Month: May 2023

5 Must-Know SaaS Sales Roles and Definitions

Posted on by Nick Mann

The SaaS industry is huge and still growing. As of mid-2023, there were 17,000 SaaS companies in the US alone and over 30,000 worldwide.

And by 2024, some experts predict this number could more than double to as many as 72,000 SaaS companies. As the industry has evolved, so have the positions, and there are a variety of SaaS sales roles, ranging from basic entry-level jobs to high-ranking executive positions.

In this post, I’ll provide an overview of five essential SaaS sales roles so you can better understand the underlying structure and how the various positions come together to create a cohesive sales team.

1. Sales Development Representative

The main purpose of this role is to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. A sales development rep’s responsibility is to continually communicate with the marketing team to identify sales qualified leads (SQLs) that have a strong likelihood of buying.

Once SQLs have been identified, a sales development rep will then pass them on to a SaaS sales representative who will attempt to make a conversion (more on this in a moment). B2B sales consulting and training services company Winning By Design elaborates saying, “They have to start a conversation and provoke a decision maker into action, handle objections, and close on a call-to-action such as meeting with an account executive (AE) or attending an event.”

One of the most important traits to thrive in this position is strong communication.

2. SaaS Sales Representative

One of the most fundamental yet integral roles at any company is a SaaS sales representative. At its core, a person in this position is responsible for selling products to customers, which can include a wide variety of activities, including:

  • Reaching out to and following up with leads through email, social media, over the phone, video calls, and other mediums
  • Creating and performing sales presentations
  • Identifying the specific needs and pain points of leads
  • Providing relevant product recommendations
  • Answering lead questions
  • Negotiating product pricing
  • Acquiring new customers
  • Communicating with the software development team to relay customer feedback

SaaS sales reps are typically the ones “in the trenches” and play a vital role in getting conversions and setting the stage for a positive customer experience, which is important for increasing retention and lowering churn.

3. SaaS Account Manager

After a lead has purchased a SaaS product and a sale has officially been made, the customer falls into the hands of an account manager who’s involved with ensuring customer satisfaction and building a long-term relationship.

A SaaS account manager performs several tasks but has two primary goals.

  • Cater to each customer’s needs to sustain positive momentum, increase loyalty, and boost retention
  • Seek out new sales opportunities with existing customers

As for specific day-to-day activities, these can include:

  • Managing the account portfolio, while giving each customer personalized attention
  • Building and maintaining customer relationships
  • Serving as a dedicated point of contact for customer inquiries and questions
  • Resolving any issues that arise
  • Checking in with customers to ensure their key objectives are met
  • Identifying potential add-ons or upgrades that could provide additional customer value
  • Offering suggestions on how to improve product performance

This graphic illustrates nicely how a SaaS account manager fits into an organization.

4. SaaS Sales Engineer

First, note that this isn’t a role that’s required by all SaaS companies. It’s typically reserved for those that sell a complex, advanced product that your average customer won’t fully understand.

A SaaS sales engineer serves two main functions.

First, as HubSpot puts it, “They must be able to use their applied technical knowledge to help sales reps persuade prospects to choose their products.” That’s their job on the pre-sale side of things.

And for post-sale, a SaaS sales engineer assists with the integration of the product into a customer’s existing tech stack. This is important given the average company used 80 different SaaS apps in 2022.

To ensure the process goes smoothly, a SaaS sales engineer will oversee the integration and resolve any issues that may arise. In turn, they play a big role in ensuring customer satisfaction and maximizing retention.

5. Sales Manager

You can think of the previous SaaS sales roles as relay racers passing a baton.

The sales development rep identifies SQLs and passes them on to a SaaS sales representative. A SaaS sales representative then engages with a lead and seeks to convert them. Once converted, they then hand the customer off to a SaaS account manager who looks to further build the relationship and make additional sales to existing customers to maximize value. And throughout this process, a sales engineer is there to ensure that the technical side of things goes as smoothly as possible.

Overseeing everything is a SaaS sales manager who ties it all together. This role wears a lot of hats, but their core mission is to build the best sales team possible, establish goals and KPIs, provide motivation, continually monitor team member performance, and ultimately ensure that customers are happy.

Because of the hands-on nature of this role, a sales manager will need to possess excellent communication and leadership skills. They also need to be a bit of a psychologist where they manage different personalities to get everyone to operate at their best.

SaaS Sales Roles Coming Together to Create a Cohesive Team

Having a tight underlying structure is essential to the success of a SaaS company. Teams need to have clearly defined roles and understand how everyone works individually as well as a unified whole.

While the specific SaaS sales roles of an organization can vary slightly, the five mentioned here are the fundamentals that you’ll want to know about if you’re assembling a team.

If you want to recruit the best talent in your industry using a data-driven process, use HireDNA to post a job for free. It eliminates 96% of wrong hires and reduces turnover by 50%.

