Inc - 6 Things Sales Reps Say That Kill Deals

A little ways back I put together a list of things sales reps recently said to me as a buyer of SaaS products … that killed the deal:

• “You are wasting my time”. I don’t think many folks say this aloud to prospects, but many B-tier reps say it internally — and think this all the time. No.   A prospect’s time is always valuable. Sales is there to serve, and help a prospect find the best solution to their problem. If sales was routed the wrong lead, that’s the company’s fault, not the prospect’s.
• “Our product does [key feature]” — when it doesn’t. If I’m buying a product I haven’t used before, the AE is my guide. If he/she tells me things that aren’t true to close the deal, I’m out. I’m buying a solution. I need to know for real if it solves my problem — or not.
• Constant bashing of competitors. Not only does that make the company look insecure — it makes me want to go test the competitor instead. Even worse (see prior point) is when they say something about a competitor that isn’t true.
• Forcing me to talk to an SDR first. SDRs are great, but oftentimes SMBs don’t want to be qualified.  Personally, I want to try, use, and buy. I lose patience here and move to a vendor I can just deploy without being forced to talk to an SDR that just wants to force me to get on the phone and screen me but doesn’t get me going now.
• Wrong / painful economic terms, even if price itself is OK. I’m basically an SMB these days. I don’t like annual contracts, and I especially don’t like being railroaded into enterprise-type contracts — multi-year with no outs. I don’t have patience for any contract that is so long it requires legal review. Let the buyer buy the way they want. And let especially SMBs out if you don’t deliver for them.
• “I’m turning off your trial” — and other threats. Yes, you have to do that. But a sales rep needs to do it the right way. Threats don’t work. How about “Your trial is about to end — I can extend it a week if that helps? Let me know what I can do to help you get going with us!” Then — I’m in.

So we’re almost there!! 

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So there are times in startup life when it seems like a wave is just overpowering you, that there is only so much you can do. And so many times, when you need to address a challenge, you may quietly feel limited by the team you have.

There’s only so much you can do, just so quickly. 

So many times you’ll default, partially, to Doing Nothing. For now.

This works better at Bigger Companies, where real change is often measured in 5+ year chunks. But startups aren’t always as agile as social media paints them to be. There’s just so much code 15 folks can push out, so many markets a 2-person marketing team can enter, etc. etc.

Still, one of the top mistakes every top founder says they made is this: “I Should Have Acted on Bad Trends Earlier.”

I can tell you I don’t. Send the full deck. At least, send enough of it so I already want to invest by the time I’ve read it.

The average VC receives 500+ decks a year, maybe more.  Why will your 2–3 slide “teaser” deck stand out? 99% of the time, it won’t.

Think of it from that perspective.  Raising capital is sales.  It’s selling stock, but it’s sales.  Is a short deck, light on details, really the best way to put your best foot forward?

What will is a deck detailed enough to present the entire story in a very compelling format.

What most VCs don’t have enough of is time. Not enough time to hear 500+ pitches.

Make the deck stand on its own. Make the deck so compelling, the VC already wants to invest before the first meeting.

Don’t listen to folks who tell you send a “teaser”. Very few folks have time for that. Unless you already have an insanely proven team. In which case the team itself is the pitch anyway. And even there — send more detail.

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Try to find a VP of Sales now, and try to hire an AE now. You probably will find the solid AE first.  But — I wouldn’t exepct that AE can manage the SDRs.  That’s the big potential mistake here

First, you seem good at managing SDRs. This is a skill. Managing entry-level sales professionals can try the patience of the best of us. So you seem to have a super-power here.

Second, hiring an AE to take over the SDRs is unlikely to work as well as it does today. Most AEs do not know how to manage other sales professionals. And most AEs are closers and don’t know how to manage the goals for SDRs properly, either. They tend to treat them like their sales administrative assistants.

So if you can, I say push on. Hire an AE or two, and another SDR. Get them all working. Then bring on a true VP of Sales.

But if you truly can’t handle it, having the SDRs report to the AE is better than nothing. Once in a while. If they all seem to work together well, it can be OK.  But likely that AE won’t really know what they are doing.

You can also hire a head of marketing and have the SDRs report to her or him. Many demand gen leaders these days have managed a small SDR/BDR team.

Some of the ideas in this post are … basic.  At least to some. So forgive me.  But I’m going to include some of them as I’ve noticed that as SaaS explodes, more and more SaaS companies do better and better in more and more interesting spaces. But they also just miss some of the very basics sometimes.

So let’s talk about lead allocation 101. 

Really, 100. 01. The very basics.

When you have 1 rep, it’s pretty easy to know where to send the leads.  You either keep a few for yourself as CEO — or you send them all to her. But what do you do with reps 2-10?

A few fundamental thoughts on lead routing.

Yes.

In my first start-up, the VCs pulled our term sheet between signing and closing. They had a legitimate reason — our COO had pulled out of the deal. Which was my fault, for recruiting a prestigious, but sketchy, COO.

But it was a very stressful time, when the term sheet was pulled. I had 9 employees and no way to make payroll. In fact, we were about $250,000 in debt.

I had about 11 days to avoid shutting everything down. So:

• We went out and got our customers to agree to buy $6,000,000 from us.
• We went out and got our prototypes built — and shipped.
• We went out and closed a $3m deal with our key manufacturing strategic partner.

All in those 11 days.

With that …

We convinced the VCs to come back to the table. At a much lower valuation (an effective $2m pre, instead of $7m). We had to give back 50% of our founder stock. And the VCs made me sign a $750,000 full recourse promissory note.

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