Growth hacking sales trends

^{Screenshot from the cartoon “How the old man sold the cow”}
Recently you have heard about many successful examples of growth hacking techniques, and they were mainly used in B2C business models, social networks and market places. Literally, “supernovae” Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb appeared before our eyes. But what do we know about growth hacking in SaaS? We talk about a higher customer value, which does not allow for explosive growth, but is it?

Before answering this question, let's look at what has happened in recent years with sales. If you have been in corporate sales for a long time, you probably have seen the rapid evolution of sales of companies operating in B2B, the main features of which are outlined below.

1. The predominance of direct sales

The Internet has removed intermediaries in many market segments and corporate sales are no exception. We see that resellers and other sales channels in most cases today play a much smaller role. Even if integrators still play a key role in the deployment of solutions, their role as sellers or even advisors recommending specific solutions has dropped dramatically due to better customer awareness and simplicity of direct relationships with suppliers.
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According to a recent study by Matrix Partner's, such channels close on average only 5% of SaaS company sales. Yes, and for the presentation of products they were used on average from 30% to 50% of the total over the past decade.

2. The sales cycle has become infinite

Previously, more than half of the revenues were collected at the initial sales stage (and this share was much higher if maintenance revenues were excluded). The sales cycle was defined as the time period from the initial contact to the purchase order (PO, purchase order). Today, this model is dead, and those who are trying to use it should remember the old Indian saying about a dead horse. Sales cycles are exhausted. Today's income is distributed over the entire time period of the relationship with the client. After the initial sale, revenue from customer relationships increases significantly due to upgrades, upgrades to the product (up-sells) and add-ons. The traditional sales funnel in this case gets its mirror image.

Unfortunately, in the past, manufacturers could achieve the same effect with the almost complete absence of good customer support, so they often had to organize events with user control groups, which now seems a bit strange to us. True, this time is gone and the degree of customer satisfaction is now much higher, as is the competition. Any client can publicly via social media share the experience of using the product, both negative and positive. The organization of communications through social media has reached a new level, and customers have much more freedom. The most important consequence is that SaaS companies must provide a very high level of customer service. In addition, the very nature of the SaaS business model is constantly in need of innovation, which in a crowded market leads suppliers to the need to keep the brand.

Mass migration of client support to social media in turn created a new channel for up-sells and distribution of add-ons. The boundaries between different types of sales are blurred, which leads to one important conclusion: “Sales are different, sales are different!”

3. Sales organization is becoming more sophisticated.

After a massive connection to the network, many powers began to move from a sales representative to a customer. Previously, a good account manager (a person who maintains constant contact with existing customers) was in complete control of the sales process. Such a specialist was the main, if not the only, source of information about the product. Today, these functions have successfully accumulated the Internet. As a result, the sales organization adapts to more complex conditions and customers to save at least some influence on the sales process. Interactivity, which allows you to take advantage of various sales opportunities, pushes companies to take extraordinary actions, ranging from the inclusion of a sales specialist to each division, to mass training of all employees.

4. Social sales

You cannot write about sales trends without mentioning social sales. Only the lazy people didn’t write to the specialized media and online about social sales, and now I’m also throwing a stone into this swamp. In fact, there is no spoon! That is, most often social sales do not imply the sale process itself. It is about relationships with people (including partners and customers), building relationships, engaging and educating.

To illustrate this, imagine that you are sitting in the same hall in the company of your customers, partners, suppliers, employees and shareholders. You sit in the corner and you are dumb. Submitted? This is how you look if you are not engaged in social sales. You simply do not exist. Thus, you cannot sell anything if you do not exist, but existence alone is not enough for sales. It is necessary, but absolutely not enough. To sell successfully, we need the good old foundations. So make sure that you are social, and do not forget that this is not yet a sale.

5. Fundamentally the sales process has not changed

Although uninterrupted phone calls have been replaced by e-mail and instant messengers, and some of the simplest processes are automated, for a successful sale a person must convince the other person that his product or service is the best solution to the client’s problems. The more opportunities, the more the real Creator is needed. The fundamentals of sales have not changed, so the use of the correct methodology and optimization of the sales process has not gone away.

New sales trends for SaaS companies are also developing based on consumer demand. As well as B2C and B2B, the buyer has become more educated and informed than before, therefore, the approaches to growth hacking in B2B should take into account these features, but I will write about this in the next article .