Cement for castles in the “clouds”: how we learned to sell SaaS
In this article, I will share the experience of selling SaaS solutions in the B2C segment and tell you which of the tried-and-tested approaches turned out to be working, and on which, perhaps, SaaS beginners should not spend a lot of effort.
If you are associated with sales of cloud services and e-commerce, welcome to the cat, where they expect not theoretical calculations, but a presentation of the actual experience of building a working SaaS solution sales system.
First, I will answer the question: “If you are so smart, why do you share know-how? Sit on the side, be silent in a rag - row the money with a shovel! ”
Let me explain: as long as a huge number of people do not imagine that there is something other than ICQ and “VKontakte” on the Internet, I won’t make much money either for other SaaS users ... Therefore, I share my experience, which is more or less will be useful for new commercial SaaS projects. Working each on his own cloud-based product, we all together form and expand the SaaaS market, and increasing it increases the income of each company in the field.
In a nutshell, I’ll mention the specifics of our solution so that the chosen sales techniques are evaluated in the right context.
Product idea: sales automation and management accounting system for stores and chains selling clothes and shoes. ( trykarkas.ru )
The essence of the product: the system monitors store sales, stock balances and deliveries planned for stores + supports any analytics, so even if the client has several stores / warehouses, he knows exactly where and how much and how much they sold, and he tells when it will have to be ordered again + the client can analyze the sales in order to understand what is selling better, what is worse, etc. Ordinary sellers and administrators also have access to the system through which they conduct sales, returns, discounts, etc. Of course, the solution supports dimensional grids, printing of checks and other retail gadgets (everything works from beginning to end on the SaaS model).
In short, the system is beautiful, and when we started selling, we were sure that everyone would soon build a small country estate for themselves ...
But it turned out to be not quite like that: trying to sell a solution, we repeatedly faced the same problems, for solving which we had to create a whole mechanism (later, communicating with colleagues, we realized that many problems were universal for Russia) . However, “when the trees were big” we did not know about it yet ...
')
Barriers
1) There is no practice of consuming cloud services:
Yes, in Russia, bookkeeping, management accounting or personal finance online is almost nonsense. The point here is not even that people are afraid to do it, most of them do not even realize that this is possible. The brain in that direction does not work for them. What are the sales SaaS. Its essence is first necessary to explain half a day ...
2) Low internet penetration:
Rather, not that low - uneven more correct word. In other words, the capacity of the SaaS market is limited to geographic locations where this notorious access to the normal quality of the Internet is. All the others, let the most attractive in other characteristics, the area can be safely thrown out of my head
3) The most marginal group:
The most marginal goal - individuals, freelancers, small and medium-sized companies - those who are not afraid of experiments, are not interested in kickback, and on which large vendors have not yet “sat down”. This means that in order to get a normal exhaust from the sale of a product, you need to pile up many contacts at once, or learn how to sell quickly. And the best is both at the same time. It’s a long time to lick a large corporation and then sell there 1000000000 licenses, but here SAAS has less chances - the flexibility of the SAAS product is a priori less than that of a custom corporate solution, implemented by vendors / consultants for half a year
4) No confidence:
Simply put, customers are scared. Like this! My data - and the Internet!?! There are hackers, phishers, FSB-GB-CIA! Take the most for Faberge!
5) There is no established sales system:
Sell SaaS, as a rule, IT-guys or those who have recently sold boxed solutions. And they use for this their past experience ... which does not work here. Well, that’s right, ideologically, the product is different, and nails and microscopes are not always compatible ...
Okay, okay, “Tell me someting I don't know”? Okay, I turn to the main part - the techniques by which we pushed the barriers.
1. Create a sales system
We have been looking for customers for a long time, giving managers of the base for which they tried to engage in telephone sales. The results were so-so: customers were rare, and the process was obviously too expensive and long. Therefore, we decided to upgrade sales to Sales 2.0: to ensure that customers find us, and not we were looking for customers.
After two months of work, it dawned on us that SaaS works via the Internet, and therefore people who are potentially ready to buy SaaS are also on the Web. Therefore, it is necessary to catch them in their natural habitat, you do not go fishing in the Sahara, right?
We reasoned that the secret of success is to direct the maximum flow of interested people to Internet resources, which would be designed in such a way as to transform the maximum percentage of interested people into happy customers.
As a result, we built an online sales platform, which now looks like this:
Everything works simply:
1 + 2) We create a stream of clients to our selling site: SEO, context, whatever, just someone, even with an edge of the ear interested in the decision, hit the site.
3) And here the potential client should, in the required doses and in a convenient way for him, stick to the selling content in which your product is wrapped: Screencasts, texts describing “we are very cool,” blogs where articles with profile information are written are all aimed at so that the customer:
a) believed you
b) the product has ceased to be afraid
c) wanted to buy it
We, for example, specifically launched the Torg-12 satellite project, the satellite project Torg-12 ( http://torg12.ru/ ), within which we made a platform for online and offline communication of retailers.
Naturally, the simpler the product, the less it is necessary to generate support-materials in principle, look, for example, at the content accompanying Dropbox or Mozy Backup.
