
How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups - jhchen
https://www.entrepidpartners.com/how-to-sell-guide
======
vincentmarle
> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders:

> \- Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call

> \- Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call

> \- Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process

These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes"
I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like
companies who are too deep into doing high touch sales don't really respect my
time and are _shocked_ when I tell them to cut to the chase and yes, I do
expect to hear about pricing on the first call, otherwise there won't be
another call.

Disclaimer: I have zero patience for abundant sales processes.

~~~
goatherders
Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a
worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad
customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so
please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much
everything I've ever sold in 20 years.

High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big
purchasing decision. Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this
interaction and courting. But it's also for the benefit of the company
courting you. Making sure there is no charge-back and that the client is set
up for success is a big part of being a successful salesperson.

~~~
StaticRedux
I understand your point, and you aren't wrong, but you are short-sighted. You
may only sell to big clients now, but you are also leaving a lot of money on
the table for yourself, not your company, yourself.

You've been selling for 20 years? How many of your customers have you had for
longer than 3?

Now I can hear your mind churning, 'but I'm at a different company now! I
don't sell the same thing!'. It doesn't matter. Sales is sales. And the best
sales people foster relationships for years before they really sell the big
bucks. And can go back to those same clients and sell different products and
it's easy because those clients know them and trust them.

Ever get that little pang of jealousy wondering why that guy you know in sales
plays golf every day with clients and doesn't seem to do much else? It's not
because he's just that good. He's not. He might even suck. It's most likely bc
he has been building relationships with those clients for years and they would
buy a cactus as a new pillow if he asked them to.

This attitude of telling the little guy to piss off bc he isn't your type of
client might make for some ok sales now, maybe you even have a shiny BMW, but
it doesn't make for long term relationships with people who trust you. Once
those people at that big company move on to bigger and better things, you'll
be stuck grinding it out with whoever they replace them with.

I take it you work hard. You're certainly passionate. But after 20 years in
sales, you shouldn't have to be working hard. Whether you changed companies
and products every six months or still work for the same company, you should
have been building relationships.

Instead you are content writing off the little guy as a waste of your time.
The same senior management you grind it out to sell to now who was a little
guy 20 years ago. And the same little guys who will be senior management in 10
- 20 years.

I imagine you'll still be grinding it out every day then also, instead of
playing golf like you should be.

~~~
goatherders
I'm not sure your post was meant for me even if you think it was. I dont write
off the little guy, I write off the person that just wants to know about price
price price.

My churn rate is low precisely because I take time to learn what they want
then provide what they need. I work with clients that are a good fit in both
directions and got out of the "anything for a buck" game years ago.

I work hard building my businesses, but I don't have to work hard at sales
precisely because of what you said - I've built relationships and skills that
make it fun for me to sell. I work about 5 hours a day, travel a ton and play
lots of golf. ;)

~~~
confiscate
agreed. Whether someone cares only about price, is a separate trait from
whether that person is a big/little guy

in the very original comment, it said "I do expect to hear about pricing on
the first call, otherwise there won't be another call. Disclaimer: I have zero
patience for abundant sales processes."

this person isn't asking about price because he/she is "little" and can't
afford it. Even if the person is a big guy with a lot of $, he/she will still
haggle you on price, because that's his/her worldview.

besides, it's unclear that a little guy with a "zero-patience policy" that
fixates on price price price as a principle, will likely become a big guy some
day.

Even if they did become a big guy some day, you would still have a lot of
problems making money from them.

------
DeanWormer
I found this ~20 page guide Fog Creek put out a few years ago and it got me
excited about switching from a technical role into sales. I'd recommend it to
anyone who wants a high level understanding of Enterprise sales.

[https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-
co...](https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-company-
needs-to-know-about-sales.pdf)

------
Bromskloss
Direct link:
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd400b/t/5b0b4dc68a922dbfa263b389/1527467516482/Entrepid_How+To+Sell.pdf)

------
rohamg
i've worked with Tyler and Entrepid across multiple of our portfolio companies
at Axiom Zen and been super impressed every time

ZenHub wouldnt be where it is today without Tyler (we have dozens of Fortune
500 companies as customers)

Tyler is a close friend so at this point i am biased, but Entrepid has built a
team of humble, holistic thinkers with deep expertise in sales and high-touch
growth strategy

------
sparrish
Nice guide for high-touch sales.

I'd love to see something similar for low-touch/no-touch sales SaaS.

~~~
goatherders
"Low touch / no touch" sales is also known as "marketing." I don't know you or
your intentions so this may not be directed at you, but I've found that most
people looking to develop a low-touch sales engine are really saying
"Ew...sales...I don't want to have to do that. Maybe if I blog enough and my
site looks good I won't have to actually, you know, TALK to potential
customers."

I also find that anything above about $70/month MRR is going to require
talking to the person. $70 is a limit that most companies will allow to be
expensed without much question. MAYBE you can get that number to $100 in the
right market. Above $100? Good luck. And if you are selling a $100+ product
with no-touch then you are really missing out on TONS of business that could
come your way if you just put in some actual sales effort.

