How to sell saas
SaaS Sales Funnel - 5 Strategies To Selling SaaS (Software as a Service)
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in this video i'm gonna walk you through
five simple steps to sell
sas software as a service and you wanna
make sure you watch this video all the
way through because these strategies are
gonna be
applicable if you are selling a sas idea
that's not quite
built yet and you wanna pre-sell it and
it's also going to work even if you are
working at a company selling an
established sas product what's going on
everybody it's patrick and here before
we get started make sure to give this
video a like subscribe and turn on
notifications if you want to see more
sales training videos like this
and let's go ahead and dive right in now
to understand from a high level
perspective the
sas sales funnel essentially what we
want to be thinking about
is thinking our sales process as a
funnel almost like a triangle right
so at the top of the funnel is your
first step where you're gonna
obviously have more people and you try
to get as many people in your funnel as
possible
and as you walk them through every step
right there's gonna be five steps for
this video
well you know you're gonna filter out
more and more people until you get to
the end of the funnel
where people are actually qualified to
buy and they end up purchasing your
products and services and so this video
is all about how to walk your prospects
your potential customers
through every step of the funnel so that
you can turn a total stranger
into a paying customer now at the top of
the funnel right
the top of this triangle is going to be
lead generation
so lead generation in my opinion is
probably the most overlooked
aspect of sales because you know if you
think about a funnel if you don't have
the beginning of the funnel meaning
people are not coming in as it leads
you can't even walk them through any of
the steps to actually do the selling
process
talk on the phone do a presentation
close the deal negotiate you cannot do
any of that without lead generation so
whether you
are already a proven enterprise selling
an established software or if you're a
startup and
you're just really starting out and you
haven't built anything yet you have to
generate
leads now for your industry for whatever
you are selling it's gonna vary a little
different right for example real estate
in that industry it might be easier to
cold call you know real estate
brokerages and real estate agents to try
to sell them that way
for other industries it might be better
to do a cold email right
in other industries like let's say if
you're selling consulting services if
you're installing any software or
integrating anything
um using linkedin and social selling
might be more effective
so whatever it is you are selling just
know that each
channel is going to vary depending on
what you're selling
and who you're selling it to but what's
most important is
you find at least one effective form of
outreach and communication to start
generating those leads
once you get one down you can expand but
if you don't have one way to generate
leads whether it's cold email
linkedin or whatever well you got
nothing so definitely find
one that works for you first and my
recommendation is to look at
you know other people in your industry
maybe your competitors or people who are
much larger than you
and see how they're doing it chances are
if it's working for them in their
industry
it probably can work for you too if you
just kind of follow a similar route
now the next step of the sas selling
process is you want to
qualify your prospects right because not
everyone is going to be a fit to buy for
example if you're sending 100 emails
how do you know for sure that these
people are actually going to buy from
you you don't and that's why you have to
get on the phone
right you basically send them an email
say do you want to have a meeting you
get on the phone and you qualify them
before you start selling anything right
so qualification is extremely important
because you are basically asking a bunch
of questions
understanding the customer and seeing if
they are a good fit
to buy i'm not saying you have to force
anything i'm just saying
is there a fit do they have a problem
that you can solve with your
sas product so from a tactical level how
it's going to work is
you get on the phone with a prospect and
you have you know a little building
report chat a little bit like oh how's
the wedding over there oh where you from
then you say something like hey i want
to be respectful or your time so
how about we go ahead and get started is
that okay with you and they're going to
say
sure let's go ahead and get started
right and that's how you start a sales
meeting you just ask permission
hey do you mind if we go ahead and get
started obviously they're on the phone
with you they're going to say yes
and as you qualify the prospect the main
things you are looking for from a high
level
is you want to look for a couple things
do they have a pain that you can solve
is that pain bad enough that they're
going to pay money
to you to solve it okay if that's true
then you want to
talk about okay do they even have the
budget to buy
whatever it is you're offering when do
they want to buy
and who is going to buy meaning who are
the other decision makers involved in
this process
and you want to get all these questions
answered during the qualification
process and some people also call it the
discovery phase
you can kind of mix the two together
where you're just learning about the
prospect getting as much information as
possible
and by the end of the meeting your only
goal is to understand
hey is this person someone that should
buy my product and service
you're not even quite selling them quite
yet you're actually just
gathering information to see if they are
worthy
right qualified to move to the next step
which moves us to step number three
which is your presentations your
demonstrations and your pitches
