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- In this video, you're gonna learn what the day-to-day life is like in SaaS Sales. We're gonna talk about the culture you know, what it's like working in tech sales or I was gonna talk about what you're actually doing as a sales person. And I'm also gonna share my insights working in Silicone Valley at Oracle, as well as in San Francisco at a Y Combinator backed startup. (upbeat music) What's going on everybody, it's Patrick Dang here before we get started and make sure to give this video a like, subscribe, and turn on notifications, if you wanna see more sales videos like this. And let's go ahead and dive right in. Now, the first thing I wanna talk about is, what exactly makes SaaS Sales different, right? Software sales or tech sales and we're gonna bundle it all together, right? What makes this industry so special compared to other industries? Now, personally, myself, before I started working in tech after I graduated from university. I actually interned in at a marketing agency in Hollywood which promoted movies like Batman and stuff like that. And I also worked in fashion and street wear or men's fashion, specifically, selling products like Incase, G-Shock, Super Footwear. So, let's go ahead and talk about, you know, the differences in working on in these industries. Now, starting off, let's talk about the SaaS business model real quick, right? SaaS is essentially software where people basically pay to use your software every month. So, if you think about Spotify or Netflix technically these are SaaS companies but on the consumer level, right? Regular people like you and I have Netflix we have Spotify and things like that. Now for other companies, like Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, HubSpot, you know, these are large companies that sell B2B SaaS products meaning they're selling specifically to businesses not regular consumers like you and I. And when you're selling these big products they cost big money, right? It's expensive. So, some people are paying thousands, 10,000 100,000, even millions per year on this kind of software. And so that's essentially where salespeople come in and, you know, sellers like me and you, are the people that are selling this type of software, right? Because a company's gonna want to talk to a real person if they're gonna spend $10,000 a month on a software. Right? Obviously. Now, so from my experience, working at Oracle selling human capital management software and then I later worked at this company called Lob. lob.com which is a Y Combinator backed startup. And, you know, from my experience overall, you know, both of them, I would say working in tech, you know, people are a lot more innovative forward-thinking and more open-minded compared to the other industries that I we're in. I'm not saying that Hollywood and fashion I'm not saying they're bad industries. I'm just saying that they are there is definitely a difference in the culture. And so for tech, I feel like people are very nice and supportive. Like overall, they just, I don't know what it is. They just how they are, people always trying to help you, try and give you support and share insights especially internally as a team. And it's very encouraging, right? Because in tech, everybody wants to do a startup and that's probably part of why they got into tech. And so, you know, there's a lot of people who may have a job as an employee, but they're always thinking like, "Okay, I want to do this startup." "I have this idea." "You want to work together on this on a side project." It's actually a very fun and mentally stimulating environment I've found. Now, working in tech and SaaS Sales it is a lot more fast paced, right? So, if you're someone that likes to go slow tech may not be for you because in technology things change all the time. And just like, you know, for a sales person especially someone who's just graduating from university, starting their job. They might be switching jobs every one or two years because you know, they might do good in one place. And then, you know another company offers them the similar job but then they offer a much larger salary and they just keep jumping around and increasing their salary, you know, every one or two years. And you know, if you think about technology it just changes so fast, right? Like, you know, one year you might have a company that's doing really well. A couple of years later there might be out of business. Right? And that's just how fast it goes. And if you think about, let's say like cryptocurrency like five years ago, nobody was really talking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And just a couple years later, there's literally thousands of different companies that just came out of nowhere came out in the air, who have a lot of funding. And now there's this whole ecosystem in cryptocurrency companies, right? So overall, like if you work in tech sales you have to be, quick to adapt to different markets, right? You can't complain that the market's changing, product changes, people, customers preferences change. They change all the time. So you have to keep adapting, right? It's not like selling a commodity like rice or steel. It's like these things change. You have to be up-to-date with what's going on and yet to be able to communicate and sell these things as well. And one thing that is really interesting is that, when you work in tech like five years in technology feels like a long time whereas let's say five years in, you know, construction might be, you know, very, very slow and boring, right? And so, you know, that's the overall feeling and culture and environment that I personally got working in SaaS Sales. So now that you kind of get the feeling and the environment of what that is like, let's go ahead and talk about the day-to-day life of, you know, working in sales, right? So, when you're starting a software you're typically gonna start out as a sales development rep also known as a business