Streamline your b2b saas sales process for Technology Industry

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- If your average deal size is anything more than say $997 a month, then it's very, very likely that you won't convert unless there's a human involved, there's a sales person involved. Now, this is regardless of whether you're product led growth or you're just traditional lead based marketing, either way, there's this human rule of, "I'm not gonna swipe my credit card for more than $997 unless I talk to a human being, and I know there's a real person on the other end." Now, the only exception to this rule is if you are Elon Musk, in which case he's one of the greatest marketers out there, even though he spends $0 in marketing. In which case you will probably go to the Tesla website and swipe your Apple Pay and pay tens of thousands of dollars for a car for delivery 18 months from now. But for everyone else, us mere mortals like us, for most of us, maybe you're as good as Elon Musk, I don't wanna assume anything. Then in that case, we're left with this big question, if we wanna increase our average contract values, if we wanna be charging more than $997 a month and even at that level, if we actually wanna be doing one year deals where they pay up front for the deal, then how do we actually institute a sales system with actual salespeople so that we can close those deals? Now, this is pretty counterintuitive. There are some critical components to this. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the three principles that you absolutely need to know to establish your unstoppable SaaS Sales System. Say that five times fast. And when you incorporate this, you'll be able to accelerate the growth of your SaaS business because every single customer you bring on will be worth a lot more and you'll be able to do it efficiently. Intro. (upbeat music) (clapping sounds) What's up everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable. I'm TK, and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome, I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies and principles on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So, be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon that way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy. Now, if you're already part of my Coaching Programs, if you're part of this fast growing unstoppable community of SaaS founders and leaders and marketers and salespeople, my people welcome. It's really awesome to see you over here. Now, I remember when I was building our ToutApp, ToutApp was a pioneer in the sales engagement space, we actually started with a product-led growth model, and then we bolted on a sales-driven model on top, meaning people could just sign up for a trial on the product and then we would monitor to see which were high value accounts, where we could sell multiple seats, large logos, and then we would feed those leads as they activated in the product into the sales team, and the sales team would then go in and try to close larger deals. Over time, that evolved where we had the self-service business, we call it self service, now it's called product-led, same thing, but we also had salespeople that were doing outbound and we had marketing efforts that were going after larger deals. So, we kind of had both models going. ToutApp got bought by Marketo and at Marketo you couldn't get a trial, you still can't get a trial of a Marketo product. So, it was only sales-driven. And so I got to see what the sales-driven machine looks like for a 450 million plus ARR company. So, I saw it in all these different scales from the earliest of stages for ToutApp growing from PLG to sales plus PLG, all the way to Marketo, where it was a 450 millionaire ARR company. And so given all that experience, my 15 years of experience in building, scaling, exiting SaaS companies, and now I coach SaaS founders with 85 plus companies that I work with inside of my Go-To-Market Program. I'm gonna walk you through exactly the three principles you need to know, so you can build out your unstoppable SaaS Sales System. So if you're excited to dig in, go smash out like button for the YouTube algorithm and let's dig right into it, shall we? Okay, so I'm gonna walk you through the three principles and I have a bonus one for you in the end, but let me just kind of frame on where we are. A lot of people approach building out their Sales System on well, how do we get salespeople and hooked in, what do they do, what's our process. They think of it in terms of me, as in like, "What do we need? How do I get the money from the customer?" And that's always the wrong way to do it, or it's the harder way to do it. The easier way to do it is just think about the customer journey. And so, what I have for you here is essentially the customer journey of where a potential customer, someone in your ideal customer profile is aware of you. Now this could, they become a lead, they see an ad or they start a trial on your product. It doesn't matter. That's essentially your pipeline generation activities. And it doesn't matter how you do it, whether you're product-led or marketing-led, whatever, it doesn't matter. But once they become aware, a bunch of stuff needs to happen in your Sales System. And once those things happen effectively, then they get into paying you and