You’ve poured your heart and soul into crafting an amazing SaaS product. But building it is only half the battle; figuring out how to sell SaaS is where many startups struggle. Developing effective SaaS sales strategies is key to attracting clients, and ultimately crucial for your business’s long-term success.
The SaaS market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 11 percent, reaching an estimated $344.3 billion by 2028. This means there’s ample opportunity, but also fierce competition. Different sales strategies will produce vastly different results, especially in the SaaS market.
Table of Contents:
- Choosing the Right SaaS Sales Model
- Foundations For Success: Pre-Sales Prep
- Mapping the SaaS sales Process
- Structuring and Scaling Your Sales Team
- SaaS sales Strategies
- Conclusion
Choosing the Right SaaS Sales Model
There are various ways to approach SaaS sales, each sales model has its strengths. Finding the perfect one depends on factors like your ideal customer profile and your SaaS product itself.
The right SaaS sales model also shapes how brand awareness translates into closed deals. This requires focusing on customer acquisition and generating qualified leads.
Self-Service Model
The self-service model lets customers explore and buy your product without any direct help from your SaaS sales team. This works well for simpler, lower-cost products and for reaching small businesses. Someone checking out SaaS sales benchmarks might discover a solution that works for their situation.
Customers usually discover your brand through marketing channels. They then engage via interactive demos, trial period offers, or freemium versions.
Often a lot of automation is involved at this stage. This could be chatbots answering basic questions or a CCaaS provider qualifying prospects.
High-Touch Sales Model
In a high-touch model, sales representative actively guide prospects from initial interest to a purchase decision. This method is frequently used by companies with a sales-led growth strategy, acting almost like a concierge service for your potential clients.
This might involve an agency guiding potential clients through sales strategies for their customers. Then they could offer a product to complement that consulting, focusing on solution selling.
Transactional Sales Model
This isn’t just for high-ticket items. The transactional sales model can also complement a self-service model, for those users on the fence.
The idea is to guide prospects toward the perfect plan. Perhaps leading them to a higher tier or plan, to improve monthly recurring revenue.
Enterprise Sales Model
For high-value, complex sales, the enterprise sales model takes a very hands-on approach. Reps will actively guide clients, often working for months with multiple decision-makers.
Enterprise SaaS sales often happen through outbound efforts or referrals. These deals typically feature bigger revenue, compensating for the smaller quantity.
With larger contract values, enterprise deals usually must pass security, legal, and procurement processes. This due diligence further lengthens the SaaS sales cycle.
Foundations For Success: Pre-Sales Prep
Before the actual selling begins, some foundational work helps provide a solid base to support sales growth. This preparation helps you understand customer lifetime value and customer acquisition cost.
Start by crafting testable hypotheses that map the course to achieving true product-market fit. A strong sales plan is essential.
Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
It goes beyond identifying any user who might casually try your software. An ICP identifies the precise people who can benefit most from your SaaS solution.
That includes focusing on businesses, roles, and industries that convert into devoted, long-term customers. You need to locate your target audience.
Develop Buyer Personas
Once you have an overview with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), delve deeper. The best way to achieve this is with Buyer Personas.
Zero in on the specific decision-makers at your ideal target companies. Determine who’s setting strategy, evaluating solutions, and making purchasing decisions to find advocates.
Craft a Clear Value Proposition
What persistent problem does your SaaS product address? What makes it a better SaaS solution than others for a business?
Communicate this as soon as possible. As you better understand your SaaS product’s value, tailor messaging to impact specific needs, roles, and priorities, focusing on identified pain points.
Early on, you need an attention-grabbing hook to capture interest. Use this to make prospects actually consider your message and work towards effective sales.
Assemble a Sales Playbook
Consider this the “Greatest Hits” guide meant to streamline SaaS sales efforts, functioning as a central resource bible. It will be your internal reference for qualification questions, email scripts, and objection-handling techniques.
Over time, you’ll expand this data as you gather more details. You’ll continue to update your SaaS sales plan with this information.
Have The Right Sales Stack
Efficient sales rely heavily on data and customer management. The goal should always be converting prospects into users of your software or service.
Have the right sales stack to prevent lost leads. Many organizations experience opportunity leaks, leading to wasted efforts and resources.
Avoid losing users during transitions, integrations, or other circumstances. Implement sales technique refinements regularly.
Set SaaS sales Metrics and KPIs
Your entire business must measure benchmarks like conversion rates. Track how long deals take and identify when they become “stale”.
Understand and leverage these sales metrics. Don’t just collect data aimlessly; use it to set clear sales targets and make data-driven decisions, which is an essential sales methodology.
Mapping the SaaS sales Process
Generalizing is difficult since customer journeys vary. However, sales is about influencing, and that process usually includes certain common steps.
Here’s a quick guide to help.
Prospecting
Reaching out to customers via email, sales phone calls, and social media can initiate outreach efforts. Your outreach is only effective when your goals, messaging, and ideal client are clearly defined.
Businesses often explore various inbound marketing methods. These might include podcasts, articles, or videos – new approaches are constantly emerging.
Sales involves outbound efforts; marketing focuses on inbound strategies. Effective lead generation is vital.
Discovery Phase
The discovery stage is critical for organizations and customers, but is often overlooked. How can you understand and leverage the ongoing data?
Evaluate each opportunity. Remember that customers have choices, so it’s crucial to discover the best solution for both companies.
Even brief phone conversations can allow decision-makers to conduct quick research. Thus, discovery might take a short time in such situations.
Understanding “Qualified”
What makes someone or a company a qualified candidate for your business? Are there simple qualification checks?