Special attention should be paid to the organization of supporting materials on the site: the structure should be extremely simple and enjoyable to navigate. We have already agreed on the shortest sales cycle? So let most of it happen on your website online.
4) Next, it is desirable to feed and gather the right crowd of clients and experts - this is aerobatics: hemorrhoid and hard, but worth the effort - a recommendation from a person from a party not related to your product a priori seems more reliable for a potential client ... Well, at the same time You will monitor what worries customers and promote all sorts of smart things, acting as an expert and thought-leader.
In short, the task is simple: to make sure that - customers believe that you are really smart and understand their business.
5) In our case, only after the creation of the entire above described system, we began to observe how the stream of “unique people” passes into a stream of customers. Now, in order to increase the conversion, we are refining communications, the product and other aspects of the system - there will be no more universal recipes, all solutions are unique ...
Well, a couple of tips.
2. Sell benefits
If someone does not know - all people are, in general, different. Therefore, everyone buys something of their own, especially imposing him. So you need to straighten up and describe the different types of advantages that the solution carries. Moreover, it is necessary to do this from different sides: someone needs to show more numbers, for some of your customers, product innovation will be important, and someone will just be happy to pay less money than for a boxed solution ...
In short, it is advisable to "process" a potential buyer from all sides. As a rule, the following groups of benefits will be valid for all SAAS solutions:
• Financial:
o Minimum initial investment, and the most extended period of investment (the value of money decreases with time)
o No cost to implement, update and support
• Custom
o Always fresh and relevant data
o Access to the system is possible from anywhere in the world.
o Easy to give access to anyone.
• IT'shnye
o Compatible with any OS
o Do not install anything
o You will always work with the latest version of the program.
o SLA
• Are common
o Promise of system development
o Greater system security than working on a local server / flash drive / work computer
Finally, the last. Truthfully answer your customers' questions, speak on topics that concern them.
3. Work with fears
You may not be trusted for a million reasons both related to your product and arising from business practices in Russia. So you have to be patient and get ready for a long, long time to prove that you are not a camel.
Most likely, you need to come up with thoughtful and clear answers to the following client questions:
1) What will happen to my information on the network?
2) What to do if the Internet is gone?
3) Why I have never seen such a system?
4) Why there is no possibility of additional settings and improvements?
Correctly approach communication on these sensitive issues - and you will already earn 30% of the client ...
In summary: keep these three areas in mind - develop your sales system, work with fears, sell benefits + think with your head, and everything will be fine.
I really hope that someone will find these tips useful. Good luck!
And ... well, I completely forgot to say: everything I’ve written here doesn’t work at all if you have a bad or useless product ... so don't forget about this aspect too!
If you are associated with sales of cloud services and e-commerce, welcome to the cat, where they expect not theoretical calculations, but a presentation of the actual experience of building a working SaaS solution sales system.
First, I will answer the question: “If you are so smart, why do you share know-how? Sit on the side, be silent in a rag - row the money with a shovel! ”
Let me explain: as long as a huge number of people do not imagine that there is something other than ICQ and “VKontakte” on the Internet, I won’t make much money either for other SaaS users ... Therefore, I share my experience, which is more or less will be useful for new commercial SaaS projects. Working each on his own cloud-based product, we all together form and expand the SaaaS market, and increasing it increases the income of each company in the field.
In a nutshell, I’ll mention the specifics of our solution so that the chosen sales techniques are evaluated in the right context.
Product idea: sales automation and management accounting system for stores and chains selling clothes and shoes. ( trykarkas.ru )
The essence of the product: the system monitors store sales, stock balances and deliveries planned for stores + supports any analytics, so even if the client has several stores / warehouses, he knows exactly where and how much and how much they sold, and he tells when it will have to be ordered again + the client can analyze the sales in order to understand what is selling better, what is worse, etc. Ordinary sellers and administrators also have access to the system through which they conduct sales, returns, discounts, etc. Of course, the solution supports dimensional grids, printing of checks and other retail gadgets (everything works from beginning to end on the SaaS model).
In short, the system is beautiful, and when we started selling, we were sure that everyone would soon build a small country estate for themselves ...
But it turned out to be not quite like that: trying to sell a solution, we repeatedly faced the same problems, for solving which we had to create a whole mechanism (later, communicating with colleagues, we realized that many problems were universal for Russia) . However, “when the trees were big” we did not know about it yet ...
')
Barriers
1) There is no practice of consuming cloud services:
Yes, in Russia, bookkeeping, management accounting or personal finance online is almost nonsense. The point here is not even that people are afraid to do it, most of them do not even realize that this is possible. The brain in that direction does not work for them. What are the sales SaaS. Its essence is first necessary to explain half a day ...