~~~
anoncoward111
If I could offer some perspective from someone in the sales trenches:

Cold calling does not work. No matter how good your script is, your email,
your personality, your talk track, your data sources, your persistence, cold
calling does not work. It is a poor ROI.

All real sales are made either through the customer opting in to communicate
(response to an email blast, inbound lead from the company phone, a referral
etc)... or through nepotism and cronyism and ivy league networks of multi
millionaires. Hint: this is how Oracle is alive to this day.

If I was in charge of selling a product over $100, I would create the most
awesome, viral content you would ever see about our product. I would release a
free version to 99% of the world that is truly usable and awesome.

This is what join.me did to compete with Webex and Skype for Business and
GoToMeeting.

Remember: if you don't have an existing network, you don't have any business.

Start marketing before you start selling.

~~~
bharris315
Bryan from Entrepid Partners here... we find that highly targetted, outbound
cold emails are actually the best place to start prospecting.

In our experience, if you do the extra work to personalize the email and focus
in on why your product/service is relevant to the buyer's pain points, we've
seen response rates as high as 30% with the majority of those replies turning
into an intro call with the buyer.

~~~
anoncoward111
Hi Bryan :)

>highly targeted, outbound cold emails...

...are neither scalable nor calls, in my mind. Here's my opinions:

1) I am currently manually building my own unsolicited email list for the
purpose of marketing my b2b service. I have good, quality data sources with no
bounce rates and right personas, but it is neither cheap nor simple to enter
this data manually

2) even if I send these people highly targeted and well-crafted emails that
are friendly and insightful and pithy, it is a slow process with diminishing
returns...

3)... because most people add me to their spam filter these days. It is
trivial to do so.

I would infinitely prefer to invest my time in creating excellent, viral
content and offering users a free entry level service with few restrictions.

I would then spend all my time obsessively devoting myself to those users who
have a big budget and greatly desire to receive communication from me.

Lastly, I dare say that someone who responds to a cold email will probably
just end up kicking tires.

Tire kicking is automated away with my free demo.

~~~
goatherders
Certainly more than one way to do this, but I agree with Bryan.

Highly targeted email lists are scaleable enough and there is plenty of tech
to make them more personal than ever. I disagree a great deal with the idea
that cold respondents "end up kicking tires." 100% of my marketing is cold
email. 100% of the marketing I do for clients is cold email. I'm happy with my
ROI and so are they.

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akulbe
I do Chef and Ansible development. I'd love to know how to sell and find more
good customers. I have a long-term customer who's had me on what amounts to a
staff augmentation project for 3 years. I know it won't last forever. How
would you go about finding more projects like this?

~~~
goatherders
Email me and I would be glad to have a back and forth for free. Good sales
process comes down to patience and persistence and I can coach you through
both if you dont mind the sometimes-slowness of email.

------
goatherders
Kudos to you guys. Please report back in a few weeks with the metrics on the
number of leads this created for you. I'm in the same space and this content
marketing is golden.

------
throwawayosiu1
This actually scares me.

I want to bootstrap an SaaS company focused on enterprise / b2b soon and being
bootstraped I can't afford to hire an sales rep/ account manager (or be one
myself while working on the product) for what looks like a long process.

This is definitely a scary thought in my opinion.

Fingers crossed, I hope that's a good problem to have.

~~~
consumer451
We are exactly at this stage right now. Bootstrapped, enterprise SaaS, ready
for initial sales. This post could not have been more timely for me.

I'm not sure if this is possible in your niche, but we are partnering with a
consulting company which provides services in the same industry/niche. We will
give them a cut from the sales to do this exact process. Many leads will come
from them as well. I could not imagine doing this any other way at the moment.
Eventually we will certainly hire a full time salesperson.

edit: we got really lucky that this consulting company had some biz dev people
who used to do SaaS sales at a previous employer.

~~~
bharris315
In our experience, the founder should close the first 3-10 enterprise deals on
their own. When you chose to outsource, you may close some deals, but you lose
out on the early customer product feedback.

The relationships with your early customers are key. You need to make your
early customers your biggest fans to show how your product changed their
business through references and/or mini-case studies.

~~~
consumer451
Oh, I am definitely in on all calls at this point. And thanks for the rest of
the advice, I am trying to follow it already.

------
vinceguidry
Is there an awesome list for business that this can be added to?

\--edit nevermind, here it is:

[https://github.com/cameronroe/awesome-
marketing](https://github.com/cameronroe/awesome-marketing)

it's not added to the main awesome list, so I'm making a pull req for that
too.

------
not_that_noob
Excellent guide - rings true.

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gurglz
This is super helpful!

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ministrator
I'd recommend also reading this: [https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/b2b-growth-
strategies-by-in...](https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/b2b-growth-strategies-
by-indiehackers-8ab87ed66d0d)

It's an analysis of successful growth strategies used by B2B SaaS Startups
that are listed on Indiehackers.com

As well as the Saastr podcast. Full of gems on how to sell.