development rep. And there's a lot of different acronyms and different names for this type of job but it's pretty much the same thing, right? It's SDR, BDR pretty much the same. And when you're starting out, all you're really doing is generating meetings, right? And lot of times you're not even selling anything quite yet. You're just like cold calling on the phone, sending cold emails, adding people on LinkedIn, sending them a message, and just asking for a meeting. And in the beginning it's kind of really interesting because when you're an STR you actually get paid a lot, especially in America you might be making 50 to 80K OTE, meaning your commission, plus your base salary combined just for generating meetings. And you have zero experience, right? Which is pretty ridiculous because other jobs that require a lot experience and don't even get paid, you know, 80K a year, right? And you can get this, right? After graduating college. So, basically for SaaS, how it works is like you have a software and there's many other competitors have a similar software and you have to get in the door with your potential customer. So, sometimes marketing does a good job and a lot of leads come in. A lot of times that doesn't happen. You can't rely on it. So, as a salesperson, you have to go out and reach out to these people. And so that's why companies, especially if they're well-funded, or maybe there are large company like Google or Facebook or Microsoft they basically hire an army of salespeople that just go out and they just keep knocking on doors like metaphorically. They're not actually knocking on doors but they're cold calling, miss sending messages on LinkedIn, sending cold emails is just pounding, pounding, pounding. And most of this is actually done inside, right? So, it's like inside sales. So don't, they don't actually go outside and knock on a door and meet somebody. They just do everything remotely from an office or maybe from home. And all you're really doing is generating leads. You're trying to say like, "Hey." you know you make a cold call. "Hey, this is Patrick from Oracle. You might have to take a second to tell you why I'm calling." And then you just, you know, talk about what value you bring and see if they're interested in if they are they'll book another meeting and you move them to the next step of the sales process. So, let's go ahead and use an example, right? So, this is software called Gusto and actually use it myself. It's basically like an HR payroll software. This is not a sponsored video by the way. And I just use them. And it's just a nice example. So, for Gusto, essentially they are payroll software where if you have a bunch of employees every month you've got to pay everybody, right? Or twice a month, you gotta pay them. And then, you know, it calculates your Social Security and Medicare and all that stuff automatically. So you just press a button, and boom. Everyone's paid. Now, for Gusto. They go specifically for small, medium businesses, right? And maybe it might be like 50 employees 10 employees, you know, whatever the number is. Those are the people that they're going for. So, if I was a sales development rep a very entry-level salesperson working at Gusto. Here's what my day might look like. You know, one day I might be like, okay I'm gonna process. I'm gonna make a prospecting list. I'm gonna look for all the companies in California with 10 to 50 employees with less than 5 million revenue who are not using a payroll software yet or they're using a legacy, old payroll software and it's time for them to upgrade. And basically, I'm gonna go on LinkedIn or go buy different lists and find all these people that fit this specific criteria, right? Because, if they fit this criteria there are a lot more likely to buy my product. And so once I build this list it could be 50 people, 100 people. It depends on how many people I can actually find that fit the bill. Then I'm just gonna , you know, reach out to them, whether it's cold, email, cold call them. And I would exhaust this list and just go through it and see, "Hey, are these people interested?" If they are, then I keep finding more people similar to that. And you keep booking meetings. But, if they're not interested, I come over different idea. And I say, "Okay, so now I'm gonna go for all the s in Nevada that are small, medium businesses, right?" You kind of see where I'm going with this. You're basically coming off a bunch of different ideas seeing who might be a fit and you're trying to find a way to get a meeting and get your foot in the door and have a conversation with them. And you've got to understand most people are gonna say no, right? Maybe they already have payroll software your information's wrong, or they don't need it or they don't care, right? But, you know, 400 noes maybe you get three yeses, right? Or five yeses, people say yes to phone call. And then maybe one or two of those five people might actually buy your product and service. And that's just the game. So, part of the reason why salespeople get paid so much even at an entry level is because they have to go through that process. And it's not easy. You really have to be creative and think about who will buy your product and service. From there, you got to have the emotional stability to handle all the rejection. And then you gotta have this sales skills to actually close the deal. So, it's a multifaceted career, but you know, these are real valuable skills and you can use in your everyday life. So, if I were to say like what are the skills required to be a sales development rep? Well, number one, you gotta be good at communicating verbally, right? Because you gotta talk to people on the phone and you got to qualify them to see if they're a good fit to buy your product or service. Even if you cold email them you still got to get on the phone and qualify them and pass them to the next person in the sales process which we'll talk about later. You also gotta have pretty good copywriting skills. And I'm