How to sell saas to smb
SaaS Sales: Selling to SMBs? Use this enterprise sales tactic to succeed!
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everybody this is steli efti with
Roselle and today I want to talk to you
about stakeholders with an SMB SAS this
is a topic I've never seen an article
about and I'm reading probably have read
almost everything that's ever been
written about SAS and because there's so
little discussion around this and
knowledge to be passed around we fell
into a trap
in the last one and a half years with
clothes and we learned an important
lesson I wanted to share that lesson
with you and start a conversation
typically when you think about different
stakeholders you're talking about
enterprise you know you're talking about
enterprise sales and Enterprise SAS you
know we're thing about these massive
organizations we'll all different
departments stakeholder than all that
and I've talked about this before how
the difference between selling to one
person or a massive massive fortune 500
company and its essence you're still
always selling to people right there's
no logo walking around purchasing the
software but the the main thing that
makes it enterprise sales so much more
complicated is that there's so many
different people you have to sell to
their very opposing needs and views and
priorities so that is what makes
enterprise sales so complex and why it
takes such a long time and why you
better be paid really well if you're
going into that direction but when we
talk about SMB sales we always think
about a faster selling cycle we
understand that you know it's not like
selling to end consumers with just one
person making a decision although even
that in a household could be wrong but
when we talk about SMB we're talking
about small and medium-sized businesses
and too many SAS companies that sell to
the SMB are really not separating and
segmenting and differentiating between
all these different stakeholders within
an SMB customer here's something funny
that happened it closed last year in the
beginning of 2017 for the very first
time we wanted to invest in a success
team and we wanted to not just provide
amazing support to our customers we want
to be proactive in reaching out to our
customers and helping them get more
value out of the solution and get more
success with a solution so we started
hiring success people put
together success team and what did the
success team do very organically and
naturally they thought well we have
thousands of customers you know we're
small team how do we prioritize well
let's just start with our biggest
customers first let's just reach out to
them and then when they looked at those
biggest customers some of them had
hundreds of sales reps on clothes hmm
how do we now decide who to talk to
right we're not gonna talk to all the
people there so how do we prioritize
well let's talk to the admin to the
manager to the person that's
administrating the entire account
probably the person that purchased the
product or once the product was
purchased the person that took over
managing and administrating the entire
account with us so the success seemed
started reaching out to these admins
talking to them setting up webinars you
know consulting them coaching them
checking in on them I can't managing
them and obviously through all that
relationship building in all those
conversations the success team started
listening more and more to their needs
their wants their desires their problems
their grudges and they were passing
along that feedback to the rest of the
company and especially to the product
team so what started happening very
organically without us even noticing our
product team in our overall company
started prioritizing and focusing more
on building features and fixing problems
that our admin priorities so the entire
2017 we really started investing more
and more and more in admin features and
not as much anymore in end user features
sales rep features now let me give you a
little bit of a background here clothes
is the only CRM in the market that
prioritizes the end user before the
admin every CRM Under the Sun starts off
by having some kind of a thesis we're
gonna build a CRM that social that's
mobile we're gonna build a bigger serum
a smaller serum this that or the other
whatever it is and then as they're
trying to get bigger and bigger
customers they're starting to focus more
and more and more to sell to the person
who's purchasing or the person with all
the purchasing power
which is usually the admin the manager
and what does the manager want the
manager wants reporting the manager
wants control right being able to give
user permissions the manager wants
forecasting the manager wants beta and
integration so that's what most serums
prioritize and build more more and more
off and then as they outgrow even that
kind of a customer size now selling to
larger larger enterprises means not just
selling to the admin and the manager but
selling to leadership to this you know
chief revenue officer to the CEO to the
executive suite and what do they want
they want visibility they want security
they want integrations with all kinds of
other departments and tools they want
all kinds of things that have nothing to
do with selling better and be more
productive as a salesperson see rents
have always been built and sold top down
upper managers upper management buys the
CRM and then forces it down the throat
of the sales reps that have to use the
system and that's why most CRMs honestly
suck and I know that I'm biased here
right you might think well of course you
say that sell if you're selling your own
CRM it's true I'm very very biased here
but just because I'm biased doesn't mean
I'm wrong right so if you're wondering
why many serums are so complicated and
not user-friendly at all it's because
they were never built for the user the
user is not a priority stakeholder for
all other serums I would claim except us
maybe there's another exception here and
