Category: Sales Strategy

Average SaaS Salespeople Ask Leads 6 or Less Questions. Top Performers Ask 11-14: Why Discovery Call Questions Are Essential

Posted on by hiredna

In a previous post, I mentioned that 88% of today’s leads are only willing to buy when they see the salesperson as a trusted advisor. I also pointed out that hyper-aggressive sales tactics often turn leads off and can be potential deal-breakers. 

One of the best ways to assume the role of trusted advisor is for SaaS salespeople to ask plenty of questions during the discovery call. And this number is higher than you may think. 

Here’s what you need to know to equip your reps for success. 

Top Performers Ask 11-14 Discovery Call Questions

Revenue intelligence software, Gong.io, has built an amazing reputation for their original research. They’ve conducted a ton of in-depth studies to pinpoint the exact reasons why salespeople succeed or fail. 

One particular study I found fascinating was this one on discovery calls. 

“We analyzed 519,000 recorded discovery calls with AI to understand what drives successful outcomes,” explains Chris Orlob, director of sales at Gong.io. “These discovery calls were recorded on web conferencing platforms with Gong.io, transcribed, and analyzed with unsupervised machine learning to identify the discovery call questions and techniques that drive revenue.”

In this study, they examined the number of target questions SaaS salespeople aimed for per discovery call and found:

  • Reps that only asked 1-6 discovery call questions had a 46% success rate (the lowest by far)
  • Reps that asked 7-10 questions had a 66% success rate
  • Reps that asked 15-18 questions had a 67% success rate

But here’s the kicker. Reps that asked 11-14 discovery call questions had a 74% success rate — considerably higher than the other reps that asked fewer or more questions. This graph illustrates this trend perfectly. 

Finding the Sweet Spot

According to this study, the trick is to ask enough questions so SaaS salespeople can figure out a lead’s precise pain points, needs, goals, and so on. This is what allows reps to not only optimize their offerings so they’re perfectly tailored to each lead, but also helps them build trust and rapport along the way. But at the same time, SaaS salespeople don’t want to ask too many questions because that can create friction as well. 

Looking at this data, it’s clear that 11-14 questions is the sweet spot. 

“Less than that and your discovery call may not be robust enough,” writes Orlob. “More than that, and it will likely start to feel like an interrogation, rather than a natural conversation.”

Asking the Right Discovery Call Questions

But there’s something very important I need to point out. Having successful discovery calls isn’t just about asking 11-14 questions. It’s about SaaS salespeople asking the right questions. 

Or as Orlob puts it, “Asking a generic line of questioning is likely to get you kicked in the teeth. Your best bet for discovery call success is asking questions about key business problems or goals the customer is trying to solve.”

Specificity is critical here. And as I mentioned earlier, the questions a rep asks need to focus on a lead’s unique needs, pain points, challenges, and goals. 

Here are some examples of questions one of our reps might ask at HireDNA when attempting to identify the needs of a lead who needs help with their technology sales recruiting:

  • What are some areas you’re currently struggling at with your recruiting?
  • What are some of the core competencies you look at when hiring reps?
  • What percentage of reps currently hit their sales quota? What number would you like to be at?
  • What’s your current salesperson retention rate? How much higher would you like that to be?

Notice how all of these questions are designed to instantly get the ball rolling so we can identify key business problems/goals and gain a solid understanding of the lead. This brings me to my final point. 

Getting Leads Talking

There’s one final piece of the puzzle I need to mention. You want your reps to get leads talking and encourage them to give long responses — not merely yes or no answers. Why?

Getting leads to talk interrupted for a long period correlates to a thorough response. That way SaaS salespeople can really wrap their head around the situation, which ultimately means they can optimize their offerings and increase their chances of closing the deal. 

Orlob mentions some specific ways to phrase questions to encourage a long response:

  • “Can you help me understand…”
  • “Can you walk me through…”
  • “Talk to me about…”

Let’s Recap

These days leads aren’t receptive to pushy, aggressive sales tactics. Rather, they prefer dealing with reps that take the role of a trusted advisor and base their offerings on the lead’s unique needs, pain points, and goals. 

In other words, SaaS salespeople need to be adept at creating meaningful dialogue, which is illustrated by this graph that highlights the question frequency used by top performers versus average ones. 