you get into this initial revenue. And because we are SaaS businesses, you know most of us are SaaS businesses, it doesn't end there. It continues on where we renew and upsell and cross sell and grow that over time. So, for all practical purposes, that's the customer journey we're looking at. And when you're thinking about that part of the customer journey, what we really wanna dig into is what are the three critical components that you need, plus the bonus one to actually build out your Sales System? So, the first thing that you wanna be thinking about is exactly how someone goes from this awareness stage to the demo stage. Now, this is essentially the first call with the actual human being in your company. This could be a demo call. This could be a strategy call. This could be a discovery call. Whatever you wanna call it, these are the different names I see for it. But essentially this is the first touch in the sales process where someone becomes aware of you guys through your pipeline generation activities. And then they say, "Hey, know what? I'm interested. And I wanna talk to a human and I wanna pay you a lot of money if you can solve my problems." And in that scenario, you essentially have to kind of find a way when it goes from here to here. And a lot of times, you maybe you'll have a talk to sales button in the homepage, but then there's also a start trial button and maybe they get into the trial, but there's no way for them to actually then request a demo. They go down on this other path. So, what you wanna be thinking about is what are all the touch points that we have whether it's in the product, a follow-up email sequence, or just on the website or through our outbound efforts where we actually go to them and say, "Hey, we wanna talk to you." Because you know that they're a high value potential customer. They would be paying over that $997. So you're like, "You know what? This violates the 997 rule. I want them as a customer so let's go talk to them. Let's go talk to the salespeople." Or if you're founder-led and you're super early stage, "Let's go engage with them so we can get them on a call like this." And what ends up happening a lot of times is people don't think about how does this happen? What is the messaging for it? What are we promising them on the call? They don't think about them. How do we engage them on the call? How do we get them to give us 30 minutes of their time now that they know about us so that they would get on this call and make it worth their while. So, principle number one is essentially just figure out what is your call strategy? That first call strategy, and how do you ensure that people are compelled to book the time? How do you make it easy for them to book the time? And a lot of times people graze over this part and they just maybe have a button. They don't have the scheduling, they don't have the messaging. So, you wanna flesh that out as part of your unstoppable SaaS Sales System. Okay, once you do that, then we get into the second principle. The second principle, which is just as important as the first one is, okay, you work all your magic to get them on the call. Now, you have this 30 glorious minutes where you're gonna be talking to them. What do you say? How do you frame the conversation? Now, remember we're thinking about the customer journey they're on, they wanna talk to a human. They wanna understand if this is gonna work. Now, this could take, depending on your deal sizes, depending on the complexity of your sale, this could take multiple touches, right? It could take maybe eight calls, maybe you have million-dollar deals. Some folks in the Go-To-Market Program, they do $2.5 million deals, which is crazy. And they've done them, but they take a bit of time. Other people have 25K deals and they could close it in one call, maybe two. So, it depends on what type of deal you're doing, but ultimately even with the number of calls it might take, the first call is crucial. If you nail the first call, then there's gonna be urgency on the deal. If you nail the first call, then there's gonna be a clear value proposition. If you nail the first call, then they're gonna truly understand what the return on investment is gonna be if they buy your software. If you don't do these things, then you'll have a call. It'll be just another call. They'll be busy and they'll move on to the other thing. So, it's super important to understand well, what is our strategy for these discovery calls or these demo calls? So, the second principle that you absolutely need to have over here is you need to flash out your manifesto. Others call this your strategic narrative, and when you actually take this and adopted what you're really turning this into is your sales deck. Let me explain. So, if you've been following my channel for a while, then you know that everyone should have a manifesto. A manifesto is this core messaging around why your company exists. What the transformation is you're bringing into the world, why they should pay attention, who are the winners and losers. That's essentially what the manifesto is. And inside of my Go-To-Market Program, I teach you how to craft these in a very specific way. Typically, it takes two to three tries to get it right inside the program, but that's how we get ensure that you're successful with it. So, there's a nuance way to