
Systematizing Sales with Software and Processes - jplarson
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/sales_automation
======
lmorris84
_rather than giving Cindy the quote which she asked for, I should have asked
Cindy to hop on a quick call with me to discuss how they were planning to use
Appointment Reminder_

I get this all the time when looking for vendors for various things and have
to say I usually do an internal eye-roll when it comes up - sometimes I just
want a rough quote in an email that I can look at when I get the chance. Most
recently we were looking at some load testing tool and I had to sit through a
sales call only to find out the cost was ten times what we were prepared to
pay. I had zero special requirements so why that price couldn't have been
emailed is beyond me.

I understand in some cases like this it might be useful to have a call, I just
feel I'm getting the sales BS when it happens to me.

~~~
patio11
I'm on your side here with regards to that, but this story is exactly why your
vendor can't do that to you. You know you have no special requirements. They
don't know you have no special requirements. They also don't know whether
you're serious yet. For better or worse, asking you to put something on your
calendar and show up to it is a great way to verify whether you're serious or
not: if you're not willing to make yourself available for a phone call, it is
possible you'd be able to organize your company to pay $10k for software but
that isn't the way I'll bet.

I regretfully have years of anecdata on the close rate of doing things the
geek-approved way versus the close rate when I get on the phone with somebody
and it, ahem, is not a close call.

~~~
lmorris84
In the case I mentioned I wasn't serious at all - I was just putting feelers
out and trying to gauge pricing across a few different vendors. A call at this
point is probably wasting my time and theirs.

For me, the stage after finding out a standard price is to perhaps have a call
and determine if my requirements match up to the product.

I guess it also depends on the size of the company, type of software etc. If
the company has trial versions then it's more likely the person buying knows
what it can do etc.

As a hard example, I go to jprofiler's website[1] and can order there and
then, no messing around. I go to neotys[2] and it's the sales induced hell I
mentioned above.

[1] [https://www.ej-technologies.com/buy/jprofiler/select](https://www.ej-
technologies.com/buy/jprofiler/select) [2]
[http://www.neotys.com/product/neoload-
licenses.html](http://www.neotys.com/product/neoload-licenses.html)

~~~
danielvinson
"A call at this point is probably wasting my time and theirs."

Most salespeople spend countless hours of time with potential customers who
don't purchase - it is certainly worth their time if there is even a slight
chance that you will consider the product in the distant future. You are
definitely NOT wasting their time.

~~~
douche
It's certainly wasting your time... It drives me nuts when I download a trial
version of some software tool to evaluate and get phone calls from sales reps
before the day is over. Calm down, I haven't had time to even try it yet...

~~~
raminassemi
From the software vendors' perspective, it makes good business sense to call
you asap, see: [http://blog.close.io/why-you-need-to-call-every-signup-
user-...](http://blog.close.io/why-you-need-to-call-every-signup-user-
within-5)

From a customer perspective, ideally that call will help you to save time by:
a) figuring out faster if this software is right for you or not b) helping you
to learn how to use it the best way possible c) setting this up so you make
the most out of your trial.

I'd rather take objection with bad sales calls, not with the fact that they
call on the same day.

------
adwf
This is one of the hidden gems within the article:

"Selling to your existing customers is orders of magnitude easier than selling
to new customers. We’ve never really strictly enforced the quotas
differentiating our tiers from each other, so I had poor visibility into how
many people were over quota, but it turns out that it is almost 10% of the
user base. I built out capability in our billing system to upgrade a user’s
account without forcing them to log in and initiate it themselves. Then I
built a screen in our admin dashboard which shows all the accounts that are
over quota and links them to their contact details in the CRM."

How great is it for a customer to hear that they've gone over but it's OK? So
many companies would put a sting in the tail of the contract and charge
overages (frequently at nasty rates), or just suspend their account until it's
upgraded. Instead it's being used as a perfect opportunity to upsell an
existing, qualified - and therefore presumably very happy customer - on a
bigger plan.

~~~
hglaser
I get so much love from customers when I email them a few days ahead of the
renewal and let them know that they're over quota, that I didn't want them to
be surprised by the CC bill, and give them an opportunity to pare back down if
they want to.

