Selling in the B2B SaaS world: how to scale?

The role of the Sales function in the SaaS world (Software as a Service) takes on a different meaning compared to traditional tailor-made sales. Selling a SaaS product is indeed the result of a series of actions that assist in conversion – primarily advertising and marketing automation – combined with typical business logic of the sector (for instance, free trials). 

The efficiency of the customer acquisition process must be constantly measured to optimize and make the right decisions. All this makes accounting skills less relevant in favor of analytical abilities, consistency in testing new strategies, and automating the various sales stages as much as possible.

How can the sales process of a SaaS be made extremely scalable?

Self-provisioning: when is it possible

The term self-provisioning represents the purchase mode not assisted by agents, in favor of automations that can exponentially increase growth and thus product distribution.

For this to be possible, the product must be easy to understand and configure. The customer must be willing to embrace its logic, abandoning any (and not always useful) whims regarding customization in a tailor-made perspective. These conditions are more easily verifiable in the target of SMEs compared to the enterprise world. 

From the Funnel to the Papillon Funnel

The sale of a SaaS product cannot be well represented by the classic AIDA funnel (Attention Interest Desire Action), as it has been designed from the seller's point of view and thus reflects a benefit obtained immediately after the sale. When selling a car or a house, the dealer or real estate agency monetizes immediately, and there is no continuity of relationship between the sales function and the buyer.

The adoption of a digital platform should instead be more correctly analyzed from the customer’s perspective since the phase of creating economic value comes after the product choice.

Typically, in SaaS, a trial period is offered along with a subscription model that generates recurring revenue and frequent upsells for new features, add-ons, etc. Therefore, the focus is more on the Customer Life Time Value than on the value of a single deal.

A sales process made up of different phases and roles

The choice of a digital platform primarily depends on knowledge of it or a company need.

Building brand awareness, supported by user trust in the robustness of the solution, is a costly and complex process but essential for scaling. 

The need, or business pain, can be something urgent and mandatory (as happened with the advent of electronic invoicing) or a need induced through an educational path on the benefits of digital transformation applied to different business processes.

Let’s then see what the cornerstones of a winning strategy are. 

Communication, media planning, and conversion

The first ingredient for online sales is generating awareness and traffic from interested audiences. 

Awareness also means originality and recognizability in communication, as well as being able to tell the advantages of adopting the platform in question. 

The qualitative production standards are today extremely high. Therefore, it is advisable to invest in the creation of videos and content in general made by professionals.

Where necessary, it is also good to involve specialists in the subject matter to gain authority.

Media planning can then channel promotional content into the most appropriate advertising and social channels to achieve the set goals.

In this way, we will be known, visible, and searchable, obtaining visits to our site.

This will mark the beginning of the acquisition process, which will typically pass through lead generation (contact request for information) or trial generation (free trial period). 

Marketing automation and onboarding

Contact and free trial are simple steps to complete for the user. However, investing time and money to launch the solution in a company is different. That is why it is necessary to maintain a certain frequency of contact with the prospect so that they complete the activation.

The design of the flows and related automatic communications takes into account the time axis (e.g., registration date) and user behavior (e.g., entry of the payment method for the subscription). 

The implementation of such automatic flows occurs with the help of one or more specific software commonly referred to as CRM or marketing platform. 

It is advisable to create communications (emails, SMS, or others) that seem personal, possibly also referring to real people from the Sales team as senders who can be contacted again if further clarification is needed.

The assignment of individual deals to a specific sales team member can be determined by factors such as deal size or country of origin, to make the most of each resource’s qualities and maximize the chances of closing the sale. 

Onboarding, or account initiation, should be as linear and straightforward an experience as possible, and can be completed in multiple sessions. 

Monitoring the status of progress of the configuration – identifying any “stalls” to intervene on – is a useful activity for the Sales team to ensure confirmation of the subscription and avoid abandonment by the prospect. 

Sales and Customer Success

The intervention of the Sales team is still an important component for many companies expecting a human interaction in starting and managing a collaboration. 

However, it is advisable to minimize classic negotiation in favor of a more consultative and technical sales approach.

For the most important customers, when sustainable, it is recommended to include a Customer Success figure that can guide the customer towards a full adoption of the product for retention and maximization of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). 

Customers thus feel listened to, followed, and are willing to purchase additional Premium support services that not only increase satisfaction with the use of the product but also represent an additional revenue stream.

Data Analytics

Reporting and data analytics close the loop. 

In SaaS sales, we have a multitude of data at our disposal. It would be a crime not to turn them into useful information for the company's growth.

However, before implementing reporting systems, it's necessary to identify the KPIs to monitor, such as the conversion percentage from trial to subscription or the churn rate (percentage rate of customers who leave us).

The next step is to cross metrics coming from multiple sources, possibly using a dashboarding system. For example, one might discover that a certain marketing channel generates many contacts but little revenue or that a certain country responds well to subscription conversion but suffers from a high churn rate.

To grow with a data-driven model, it will always be useful to keep track of trends or variations of these important indicators, intervening with A/B tests, surveys on the customer base, and optimizing every single piece of the offer.

Conclusions

The sale of SaaS subscriptions is not an activity assigned to a salesperson but a complex and orchestrated synergy of multiple professionals.

The Sales team will have responsibility for sales, but it cannot do without sourcing new prospects from marketing, developing new features and automating the processes that lead to order completion.

It is therefore essential to distribute roles and responsibilities for each phase of the sale, as well as define procedures, conduct internal training, and equip teams with tools so that all pieces fit together to complete the puzzle. This type of setup allows us to fully understand what the critical points are to scale the entire process.

Startup Bakery is the Italian startup studio specialized in creating B2B SaaS companies with Artificial Intelligence. We offer aspiring Co-Founders the opportunity to develop a business idea. We create investment opportunities for Professional Investors. We help companies in the innovation process.