How to buy SaaS for Marketers - inside tips from the Sales Perspective
How to be an internal champion?
Involve stakeholders early. Why? The Most common denominator is pricing. Often when stakeholders fail to see the value - because they were involved too late - or agree on the technical requirements, the only thing everyone can agree on is the cheapest price.?
Peel your onions
Sometimes the initial reason for buying SaaS can be quite surface level. Save time. Free up resources. To be able to sell your choice internally, it helps to peel the onion several layers. Ask yourself why a few times. Why should I save time? I’ll be able to focus more on x project. Why is that important? I can then do x. What will x achieve for me and the business? Etc. A good SDR or sales rep will help you with this process too.??
Why is there a discovery call??
Sharing info ahead of time is golden. If there is something critical that is super important for the platform to have or do, share this ahead of the call. A good rep will save your time and tell you it’s not the right fit, or at least focus on this in the call with you.
Discovery conversations help both sides understand the problem or goal. Focus the efforts on that and not on features, benefits that have no impact for the client. It also enables the SaaS side to share their experiences of talking with similar companies or people from hundreds of conversations. No one is the same.? That is the key point. No one wants to spend 10 minutes looking at things that the SaaS side thinks are interesting.?
But if you find yourself in a first meeting that is not about you, call them out. It’s ok to share a bit about the product, but it should be about the product in your life and situation. Based on what you have shared.?
Can I just get access?
It depends. Are we talking about SaaS that is a $50 investment each month or 10, 100x that? Would you expect to just get access when the partnership is worth a substantial chunk of your budget? What if you miss something? What if it’s all for nothing or you put in a lot of work and do it wrong.??
Typically it depends on the end of the ‘spectrum’ coming next. Entry Level would be a yes. In my experience, for Mid Market & Enterprise, it’s a no. Let’s explore further.?
The three ‘ends’ of the spectrum?
Usually, in SaaS there is a quadrant that shows where a product fits in the market compared to ‘competitors’. But I see it more as a spectrum with ‘three ends’ :)?
Challenge the rep to explain the differences - you can both quickly establish if there is something missing or to be gained.?
Ask a rep why they win deals, and most importantly, why the lose deals.?
Pricing
SaaS companies are young. So it’s common for annual upfront payments to be the standard. This is because they are reinvesting that for growth of the product and teams.?
My tip is if there is no pricing on the website, explore options around payment terms and expect better options for upfront and annual options.?
Trial
Be clear with each other what the expectations are and what you want to test. Sometimes just this can quickly establish if your key goal cannot be delivered.?
If you are looking at multiple platforms, my biggest tip is to test your favourite first and only test one at a time. Dedicating your time is going to be difficult. Spreading that over multiple platforms will only give you less time and focus on the task at hand.?
If you run a test with an Enterprise SaaS, and often Mid-Market too, you will likely go through a guided trial. Why is this? From the SaaS perspective this actually has a much higher conversion rate. This is a good thing for both sides. It means people are getting what they want out of the testing period.?
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Spectrum Photo by Kirill Sharkovski: https://unsplash.com/@sharkovski