Identify which businesses are good fits for your software or company and which aren’t. Prioritize acquiring qualified leads.
Evaluation and Demonstration
Evaluating sales options includes sales demos and meetings. This helps determine if something can truly work for all stakeholders.
A sales demo for SaaS product should be a collaborative experience, providing answers, insights, and solutions to company problems. Focus on highlighting your product’s unique selling proposition.
Sales demos often follow in-depth discussions and calls with decision-makers. After discovery, reaffirm their need for a solution and commit them to seeing things through.
The Art of the Demo
After understanding buyer needs. You should address those discussion points directly.
Present a sales pitch focused on improving customer operations. Consider showcasing what SaaS sales training could accomplish.
Closing the Deal
Ultimately, there is an action from both organizations. From deciding, to getting approval.
Reach mutual terms for customers and providers. Leverage data, experiences, or anything else that will aid in reaching an agreement, and reducing churn rate.
Tailor plans to each user, situation, or contract. The ultimate goal is signing deals during the sales cycle.
Customer Onboarding
Now with contractual commitment to your service or software. Guide a customer’s early journey through onboarding.
Customer Onboarding is often critical for long-term client retention. It all starts with their initial perceptions during this process, ultimately affecting customer satisfaction.
SaaS products sometimes require more resources and explanation compared to many industries. Don’t rush it, because retaining business might cost a lot, but consider the impact that increasing retention rate by 5% can lead to an increase of 25% to 95% for your company.
Structuring and Scaling Your Sales Team
Who’s doing what and when should they collaborate?
Getting things moving requires careful consideration of these aspects. Organization simplifies everything, especially as things progress.
Team Structure
When things start growing in SaaS organizations, consider who should make calls and what else you should staff.
How would a SaaS sales team look at each funding level?
David Sacks suggests that staffing B2B SaaS for each startup funding varies. Here is one possible perspective:
| Series Funding Round (employees) | Sales Role(s) | Sales Headcount (range) |
|---|---|---|
| Series A (50 employees) | Account Executives, Sales Development Representatives, Sales Operations | 8 – 16 (range of reps, including managers) |
| Series B (125 employees) | Scaling Sales Execs, Sales Managers, Adding a Sales Development Specialist, Renewal managers | 18 – 32 (range of reps, including managers) |
| Series C (400+ employees) | Adding several sales and account manager roles. Even expanding to Sales trainers. | 60 – 80 (range of reps, including managers) |
For further team scaling. Prioritize sales as the most impactful area, even in training.
The Right Metrics
Many SaaS organizations use numerous metrics for justification and prioritization. You need to do this within your organization too. For many, there’s less emphasis on marketing than in other industries.
Focus sales teams on measuring goals throughout the sales cycles. Measure volume (e.g., emails sent or contacts connected with).
Also, track how successful outreach efforts lead to conversations (conversion rates). Ultimately, all this contributes to metrics like MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).
Keeping Trials Simple
Providing the full experience over longer demos might be suitable for enterprise deals. Providing effective value to existing customer bases is important.
However, shorter durations can also drive sales. Ensuring decision-makers experience value over a shorter term incentivizes trial conversions to full customers more consistently.
SaaS sales Strategies
Achieving results often requires combining several methods to encourage ideal clients to purchase.
Newer methods like “building-in-public” gain praise for their transparency. Other industries still rely on traditional sales strategies.
Regardless of whether you have calls with decision-makers, sales depend on optimizing the sales process for both companies. Creating a positive sales experience matters.
Building A Central Playbook
Centralizing information should make processes repeatable.
For SaaS sales strategies, many playbooks could be useful for maintaining best practices.
- Obtaining contact information might involve scraping or using a third-party source with updated prospect profiles.
- Emails might be more effective than social interactions or calling; use the playbook as a template for cold outreach, adaptable to various situations, people, messaging, or organizations.
- Scripts help maintain consistency during demos, conveying the right message for a sale.
- Closing deals using pricing based on discussions with different roles – understanding how each conversation influences negotiations can inform discounts that will more effectively close business.
- Playbooks help sales identify deal-breakers or risks – leverage market data or compelling insights to understand and avoid situations where conversions are unlikely (these are examples – adapt to real situations).
- Centralizing knowledge facilitates alignment and information sharing.
Setting Clear Targets For Success
A clear plan and organization simplify the selling process. Consider it during initial process conversations. SaaS sales processes often utilize stages or checklists.
What might sales compensation look like?
A few insights we discovered:
- According to the Bridge Group, the average compensation (On-Target Earnings or “OTE”) is roughly $158,000 (for SaaS account executives).
- Job boards list other salaries, but consider roles, duties, and levels when evaluating total compensation packages (including health benefits).
- Glassdoor indicates base compensation around $48,000 for junior SaaS sales roles.
- Glassdoor’s analysis also suggests average compensation ranging from $24,000 to $96,000 for SaaS businesses (in other roles).
- ZipRecruiter reports an average base salary closer to $79,000 for many companies, for those with mid-level experience.
- Senior SaaS sales managers might earn from $93,000 to $114,000, according to ZipRecruiter data.
Co-Marketing
Collaborate with others to mutually enhance marketing opportunities. Co-webinars and content can benefit marketing efforts.
Sales efforts might include co-selling a product or other collaborative activities. This is beneficial when products integrate or a company seeks marketing assistance.
Joint promotions and offerings can add value, allowing you to share success. Joint work creates strong sales methods.
Conclusion
The software as a service business environment may require adaptability across various stages and operations. Overcoming these challenges is difficult.
SaaS sales strategies might not always yield immediate results. But for those using these strategies to impact the business, long-term user growth is achievable.
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