definitely a scary thought in my opinion. Fingers crossed, I hope that's a good problem to have.

We are exactly at this stage right now. Bootstrapped, enterprise SaaS, ready for initial sales. This post could not have been more timely for me. I'm not sure if this is possible in your niche, but we are partnering with a consulting company which provides services in the same industry/niche. We will give them a cut from the sales to do this exact process. Many leads will come from them as well. I could not imagine d…

In our experience, the founder should close the first 3-10 enterprise deals on their own. When you chose to outsource, you may close some deals, but you lose out on the early customer product feedback.

The relationships with your early customers are key. You need to make your early customers your biggest fans to show how your product changed their business through references and/or mini-case studies.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#39

Post by seem_2211 »

charleyma wrote: post #14
vincentmarle wrote: post #4

> 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 lik…

Yep exactly. And for the enterprise company it's never going to be a single sign off. You'll need to get IT involved, maybe legal, probably finance, maybe procurement. Every company has a different process, and everyone will want at least a few people saying "yes" when the price is high enough. Enterprise sales is more project management and scheduling than it is about learning the magic words that close any prospect.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#40

Post by seem_2211 »

vincentmarle wrote: post #4

> 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…

As a consumer, completely agree.

As a buyer in a B2B context, completely disagree.

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