Striking out the competition: honing your SaaS sales plan
Top 4 suggestions for enhancing your sales plan
1. Make a powerful champion
You will require a powerful champion who will work as an advocate for your solution, regardless of the market sector you are targeting. Typically, your champion will want to collaborate with you and will have a very specific problem they want to tackle. If you establish trust, a powerful champion will help you sell internally.
It’s important to keep in mind that your advocate is investing their time and trust in you; as a result, you should return the favor by offering value, being dependable and credible, and paying attention to the little details. Even small gestures like sending freebies or connecting them with other customers can go a long way toward developing a strong bond that will last for years. They’ll need you the most when they need to drive adoption, value, and ROI. You’ll need your champion to help you navigate the business and get the order completed.
“Your first transaction may be modest, but you now have the chance to grow across the account.”
2. Do not be reluctant to begin small.
In a land and expand sales motion, your solution typically entails resolving a particular issue for a certain industry or function. Even if your initial transaction was small, you now have the chance to grow the account. It’s crucial to demonstrate rapid success for that initial client; often, this entails driving acceptance or usage as well as a speedy time to value.
You have a fantastic foundation to dive deeper into the account if you can show that your solution is adding value in one area of the business.
So how might your sales team be organized to concentrate on customer success? One strategy is to reward your sales force based on metrics for customer success or renewal. Additionally, it’s critical to avoid creating a disjointed client journey across your departments as you proceed from contract signing through onboarding, adoption, and renewal. The greater the possibility you have to develop the account, the more you should invest in streamlining your client experience.
One of the major errors I observe is SAAS providers using a “one size fits all” strategy.
3. Alternative business, alternative sales strategy
One of the major errors I observe is SAAS providers using a segment-unspecific, “one size fits all” strategy for sales. Enterprise and SMB businesses often make various types of purchases and need different kinds of support. For instance, the purchase cycle involves, on average, eight people in Enterprise organizations, compared to one or two in SMBs.
If you are selling to accounts in Enterprise, you will need to collaborate with several personas who have various needs. You will almost always be subjected to a formal evaluation that includes vendor onboarding, technical validation, and alignment with business priorities.
Which sales movement supports your GTM the best?
Additionally, there are various strategies for marketing your product, including sales-assisted, product-led, and sales-led growth. Additionally, there are many sales motions, including land acquisition, expansion, and upfront commitment. Self-service strategies can be successful with Enterprise accounts as a user- or team-led entry point, but in order to grow that account, you will need to reach beyond that user or team and into the organization as a whole.
Think about your GTM and your three-year plan to better understand which strategy is best for you. What competitions do you aim to win? Are you more concerned with winning the account than the user and team? What sales motion supports your GTM the best?
“Building trust and alignment requires executive-to-executive engagement,”
4. Involve more executives in the sales process.
The deal should involve more executives than just the VP of Sales. Executive-to-executive involvement is essential to establishing trust and alignment and can significantly differentiate an organization from its competitors, ultimately leading to a longer-term partnership strategy that extends beyond the initial deal.
Executive-to-executive alignment also makes it easier to multi-thread an account and may provide avenues that widen the potential. Consider establishing a connection between your product executives, support executives, or CFO and the pertinent teams in your buyer’s organization.
Account sponsorship programs, customer advisory boards, and CXO forums are examples of formal initiatives that not only aid in tightening up alignment at the C-level but also serve as beneficial feedback loops for your business. Always keep in mind that an executive is involved somewhere—they may simply not be involved yet. It is always preferable to establish that relationship beforehand and proactively, rather than after the issue has emerged!
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