Month: June 2023

SaaS Sales Management Strategy: Tactics to Improve Underperforming Teams and Drive Results

Posted on by Nick Mann

A recent survey found only 18% of sales teams were reaching 70% or more of their quotas. And only 43% were even hitting 50% of their quotas. Further, 58% of sales teams were only reaching 20-40% of their quota attainment or less, which clearly shows there’s room for improvement in the SaaS sales management strategy of many companies.

If you’ve been feeling underwhelmed with your team’s performance as of late, this post is for you. In it, I’ll offer a simple yet effective step-by-step SaaS sales management strategy that should get your numbers to where they need to be.

Assess Your Current Team to Identify Low Performers

The first step is to gain an objective understanding of who’s carrying their weight and who’s not. You’ll likely have an idea of who your top performers are, but it’s important to look at some concrete data to identify low performers.

I like CEO and co-founder of SaaStr Jason Lemkin’s take on it. According to him, “Realistically, in most cases, the best thing to do is let some of your low performers go and reroute those leads to your higher performers. Get back to a core group of folks that can close, and then keep the bar high, and add to it. No one is happy with < 50% quota attainment.”

So how do you identify low performers?

I suggest looking at these metrics:

  • How many conversions each salesperson has made in the past six months to a year
  • What each person’s close rate is
  • What each rep’s average deal size is
  • How much their accounts have grown or diminished
  • What their overall quota attainment rate momentum is (are they trending up or down?)

Looking at these numbers should provide clarification so you’ll know for a fact who the low performers are, which brings me to my next point.

Let the Low Performers Go

Once you know for certain who’s not carrying their weight, it’s a good time to let go of your low performers. While this isn’t always pleasant, and you’ll want to take any extenuating circumstances into account, “trimming the fat” and sending leads to your top performers is usually an effective way to recalibrate your sales team and get your quota attainment rate to an acceptable level.

As Lemkin explains, “The best sales teams really do see 70% or more of their team hitting quota, or at least 70% of scaled reps (which often means 60% or so overall). It just energizes everyone, and success builds on success.”

Offer Ongoing Sales Training

At this point, you’ll want to equip your top performers with the tools they need to be their best — something that can often be done with proper sales training. While a one-off course can be helpful, I find that it’s ideal to offer ongoing sales training given the fast-paced nature of the SaaS industry.

With trends constantly changing, the teams that perform the best are usually the ones that stay on top and continually refine their collective skillset.

To find a suitable sales training platform for your SaaS company, I recommend browsing through this list from HubSpot.

They offer 36 of the top programs that can fit every need and budget.

Use Sales Tech and Productivity Tools

Sales tech and productivity tools help improve efficiency and performance with less so you can sell more without adding headcount. And with AI becoming increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous, the potential results you can get are off the charts.

A good example is using a scheduling tool like Calendly to allow leads to conveniently choose a time slot for a product demo.

Calendly kills two birds with one stone because it lets your sales team capitalize on the momentum and strike while the iron is hot while also saving your reps time. Rather than making a hot lead wait to get a response and schedule a demo, they can do it right away when they’re most interested.

And instead of wasting time back-and-forthing with leads, your reps can confirm demo times and automatically have them penciled into their calendars.

You can find a comprehensive list of sales tech and productivity tools here.

Hire Top Tier Talent

The last piece of the puzzle for our SaaS sales management strategy is to improve your SaaS sales hiring process from here on out. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need to bring new team members on board immediately (even if you’ve let low performers go). But it’s important to fine-tune your hiring so you don’t run into the problem of low performers in the future.

Easier said than done, right?

While there is no magic bullet for finding elite talent 100% of the time, using a comprehensive sales assessment can accurately and consistently help you find top performers using objective data.

Objective Management Group’s Sales Assessment, for example, looks at critical criteria like the will to sell, how much a person enjoys selling, motivation, core competencies, and more to filter through a large pool of candidates and narrow it down to the best of the best. It can be customized for your unique selling environment and tailored to your specific needs. And it can be used for nearly any sales role.

So if you’re looking for a simple way to evaluate SaaS salespeople and pinpoint top tier talent, this is a good way to go about it.

In terms of results, 92% of the candidates that are recommended by the assessment go on to reach the top half of their sales force within their first year.

A SaaS Sales Management Strategy to Get Your Team on Track

If you’re less than excited about your current sales quota attainment rate, you’re not alone. Only 18% of sales teams are hitting 70% or more of their quotas.

But if you follow the SaaS sales management strategy outlined above, you should be able to 1) steady the ship to quickly bump up your quota attainment rate and 2) set the stage for continued success in the long run.

If you’re interested in learning more about Objective Management Group’s sales assessment, you can get the full details here.

