Can B2B sales ever be 100% automated?

Of course it can.

It is called self-service.

And with PLG the rage these days, folks are trying harder and harder.  Especially where budgets are reduced, and the next round looks far harder to close than it used to.

And it works great, up to a point. The question is, do you want to do better than that?

Do you want to sell deals much more than $299 / month? 

Prospects really want to a live human before putting much more than that, at least to start, on a credit card.

Do you want to close more of the potential seats / revenue up front?

If so, a sales professional will maximize the odds you sell a full solution to everyone. Not just a few to start. 

You’ll likely close more of the ultimate potential deal size up front with a salesteam.  And maybe, make sure the competition doesn’t grab some of the other potential seats and use cases.

So raising VC capital has gotten a lot harder than it was at the peak of 2021 — when it was still hard for all but the best and more privileged.

But boy, it’s harder today.  

Everything has slowed down, the bar has gone up, and even VC funds themselves are struggling to do their own fundraising.

So I wanted to write a simple post, one that may be obvious to some, but it’s my #1 hack to increase the odds a VC invests in you.

The hack: Crush the current / next month, and send an immediate update on the 1st of that month.

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At the very first SaaStr Annual in 2015, we picked 3 break-out leaders at $5m-$10m, and added Nick Mehta from Gainsight.  All were growing 15%-20% a month, so we called them “The 20%ers club”.

Did that growth last?  How did they do?  Well, fast forward to eight years to 2023, and all 4 are doing about or above $200m ARR!  All of them!

Here’s a chance to look back at 4 pre-IPO SaaS leaders today, and how they were doing and what they were thinking in the run up to $10m ARR.

They do in the enterprise. At least the good ones do.

That’s what a lot of founders miss if they haven’t worked with great mid-market and enterprise sales execs before.

Let’s break sales down into 2 types: transactional and solution sales.

In transactional sales, which are often low-priced solutions … it can be hard to provide a ton of value:

• Absolute cost is fairly low.
• Few, if any, concerns on security, workflow and business process change, etc.
• Prospect can often try and deploy the solution on their own first.
• Questions and issues are important but pretty simple.
• Buyer is often the only decision-maker.
• Buyer might buy many products this year.
• It’s just one tool of many the Buyer uses. Won’t make-or-break their job.

Solutions sales is quite different:

• Absolute cost higher
• Often real work to do a pilot, get product into production. May be significant security, worfklow, business process, and other implications of introducing a new vendor.
• Often hard to really do a bonafide trial on your own. Business process change and data needs too complex. It’s not like trying Canva or the basic version of Slack.
• Multiple stakeholders, each with different needs and goals.
• Buyer may need buy-in from others.
• Often the only significant product that buyer will buy that year
• Success of product roll-out often tied to buyer’s career success.
• And importantly — buyer pays out of their budget, but rarely out of their own pocket.

So I’ve been investing long enough — just about 10 years — to not really have mastered it, but seen the results of trade-offs made in investing.

I’ve made about 30 material investments. 

Most have been successful, but of course not all have, and I’ve been reflecting on the ones that didn’t, because they still had attractive elements when I invested.  

I’ve at least come far enough to see why some exited for billions (Salesloft, Pipedrive, Greenhouse) or become truly worth billions with hundreds of millions of revenue (Talkdesk, Algolia, etc.) … and others didn’t.  

Despite strong initial promise.

My learnings.

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

Free trials and freemiums can be a powerful sales strategy. But it’s not a one-size fits all! Learn how to increase conversion by leveraging other PLG modules, such as sandbox product experiences, and show prospects how your product can solve their challenges. 

Up Next: Wednesday, March 17th @ 10AM

Topic: Things you think as a first time founder that just ain’t so

Speakers: Jack Altman, CEO at Lattice and Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO at SaaStr

Workshop Wednesdays is new series where we’ll be bringing some of the best SaaStr speakers to you LIVE, every Wednesday. 

Each workshop will be hosted in a live, interactive 30-minute format at 10am Pacific each and every Wednesday. This workshop will be 100% LIVE, not pre-recorded, and will be hosted in an, interactive 30-minute format, including Q&A.

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