How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups

Nice guide for high-touch sales.

I'd love to see something similar for low-touch/no-touch sales SaaS.

> 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 doing high touch sales don't really respect my time and are shocked when I tell them to cut to the chase and yes, 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.

I agree if what the person is selling is solving a well understood problem. But what if it's something that you hadn't really thought much about before and need to take some time to wrap your head around? In sales, I think it's generally a mistake to talk about pricing until you've established the value of what you're offering first, which is where I think this advice is coming from.

I went into a furniture shop and the guy was pressuring me to buy the couch almost immediately even after I said that I am just browsing what's available and didn't plan on buying until I move places. It was so damn aggressively annoying that I'd not buy from him on principle alone.

There are definitely good ways to go about the sale process and shortening the timeframe when it suits the customer is absolutely fine. when they don't respect that it's not. It's all about the customer and doing the right thing for them... if that means that you suggest someone else's product or service then so be it(and is actually a good way to get referrals and trust from the customer who still might buy from you).

When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal. If they’re a good salesperson, they will find out if you are a decision maker.

The high touch salespeople have a few hard jobs — match client to solution and figure out WTF makes a decision.

A lot of times, the big mouth in the room is just loud. They need to balance keeping you happy with selling a far more lucrative solution/vision to the guy with the money.

I usually play the direct guy role in these sorts of negotiations, and we do it because once you anchor to a price ($n-x%), you need to fight for every marginal dollar. When you start with the big bundle with the business vision guy, you start at $5*n and negotiate it down by 60%.