In saas enterprise sales there's much more focus on the post-sales lifecycle.
Because the model is recurring revenue, elastic with workforce, and up/cross-sell, there's huge focus on account management, service levels, and delivering actual value.
If those aren't getting to the customer, it's likely they didn't actually need your product, or … their product didn't need _you_.
This is why traditional enterprise software is increasingly being sold and valued like a SaaS. A lot of the latest SaaS IPOs (MuleSoft, Elastic, Pivotal, SolarWinds, DocuSign) derive a lot of their revenue from installable software. The economic model is annual subscription (with incentives for multi-year pre-pay) rather than big perpetual deal followed by 25% maintenance annually in perpetuity.
Wall Street likes this model, understands this model, and it's less prone to boom/bust and aggressive sales tactics.
The result has had a huge positive impact on making enterprise sales more driven on actual results rather than schmoozing. It leads to more sustainable, stable revenue for the software company that's directly tied to ongoing perception of value from the customer. The customer also in theory gets a LOT more attention from account teams and support than they otherwise would. Screw-ups or shelfware at worst lead to 1 year of revenue and hit the churn rate.
Exactly. And that contract will include a minimum number of seats in exchange for a "discount". So they don't have to worry about you hating it and downsizing.
Yes, this is why SaaS products are fundamentally just better than one-off sales products. It aligns incentives between the SaaS company and the customer.
Because the model is recurring revenue, elastic with workforce, and up/cross-sell, there's huge focus on account management, service levels, and delivering actual value.
If those aren't getting to the customer, it's likely they didn't actually need your product, or … their product didn't need _you_.