One of the best ways to do this is by asking the right number of questions during discovery calls — 11-14 to be exact, as this is considered the sweet spot and what yields the highest success rate. 

Besides hitting the right number of questions, reps also need to ask the right questions involving key business problems or goals the lead is trying to solve and using phrases to get leads talking. By following this formula, it helps reps fire on cylinders, allowing them to quickly establish trust, figure out what solutions to offer, and ultimately convert. 

Looking to assemble a team of ultra talented SaaS salespeople? Find out how HireDNA can help you do this by using cutting-edge technology to source top talent using intelligent matching and science-based assessments. HireDNA can cut your hiring time in half and eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes. 

88% of Leads Buy When a Salesperson Assumes the Role of Trusted Advisor: How to Capitalize on This Stat

Posted on by hiredna

There are certain professions that people are inherently wary of. Car salesmen, real estate agents, and lawyers are just a few that come to mind. 

But it turns out that there’s also a growing distrust of salespeople these days. One study found that just 32% of buyers view sales as a “trustworthy profession,” while another study says only a paltry 3% consider salespeople to be trustworthy. 

Whatever data you go by, there’s clearly a negative perception of salespeople and something they need to overcome. So, how exactly can they go about that?

It’s simple. Assume the role of a “trusted advisor.” 

An Age of Unprecedented Customer Empowerment

We live in a new era where people are more empowered than ever when it comes to making purchases — something that’s largely due to the internet. Having access to an unending supply of information where buyers can search for literally anything in seconds means they’re highly informed.

Or as Gigi Peccolo, Content Manager of conversational AI platform OneReach, puts it, “The information gap between companies and customers is slowly being closed as the empowered learn what they’re capable of. It’s no longer a monopoly, it’s a duopoly, and it’s shifting in customers’ favor.”

This means most people have very little patience for fast talking, back slapping salespeople trying to separate them from their money. And if they sense the least bit of dishonesty or sleaziness, they’re quick to walk away and look elsewhere. That’s especially true for B2B buyers who often have a strong familiarity with inside sales tactics that your average consumer does not. 

Closing the Trust Gap

And this collective distrust of salespeople is a big problem. Without a basic sense of trust, you can’t even expect B2B buyers to listen to a sales pitch, let alone make a major purchase that could potentially make or break their company. No matter how rock solid your sales funnel is, it’s going to be an uphill battle if you can’t close the trust gap. 

The key to doing this is to modify your approach where instead of your team taking the role of traditional salespeople, they instead strive to be trusted advisors. Considering that 88% of people are only willing to buy when they view a salesperson as a trusted advisor, this can be your ticket to not just getting immediate sales, but paving the way for repeat business as well as referrals.

In fact, “79% of business buyers say it’s absolutely critical or very important to interact with a salesperson who is a trusted advisor — not just a sales rep — who adds value to their business.”

How to Make the Shift to Trusted Advisor

For starters, it requires that your sales team collectively adopts a different mindset than what they’re probably used to in terms of interacting with buyers. And the key to doing that is having your salespeople treat it like they’re merely helping leads find the right solution and supplying them with information to make an informed choice rather than straight up “selling.”

Sean Callahan, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at LinkedIn, says it well with this quote. “People need to feel like they’re making an informed decision about a purchase without background sales pressure. Don’t think of it as selling: think of it as providing the information, benefits, and value so the customer can sell themselves.”

In other words, it’s about shifting from sales to solutions. That should be the initial catalyst for making the transition. 

Develop the Core Qualities of a Trusted Advisor

Next, your salespeople need to focus on developing the core qualities that B2B are seeking.

These include:

  • Fully researching each buyer to understand their industry, needs, pain points, goals, etc.
  • Demonstrating competency by knowing the ins and outs of different product solutions and how they relate to the buyer’s specific needs 
  • Improving question asking skills to show genuine interest in a buyer’s business and provide the optimal level of service
  • Being transparent and honest every step of the way during interactions
  • Acting with integrity and not offering products a buyer doesn’t truly need
  • Keeping a collaborative tone with buyers, letting them know the salesperson is working to come up with the best possible solutions 
  • Developing real chemistry with the buyer and striving to achieve a certain sense of “likability”

Follow a Customer Focused Problem Solving Process

Finally, there’s a particular problem solving process that Nick Frank, Managing Partner at Si2 Partners outlines that is helpful for achieving the role of trusted advisor. 

