SaaS Sales Methodology: 3 Sales Models to Drive Long Term Growth

when it comes to selling your SaaS product you actually need to have a proper sales process when I first started selling my SaaS products I Learned very quickly there's a huge difference between just getting on a call and giving a demo versus running a proper sales process following a proper sales methodology demos get a maybe at the end of a call sales methodologies drive to revenues out of the opportunities that you're working here's a big question though which sales methodology is right for you and you're like how many are there and which one should you pick and how do you actually implement it in this episode I'm gonna walk you through the three sales methodologies that are the top three for selling SaaS software today and we'll walk you through the principles to apply so you pick the right one and you can actually implement it and when you follow these principles and implement the right sales methodology you'll be able to accelerate your path to that next stage of growth intro what's up buddy welcome to unstoppable I'm TK and on this channel I hope SaaS founders like you grow your size businesses faster with unstoppable strategy if you're new to this channel welcome I drop an episode every single Sunday with national strategies and tactics from the trenches and how to grow your SaaS business faster so if you're new be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon and you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode with the TK Energy if you're already part of this community if you're part of my SaaS go to market coaching program my people welcome back it's really awesome to see you over here now I remember when I first started book sales demos for my first SaaS business I would get on the calls and back then it was go to webinar or go to meeting or something like that zoomed in exist and I would say hey really glad to have you here let me give you a demo of our product and I would just jump right into the demo very quickly I learn that demos don't actually convert to real revenues unless it's your mom or someone that already trusts you soon as you start to get some marketing out there as soon as you start to get real sales demos with people you don't know I Learned very quickly that you actually have to follow a proper sales process backed by a real sales methodology so in this episode I wanna walk you through the three sales methodologies that exist in the market today that work really well for sales companies guide you in picking the right one and when you apply these you'll be able to accelerate your growth if you're excited to dig into methodology No. 1 go and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm it just loves it when you do that let's dig right into it so methodology No. 1 is to follow what we call the top down sales model this works really well when there is a salesperson involved obviously and you are dealing with a larger deal size the reason it's a larger deal size is because this software is going to be pretty core to how this business operates which means that there's going to be a real transformation that takes place multiple decision makers that are coming into play to actually choose your software platform and run the entire company on it in these kind of cases you have to go top down we call it top down because you're starting at the leadership level of the company or the leadership of the department that's going to be adopting your software you start with them and you actually have to work through that buying process educate them on the transformation why they should trust you and actually get a deal done so that they deploy your software in the OG days even before cloud software even before SaaS existed most enterprise software was sold in this way there'd be salespeople showing up they'd be giving demos be solution architects and you'd work top down because the software you were selling was such a critical part of the business the top of the people the leaders of the company would have to be bought into it which also meant that you'd be charging a heck a lot of money fast forward to today even with SaaS companies that are selling massive transformations whether you're selling it to the enterprise of the mid market or the SMB you're a major critical part of the how they run the business chances are you're going to have to go top down they're gonna wanna talk to you they're gonna wanna figure out that they wanna run your business on your platform if you're running a SA software where it's transformational for the company it's core to their infrastructure how their business operates it's really a system of record then you're gonna follow the top down sales model in the top down sales model it can take multiple phone calls multiple zoom calls maybe even in person meetings but it'll be worth it because the deal sizes will be big enough now there's a catch here if your deal sizes are super small and you're still having to do a top down sale for not a lot of money that's a sign that you need to reevaluate your sales methodology in your sales model because it may not be sustainable if it's a small amount of money but a lot of sales work to be done you'll never be able to get enough reps and pay them well and earn enough money from customers to sustain that so this is why with each of these sales methodology I'm gonna walk you through this pros and cons is the right fit and the wrong fit depending on the nature of your business this first sales methodology is the top down model that you're selling to the top and it's a true transformation for the company and in these kind of cases it's a larger deal size it's truly transformational and the best part about this is once you do close this deal you're gonna be so embedded into how their company operates they're less