Use These SaaS Selling Strategies to Close More Deals

Posted on by Nick Mann

As of 2023, the majority of business apps that today’s companies use are SaaS-based at 70%. And experts predict that number will grow to 85% by 2025. This means there’s abundant opportunity for SaaS companies. But to fully capitalize on it, you need to thoroughly understand which SaaS selling strategies are most effective.

That’s what I’ll be zeroing in on in this post. Without wasting any time, let’s dive into the best of the best SaaS selling strategies to close more deals.

Use Lead Scoring to Prequalify Prospects

A classic rookie mistake is approaching all prospects the same and assuming everyone is ready to buy right off the bat. This simply isn’t the case, and most experts say that only around 3% of prospects are ready to “buy now.” And with choosing the right SaaS product being such an integral part of running a business, seldom are prospects ready to instantly pull the trigger.

A critical precursor to closing more deals is first using lead scoring to separate prospects so you know who’s ready for a sales discussion and who still needs nurturing from your marketing team.

Here’s an example of how leads can be broken down based on quantifiable scores.

Those that receive a score of 10 or less are considered prospects. Those that receive a score of 50 are leads. Those that receive a score of 75 are marketing qualified leads (MQLs). And those that receive a score of 100 are sales qualified leads (SQLs).

Note that the scoring system can vary depending on the product, but using lead scoring where points are assigned based on behaviors like the ones below is one of the best ways to objectively assess where each person is at in the sales funnel and, in turn, who deserves immediate attention.

That alone can help your SaaS sales team dramatically optimize their time and put them on their way to closing more deals. As for specific lead scoring tools, you can find some of the top products on this list from G2.

Be Lightning Fast with Lead Outreach

Once you’ve developed a system for identifying SQLs, the next step is to accelerate your lead outreach so you can strike while the iron is hot. With the SaaS industry being so competitive, time is of the essence with lead outreach, and I can’t stress enough the importance of contacting SQLs before your competitors do.

For perspective, research has found that the first vendor to respond wins 35 – 50% of sales.

And to understand the correlation between outreach time and conversion rate, check out this graph.

On average, contacting a lead within 24 hours results in a 16% conversion rate improvement. However, that number increases to 36% when a lead is contacted within one hour and 62% if contacted within 30 minutes.

But hold the phone. If they’re contacted within just one minute, that number skyrockets all the way to 391%!

Admittedly, this fast of an outreach is often easier said than done, especially during non-business hours. While it’s not always feasible to have a salesperson communicate with a lead right away, you can always use an automated message on email, social media, or another platform to touch base and get your SaaS brand on their radar before competitors do.

This brings us to the next of our SaaS selling strategies.

Quickly Convey Value and Build Trust

Once a salesperson has made contact, their main objective is to show a lead why your SaaS product is valuable and that you’re a credible, trustworthy business. This could be an entire blog post itself, but some effective ways to accomplish this are to:

  • Use social proof like user reviews and testimonials
  • Offer case studies from companies in a relevant industry
  • Highlight notable companies that have benefited from your product
  • Provide customer success stories

Many leads may be skeptical of a SaaS brand initially, but this is one of the best ways to “disarm” them and lay the foundation for the essential rapport needed to ultimately convert.

Perfect the Demo

Let’s say that you’ve identified qualified leads, quickly initiated contact, demonstrated value, and built a baseline level of trust. This is the point in the SaaS sales funnel where many leads will want to check out a product demo. And it’s a point that can make or break your chances of converting.

If your salespeople consistently nail the demo, your conversion rates are nearly guaranteed to increase. That’s why it’s so important to perfect the SaaS sales demo — something that’s largely done by implementing the right formula and covering all the bases.

While the exact winning formula will vary, here’s a good basic structure to follow across the board:

  • Make a formal introduction and provide some general context, such as your UVP and the pain points your product solves
  • Explain core features and benefits
  • Cover the product interface
  • Mention software integrations
  • Explain analytics and reporting
  • Go over different plans and pricing
  • Discuss the basics of onboarding and customer support
  • Answer questions

I also suggest reading this guide from Gong.io, which is packed full of helpful information for mastering the art of the sales demo. It features concrete data on how long a demo should be, the ideal ratio of talking to listening, and much more.

Proven SaaS Selling Strategies for Increasing Conversions

There’s a lot that goes into effective SaaS selling and it requires a ton of experience and a natural aptitude to perfect. That said, when you break it all down, there are four main components — using lead scoring to efficiently qualify leads, accelerating your speed to lead outreach, conveying value and building trust, and perfecting the demo.

By deliberately working these into your SaaS sales strategies, you should be able to 1) know which leads to focus on and 2) how to best engage with those leads to scientifically increase your odds of converting.

And if you’re looking to assemble a winning sales team of elite talent, see how HireDNA can help you find the best of the best while eliminating 96% of hiring mistakes.