SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2021

The other day, a sales leader working asked me how I got to be “so good at sales.” You might think so that after almost 3,000 answers on Quora, 300 blog posts, and 35,000 tweets. In fact, that’s why I have so much respect for the art and process of sales. ” I’m not. So back to me.

Contract 111

Contract Sales Negotiate Price 111

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

If I had to boil down how to filter potential sales professionals based on just 1 controlling criterion, it would be deal size. Enterprise sales: Reps often hunt many of their own deals. Reps have to get out in the field (generally) and met prospects in person in their offices. Mid-market sales are … in between.

Sales 65

Sales Pitch Gaming Closing 65

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2019

So your prospects and customers are veterans. Marketing (demand gen) and/or Sales (outbound) generates leads. Then, sales’ job, the account executive, is to help them understand why an initial decision they’ve already made— to maybe buy your product — is the right one. That mislead prospects. They look at your website.

B2B 68

B2B Contract Sales Prospecting 68

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 22, 2021

Every experienced salesperson dreams of a short, uncomplicated sales cycle – especially in the B2B world, where we can forget about the impulse buy. Credibility leads to trust, and trust means that potential customers meet your sales efforts with minimal skepticism. How to generate online authority for your sales process.

Process 89

Process Niche Angle Sales 89

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2019

A few thoughts to excel as someone new to SaaS sales: Really learn the product cold. 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 prospect and customer’s problems.

Growth 94

Growth Prospecting Sales Closing 94

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Q: What are the best ways to improve your email response rate for a SaaS sales startup? Write 10 personalized, well-researched emails a day to top potential prospects. Research the prospect. But don’t confuse drip marketing with high-quality prospecting. View original question on quora. Slow it down.

Promote 58

Promote Pipeline Prospecting Sales 58

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Listen in on as many sales calls as you can. Start a weekly webinar for existing customers AND prospects — and listen. Ask the sales team to force rank their Top 10 feature requests. View original question on quora. Also listen to as many Chorus’s and Gong’s as you can. Hopefully, there are any!! Ideally, more.

Product 96

Product Trust Start-ups Prospecting 96

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

Q: What is the best sales advice you can give? I’m actually not that good at sales myself. But I have observed a lot of successful sales folks and leaders. Here’s my Simple Guide To Be In The Top 25% of Sales Reps: Sell a product you truly believe in. That alone is probably enough to put you in the top 1/3d of sales reps.

Contract 55

Contract Sales Prospecting Closing 55

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2019

Prospects will be … if not lied to … then told half truths. If you go long, you’ll often get another chance to close a prospect. Clawback sales commission for customers that churn quickly. But at least an aggressive clawback policy keeps churn topper-of-mind for the sales team. View original question on quora.

Commission 91

Commission Sales Closing CRM 91

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

Most SaaS products are solution sales and prospects and customers want to talk to someone about the needs and problems. More here: Curse of the ‘Middlers’: Why Happiness Officers Can’t Stand In for True Sales Professionals | SaaStr. View original question on quora. The margins in software are high.

Commission 60

Commission Sales Growth Closing 60

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

Yes, you can start off a a founder doing support, QA, sales, marketing, and more. But sales is a full-time job. Answer questions from prospects. Folks that know sales. View original question on quora. The post What’s the one thing about sales you’ve learned that helped you succeed?

CRM 56

CRM Follow-up Sales Start-ups 56

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2019

Testimonials are nice, but most prospects these days have already seen the generic ones on your website and in your collateral. What work in sales is very similar companies using, and loving, your product. Arm your sales team with the best testimonials and case studies carefully tailored for each customer segment.

Sales 56

Sales Closing Prospecting Product 56

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2019

The prospect got interested, took the call and the meeting, but … didn’t ask for a contract. What a great sales pro will learn is how the heck to add thoughtful urgency to a sales process. Sales is hard. Great sales reps know to touch base as often as possible once a deal is in flight. Or sign up herself.