likely to churn so that's the press side of this as well so that's the first sales methodology and don't worry when you watch till the end I'll kind of compare and contrast these three so that you can really nail in on which one is the right one for you the second sales methodology is the exact opposite of the first one instead of going top down you essentially go bottoms up there's a pro and con to this in order to go top down you really have to go sell them on the transformation you really have to talk to them you have to build the relationship it's gonna be a large deal you to get multiple stakeholders there's a lot of work and it has to be a large enough deal size so a lot of SaaS founders and SaaS companies eventually said you know what I really don't wanna do that I don't want 12 month sale cycles I don't wanna go top down I rather build a really great SaaS product let the users just choose to use it so instead of putting sales upfront I'm gonna make it where random people can just start using it and then over time I can sell it to the wider company and this is where the bottoms up model was born some people refer to this as product LED growth but it's a little bit of a mislenomer because you may be starting with product but there's still sales people involved the way it works is you get end users to actually start using your product and in this kind of scenario they will maybe start with a trial have a single user license swipe their credit card like $9 a month or $30 a month and start to get regular use you then wanna make it where they're starting to propagate this to other people in that company so you want a natural way where they're spreading it to other parts of the company and more and more people in the same role are starting to use it that's when the fun begins that's when you take your salespeople and you send them in and say look you have 100 people in your organization already using our software would you like to get a sitewide license or a company wide license would you like to make sure it's compliant with it instead of these people using it in a rogue way that's why this is called the bottoms up model instead of a really complicated sales process up top you start by ceding it to the users you still run your marketing to get to attract those users and get them into your product and start using and convert to revenue at a very low Dollar Point and then once you get critical mass at each of these companies each of these target customers you send the sales people in and then you say okay cool we have 100 seats or we have 50 seats or maybe we have 15 seats but you still have 1,000 people that could be using the software let's talk about how we can actually make it where the entire company is using it what this does is instead of going in cold and starting to sell a transformation all the way at the top without them really knowing if they can trust you if your software is any good you're essentially going in warm they're already using your software people will already vouch for it chances are they're asking for it and clamoring for it and wanting to expense it so this bottoms up model is super powerful because sales ends up coming in in the middle of the process where it's already warm and you already have momentum in a customer base and in a deal and then they really go after the larger deal sizes where the entire company is buying the product so those are the first two sales miles now there's a third one that I actually absolutely love and I think this is the future of SaaS companies especially as you're looking to grow in a cost efficient way while you're driving scale before I go into that let me pause here for a second are you starting to see the power in this on one hand you can just go in and just do a demo but on the other hand if you are cognizant about hey who's my ideal customer how do I wanna sell to them do I wanna go bottoms up do I wanna go top down am I selling a transformation or am I not doing a sales call at all I'm first actually going in and getting the users to buy it on their own and then I'm going in to actually drag momentum you can start to make decisions on how you're going to run your sales process and this is where a sales methodology actually emerges if you certainly see the power in this can I just get a yes in the comments below and also smash a like button for the YouTube algorithm just loves it when you do that also while you're in the comments you should put in which sales methodology you're leaning towards so far I'm gonna go to the third one which is probably what everyone's gonna wanna choose but right now between top down and bottoms up which one is right for you one thing I'll mention sometimes founders just choose the one that they want to create like look we wanna be product LED because they don't want salespeople the reality is you really have to think about how your customer wants to buy for example if you have a system of record a random user is not going to start using it out of the box it's gonna have to be a top down sale but if you're a system of engagement if you're a tool that a single user can get value from then a top down sale might actually be inefficient you want the end users to start using it get critical mass and grow a lot of times this decision is actually made by your customers they tell you how they wanna buy because of the nature of your product so as you're trying to make this decision between these two wait till you hear the third one you should really think about what is my customer want and what's right for them because usually that yields a better result and you can architect your overall sales and marketing process around your customer so if you're in the stage where you're figuring out some of these core pieces around your go to market strategy who are we selling to what's the transformation how