How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#41

Post by anoncoward111 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

bharris315 wrote: post #37

anoncoward111 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hi Bryan :)

>highly targeted, outbound cold emails...

...are neither scalable nor calls, in my mind. Here's my opinions:

1) I am currently manually building my own unsolicited email list for the purpose of marketing my b2b service. I have good, quality data sources with no bounce rates and right personas, but it is neither cheap nor simple to enter this data manually

2) even if I send these people highly targeted and well-crafted emails that are friendly and insightful and pithy, it is a slow process with diminishing returns...

3)... because most people add me to their spam filter these days. It is trivial to do so.

I would infinitely prefer to invest my time in creating excellent, viral content and offering users a free entry level service with few restrictions.

I would then spend all my time obsessively devoting myself to those users who have a big budget and greatly desire to receive communication from me.

Lastly, I dare say that someone who responds to a cold email will probably just end up kicking tires.

Tire kicking is automated away with my free demo.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#42

Post by andrei_says_ » Thu, May 31, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

goatherders wrote: post #17

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…

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…

> Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting.

I am sorry, but I fail to see how taking many hours out of my productivity does benefit me.

Yes, I do want to know if this is the right purchase decision. So I request a trial and a live session with an engineer who can answer my questions as we go over the product in real time. I get to ask questions related to our workflows and discuss solutions and even workarounds.

This helps me build understanding for their product the way my brain works and not the way their demo is designed.

Demos are designed to impress, to highlight the strengths and hide the weaknesses of a product. They do not mention the corner cases, and often are oblivious of our workflow so do not cover our needs.

The process I described is ultra efficient for both parties.

Wooing me, playing games, mentioning my name every 90 seconds, qualifying every question I ask as "great"... all of these quickly and drastically decrease my trust in the company and the product.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#43

Post by goatherders » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #42

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…

> Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting. I am sorry, but I fail to see how taking many hours out of my productivity does benefit me. Yes, I do want to know if this is the right purchase decision. So I request a trial and a live session with an engineer who can answer my questions as we go over the product in real time. I get to ask questions related to our workflows and di…

I agree completely: all the "tricks" in the world (mentioning the name every 90 seconds, every question is "great") is generally a waste of time. I roll my eyes as much or more than you when I get Sandler-ed or Spun or whatever the newest training advises.

But the process you've described (demo with an engineer) is far from ideal and not always efficient. That process solves the problem you know you have. That's ok, I guess. But "the problem you know you have" is never the full problem...ever. There is always something behind that problem and something behind that one and so on.

A good salesperson may let you see the demo, close the deal and sell you a solution to the problem you have identified yourself. A great salesperson will first get you to invest the time in understanding the entire picture and then sell you the solution for that. Sometimes that is a LOT more expensive and expansive. And sometimes, believe it or not, an honest salesperson will sell you something less than what you originally came for. It's why some people buy $10 web hosting and some people buy $X,000 web infrastructure. Education, process, understanding. Weighing benefits and costs. Understanding risks and assurances.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#44

Post by goatherders » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #41

bharris315 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hi Bryan :) >highly targeted, outbound cold emails... ...are neither scalable nor calls, in my mind. Here's my opinions: 1) I am currently manually building my own unsolicited email list for the purpose of marketing my b2b service. I have good, quality data sources with no bounce rates and right personas, but it is neither cheap nor simple to enter this data manually 2) even if I send these people highly targeted and…

Certainly more than one way to do this, but I agree with Bryan.

Highly targeted email lists are scaleable enough and there is plenty of tech to make them more personal than ever. I disagree a great deal with the idea that cold respondents "end up kicking tires." 100% of my marketing is cold email. 100% of the marketing I do for clients is cold email. I'm happy with my ROI and so are they.

Re: How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

#45

Post by consumer451 » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 11:53 PM UTC

bharris315 wrote: post #38

consumer451 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, I am definitely in on all calls at this point. And thanks for the rest of the advice, I am trying to follow it already.