It involves six steps, which break down as follows:

It’s all about identifying what each individual buyer’s unique pain point is, figuring out what’s causing the problem, and determining what specific product your company offers that can solve it. From there, it’s a matter of implementing the solution and maintaining close contact afterward to ensure everything goes smoothly and addressing any issues that may arise.

It’s not about shoving some random product down a buyer’s throat and leaving them on their own after that. Rather, a salesperson should act as a buyer’s own personal advisor who sticks with them every step of the way. 

Appealing to 88% of Leads

We’re living in a new age where old school, and quite frankly raunchy sales tactics that are ultra aggressive no longer cut it. The vast majority of B2B buyers are not only unreceptive to this type of approach, they’re completely turned off of it. And most can sniff out any sleaziness from a mile away. 

But what they are receptive to is dealing with salespeople who they view as trusted advisors. Helping your sales team transition to this role is critical moving forward and can be instrumental in converting more leads and generating bigger profits. 

Looking to hire top sales talent who “get it?” HireDNA can help you do that while using powerful recruiting technology and science-based sales assessments to eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes. Get your demo today. 

Increase Productivity By 38% and Profits By 27% With an Employee Engagement Strategy

Posted on by hiredna

Employee engagement is one of the hottest topics in the business world right now and something nearly all companies are trying to increase. And for good reason. 

“Organizations with higher than average levels of employee engagement realized 27% higher profits, 50% higher sales, 50% higher customer loyalty levels, and 38% above-average productivity.”

It’s hard to argue with those numbers. But how can you increase sales rep motivation in a practical, concrete manner?

It’s simple. Create an employee engagement strategy. 

The Impact an Employee Engagement Strategy Can Have

Before we dive in too far, let’s discuss just how big of an impact this can have. To put things into perspective, we must first understand how prevalent employee disengagement currently is. 

According to research, 45% of the workforce is not engaged, and 26% of employees are actively disengaged. That’s a huge problem and means that less than a third (29%) of employees are actively engaged.

Further, “disengaged workers cost the economy $300 billion or more per year,” mainly because they’re only there for the paycheck and do the bare minimum to not get fired. This scene featuring Peter Gibbons in the movie Office Space summarizes this trend perfectly. 

But having an official employee engagement strategy in place is arguably the best way to slash through disengagement. Not only does it help boost productivity and profits, it tends to make the workplace a more pleasant place and naturally enhances the collective culture. 

Besides that, companies with high employee engagement have a 41% lower absenteeism rate. And having a positive company culture results in 4x the revenue. One study even found that 90% of business leaders believe an employee engagement strategy could yield positive results for their company. 

How to Create an Employee Engagement Strategy

Now let’s get down to brass tacks. Here’s how to develop a winning employee engagement strategy for your business. 

Step 1 – Pinpoint Your Specific Goals

Of course you’ll want to increase productivity and boost profitability. Those are givens. 

But the first step to shaping your strategy is to look deeper and pinpoint a handful of specific goals you want to accomplish with your employee engagement strategy. 

Some examples can include:

  • Raising collective employee satisfaction levels
  • Reducing turnover
  • Motivating employees to stay with your company longer
  • Creating a more positive, collaborative culture 

Once you’ve got these nailed down, it’s time for step two. 

Step 2 – Build an Action Plan Based on the 10 Key Engagement Drivers

When you break it all down, there are 10 main factors that contribute most heavily to employee engagement and overall satisfaction. Here they are. 

Therefore, these are the primary areas to focus on and will help shape your approach. The trick is to analyze each of these factors and prioritize them in the order of the most importance. 

For example, your top three engagement drivers may be:

  1. Recognition and rewards
  2. Wellness and balance
  3. Career growth

Those would be the top three you would want to focus on, and have everything else come after that.  

Step 3 – Identify Actionable Ways to Improve Top Engagement Drivers

Once you’ve identified your top engagement drivers, you need to devise actionable strategies to improve them. 

If, for instance, recognition and rewards was your number one priority, you might encourage managers and higher ups to continually praise employees and thank them for a job well done. “70% of employees say that motivation and morale would improve ‘massively’ with managers saying thank you more,” according to a Reward Gateway study.

