I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls

The advice for sales reps to stop talking and listen certainly rings true in my experience. I see a lot of sales materials that are geared towards a scripted pitch: generic powerpoint decks, exhaustive demos, and boilerplate feature description flyers. There's probably a lot of value in sales teams having access to that kind of collateral, but I would wager that there's even more value in knowing how to step away from that material and follow the customer's lead in what to showcase.

I'm in a sales related role for the first time and it seems like half the customers expect and want a 'deck' and the other half balk at a deck. Right now we're tending to stick with just talking on a call rather than presenting glitzy materials.

I didn't expect to learn much from this article - but it actually really resonated with me. I often am responsible for purchasing decisions and found much of the advice to sales reps really insightful.

(1) The number one thing that bothers me is when I reach out to a company to explore their product and I get scheduled with a BDR who's sole job is to "qualify" me as a lead. I know BDRs are in a tough spot - but if you have someone reaching out and interested in your product, take advantage of that and get them straight to the person who can demo and answer questions. I'm shocked at how many companies make me want to prove myself as a customer before spending time on demoing.

(2) Ask before recording meetings, and if someone doesn't want to be recorded make sure you actually have the ability to turn that recording off. I've been on calls where the person who set up the Zoom/Gong wasn't on the call, and so no one had the ability to stop recording.

(3) The details of what is shared on calls is often completely lost. Every time a new person gets on the call, they ask the exact same questions that have already been answered. Make the customer feel as though you're interested in their business, have discussed their pain points, and have a plan ready to help them.

(4) Discounting discussions are always a pain. It's a game that no one likes to play.

(5) Offer to send some swag to the implementing team at your customer - not just your champion. It's a nice gesture and goes a surprisingly long way towards building positive sentiment.

I’m a founder, not a sales person, but we don’t have any sales staff. So I, along with my CEO, do all of our demos. We split the responsibility. Our product does many things, and I could just speed talk through a demo. But I don’t. I directly ask the person what they want to see, and how they feel we can help them. If they don’t know, that’s fine, I have material prepared. But I’d much rather you tell me how I can help you, and then we drive the call from there.

> In most sales orgs, calls are being recorded by Zoom, > Gong or Chorus. To my surprise these calls are littered > with countless discussions of health.

IMHO that sales calls are recorded is the bigger issue. People talk about their health in video chat because they feel it's a private conversation. I wouldn't shame people for talking about private matters but rather question why 1000 sales calls were (long-term?) recorded and transcribed.