How to Find Great Talent in Tough Economic Times

Posted on by hiredna

Finding talented salespeople can be difficult in even the best of circumstances. But it can be especially challenging to find great talent in tough economic times.

And that’s precisely what sales recruiters are up against today. Although the recruiting climate has stabilized somewhat in the wake of COVID, there are still some major challenges that must be overcome to secure elite talent.  

In this post, I’ll offer some background on the current rocky economic state and specific strategies and tools you can use to find rockstar salespeople in your industry.

Some Statistics for Perspective

By definition, the US is not currently in a recession as of the time of this writing in May 2023. However, many financial experts believe there could be one on the horizon.

“Slowing in GDP could be due to negative US inventory accumulations and trade deficits,” writes Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank. “Whether these factors will continue dragging on the economy throughout 2023 remains to be seen, but steadily slowing GDP growth could be an advance warning of recession ahead.”

Besides that, there are also the issues of inflation, stock market volatility, sluggish retail sales, and other factors that are contributing to our current economic woes.

And from a recruiting standpoint, today’s businesses must contend with what McKinsey calls “the Great Attrition” or “Great Resignation,” where a staggering 40% of American workers say they may leave their job in the near future.

By these numbers, two out of every five salespeople are theoretically ready to look elsewhere, which is no doubt alarming to many recruiters.

Capitalizing on Opportunities

This isn’t to say that everything is all doom and gloom. In fact, there are plenty of opportunities for sales recruiters to find great talent in tough economic times.

For instance, this often translates into a larger candidate pool that wasn’t available a few years ago. You may also be able to find elite-level talent from other organizations that wouldn’t have previously been possible.

It’s just a matter of adjusting your sales recruiting strategy, which is what I’ll discuss for the rest of this post.

Start with Your UVP

I love what Cassie Pike, managing director at Cielo Talent has to say about the importance of strengthening your UVP in tough economic times.

“When slowdowns occur and candidates are in the market, it’s prime time for companies to campaign for who they want and show why their offerings stand out amongst the rest. It’s important to help candidates understand why you’re hiring and why you’re a safe bet for them when it comes to a job change. It’s about more than the money; it’s about the full value proposition, including stability of your organization, growth for the organization, and what it provides for your employees, as well as other non-monetary benefits like flexibility.”

Refining your UVP is a critical precursor to anything else, especially in our current economic climate, because it affects everything else. This is a topic I’ve covered in detail before, and you can learn how to create a winning UVP here.

Use a SaaS Sales Recruiting Platform

Perhaps the best way to streamline recruiting is to use a data-driven tool like HireDNA.

With it, you can tap into a robust national network of qualified sales talent and access top performers — both active and passive candidates — that have the exact skills and qualifications needed to thrive at your company.

Here’s how it works.

First, you’ll be assigned a dedicated recruiting manager who will work alongside you to create an ideal candidate profile.

Based on that, we’ll come up with a list of verified candidates that match what you’re looking for using 26 profile data points and 21 core selling competencies. Note that this goes beyond just traditional hard skills and is extremely granular with traits like motivation, desire to sell, the ability to handle rejection, and much more.

From there, we’ll provide you with a short list of handpicked, verified candidates that are most likely to succeed.

And finally, you choose the candidates you’re most interested in and can schedule interviews.

Sales recruiters that use HireDNA are able to eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes, speed up their time to hire by 50%, and have 50% less turnover. So if you’re looking to streamline your sales recruiting and find the best of the best, this type of platform can be very helpful.

Hire for Skills Over Industry Experience

The other main strategy I recommend to find great talent in tough economic times is being flexible with your job requirements.

In a previous blog, I explained why selling skills are often more important than industry/product experience. Although this post is over two years old, I think it’s just as relevant as ever.

The bottom line with this logic is that you can always train someone on a product, but you can’t always teach someone how to sell.

Say, for example, you find a candidate that has a stellar track record and has consistently exceeded their expectations in all previous roles, but they don’t have any experience in your specific industry. Odds are, they could learn it fairly quickly and use their natural talent to reach the top of your sales force.

On the other hand, let’s say there’s another candidate that does have plenty of experience in your industry, but they have a history of underwhelming performance. Although you could probably get them up to speed quicker, they’ll likely hit their plateau and won’t have nearly the same potential as someone who’s a natural winner.

This is a simple example, but I’m sure you can see my point. More often than not, prioritizing raw sales talent over experience and being willing to hire someone you know can sell, even if they lack direct industry/product experience, should lead to positive results and can give you an edge over many competitors.

Finding Great Talent in Tough Economic Times

Although the current economy is far from ideal, it’s still possible to find elite talent. In fact, there are golden opportunities as long as you leverage the right strategies and take advantage of helpful tools.

To see HireDNA in action and learn how it can take your sales recruiting to the next level, schedule a live demo today.