There’s a lot that goes into selling SaaS. As any salesperson knows, no two customers are the same. Every sale is a unique challenge, and you need to always be on your toes if you want to keep your closing rates high.
To get this right, you always need to be one step ahead. Having a sleeve full of SaaS sales tricks will help you respond to any tricky situation and turn even the most difficult leads into closed deals.
This guide explores some of the best tips and tricks you can use when selling SaaS.
What You Need to Know About Selling SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS) sales involves selling software products to interested clients. As software is not a tangible product, a typical SaaS sales process can look very different from regular sales pitches.
This is because selling SaaS is all about conveying the value and benefits of a solution that a user has yet to apply to their lives. And because SaaS products are typically subscription-based, selling SaaS focuses on long-term contracts.
To get this right, SaaS sales teams need to have a deep understanding of their target customers and know how to pitch software to them in the most strategic way possible. Getting this right can involve many different tips and tricks.
8 Tips and Tricks for Selling SaaS
Whatever type of software products you’re selling and whoever you’re trying to sell them to, there are a few essential tips and tactics that can apply to any SaaS sales team. Let’s explore some of the most impactful ones.
Understand Your Target Audience
When it comes to selling SaaS, few things are as important as having a deep understanding of your target audience. Without this, you won’t be able to highlight the right value in your sales pitches and product demos, which is essential for engaging your prospects and closing the deal.
When researching your target audience, there are two important things to keep in mind.
First, establish clear target audience segments. Chances are, your SaaS product appeals to various target audience groups – such as people in different industries or people with different use cases.
By clearly outlining your different target audience segments, you’ll be able to establish what value propositions appeal most to each segment.
Second, focus on your target audience’s pain points. While it’s helpful knowing demographic information about your target customers, this isn’t nearly as useful as understanding their pain points.
Remember, their pain points are what will drive them to make a purchase decision. It’s also their pain points that help you showcase the value in your product. So, the better you understand your customer’s pain points, the easier it will be to sell to them.
Personalize Your Product Demos
Few steps in the SaaS sales journey are as critical as your product demo.
This is when you have your prospects on the line. It’s your big chance to motivate them to make a purchase.
By offering a strong product demo, complete with personalization, you’ll significantly increase your chances of closing the deal. In fact, 77% of customers choose brands that provide a personalized customer experience. Your product demo is your best opportunity to apply this personalization.
Besides focusing on your prospect’s industry and business model, really compelling product demos make use of relevant data. By showcasing data in your live demo environment, you’ll transform your product demo into a far more engaging experience. This could be your secret weapon to close more deals.
Saleo is the ideal live demo experience platform for helping you pull this off.
Consider Offering Free Trials
An effective strategy for getting customers hooked on your product is offering a free trial period. Doing this strategically makes it easy for customers to sign up and get started with your platform without any risk.
Once they start using your software and it becomes a part of their regular routine, it will be hard for them not to upgrade to the paid version. So, offering a free trial period is a great way to truly display the value of your solution to potential customers.
If you decide to do this, make sure you choose a trial period length that makes sense for your platform. This is typically anywhere between 7 – 30 days. If your platform is quite complex and full of features, then consider a longer trial period. If it’s very straightforward, a shorter trial period might be a better option.
Keep in Contact With Users During the Trial
If you do decide to offer a free trial period, then you want to make sure that you maintain regular communication with your customers during this period.
Check-in with these users to hear their feedback, offer support and understand how they’re using the product. This information can help you offer more value or suggestions to them, which will make it easier to sell after the trial period.
An important part of selling SaaS is maintaining a constant relationship with your prospects. They should know that you’re always there for help – which will make it faster to close the deal when they’re ready to buy.
Optimize Your Pricing Strategy
Pricing is one of the most important considerations customers have when buying SaaS. So, when selling SaaS, you want to make sure your pricing strategy is as strategic as possible.
Beyond offering competitive pricing, you could consider offering annual plans at a discounted rate. This can be an excellent strategy, as you bring in a lot more revenue upfront than you would with a month-to-month contract.
By selling discounted annual plans, you also give customers more reason to commit to your software product for a longer period. This is helpful for customer retention and maximizing customer lifetime value.
Utilize Testimonials
When it comes to selling SaaS, few things are as powerful as positive customer testimonials.
Having testimonials available from your past and existing customers is the type of sales collateral that every SaaS sales rep is after. Ideally, you will have testimonials available to match each of your different target audience segments, This way, the testimonials you show prospects are more relevant.
Testimonials are a valuable form of social proof. If a prospect sees that your product works for someone like them, then they will be far more interested in purchasing it too. As consumers trust other people like themselves more than they trust marketing messages from brands, testimonials can do wonders for your sales cycle.
Send customers relevant testimonials in email drip campaigns and nurturing sequences. Have testimonials available for any questions or concerns that they could relate to. You could package these testimonials in written or video forms.
Focus on Upselling and Cross-Selling
You probably already know that it’s significantly more expensive to take on new customers than it is to sell to your existing ones.
Your existing customers already trust your brand and are (hopefully) getting value from your software products. This presents an ideal opportunity to increase the value of these customers through upsells and cross-sells.
To do this, you’ll need to understand your customer’s scenarios and understand how they’re using your software. If you can find any reasons why upgrading to a more expensive plan, or adding extra features, would be beneficial, then reach out to the customer and communicate this.
When you get this right it’s a win-win, because your customers get more value and your business generates more recurring revenue.
Use a CRM
A good customer relationship management (CRM) platform is essential for selling SaaS.
These platforms reveal all of the information you need to know about your prospects and customers. For example, you can view each individual customer’s history with your brand, past interactions, responses to campaigns, and more.
With all of this information at your fingertips, personalizing the customer experience becomes a lot easier. This will help you engage customers more effectively which is key to closing more deals or pushing more upsells.
Conclusion
Follow the tips and tricks above, and selling SaaS can be easier!
The more you understand your customers and know how to respond to any of their objections, the more deals your team will be able to close.
If you’re looking to enhance your live demo experience, consider Saleo. Book a demo to see how the platform can help your sales team boost its closing rate.