actually build this out. And so when you have that core strategic narrative, your manifesto, that becomes an extension into your sales deck. And if you don't put the right amount of thought into your sales deck so that people are clear on what the transformation is, why they need to do this now versus wait? What the return on investment is gonna be? Why they should trust you? If you don't do some of those core components in your sales presentation, then it'll just be another call. But if you nail this, then this will be one of those calls where they walk away saying, "We got to take action on this. We need to take this very seriously." And maybe they're already in the market and they're talking to your competitors or they're discovering it for the first time, having the right manifesto and a sales deck delivering it will actually ensure that you rise above the competition and you drive that urgency to say, "Hey, this is something you need to be taking very seriously." And so principle number two, principle number one is make sure you have a strategy on how you get them on these calls. Principle number two is make sure you actually have a plan for these calls. You have a proper sales deck delivering the actual strategic narrative for your business on why they need to be doing business with you. Why they didn't need to be buying your software and most important, what happens if they just walk away if they don't do anything? This is the super important things you need to be flashing out on this call. Now, are there more things that you need to be doing on this call? Absolutely. Beyond the sales deck, there's some core principles around how do you run the call? What questions you ask, what are the discovery questions, but that's beyond the scope of a 30, 28 minute YouTube video. But this is a must have, because if you have the right sales deck, which is stems from the right strategic narrative and your manifesto, then it'll set you up to have those right conversations and ask those right questions. It'll be framed in the context of the big transformation you are bringing. So, those are the first two principles. Now, before I go to principle number three, and I give you the bonus principle, let me just pause here for a second. Are you starting to see the power in this? Are you starting to see the power of first of all, regardless of whether you're product-led growth or marketing-driven growth, whatever you wanna call it, regardless of that, if you wanna start charging higher prices for your deals, if you wanna be making more money per customer, you wanna sell something substantial that can't easily be ripped out. Then you're gonna need some sort of a Sales System. You're gonna need a sales process. You're obviously gonna need salespeople too, but that comes later. Maybe it's founder-led sales in the beginning of the early stages, and then it grows from there. If you are already running a sales process and you know it's not quite working, your win rates are not that great. Then chances are you're missing one of these parts to your system. So, if you start to see the power of this, can I just get a yes in the comments below? Also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, it really likes it when you do that. Also, if you're figuring out all these pieces and you're like, "You know what? I really need to build out my SaaS sale system. I also need to figure out how to generate enough pipeline so I have my salespeople or myself have enough deals to go after." Then you should check out my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching Program. Inside of this program, I actually help you implement all these pieces step by step. I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video, I'll also link to it below, but now let's go to principle number three. All right, principle number three. Okay, so you have the demo call. You go through it and now you have the sales deck and you walk through the sales and you run the discovery call. The third principle that a lot of companies and founders and leaders forget, This is principle number three, is the follow-up. You would be amazed how many salespeople, how many founders that are taking on sales are just bad at following up. Not every deal is going to close right away. There's a saying we had a tout app whenever we lost a deal, and we hated losing deals because we were like going head to head with a lot of competitors. And we just said, "Look, they'll come back." We knew that we had one of the best platforms in the business, and so we were always like, "They'll be back. They'll be back. They will be back. So let's follow up, let's remarket to them." Let's add value to them. They will be back and sure enough, they did come back. Eventually people would come back because we still had the best platform at that time. Obviously, sales engagement has evolved since then, but at that time we were the best and we knew it. So we always said, we will keep following up. And so some critical components to this is the obvious thing where you should have a CRM system. You should have clear stages for your deals. You should also have a proper followup system. Now, I did an entire video on how to set up your SaaS sales stages. Also really hard to say it really fast. I'll link to it below. You don't have to go right now. Let's keep going on this, but if