okay so i'm kind of bundling this all
together now once you qualify
the prospect the next step is to do some
type of presentation
a pitch or a demonstration to show them
how you actually solve their problem
what your product actually is what value
you provide and to actually show them
the software if you already have it
built
um what does it actually do what does it
look like what does it feel is it
easy to use right and this is where
you're gonna start actually
selling now the important part to
understand is before you even
sell anything you have to first qualify
the prospect right
because if you start selling in the
beginning you're not even sure
if this person even cares about what you
have to say but if you qualify the
prospect first
then suddenly everything you say in your
demonstration is going to
hit a lot harder because you're directly
addressing the pains that you uncovered
during the qualification step now in
your presentation demonstration however
you want to do it
the main thing you want to remember is
that you only want to talk about
the pain points the prospect already
told you
during the qualification phase if they
didn't talk about those pains
don't talk about it in your presentation
because they actually don't care right
don't talk about
all the different features that you have
and all the things you can do because
that's not what they came
for the meeting for they came to see how
you can solve their problem now from my
personal experience i find the best way
to do
a sas demonstration or presentation is
actually if you're doing it remotely
right whether you're like sharing your
screen and
you you know talking to the person maybe
with a zoom call i would share my screen
and i would do
a presentation probably using powerpoint
or keynote
and basically walk them through the
pains that they had and how we solve
their pains
and you know why i prefer you know using
a keynote or powerpoint is because
uh you're using your audio using your
voice and at the same time you're using
visuals so you can clearly demonstrate
you know the problems that you're
solving it's a very simple thing right
you just slide by slide
and you don't have to memorize too many
things you're literally just going with
the script
and talking them through it now on top
of that what i would also recommend and
now if you have some kind of software
that's very easy to use and it's fast
and it's working
i would use a combination of powerpoint
and then also go
into the software after you kind of
finish your powerpoint to show them
like hey you know this is how we do the
thing i was talking about this is how
you you know add people here and delete
people here and
this and that you know depends on what
you're selling right and i would show
them
how the software actually works so they
can visualize oh
this is how my life would look if i
bought the software from patrick and
again when you talk about the different
features
in your software whether it's through
the powerpoint or actually going into
your software and
showing them live you're only going to
want to talk about the things that they
care about
obviously you don't talk about all the
different features that you have
right especially if you're working at an
enterprise company and they have all
these different type of features that
nobody uses
don't talk about those because they
didn't ask for that they asked for the
features that
solve their problem right pain solution
match it together and that's how you do
your presentations now the next step
of the sas selling process is you're
going to want to go for the clothes or
go for the next steps
now typically when you're selling sas
not everyone is going to
buy on the spot and buy right after
the demonstration right because a lot of
times if you're selling something more
complicated especially if it's more
enterprise or if it's quite expensive
you're going to need multiple people
involved in the prospect sides
before they make a decision right maybe
their cto cmo
ceo all have to get together in the
meeting to decide whether or not they
should purchase a product service
from you so that's why you can't always
expect someone to close right there
unless you're selling something that's
fairly obvious very transactional and
not very expensive then yeah maybe
they'll buy after
you do the presentation and do a
demonstration however if you're doing
something very complicated it takes many
people to integrate the software and
things like that and
they have to hire consultants and all
these different things don't expect it
to close because there's a lot of steps
that need to happen before things
actually do close
so what you want to do instead is you
want to understand what the next step
is in the selling process for the
prospect right
so instead of saying like hey do you
want to buy now you could say something
like
hey you know based on everything we're
talking about so far is there anything
else you need to see before moving
forward and if they have any objections
you handle them right there
if they say nope you know that's
everything we need to see then you're
like okay so it seems like you guys are
interested well you know just curious to
understand
you know what exactly is the next step
for you if you were to move forward with
this
now what's going to happen when you ask
a question like this is the prospect is
going to
tell you exactly what needs to happen on
their side
if they want to buy right and if they
actually do want to buy they might want
to buy right now
but they cannot because maybe there's an
approval process so they might say okay
well patrick
thanks for doing the presentation well
usually our next step is i gotta talk to
my boss about it and then we're gonna go
to procurement and then we gotta talk to
the tech guy to see if this is gonna
work with this and that
and then you know they're gonna tell you
every sale is a little bit different
so they're gonna tell you what the next