there but even the the the few CRM that
started with an end user in mind
eventually because they have all this VC
pressure and the pressure to grow and
the pressure to IPO one day they move up
market organically they're trying to get
to the enterprise and eventually they
lose their their way and we're not free
of that we don't care about VCS we're
not caring about IPO we're gonna build a
huge business and we're fully dedicated
on the SMB market in the SMB customer
and the end user is our number one
priority stakeholder
we lost our way because I mean we meant
well we wanted to invest in our customer
relationships we wanted to be proactive
so we built a success in the success
they prioritized in the simplest way
possible and boom all of a sudden we
create an echo chamber where we gave the
biggest microphone to not a most
important user so what happened was we
lost touch with the most important
stakeholder and if you know anything
about me you know that I'm screaming
customer intimacy and customer insights
and every conference that every talk and
every conversation I have and I love to
quote and to say that whoever
understands that customer best will
ultimately own the relationship and if
your competitors understand your
customer better than you do if they will
get them one day you know sooner or
later so it is incredibly important for
you to understand your customer really
really well and part of understand your
customer really well in SMB SAS is to
understand the ecosystem within your
customers and this stakeholders with new
customers and to differentiate segments
and prioritize so one interesting thing
that happened in 2017 as we build mobile
features and we made clothes more
powerful but prioritizing the admins
before the end users our salespeople our
people was that our NPS score you know
stayed the same if not slightly dipping
and we noticed that it we thought well
that's super weird
now let's dig a little bit deeper and
ps4 means Net Promoter Score it's a
simple survey that allows us to - that
allows our customers and users to tell
us how happy they're with a product
anything would recommend it to others or
not right and based on that you can tell
a lot about customer satisfaction so
we're like wow this is weird we've
invested so much in success and we've
developed a platform and customers are
not a lot happier they're just a little
happier or even a bit what's going on
here so we analyzed the data and we
realized that our end user and PS scores
went down dramatically because the sales
reps they didn't see a lot of features
and functionalities and allowed them to
do their job even better and the NPS
score of admins administrators they have
one improved because that's who we
prioritized
well overall with a lot more end-user
seats than we have admin seats right
every account just has one admin but
typically has many many multiple end
users and sales reps on clothes so we
realized why we made the wrong
stakeholder a lot happier and we
neglected a most important stakeholder
and we didn't do that by design we did
it by default and by mistake but not
being as thoughtful and mindful as we
should be so we started breaking this
down a little bit and I want to break
this down for you and and help you
understand this better be more strategic
for yourself on this if you think about
stakeholders in SAS there's a few that
are very basic typically you have an end
user that's gonna be the person that's
gonna be using your product for most of
their day or for most of the time but
the heaviest user within the SMB
customer the company that purchase your
software if the user you have the admin
that's the person that you know usually
purchases the product or has a lot of
decision-making over the purchase but is
the person responsible to administer the
entire account but in our case
oftentimes that's the sales manager then
you have leadership right leadership
could be you know the CEO the founders
could be the VP of Marketing the VP of
Sales or the chief revenue officer
somebody it's a very high-level
executive and leader in the company
that's not really interacting with the
product that often but has influence is
a stakeholder over the overall decision
then you have an engineer or an ops
person somebody that's gonna use your
API to integrate it with other tools
somebody it's going to set certain
automations or coming up the data export
or import the data or set connections
between in our case clothes and the
website and the marketing automation
tool and whatever else you're using
right this is gonna be some engineering
resource or operations resource that's
gonna have to use the system typically
it's in the beginning it's not as
frequent but they're gonna have to use
your API maybe they're gonna have to use
your permission and roles they're gonna
have to do export of data and and right
maybe they'll use a tool like zapier to
do some integrations and automations so
that that's another stakeholder and then
there's other departments right there
might be somebody marketing video of
access to the serum there might be a
support team that needs to integrate in
some way or the success team in some way
that integrates with the serum right we
build our CRM for sales people and we
want sales people to close more deals
make more sales we want to make them
more productive who wanna eliminate
manual data entry and empower them to do
their job better and faster and stronger
but in most teams they use this or in
many teams that use us it's not just the
sales team that uses us it's the success
team as well because they're doing a
comp management in our team it's the
same thing our sales team is our success
team is using clothes just like the
sales team does in some teams there's a
recruiting team or recruiter that's used
for Xero as an ATS system to recruit in
many of our cases when there's a
start-up customer they might have one
organization where their sales team and
then the farmers might use clothes to do
fundraising right so there might be