you wanna learn more about the stages, I'll link to it below as well so you can check out one more video about this whole area of expertise. So, you wanna have the CRM. You wanna have clear deal stages and you wanna have proper followup sequences. Even in my case, when we are selling something, we have email templates and sequences on following up after we do a meeting. This ensures that we're getting the consistent messaging, we're reminding them of the value proposition, we're reminding them of the ROI, we're showing them customers' case studies and proof points so that we make it a no brainer that they're gonna work with us, and we also even set up closed/lost sequences, meaning as someone says, "I'm not interested. I don't wanna do this business." And we moved them over to say, "Okay, we lost the deal." But that triggers an entire followup sequence that keeps sending them success stories of our customers. And that way they're like, "Oh, like, okay, well maybe I should reconsider them." It's not a pushy thing. It's like, "Look, our clients are getting success. We believe in it. I'm sending this to you because I believe we can help you. So let's go do the thing." Having a proper CRM, having the right stages to measure your deals and where they are in the pipeline, and having a follow-up sequence is a third key principle of an unstoppable SaaS sale system. And when you have that, then everything starts to come together. That way, as people become aware through your pipeline activities, then there's a clear path and engagement process and system in place on how to get them on a sales call. Once they get on a sales call, then you have a clear process on exactly how you're gonna run that sales call. What is your manifesto? How are you gonna walk them through it? So, they feel compelled. They feel the urgency, they feel the transformation and they feel how they're gonna get their return on investment. And once you have that, you have a clear follow-up sequence on, "Hey, let's do the deal or let's get to the next phase." And let's make sure that you have everything you need to make an informed decision. You do these three things, then you will have the beginnings of an amazing unstoppable SaaS Sales System. If you don't do this, then you're gonna be wondering why is our win rate shitty? How come our leads aren't converting? You're gonna be looking at all these metrics and you're like, "I don't know what's going on." But if you break down your Sales System to these three key things, then everything will start to change. And you can start to ask yourself, "Okay, is it that demos aren't getting booked? But we have leads. Or is it that our messaging is off because we're getting discovery calls, but no one wants to talk to us after? Or is it that we're just not following up? We don't have a follow up sequence." So, let's figure that out. You can start to break it down into these core components and see where the problem is and tweak it from there. Now, I did promise you a bonus one and you're still here so I wanna make sure you get it. There's one more thing. There's a fourth bonus principle that I wanted to talk about. And the fourth bonus principle that is actually part of your Sales System, it's also part of your marketing system, but not everyone thinks about it outright, is your pricing and ROI strategy. Now, let me explain. What is the price of your product? You know, maybe it's a hundred bucks a month, but now you wanna sell it at a thousand dollars a month. Maybe you have to pre-pay for the full year. Maybe it's a three-year deal minimum. And maybe you charge by the seat, or maybe you don't charge by the seat, but you charge by the instance. Maybe you don't start charging by the instance, but you charged with a number of contacts. You get the picture? There's so many different ways to price something and there's an art to this. And we actually have an entire section dedicated inside my Go-To-Market Program on what is our pricing strategy gonna be and how do we tweak it? And how do you make more money from it? I remember I learned the importance of this because of two investors of mine, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. I was talking to them because ToutApp was in trouble and they were like, "Look, just increase your prices and it's gonna solve 90% of your problems." And they were right. I increased my prices and everything got better. Pricing is something we don't pay as much attention to but when you're building out your SaaS Sales System, even at the point where you're communicating the value of your product, believe it or not, they will likely be looking at competitors, right? Like they'll go to G2 cloud and see who else is a competitor. They'll do a Google search, they literally type in the name of your company and type in vs and Google will tell them who your competitors are. They will do all of that. And the way you communicate the price, are you more expensive or less? We'll communicate the value they're gonna get. So, it's an opportunity for you when you start talking about pricing, which you inevitably will in the sales process to communicate the value they're gonna get, to show the return on investment they're gonna get. And so, the bonus principle here as part of your unstoppable SaaS sale system is to figure out what your pricing strategy and your ROI strategy