Contract 60

Contract Sales Closing Follow-up 60

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

And you may need to do buy-out deals where the stolen customers pay basically nothing for a few years, but you still pay the sales rep a full commission. Sometimes, a prospect will simply pick the less scary vendor. View original question on quora. Compete in areas you are weak. This won’t make a lot of sense to you at first.

Commission 97

Commission Start-ups Closing Prospecting 97

Hubspot

OCTOBER 1, 2021

r/sales (85.2k members) – Everything you need to know about sales, business development, lead generation, prospecting and closing. Quora is another one of the internet’s best social hubs to get your questions answered. You can also browse by topic on Quora, such as: Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

CRM 58

CRM Real Estate Customer Relationship Management Trust 58

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Segment your Customer Success — and Sales — teams. And if you segment your sales team by deal size, the smaller customers will get better attention upfront. More here: 5 Tips To Minimize “Churn and Burn” Behavior in Your Sales Team | SaaStr. Do a weekly webinar for all prospects and customers — every week.

Customers 103

Customers Technology Technology Price 103

Highspot

APRIL 17, 2020

Product marketers are the go-to resource for providing messaging guidance, product training, competitive intelligence, and other tools to their sales teams. When created and delivered properly, sales collateral produced by product marketing is highly visible, widely adopted, and produces quantifiable results in the form of win rate increases.

Product 52

Product Sales CRM Drivers/motivators 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2020

I see this all the time: For example, a little while back, someone on our events team bought a piece of software that the sales rep promised him integrated with everything in our stack. I often see demos to buyers that aren’t software-savvy that just skate around and hide feature gaps the prospects has asked about. Not even remotely.

Technique 81

Technique Trust Prospecting Closing 81

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 4, 2023

Earlier this week, we announced that my new company, the GTMfund , has acquired my old company, Sales Hacker , from my…other old company, Outreach. I’ve gone through a mix of emotions, reliving the insane 10-year journey that came out of a young Max being naively intellectually curious about how to scale sales at a startup.

GTM 62

GTM Non-Profits Sales Start-ups 62

Salesmate

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Enterprise sales is undoubtedly a hard nut to crack. Persistence and calmness are two essential traits needed during enterprise sales, as there are chances that the deal might fall apart at any stage of the sales prospect. Closing enterprise sales requires a lot of time and effort. Be patient and move slowly .

Sell 103

Sell Cold Call Negotiate Cross-sell 103

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2019

To a dinner for top prospects. This says the prospect is not worth your time. You’d be surprised how often prospects enjoy this. View original question on quora. The post What do I do when a solid, late-stage sales opportunity ghosts me? A few ideas: Invite them to something useful. Invite them to a webinar.

Pipeline 54

Pipeline Promote Prospecting Sales 54

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Instead, figure out the 100 top prospects. You can basically run the full sales & marketing toolkit for $0 if you have to. But you can do press, events, content marketing, SEO and even outbound sales without spending one dollar. View original question on quora. Don’t buy some list off the internet.

Customers 96

Customers Pitch Meeting Prospecting 96

Hubspot

MARCH 6, 2018

What is a sales process? Sales process” most often refers to a repeatable set of steps your sales team takes with a prospect to move them from early stage to a closed customer. A good sales process helps your reps consistently close deals by giving them a framework to follow. What are the steps of a sales process?

Process 101

Process Objectives and Key Results Sales Negotiate 101

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2019

I do not love their Template Sales Agreement. It was written by a lawyer at a Big Law Firm who almost certainly did not support a high-velocity inside sales team. It will create endless redlines, phone calls, and will get “forwarded to our attorney to take a look” by your prospects and customers. And the deal never closes.

Legal 54

Legal Contract Inside sales Sales 54

PandaDoc

JULY 1, 2020

Creating new sales opportunities and achieving stable growth is the goal of every company. Precision prospecting is the first step towards reaching new revenue heights. The goal of prospecting is to convert leads (contacts) into prospects (potential buyers) into clients. Prospecting should be your top priority.