This is one of those areas where "being a good person" is a competitive
advantage and drives lots of retention. Plus, after a couple months of this,
they'll all upgrade anyway as paring down gets harder and more time-consuming.

~~~
patio11
_" being a good person" is a competitive advantage_

I get so much mileage out of the phrase "Don't worry, we aren't the phone
company" it is unreal. Sure, we have hard costs associated with providing
services, but I'd rather loses a few bucks occasionally on an account than
routinely bite the hands that feed me.

------
toumhi
Great stuff there Patrick. Also, I strongly recommend close.io newsletter for
startup sales. Steli Efti is to startup sales what Patrick Mckenzie is to
startup marketing.

A lot of the SaaS companies out there don't have a proper sales/marketing
process in place. In particular regarding free trials, too many of them are
doing only two things to interact with a user:

    
    
      1- when the user signs up, send a welcome email
      2- when the free trial expires, send a "free trial about to expire" email
    

And in between these 2 steps, crickets. The new user is left to figure out
what to do on his own, and whether the product is even a good fit for him.

Any kind of process to move a user from "just signed up" to "paid customer" is
better than no process. How do you move a user on that journey? By identifying
the steps that a user has to go to realize the value of the product, and
figuring out a way to move from one step to the other.

It can be automated (marketing) with lifecycle emails, in-app messages or with
specific UX. It can be high-touch (sales) with a customer success/sales rep
assisting the user to go to the next step.

Just don't leave the new users alone.

------
philfreo
Thanks for the Close.io ([http://close.io/](http://close.io/)) shoutouts
Patrick!

If anyone needs help doing similar Close.io API integrations, feel free to
reach out at phil@close.io - would be happy to help.

~~~
gingerlime
OT, but I'm on holiday in Laos at the moment and can't open your page. Other
links work fine, albeit slow. Are you blacklisting certain countries?

~~~
philfreo
Do you have a problem loading [http://close.io](http://close.io) or
[https://app.close.io/](https://app.close.io/) or both? Shoot an email to
support@close.io with details + your IP address please!

------
saturdayplace
Patrick, if you haven't yet gotten any emails about this, the Amazon link to
"Predictable Revenue" is to the .co.jp domain.

~~~
patio11
Thanks. D'oh. I understand how I missed that when QAing the links but I'm
clueless about how it got into there in the first place.

------
inthewoods
Personally, I giggle when anyone says that SaaS has changed the way enterprise
or b2b software is sold (as opposed to delivered where it has made big
changes) - I've been in the business for a while and most deals still require
sales people and cocktail hours. This is especially true as the price tag goes
up - when you're selling $1m deals, it is just about always done on personal
selling basis.

With the exception of Atlassian, most of the low/no-touch companies I've seen
are pretty limited in scalability - I don't know many that have reached a
$100m in sales without having a traditional sales team. As another example,
Mixpanel, which would seem to have a low-touch approach, is building a huge
sales team. Zendesk is interesting - but I know they've got salespeople
because we just negotiated with them.

I should also differentiate between those that show prices on their website or
not - many show pricing - although it is often generalized. Many show pricing
up to a certain level and then you have to talk to a rep - Mixpanel goes up to
$24k a year and then you have to talk to a rep.

Would love to see more examples other than Atlassian if anyone has them.

------
JamesBarney
The article mentioned "and S-1 filings of SaaS companies trying to IPO are, to
many people, hilarious for this reason".

Being outside of start up circles I was curious why this was hilarious.

~~~
mikey_p
Some recent S-1 filings have included numbers that show the company spending
as much as two and half times their annual revenue on sales and marketing
alone.

Some argue that this may demonstrates and unsustainable business model, while
others would say it's just an early stage startup and that it'll correct
itself.

~~~
MichaelGG
Splunk's been public for quite a while and is the same way. In fact, even
eliminating their entire R&D wouldn't result in them being profitable.

------
davidw
> my sales rep (who is very, very part-time)

Interesting. I'd definitely like to hear more about how this works.

> Ask me if you’re curious about going into depth on that — I might write an
> essay about it in the new year.

Yeah! Anything that lets me figure out support and sales better would be
extremely welcome. I'd be very grateful if you found the time to write about
it.

------
gingerlime
_while I could probably have done something with Trello or a spreadsheet,
those aren’t quite as scriptable as I’d like_

Can't comment about close.io since it's inaccessible from where I'm at[0].
Trello is quite scriptable though and I've been using it with a couple of
rough scripts to keep track of our own sales process. This was inspired by an
interesting post called "A system for selling"[1] that I'd recommend reading
and sounds similar to what Patrick was doing.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8775958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8775958)

[1] [http://casjam.com/system-for-selling/](http://casjam.com/system-for-
selling/)

------
oviya1994
We have actually built a system to automate our internal sales process
([http://customertrialportal.com](http://customertrialportal.com)). It is
ideal for software product trial management, sales followup and license
issuance. If you are looking for one send us an email.

------
magsafe
Since this discussion is about sales, I'd like to share a nifty little app for
tracking sales that have already been made:
[http://www.bottomlinehq.com](http://www.bottomlinehq.com)

