Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

sofuckingagile.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 175 posts

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#91

Post by aksss »

captainmuon wrote: post #24

As someone who was accidentially thrust into an IT role and had to do some purchasing... I absolutely hated sales cales and B2B selling. The simple act of buying a server means finding an "authorized reseller", going through some sales calls, proving that you are a worthy customer, then they want to know all about your other setup to make sure it is "supported" (which turns out to have no consequence whatsoever). The…

I hesitate to make blanket statements, but at this point, by and large and for most companies, Windows Defender (particularly with supplemental services from Microsoft like OneDrive backup, and Intune (some way to enforce configuration), etc) are more than fine for most companies. Spending money on third party AV solutions, particularly those that MSPs are making margin on with complementary hardware solutions (cough, sophos), are a rip-off.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#92

Post by JaggerFoo »

Great article. Not what I was expecting. The article was informative, actionable and concise.

I learned several things, and laughed at the "When You're Asked To Update Salesforce" meme, which I observed first hand after implementing SFDC and customizing workflows designed by Sales and Product Managers.

I'll be taking a look at Scratchpad and Dooly for sure.

I wonder if the sales teams followed any particular method as depicted in books like Spin Selling or Cracking the Sales Management Code.

Thanks for sharing your insights.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#93

Post by plorkyeran »

asyncscrum wrote: post #39
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,…

One on my major takeaways from the calls was how many people were visibly sick yet still working and getting on calls. WFH has really destroyed the concept of stay home and get some rest.

Stay home and get some rest was destroyed long ago. They used to just show up to the office visibly sick.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#94

Post by mmerlin »

anthomtb wrote: post #75

What do BDR and RevOps mean? The former is clearly a role in a sales organization. The latter rhymes with DevOps but I’ve no idea whether Dev and Rev become related when appended with Ops.

BDR = business development representative

RevOps = revenue operations / operators

i.e. sales ops / salespeople

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#95

Post by lifeisstillgood »

I may be being dumb here, but why not make a simple demo site the first qualification hurdle? I mean the only thing SaaS users care about is the saas system - give them a hand on version - I mean people are going to lie anyway about the qualification questions (do you have the budget? I mean who says no?)

Just slip the qualification questions into the "wizard" - he w many user accounts shall we create?

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#96

Post by hnbad »

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,…

HIPAA aside, this is PII under the GDPR and fits the definition of "health information" which (like political affiliations, religion, etc) is given special protections under the GDPR. Typical social media profiles are actually a minefield.

Then again, a ton of practices described in the article are probably blatant violations of the GDPR like scraping LinkedIn to track the titles and job changes of champions. I guess a PII request under the GDPR would include data stored in Salesforce, which would make the result fairly awkward depending on what information sales people decide to keep in there.

Given that I've seen companies having to explain to sales people that they can't just repurpose dodgy e-mail lists for direct sales outreach without having any records suggesting the victi-... err... "prospects" consented to that use, I wouldn't be surprised if most sales teams are violating the GDPR left and right on a daily basis.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#97

Post by asyncscrum »

MaintenanceMode wrote: post #83

Where did the author get these recordings? A very interesting read.

Worked at a company that had a business line offering a professional service to saas firms. We got into the saas game ourselves and leaned on our existing customers to analyze their calls. I was the 'machine' in our machine learning lol.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#98

Post by wlonkly »

asyncscrum wrote: post #39
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,…

One on my major takeaways from the calls was how many people were visibly sick yet still working and getting on calls. WFH has really destroyed the concept of stay home and get some rest.

I think that's always been the case, unfortunately. Quotas don't have sick days.

Re: I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

#100

Post by CPLX »

FredPret wrote: post #84
CPLX wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re still talking to them. They’re just wasting everyone’s time.

A lower ranked salersperson does the qualifying. The more trained ones do the selling. They are optimizing their resources and for a big purchase, the buyer is expecting a more involved process than one-click checkout.

Yeah I get it it’s just annoying. Train some entry level people to show some basic software features instead of training them to waste people’s time asking questions.
Post reply on HN