Technique 98

Technique Growth Prospecting Referrals 98

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2020

How do you think Customer Success should work with the Sales and Product teams? But in the early days, they should be at the vanguard of driving product changes, as well as being pulled into deals by sales that want help with more complex prospect needs. View original question on quora.

Customers 103

Customers Growth Start-ups Product 103

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

It’s really just sales — remember that. Albeit a very nichey type of sales. And so you use a modified version of the traditional sales playbook. Do your homework (like any great sales rep), be present where the prospects are, and put your best foot forward: Top Events. This is the same in most categories of sales.

Pitch 79

Pitch Gaming Meeting Presentation 79

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2019

It’s the process of finding weakness in your competitors, and exaggerating and maybe even a few lies about them to try to knock them out of a competitive sales process. In very competitive spaces, in fact, sales reps are often given Anti-FUD datasheets and updates monthly (or even more often) as counterpoints when prospects bring FUD up.

Customers 56

Customers Prospecting Process Sales 56

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

They are too much work to just dump on a product person, success person, sales leader, etc. The quicker you do this, the more comfortable prospects and customers will be that you are “enteprise-grade.” View original question on quora. The post What are some of the biggest mistakes you made with enterprise SaaS sales?

Clients 69

Clients Sales Contact Presentation 69

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2019

Especially, sales and marketing teams often don’t think enough about the risks in buying a new piece of software. I’ve never seen a sales team really care about this, or really understand it, outside of very complex enterprise sales. So prospects are looking to de-risk their vendor choice: Will it work in general?

Customers 66

Customers Contract Prospecting Closing 66

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2019

For most SaaS apps, you want to at least start with “just right”, Goldilocks pricing: Too high a price, and you start to add friction to the sales process. Sales may even push for this. Too low a price also adds friction to sales, and if significant, leaves too much money on the table. View original question on quora.

Price 76

Price CRM Closing Start-ups 76

A Sales Guy

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

Our “networks” are the lifeblood sales and as sales people, that is good sales people, we have meticulously built them overtime. Networks are the cornerstone of all successful sales people. Successful sales people know how to use them to get meetings with prospective clients or how to help close a deal.

Networking 110

Networking Leadership building Clients Prospecting 110

Search Engine Land

MARCH 3, 2023

Or, talk to the sales and customer service teams who have conversations with customers daily. Reading sites like Quora and Reddit. If you want your content to be discovered by your audience then you need to use the words and phrases they’re searching for to find you. Question 2: What problems do your buyers need to solve?

CTR 101

CTR Angle Strategize Service 101

Hubspot

AUGUST 3, 2020

If the difference between a hobby and a business is making sales to customers, then how do you make the transition? You might be afraid that you’ll say something wrong and scare away a big prospect. For example, if you are selling a new product for prospective homeowners, see who in your network is likely a homeowner.

Customers 98

Customers Agriculture Networking Finance 98

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2019

Especially, sales and marketing teams often don’t think enough about the risks in buying a new piece of software. I’ve never seen a sales team really care about this, or really understand it, outside of very complex enterprise sales. So prospects are looking to de-risk their vendor choice: Will it work in general?

Customers 52

Customers Contract Prospecting Closing 52

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2019

That means their prospects will be more patient with complex pricing. But your prospects may just move on if the pricing page makes it seem too … hard. Familiarity in your pricing schema is key to maximizing sales velocities with less well-known vendors. Prospects need context. Prospects need context. S, M and L).

Price 81

Price Contact Closing Prospecting 81

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2019

Most prospects will give up and quit. And if you dig further, “Contact Sales”. View original question on quora. A free trial is a bad idea if: Your product has a lengthy and/or complex deployment process. If it’s going to take 30–60 days to go live, a Free Trial will just lead to failure. And what you see is “Read Report”.

Finance 70

Finance Consult Contact Prospecting 70