do we communicate it what is the sales model when do the salespeople come in when is it product you start to figure these pieces out do you actually want help implementing a lot of these principles this is why I run my SaaS go to market coaching program inside this program I work with you to actually implement a go to market strategy and help you apply all these principles you don't have to go anywhere right now I'll link to it below and also tell you more about it at the end of this episode let's go to methodology No. 3 the one that I absolutely love and what I use for all all my companies methodology No. 3 is a little bit of a hybrid of 1 and 2 and it's essentially called the land and expand model thing that I don't like about one or two is that No. 1 forces me into large and long sale cycles I have to go top down to convince a bunch of people it has to be worth it so there's some problem around you know what it's gonna take a while and I have to make the deal sizes huge and maybe they're not gonna be that huge I don't like having to pick that on the other hand I also don't like selling a 9 dollar product where a bunch of users are using it that are low intent they might churn it might not propagate it it may not actually get implemented properly in the company so these are kind of the two edges there's nothing wrong with them but I personally don't love them because it forces me to choose on quality on this hand it's high quality I know that they're really gonna use the platform they're gonna implement it but it takes forever to convince them on the other hand a bunch of randos in a company are gonna use it I don't know if they're gonna use it properly and then I don't know if I'm gonna get the expansion so I don't have as much control and I really wanna have a proper sales experience and get really great customers this is where methodology 3 really comes in methodology 3 is what we call plan the wedding and otherwise it's also known as a land and expand model the idea on this is to find some sort of a middle ground between these two methodologies and the land and expand model works really well for that what you do essentially is you don't try to get a whole bunch of users using it for $9 a month but you do think about what is a small group of people that I can sell to first we call that essentially the pilot so we go after a relatively small deal size for a subset of the organization so we can deliver a quick value so it still sales lead it's not product LED the salespeople go in they pick a very specific use case they pick a very specific part of the organization and say hey listen this is what our software does this is what transformation is this doesn't have to be a huge decision what we recommend is you do a 30 day pilot at no charge what this does is essentially takes the best of both worlds you essentially are getting a really engaged customer potential customer they're doing a pilot but at the same time you're not having to spend 12 months getting the whole deal you're doing a smaller deal to get your foot in the door and that's why it's called a land and expand mall because once you get your foot in the door then you can drive success and expand it to maybe the entire department or the entire company and the entire global company regions that may exist so you can actually start small and expand from there which is why it's called the land and expand model and there's a little trick to this every single founder that I coach that deploys this specific model I always teach them the mantra of plan the wedding what a lot of people do wrong when they're doing this is they start the pilot and then they hope and pray that they'll buy the bigger deal and what ends up happening is these 30 day pilots end up running for six months and 12 months it essentially becomes a really really shitty version of the top down sales model which is no good which is why I always coach founders and when I work with founders we were working on implementing these sales methodologies we're also working on implementing the overall go to market strategy to get them actual sales demos so one of the things we always talk about is you gotta plan the wedding meaning if you're starting the pilot plan the ultimate wedding this is essentially the engagement this is maybe the little party to celebrate but this is the wedding so plan the wedding once you start a pilot you should create a cohesive plan on how you're going to exit the pilot and when what the exit criteria is and how you actually get to the next deal and the next deal you should co create that plan with your customer this is essentially what makes sure that a pilot doesn't turn into a top down sale which may be right for you but as long as the deal size is sustained so the whole idea behind this third methodology is you start with the pilot with a little bit of money and then you expand into larger and larger deals and larger and larger usage as you start to actually get critical mass in the company so those are the three sales methodology let's recap and I'll bring it all together for you the first sales methodology you can follow for your SaaS business is the top down model you should do this one if you are a critical part of the infrastructure of the business you can charge a large deal size and you're okay with a longer sale cycle second model is the bottoms up this is where you get end users to use your product first convert to revenues once you get a critical mass in each organization you send the salespeople in and say hey you got 10 users 15 users less expanded to 100 or 200 or the entire organization and that way you can actually move bottoms up and the third one the one that I love is the best of both worlds you go into a specific part organization you get a small deal first that's your landing and then you plan the wedding as you