2) Low internet penetration:
Rather, not that low - uneven more correct word. In other words, the capacity of the SaaS market is limited to geographic locations where this notorious access to the normal quality of the Internet is. All the others, let the most attractive in other characteristics, the area can be safely thrown out of my head
3) The most marginal group:
The most marginal goal - individuals, freelancers, small and medium-sized companies - those who are not afraid of experiments, are not interested in kickback, and on which large vendors have not yet “sat down”. This means that in order to get a normal exhaust from the sale of a product, you need to pile up many contacts at once, or learn how to sell quickly. And the best is both at the same time. It’s a long time to lick a large corporation and then sell there 1000000000 licenses, but here SAAS has less chances - the flexibility of the SAAS product is a priori less than that of a custom corporate solution, implemented by vendors / consultants for half a year
4) No confidence:
Simply put, customers are scared. Like this! My data - and the Internet!?! There are hackers, phishers, FSB-GB-CIA! Take the most for Faberge!
5) There is no established sales system:
Sell SaaS, as a rule, IT-guys or those who have recently sold boxed solutions. And they use for this their past experience ... which does not work here. Well, that’s right, ideologically, the product is different, and nails and microscopes are not always compatible ...
Okay, okay, “Tell me someting I don't know”? Okay, I turn to the main part - the techniques by which we pushed the barriers.
1. Create a sales system
We have been looking for customers for a long time, giving managers of the base for which they tried to engage in telephone sales. The results were so-so: customers were rare, and the process was obviously too expensive and long. Therefore, we decided to upgrade sales to Sales 2.0: to ensure that customers find us, and not we were looking for customers.
After two months of work, it dawned on us that SaaS works via the Internet, and therefore people who are potentially ready to buy SaaS are also on the Web. Therefore, it is necessary to catch them in their natural habitat, you do not go fishing in the Sahara, right?
We reasoned that the secret of success is to direct the maximum flow of interested people to Internet resources, which would be designed in such a way as to transform the maximum percentage of interested people into happy customers.
As a result, we built an online sales platform, which now looks like this:
Everything works simply:
1 + 2) We create a stream of clients to our selling site: SEO, context, whatever, just someone, even with an edge of the ear interested in the decision, hit the site.
3) And here the potential client should, in the required doses and in a convenient way for him, stick to the selling content in which your product is wrapped: Screencasts, texts describing “we are very cool,” blogs where articles with profile information are written are all aimed at so that the customer:
a) believed you
b) the product has ceased to be afraid
c) wanted to buy it
We, for example, specifically launched the Torg-12 satellite project, the satellite project Torg-12 ( http://torg12.ru/ ), within which we made a platform for online and offline communication of retailers.
Naturally, the simpler the product, the less it is necessary to generate support-materials in principle, look, for example, at the content accompanying Dropbox or Mozy Backup.
Special attention should be paid to the organization of supporting materials on the site: the structure should be extremely simple and enjoyable to navigate. We have already agreed on the shortest sales cycle? So let most of it happen on your website online.
4) Next, it is desirable to feed and gather the right crowd of clients and experts - this is aerobatics: hemorrhoid and hard, but worth the effort - a recommendation from a person from a party not related to your product a priori seems more reliable for a potential client ... Well, at the same time You will monitor what worries customers and promote all sorts of smart things, acting as an expert and thought-leader.
In short, the task is simple: to make sure that - customers believe that you are really smart and understand their business.
5) In our case, only after the creation of the entire above described system, we began to observe how the stream of “unique people” passes into a stream of customers. Now, in order to increase the conversion, we are refining communications, the product and other aspects of the system - there will be no more universal recipes, all solutions are unique ...
Well, a couple of tips.
2. Sell benefits
If someone does not know - all people are, in general, different. Therefore, everyone buys something of their own, especially imposing him. So you need to straighten up and describe the different types of advantages that the solution carries. Moreover, it is necessary to do this from different sides: someone needs to show more numbers, for some of your customers, product innovation will be important, and someone will just be happy to pay less money than for a boxed solution ...
In short, it is advisable to "process" a potential buyer from all sides. As a rule, the following groups of benefits will be valid for all SAAS solutions:
• Financial:
o Minimum initial investment, and the most extended period of investment (the value of money decreases with time)
o No cost to implement, update and support
• Custom
o Always fresh and relevant data
o Access to the system is possible from anywhere in the world.
o Easy to give access to anyone.
• IT'shnye
o Compatible with any OS
o Do not install anything
o You will always work with the latest version of the program.
o SLA
• Are common
o Promise of system development
o Greater system security than working on a local server / flash drive / work computer
Finally, the last. Truthfully answer your customers' questions, speak on topics that concern them.
3. Work with fears
You may not be trusted for a million reasons both related to your product and arising from business practices in Russia. So you have to be patient and get ready for a long, long time to prove that you are not a camel.
Most likely, you need to come up with thoughtful and clear answers to the following client questions:
1) What will happen to my information on the network?
2) What to do if the Internet is gone?
3) Why I have never seen such a system?
4) Why there is no possibility of additional settings and improvements?
Correctly approach communication on these sensitive issues - and you will already earn 30% of the client ...
In summary: keep these three areas in mind - develop your sales system, work with fears, sell benefits + think with your head, and everything will be fine.
I really hope that someone will find these tips useful. Good luck!
And ... well, I completely forgot to say: everything I’ve written here doesn’t work at all if you have a bad or useless product ... so don't forget about this aspect too!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99165/
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