Some people will tell you the secret to driving SaaS sales is a great onboarding experience.
Others might say to you that it’s all about customer success.
Are they right?
Well … yes and no.
These are just two pieces of the puzzle.
Here’s the thing: SaaS sales are complex. While customer success and onboarding matter, other factors equally influence them.
You’re probably wondering, “OK, well, what are they?”
We’re going to make it easy for you. We’ve gathered five insights from five of the best sales and SaaS experts to help you drive sales for your SaaS product.
Let’s get to it!
1. Stop Rewarding Your Sales Team for Having Leads in the Pipeline
One of the most heavily discussed topics in sales is the number of prospects and leads in a company's sales pipeline. While a thriving pipeline can be beneficial to acquiring new customers, many sales managers and executives place too much emphasis on it as a metric.
Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and Adobe Echosign (check out what his co-founder Jeff Zwelling said about our sales software), points to a shift in thinking as one of the key tactics that his VP of Sales, Brendon Cassidy, used on the journey to $100K MRR. Jason recalls,
“He ended pipeline as a metric — and any real credit for it. Pipeline is an important sales tool. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t close it. Brendon ended endless charts and discussions of pipeline. We discussed actual deals, that could close. But Pipeline as a metric to aspire to, died on Day 1.”
In the early days of a SaaS product, you need to focus on driving real results. Jason explains, "Pipeline for This Month is useful, but still dependent on how various reps get probability right.”
The key takeaway here is that you need to focus on increasing your revenue per lead and the rate at which those leads are closing. Focusing on anything else can lead to vanity metrics.
2. Don't Say Yes to Everything (Even for Money)
What’s the Profitable Distraction Trap? It’s when you have a product that you’ve been trying to sell for months but are distracted by a new one-off opportunity like creating a custom app for one of your prospective customers.
The challenge with saying “yes” to these opportunities is their potential long-term impact. Consequences range from shifting resources and focus elsewhere to missing out on a learning exercise to determine why your product doesn’t fit their needs.
As Yoav Schwartz, the founder and CEO of Uberflip, explains it:
When you add a feature, you have to consider how it impacts every other portion of your offering. So inevitably, adding a seemingly small feature takes longer for you than it would for a custom shop starting from scratch.
More importantly, when you’re done developing this feature, you have to support it as it’s now part of your offering. Was that feature really serving the greater good, or does it have a whole bunch of bells and whistles only valuable to that one customer that paid you?
If a feature request aligns with your roadmap, great! It might just be a matter of moving ahead of schedule. However, if a feature doesn't align with your overall vision, prioritize your product’s future over a seemingly easy win in the present.
3. Price Point Influences the Value You Offer
Wiley Cerilli, Venture Partner at First Round and former co-founder and CEO of SinglePlatform believes that price is more important than most people think.
Cerilli gives the following advice:
“They will believe your product has whatever amount of value you tell them. If you charge $20, people will think, ‘Oh, it’s only worth that. I don’t want to spend time on something that’s only giving me $20 worth of value…'"
To test the impact of pricing, Cerilli ran A/B tests, charging one group more than the other to see how it influenced engagement. He found that the more people paid, the more likely they were to log in and use the system. From there, he’d fix the price with a discount, and the customers would feel like they were getting a deal.
Derek Halpern, investor and founder of Social Triggers, also understands the importance of pricing:
When people pay for something, it gives those people a sense of accomplishment, pride, and ownership, meaning they’ll value the goods or services more and complain less. Who doesn’t want satisfied customers who don’t complain? Exactly.
Don’t be afraid to charge what your product is worth. You'll know if your SaaS product is too cheap if you never lose customers because of pricing.
4. Create a Sales Presentation Focused on Customer Success
When you love your product, it’s easy to fall in love with the different features. It’s more common with founders, but a handful of salespeople still focus on features more than on results.
Your customers want to know how your product can help them, not how many features it has.
Share success stories from customers who have achieved goals similar to your prospects’ goals, and your conversion rates will increase.
To successfully share these stories, follow the “situation, solution, success” formula recommended by executive speech coach and President of FrippVT, Patricia Fripp:
- Tell a story about a satisfied client using the client’s words to illustrate the situation. Imagine one of your clients asking for your help; how would they articulate their challenge or problem?
- The solution can be delivered in your own words. For example, “This is what we did to help Client X. We did this, this, this, this.”
- The success – the happily ever after – has to be in the client’s words. Only your client’s words adequately express how excellent your product/service/solution is.
Using this framework will turn your customer success stories into great, compelling stories that drive customers to buy.
5. Your Sales Team Needs to Be Consistent
Whether it’s sunny, wintry, the end of the year, or 6 a.m.—your sales team needs to deliver results consistently. The best salespeople put in the effort, day after day after day.
Too many sales professionals and entrepreneurs are falling into the trap of believing you can work smart rather than hard. That’s BS.
In SaaS sales, you must be willing and committed to doing both. Work smart by ensuring you have all the tools you need to optimize your sales funnel, but work hard to ensure that those leads and prospects feel as if you’re focused on their problems.
Pick up the phone. Send the email. Always be shipping.
Learning Never Stops
If you want to succeed in SaaS sales, you must consistently invest in your development and personal growth. It would help if you stayed on top of the technology that can give you an upper hand and study the strategies that will help you close deals faster.
We’ve already covered some of the best insights for selling SaaS. In our free sales success email course, we deliver even more insights for those looking to master their craft.
This course covers how to give a demo that sells and seven deadly sales sins that startups often commit. Be sure to check it out—you’ll be glad you did!
If you have any questions about how you can use these suggestions in your company, leave a comment below, and we’ll try to help you out.
