For SaaS, sales are the engine of growth and may become the killer of growth.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ToBeSaaS” (ID: gh_66062ec0961b) , author Dai Wei.

Why is the US SaaS subscription renewal rate close to or even more than 100%; and the Chinese SaaS renewal rate is low? Don’t rush to give this pot to your customers, and find out your own problems before you have a way out.

As the saying goes: Grow melons and grow beans. The SaaS low renewal rate is actually planted in the sales stage.

Bet the growth on the sales of ToB, trying to use the salesman’s human tactics to achieve growth through high sales. Unfortunately, this approach is itself a growing sales trap; it not only does not grow, it also digs a big pit for future growth.

For ToB, sales are the engine of growth and may become the killer of growth.

First, the three sales traps that dragged down growth

SaaS’s marketing and sales process goes through many pits, and three of them are difficult to circumvent:

  • Marketing Quality Trap: Although the number of leads provided by the market is large, there are not many reliable ones, and whether it is a single and no one is concerned;

  • Sales Quality Trap: Although there are many opportunities for sales follow-up, too few can be made, that is, sales efficiency is very low;

  • Contract quality trap: high contract fulfillment costs, poor customer quality, is destined to lose money business.

From a financial perspective, they have pushed up the marketing and sales (S&M) expense rate, neither achieving growth nor generating losses. From the point of view of marketing management, these low-level businesses have accumulated, and it is difficult for the company to survive, let alone increase.

The way most Internet companies solve marketing problems is nothing more than analyzing data and statistical conversion rates; however, this has little improvement, just to clarify business responsibilities.

I personally prefer to use business quality instead of conversion rate. Because conversion rate is an after-the-fact statistical indicator, it is not as manageable as quality.

The quality of the three businesses is not independent, but inherentlyCausal logic.

SaaS sales: growth engine or growth killer?

“Digital” marketing for self-entertainment

A variety of popular promotion activities, traffic, and customer acquisition methods were promoted to ToB marketing with the concept of digital marketing. These ToC games don’t do much for ToB unless you’re selling ToB’s simple tools app.

The effective push marketing and seeding marketing methods for ToB, because they need professional, time-consuming patience, and no incentive performance, which has exceeded the working ability and scope of the market department, and basically no one will take the initiative to do it.

Everything from the customer’s “digital” marketing is a waste of money for ToB. It’s very likely that when you play these numbers, the contract is signed there.

Low-quality marketing problems will definitely be reflected in the output clues; you don’t need to take the numbers of MQL and SQL to say things directly, and you can see them more clearly with transaction conversion rate.

Is the empowerment or negative energy of sales?

The word “energy” is too much tolerant. When sales don’t know what to do, you can always use empowerment to say things. Why has it been empowered and the quality of sales has not improved?

Sales ability, business knowledge, sales methods and risk control awareness are the four key elements to ensure the quality of ToB sales; to grasp these four aspects, is the best empowerment.

ToB’s basic sales ability is the result of long-term accumulation, and short-term training is difficult to achieve. For example, the sales staff of ToC has rarely sold tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of customer-priced products, and the capability positioning is still at the level of consumer goods sales. The salesman who lacks the ability to use is creating opportunities for the opponent.

Insufficient business knowledge, saying that customer-centered, customer-oriented or product-centric; business knowledge is also the accumulation of practice, short-term training can only let the salesperson remember the characteristics of the product, not with the customer The ability of business people to talk.

Sales methodology and best practices are things that the company has to work hard to do. Most companies are still discussing “playing”, which is not at one level. The play requires the support of methodologies and best practices. There are many ways to play and use it for different people.

Wind control is not a matter for the legal department, but the boundaries and bottom line of sales. Salespeople who get commissions for completing sales tasks, super-business scope and over-service commitments will produce low-quality and high-cost customers and contracts that may be unprofitable.

On lineRecruiting senior sales in the industry is much better than selling newbies. Generally speaking, professional salespeople are more border-conscious, and newcomers are more likely to violate the rules in order to survive.

Good contract or bad contract?

Sales quality directly determines the quality of the contract, and low-quality contracts increase the cost of compliance, such as the cost of implementation, second-open and additional business.

The contracts that are barely signed will deviate from the inherent system business scope and will not meet the requirements of customers. This can lead to poor customer quality, which is difficult to continue to use, and lose subsequent subscription revenue.

Good contracts can lead to profitability and growth, while poor contracts can only bring “liabilities”

Second, why SaaS can’t use the traditional software sales model

At present, most SaaS companies are still using traditional software sales routines; know that selling software and selling services are fundamentally different business models.

Marketing quality, sales quality, and contract quality issues are not pits of traditional software; but this is not to say that SaaS can use traditional software sales models.

Traditional software adopts severe marketing model without exception, which means that regardless of the size of the customer, they try to use the excessive commitment and extended range of routines to expand the general purchase as much as possible. Project, and signing is the sole and ultimate goal of sales; because the transaction ends normally regardless of whether the customer uses the software in the future.

Obviously, this kind of business method of buying and selling a hammer is not suitable for SaaS, because the contract of SaS only represents the agreement of the service and part of the income, and the profit of a single customer can only be realized several years after signing the contract.

If SaaS companies adopt heavy sales methods, it will result in low transaction rate, high marketing expenses and higher implementation costs; the larger the sales scale, the more the company loses. It is also difficult to achieve growth by relying on ways to continuously expand new customers.

In fact, SaaS can use a lighter marketing model to form new service relationships with customers.

After all, selling a product to a customer and buying it with the customer is simply two things.

Three, customize your own sales growth path

Since the traditional software sales model does not work, is there a SaaS proprietary sales model? This is true. There are various successful SaaS books, XX universities, XX training camps and various lectures on the market. They are all about SaaS success.

But when you set up various roles, set up business organizations, and designed business processes in accordance with the benchmark SaaS company, you found that you didn’t get the same SaaS benchmarking company.The effect, where is the problem?

First, although the benchmark SaaS sales model provides a good reference, it is successful SaaS company experience, selling sales 1 to N The domestic SaaS company must first solve the problem of sales 0 to 1; one of them focuses on the growth rate, and the other is the growth.

Secondly, it seems like a one-size-fits-all approach, and it may not be a big deal for a specific company. Because sales have a basic logic: Achieving a deal doesn’t depend on how you sell it, but on how customers buy it. For example, you have designed a perfect customer journey, but most of the corporate procurement process is not in line with your design. If you follow the design journey, the list may be lost.

Finally, replicating US SaaS business processes may increase labor costs and reduce collaboration and sales efficiency.

In fact, one person and one role can be combined into one person and more roles, which will improve efficiency. For example, you can split the working time of a salesperson by virtual character without taking SDR, and you can achieve the same goal.

The generic SaaS sales model is not necessarily your current sales growth path. Designed according to company stage, customer characteristics, industry characteristics and product characteristics, and continuously refined and simplified.

After all, current operability is more important than justification.

Look over

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