other departments of teams or
individuals in the company that want to
have access integrate or use the system
in some kind of a different use case so
you have to understand any of these like
five stakeholders in most SME SAS
customers and they do different things
and they influence and relate to
different things right you need to ask
yourself who's gonna be who uses our
system most of the time who buys our
system who interacts with the system
once in a while but not all the time who
integrates our system and who can block
the purchase of our product or system or
lock it right so anybody that does
integration all operational work with
your tool might be the person that you
know if you if your tool integrates
really deeply within the organization
and the engineering team has done a lot
of work to integrate really deeply that
can be a lock but conversely and this is
very true oftentimes in enterprise teams
but also with us actually if I think
about it the IT department that nobody's
thinking about selling to because
there's no purchasing power can be a big
blocker for new purchases they can just
look at your system say nope not secure
enough no the API doesn't do what we
want know we can't integrate this
product with our system and if the IT
department says no boom done deal you're
out in our case a funny thing that
happened was that because we have an
incredibly powerful API and probably the
best API CRM a lot of companies you know
would
because the engineering team will take
would take a look at a few different
serums they had to integrate deeply
within their internal systems and just
say you should go with clothes their API
is the best we want to use that system
to integrate it's gonna take us a few
hours versus taking as you know weeks of
integration work that we could rather
spend on other things so IP our API has
been an incredible factor in acquiring
customers not because of the end-users
the sales rep don't really care about
API but the engineer in the ops person
that has to integrate they care about a
API and so they become an enabling
factor for purchasing our system and
then they become a person or a team that
locks us in even if somebody wants to
leave they've integrated is so deeply
that that we have lock-in right so you
need to understand who buys your system
who uses it who integrates with it who
interacts with it and who can block it
or lock it right create lock-in or block
the deal from happening in general and
you can see this beautiful little you
know whiteboard a scrap a scribble that
I put up on the wall that you know some
people you know pretty much everybody
from user down to other could
potentially block you know you you is
somebody purchasing your software S&B
customers purchasing your software but
these people relate to different
activities differently and you should
understand who can do what within your
customer base in SMB and then what you
need to do is you need to prioritize and
this is the most important thing at the
end of the day you need to serve as many
stakeholders if not all stakeholders
within a customer company as possible
all these stakeholders are important to
close we want to empower all of them but
not equally there is a priority and for
us in the beginning from the beginning
up until now we knew a number-one
priority is always gonna be the end user
the salesperson and we're gonna put them
above the a pin in leadership above
engineering ops although we're doing a
really good job with them as well above
other teams right we want to service all
of them as good as we can but the user
we're gonna serve the best that needs to
be our North Star our priority
the boys we amplify the strongest the
NPS scores we are breaking out the NPS
scores now we're paying more attention
that's the NPS core that's the most
important to be going up and trending up
because it's our most important
stakeholder that's the stakeholder that
insures the biggest influence over the
rope product roadmap and so we had to
start thinking about ways to amplify the
voice of end users to survey them more
to talk to them more to be disciplined
to make sure that just because we become
a bigger and bigger company and our
customer base becomes massive and our
customers are growing so much we don't
just default into the easiest thing to
do which is to always just talk to one
person at every customer and usually
that's the admin but to make an effort
to talk to our end users listen to them
pay attention to them invest in the
relationship with them to make sure that
they're staying the happiest because
that's what made us that's what got us
to the dance the only reason why Kohl's
is such a successful company is because
we serve salespeople better than anybody
else out there and we intend to keep it
that way so who might have lost touch a
little bit for a little while last year
but we're getting back in touch with our
core stakeholder and we're the most
we're it is reignited our commitment to
being the best CRM for salespeople right
build by salespeople for salespeople and
that's what really is differentiating us
and what will continue to differentiate
us so I hope that this little sharing
our failure the mistake we made without
being aware of it and then uncovering
that we have to be much more mindful and
thoughtful and segments are our
stakeholders and think about how they
influence things and how we interact
with them I hope that sharing that story
is gonna be a helpful lesson for many
SMV SAS companies out there and that
this is gonna kickstart a conversation
to have I said be SAS startups and
companies be better at understanding
that stakeholders and serving them and
prioritizing them instead of just
thinking because we sell to smaller and
medium-sized businesses
we're just gonna think of them as single
unit entities because they're really
really odd all right so please if you
have not done that yet go to blogged up
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love to hear from you until next time
let's go get them