steps are right and then you're
basically gonna ask
okay interesting well how long is it
going to take for you to have those
conversations right when will you have
those conversations
and then they're going to say oh
probably sometime next week and then
you're going to say okay
do you need me to be on that
conversation to make sure that
everything goes smoothly and i can
answer any of those questions
and they might say okay yeah that sounds
pretty good patrick it'd be easier for
you to do it than me to do it
so then what i would do as a salesperson
is i would make a recommendation i'll
say hey
do you mind if i make a recommendation
they'll say sure well it seems like if
you need to talk to this person talk to
the i.t guy and talk to this person
how about we go ahead and do this we
schedule a meeting with everybody me
you and everyone included and we have a
conversation to see whether or not this
is really a good fit for
everyone and that way you know you don't
have to do it by yourself and i can help
answer some of the questions that maybe
your boss might have the it guy might
have
and it'll be a lot smoother quicker and
it'll save a lot of time for both of us
how does that sound
and the other person might say okay that
sounds pretty good patrick well let me
go ahead and
work on getting everyone on you know on
the same page and will schedule a
meeting and then from there you say okay
how about i go ahead and
put a tentative date for now and you're
trying to get everyone on how about next
week wednesday 10 a.m does that sound
good with you
and they're gonna say yes and then that
basically closes out the presentation
and moves them to the next step right
and so usually for like
longer deals where you know it takes
multiple steps before someone closes the
deal
you basically have to keep doing this
over and over and over until you go
through
every step that a company needs to go
through before
buying right so after all that maybe
they get on the call everything sounds
good and then you ask them the same
thing
you know to everyone say hey is there
anything else you need to see before
moving forward
and they're gonna say okay well we need
to do this and then you basically
draw up a timeline make sure both sides
know and then do the thing and have
another meeting and then
you keep doing that until you get to a
point where they're ready
to close you send them the contract and
that's when they sign but it isn't
always that easy which
leads us to the final step which is
following up so any type of sales deals
you know
um whether you're selling sas and
enterprise startup whatever it is
you know not everything goes according
to plan sometimes things get delayed
sometimes people it's just not at the
right time in the moment or maybe they
had the budget then they lost the budget
then they
need to wait for the budget right
there's so many different things
that can happen and sometimes just
totally out of blue and you don't expect
it
so what you want to do is you want to
always be following up
if though things don't go the way you
want and things get
off track right and as you can see the
way i'm selling is i'm always
creating a timeline that i understand
and they understand we're on the same
page
working together to close the deal but
when things don't go
according to plan well you want to make
sure that you follow
up right so if someone says okay you
know everything sounds good patrick
but um you know our company just pulled
the budget we don't have any money to
buy this it
anymore then i would say okay totally
understand that happens all the time
right nothing we can really do about
that
but now i'm just curious you know in the
future is this something that your
company wants to do
in the future and create a budget for it
or is it something that they just don't
care about at all
and the person might say yeah we want to
do this but it's just that
they need money for this other project
and maybe
six months from now we're gonna get the
budget again so then you basically
schedule another meeting or
basically you could say something like
okay well that totally fine
how about this six months from now i'll
go ahead and follow up with you maybe
i'll send you an email give you a call
whatever works best for you
and you know we can talk about whether
if you got the budget or not if you did
get the budget we can kind of
start things over and resume the
conversation but if not totally fine
because i understand if you don't have
money you can't buy is that right
and they're gonna say okay it sounds
totally fine so you create an
opportunity for you to follow up six
months from now right
and that's very different from let's say
you say okay thanks bye
and then six months from now you give
them a call out of the blue because when
you
tell them ahead of time that you're
going to follow up following up is a lot
easier because they already
expect you to call them or expect your
email you're almost like friends
but if you're just like not setting
those expectations in the beginning and
you try to follow up later
they're not going to pick up your calls
they're not going to respond to your
email because
they don't feel like they need to they
never agree to it right
so that's why when you follow up make
sure you you know
set the expectations in the beginning
for your follow-up if you can
and then just keep following up until
something changes
on their side and then when they're
ready to buy again they have the budget
they're ready to go
you're the first person they're gonna
think of to move forward and so with
that said that's gonna be the five steps
to selling sas whether you're working at
a startup or a large
company if you enjoyed this video make
sure to give it a like subscribe and
turn on notifications
and if you want a free training on how
to start accelerate your sales career
and sell anything to anyone i got a free
training link is in the description
so that said my name is patrick deng and
i'll see you guys in the next one