is gonna be. How do you price it? How do you communicate it? And how do you show them the ROI? Those are the three things you wanna nail as this final piece of your unstoppable SaaS Sales System. So to recap, number one, you wanna make sure that you actually have a proper demo or discovery call strategy. How did they actually get on this call? How do we book it? Where do we engage? Where are the different places that we can ask them to engage? Number two, you wanna have a strategy on how you run these calls. That's your manifesto. You wanna actually have a proper sales deck. Number three, you wanna make sure you have a CRM with the right deal stages, and I'll link to that video below. And you wanna make sure you have a followup sequence to make sure you follow up after these calls to make the most of them. And then it'll convert to deals or they won't, and eventually they'll come back, but you also wanna have number four, a proper pricing and ROI strategy so that people can understand how to compare you in the market. What kind of ROI? What kind of return investment they're gonna get? How quickly? So that they can make the right business decision. Now, you know how to build out your own unstoppable SaaS Sales System so you can close larger deals, increase your average deal sizes, and accelerate the growth of your SaaS business. But you may not know how to actually do each of these core components. You may not quite know well, how do I get enough pipeline? How do I run the right marketing place to get people into my product if you're product-led? Or to get people to actually book a demo call if you're purely sales-led, right? Or some hybrid of that. You may not know how do we actually poke onto these people, and what's the messaging to get them on these demo calls or to get them on these strategy calls or these discovery calls. You may not know how do I craft my manifesto so that my sales deck is compelling and people feel the urgency and the transforming, and then take action. You may also may not know on how do I structure this overall sales process. What are the questions to run during these discovery calls after I've gone through my sales deck? What are the follow-up sequences look like after I moved them through the stage? How do I think about these stages? What should these stages be? You may also not know how do I craft and revamp my pricing strategy. These are the core principles, fairly simple, but implementing them can be difficult if this is your first time around, or you don't have all the resources to bring on the experts on each of these pieces. You may not know all these things and that's the case for me when I was building out ToutApp. I didn't know a lot of these things, and I had to find people and I have to piece it together and I had so much execution and I hated it. So, this is why I created my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching Program. Inside of this Coaching Program, I actually help you, I work with you and I coach you in building out these core components. From the pipeline generation piece, the overall Go-To-Market strategy piece to these specific components of your SaaS Sales System, I call the Unstoppable SaaS Sales System. And so if you want help on this, you don't wanna figure it out alone. You don't wanna rely on just an agency or a part-time consultant that's never done this before, and you wanna follow my framework, and my coaching based on my 15 years of experience in building, scaling, growing, and exiting SaaS businesses, then I invite you to check out my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching Program. All of the details are at tkkader.com/gtm tkkader.com/gtm. When you go to that page, you'll also see success stories. I actually just interviewed a bunch of companies that have been in the program for 12 months. One of them grew over 300%. One of them is experiencing 200% quarter over quarter growth. One of them, 5X in MRR. It's an incredible, incredible program. And it's a privilege and an honor to work with the founders that are in it. So, I'd love to have you in there. So, if you want help piecing together these core components and actually executing on them quickly without making common mistakes, following the best practices and actually having my coaching as you're going through it so you're not doing it alone, then I invite you to check out my Go-To-Market Program. Just go to tkkader.com/gtm. Also, if you've got value from this video, be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, it really likes it when you do that. I also drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies from actually being in the trenches, being a founder and scaling real SaaS businesses. I bring you strategies on how to grow your SaaS business so be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon, if you haven't already. Also, if you are part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group, if you're part of a community of fellow SaaS founders, if you have a team member that would get value from this video, please share it with them. It would mean the world to me and my team put a lot of love into these videos. And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK, and I'll see you the next episode or inside of the GTM Program where we get to work together. Take care, everybody. (fading orchestra music)