The Latest from SaaStr: How to Get Ahead in SaaS Sales in 7 Easy Steps

I met with a multibillion dollar SaaS founder last year who told me one of their top mistakes was shutting down their startups program.

They’d begun the march upmarket, as so many of us do.

And the math for “startups” didn’t make sense. And they found their formal startup program was a distraction. Fast forward 12 months, and they’d realized it was a huge strategic mistake.

Their competitors had taken over the “startup” segment, and in particular, the highest-profile startups had moved there. Not just as customers, but as partners.

But it took over a year to see the impact show up at all in the numbers.

A lot of us are making similar trade-offs today. We’re cutting anything that doesn’t pay off now, that doesn’t seem 100% core to the market at the moment.

Sometimes you have to.

As Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean and a developer-turned-entrepreneur, Gabe Monroy shares how founders can avoid the trap of over-engineering products that customers won’t pay for and how to de-risk product development through a simple analogy of candy, vitamins, and painkillers.

Approaching product development with a founders mentality requires a deep understanding of what pains your customers.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by MERGE

Merge’s Unified API allows you to access 150+ integrations across HR, payroll, ATS, accounting, CRM, and ticketing systems.

75%-90% of the time, enterprises have already made a tentative decision which vendor to choose before they pick up the phone or hit the Contact Me button or issue the RFP.

• In an established category, customers will pre-pick one of the Top 2–3 vendors based on brand, market share and research. Well before they even talk to a sales rep. The one they will tentatively decide to go with is the one they have the most positive experience or association with going into the calls.  But that doesn’t mean they won’t at least potentially change their mind.
• The #2 choice really can steal a deal from the #1 choice if they do a much better perceived job solving the prospect’s problem.  Sometimes, if you’re the #2 choice, it’s just a CYA call.  But a lot of times even if there is a bias toward the #1 choice, the discovery is real.  This is where a great rep at the #2 choice can steal a deal from the de facto #1 choice.
• Price rarely wins per se.  They may go with their #2 choice based on price … but generally only if they view the top 2 vendors as mostly fungible. Going in low alone is unlikely to win a deal in the enterprise. If you are the high-priced vendor, they will just tell their procurement department to negotiate it down.

In the latest SaaStr Workshop Wednesday, Jessica Bartos of Salesforce Ventures did a great deep dive on the state of SaaS and venture in 2013.

One metric stood out to me I hadn’t seen presented before: just how many private SaaS companies (i.e., startups) have crossed $100,000,000.  It’s only 150.

But it makes sense.  150 x $100m = $15B+ in spend, probably more like $30B in spend.  Getting to $100m ARR in SaaS is pretty doable if you can get to $10m ARR and are growing 60%.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by SAP

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition delivers the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation to navigate change in the high-tech industry.

A few thoughts to excel as someone new to SaaS sales:

• Really learn the product cold. As fundamentally as you can.  This really, really works.  Even if you aren’t really that good at the rest of sales.  Every prospect and customer is owed a true solution sale approach. Sales is there to close a deal, yes, but that should just be 10% of it — 90% of the “work” should be to solve your prospects’ and customers’ problems. You can only solve a customer’s problems if you know the product you are selling cold. Train yourself on it 10x more than whatever training your company provides. Live it, breathe it. Own it. So many reps don’t do this. They can only answer the basic 5–6 questions about the product. Own the top 100 customers, the top 50 workflows, the top 200 corner cases, the top 100 objections. And you will become a sales magician.
• Treat each prospect as a VIP. No matter how big or small. There is only so much time in the week, but if you treat a $1k deal with the same respect as a $50k deal … magic just happens. Small businesses care just as much about their businesses as big ones. Probably much more. Their livelihoods are on the line.  And you’ll pull ahead of folks that treat smaller deals as a waste of their time.

At SaaStr, our partners are an integral part of our events. In February 2023, we’re heading to Singapore for our first APAC event and we wanted to give a special shout-out to some of the companies that will be there with us!

We’ll see 1,000+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs February 22-23 at SaaStr APAC 2023!  Grab tickets here.

Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

So everyone knows Salesforce, founded in 1999, originally to manage your salesforce.

But there’s another SaaS leader that almost everyone in B2B software also uses also founded in 1999 — to manage their events.

Cvent.  It’s still around, too.  A lot of it is a bit old, and hard to use, and expensive.  But after taking a hit from lockdown, it bounced back, IPO’d for the second time via a SPAC, and today is at $650,000,000 in ARR, growing 20%, with a health 21% EBITDA margin.

And its founder … is still CEO even today.

And Cvent may be acquired for $4 Billion, a premium to its current $3.6 Billion market cap.

© SaaStr 2023

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