doing that small deal on that pilot you could charge for a pilot we could choose not to charge for a pilot depends on what you can really get away with and what the offer is that you make that customers love sometimes customers prefer to pay for it cause they think that free is not worth anything so you do the pilot and then you plan the wedding on how you are going to expand maybe you start with a specific department then you go to a specific country and then the entire global region depending on how big the customer is or it could be two people and then 10 people and then 100 people you can expand it accordingly and that's the third sales methodology that you can follow the land and expand model so now you know my three favorite sales methodologies the top down model the bottoms up model and the hybrid landing expand model and now you know what the pros and cons are and which one is right for your SaaS business now what you may not know is TK how do I implement this like what do I say on the discovery call for a top down model or how do I implement this for the bottoms up model or you may be wondering TK I kind of know what to say now I got it don't just jump to the demo but I need more demos I need more opportunities I need to get myself out there in the market and attract these people or you may be trying to figure out okay I wanna do a product like model how do I actually get revenues converting and then I can actually put in the sales piece this is why I created my SaaS go to market coaching program in this channel I share all of the principles but in my coaching program I help you implement them if you're in this stage where you're looking to build out a proper go to market strategy it includes how you actually generate leads convert them to opportunities and then you run the sales process to convert them to revenue or even put a product LED motion in there so the sales people come in warm this is all the pieces that I help you implement inside of my SaaS go to market coaching program specifically there's three core things that we work on the first one is your ICP that's your ideal customer profile everyone thinks I'm an ICP until they work with me I follow a 29 point process to actually flash out your ICP and stress test it with you and go through the intellectual questions that we need to talk through to pick the right segment of the market to target once you have your ICP then I teach you how to build a manifesto your manifesto is your positioning it's your strategic narrative it's your messaging it's the kind of thing that you use actually generate leads to attract the right people from your ICP but also it's the exact deck that you use when you're running your sales call so that you don't just jump to a demo also once you have the ICP and the manifesto then comes the third piece that's your Broadway show the Broadway show is a consistent set of sales and marketing activities that you run to bring the manifesto to your ICP on a consistent basis once you launch your Broadway show and typically takes about three weeks to launch it once we start working together you'll be generating consistent leads you'll be converting them to opportunities and demos and you'll know exactly how to run those demos and for example if in the middle of that you wanna add a product LED process I'll teach you how to do that as well it is an incredible program I absolutely love working in this program cause I'm working with founders like you to actually implement all the principles that I teach it's incredible so if you wanna learn more you wanna work together just go to tkk.comslashgtm tkk.comslashgtm and you'll get all the details in there the better the fit the better the results and this is why we ask you to fill a little form and book a time with us and we'll actually get on a call to understand where you are in the business what you're struggling with and if I can help it sounds like I can help you inside of the program you'll be able to join right away and we'll get to implementing right away so just go to tkkader.com/gtm tkkader.com/gtm for all the details if you got value from this video please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm it just loves it when you do that so do we we put a lot of love into these videos also if you have a fellow founder if you have a team member if you have a Slack group or WhatsApp group of other founders that would get value from this video please share this video with them just mean the world to us if you do we wanna help as many SaaS companies and SaaS founders and SaaS teams as possible lastly I drop an episode like this every single Sunday with actual strategies and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business faster so be sure to hit the subscribe button in that bell icon that you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode and lastly remember everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business when you are with us yours it's gonna be unstoppable I'm TK and I'll see you in the next episode or inside the SaaS go to market coaching program where we'll work together start implementing right away take care everybody alright new set well it's kind of the same set but slightly different spot we're gonna have some fun with it let's go

Channel: TK Kader

Views: 3,226

Keywords: saas sales methodology, saas sales models, best saas sales model, saas sales model, saas, saas business, saas startup, saas sales, saas pricing models, saas sales strategies, saas sales process, saas conversion, selling saas, saas sales advice, saas sales best practices, selling saas b2b, saas selling strategies, saas b2b sales, saas sales method, saas software sales, saas business model, transactional saas sales, self service saas, tk kader, unstoppable tk

Id: _mCjWTulxEE

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024