not saying you got to be a master copywriter but you gotta be able to write a clear concise email that demonstrates your value. Because a lot of times you're communicating through email or LinkedIn. And so you want to come off as professional clear, concise. And the third skill that's kinda hidden is that you gotta be good at researching coming up with creative ideas on who you can reach out to, right? You can't be static. You can't just be like, "Oh, you know, these people don't responds, so my product sucks." You got to think about creative ways to pitch your product and service, right? Even though you're just a entry-level salesperson. You have to think like a CEO and really think about like, "Okay, who is going to buy my product today?" And that's how you succeed as a sales development rep. Now, the next step of the process when it comes to selling tech and SaaS is, running sales meetings and closing deals, right? So, for this type of role, usually, it's the account executive that does the closing, right? So, basically you start as a SCR. And then when you get promoted. You become an account executive and account executive is basically just a closer. So, you know, all those SCRs when they're generating all these meetings they're basically usually, right? It depends on the organization but they're usually generating these meetings for the account executive. So that account executive, they can sit back and relax and just have all these meetings get booked on their calendar. And all they have to do is pick up the phone and start trying to close deals. Now, for smaller companies, you, if you're an account executive you might have to generate your own leads and close them at the same time, when I started at Oracle, I started as an account executive. I had to do both jobs at the same time. So, it just depends on the company structure and where they're at. But, usually you don't have to do that, whether it separate STR and account executive. But for a lot of times you might have to do both. So just, you know, be heads up. Now, when you're selling, you're still doing most of it, inside. Whether, you know, you're talking to people on the phone or you're doing a Zoom call you're doing presentations by sharing your screen on Zoom and going through a PowerPoint, right? All of it can actually be done online. Now, some instances it might make sense to meet the person in person. If you are in their geographical location, you know, no problem. You can just take an Uber and get over there. Or sometimes if you're doing enterprise deals. I did this when I was at Oracle, we would fly out to, you know, the person that we're selling to and do a live, you know, full on presentation with like, you know, a bunch of Oracle people there. So, you know, it really depends on, you know, your specific sale and you know, where you work. But essentially, you know, regardless of it's in-person or just online, the process is pretty much the same, right? You're selling the person you're on the phone. And this is basically the steps you walk people through. Right? First, the lead is generated usually from the SCR. Account executive gets on the phone to qualify the person to see whether or not they're a good fit. And then you dive deeper into the problems understand their pain, to really see if this is something they should buy. From there, you take them through the presentation or demonstration to show them how you solve the problem. Then you go for negotiations and any other things that need to be solved like technical calls or things like that. So any type of follow-up meeting or maybe it's just negotiating contract terms. And finally you get to the close, right? And essentially that's all an account executive does. They just take, you know, that lead and they turn them into a customer and they walk you through the sales process. So, normally if you're working at a company. They already have the sales process defined. You don't have to reinvent it unless you're working at a startup, right? So, if you're working at like Oracle or HubSpot or Salesforce, they already been doing this, you know, thousands of thousand times over. So they have like a well oiled machine that you just have to follow the script and walk people through. But, if you're working at a startup, they may not have this yet. They may not have enough people going through their sales script yet to know if it even works. So, just keep in mind that if you work at a startup, sometimes you have to keep changing things around and, you know, reinvent the script to make sure that it converts better than it already does. So, obviously for being an account executive or closer the skills you need is a verbal communication. You're gonna need to talk a lot that's essential, your job is persuasion and talking. You're gonna need to be able to do presentations whether it's in-person as well as online through Zoom and sharing your screen where it's more focused on audio and PowerPoint. You're gonna need to be able to negotiate, because you want to make sure that you're getting you're giving the customer a fair price and they're not ripping you off. And you're also gonna still need strong written skills because you're gonna communicate a lot through email because, you know, once you do the first meeting, you'd have follow ups and you're not always gonna be on the phone all the time. And you're gonna have to communicate through email, you know, send contracts through emails and things like that. So, strong written and verbal communication is absolutely important. That's pretty much the main skill that you need. And so, that's pretty much what it's like to work in SaaS Sales. If you enjoyed this video make sure to give it a like, subscribe and turn on notifications. And if you want a free training on how to start and accelerate your career in sales, make sure to check the link in the description for a free training that I put together for you. So, that said, my name is Patrick Dang, and I'll see you guys in the next one.