You might create a rewards program, where employees receive things like bonuses, paid time off, gift cards, and so on, for exceeding expectations. Here are some more ideas on this. 

Or, you might even go so far as to hold an annual event where you pass out awards to your team and acknowledge areas where they’ve excelled. Think Dunder Mifflin’s “Dundies” awards from The Office. 

Step 4 – Determine How to Measure Outcomes 

Quantifying your results is absolutely essential. Without having an effective means of analyzing the impact, it’s hard to gain any real progress. So, you’ll want to figure out which KPIs to look at and be diligent about keeping tabs on the numbers. 

One of the most straightforward KPIs is your turnover rate before implementing an employee engagement strategy and after. 

Say your turnover rate hovered around the average of 17.8% before developing an employee engagement strategy. But after a year of having it in place, you were able to drop it to just 10% — a good number experts say to aim for. 

That would mean you were able to lower your turnover rate by roughly 8%, which would indicate that your efforts were definitely paying off.

Step 5 – Set a Realistic Budget 

While some aspects of an employee engagement strategy are basically free (e.g. having managers thank employees for doing quality work), others like bonuses and gift cards require an investment.

So, you need to come up with a realistic budget that allows you to get the results you’re looking for without killing your profits margins. At the end of the day, it’s about getting the best return on your investment. 

This begs the question. Just how much should you spend on an employee engagement strategy?

A 2016 study found that around 1% of payroll is a good number to shoot for. “When companies make this level of investment, they are nearly three times as likely to rate their program as excellent, compared to companies that invest less.”

Taking Employee Engagement from So-So to Stellar

Although employee engagement has risen slightly over the past decade, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Hands down, one of the best ways to attack this problem is by developing an employee engagement strategy. And with only a quarter of businesses having one in place, this should put you ahead of much of the competition. 

A big part of having a highly engaged workforce is choosing the right employees from the get-go. See how HireDNA can help refine your recruiting through powerful technology and science-based sales assessments. 

5 Ways Sales Teams Can Thrive During Challenging Times

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As we’re all rapidly discovering, there’s nothing like a global pandemic to shift the way the world does business. The spread of the coronavirus has forced companies at all levels to implement changes they may not have wanted, and few were prepared to take on – at least on this kind of scale. Many organizations are scrambling to cope.

But amid the concerns and trepidations, new opportunities are arising. While some organizations are panicking and scaling back on budgets and staff, others are finding their services to be in greater demand, and their pipelines more robust than ever. The difference, in large part, comes down to sales leadership.

In a recent report on preparing for coronavirus-related disruptions, Gartner, Inc. suggested, “How CSOs lead now will set the tone and pace for a powerful and career-making experience for everyone in the sales function.”

As a leader responsible for the prosperity of your sales team, what can you do to ensure your organization’s success in this time of crisis?

Taking Action Right Now

1. Don’t Panic – This is always first and foremost, no matter what the circumstances are. The crisis won’t last forever. History is full of major economic turmoil and each time, the crisis has eventually passed. In its wake are stronger people and organizations, who emerge with a new perspective, more experience, and better tools to deal with the next eventual crisis.

The more ominous the headlines get, the more important it is to keep calm and remember that your best option is to focus on the things you can control, and let go of the things you can’t.

2. Stay Client-Focused – The heart of sales is helping clients succeed. In uncertain times like these, it’s important to remember that although we may change the way we do business, we shouldn’t forget the why we do it. As you look for opportunities to continue to grow your organization, don’t let your own concerns about your metrics, commissions, and goals cloud your judgment when it comes to how you serve your clients. Clients can sniff this out from miles away, and they’ll be quick to turn their back on it.

Take a moment to assess your clients’ concerns and their planned responses to the pandemic. Most clients are focused on employee and customer safety, and they may be experiencing immediate challenges like operational interruptions and cash flow declines. Reengineer your selling points to frame your solutions around your clients’ most urgent concerns.

3. Go Virtual – As entire countries are locked down under strict quarantine orders, virtual operations are a critical part of keeping business moving forward. While many companies were already starting to favor digital communications over in-person meetings, the current pandemic has pressed the fast-forward button on those plans.

If you haven’t already, move your face-to-face meetings to videoconferencing tools like Skype or Zoom, or stick with basic voice calls if that’s what your clients prefer. Expand the range of instant messengers your team uses, and use them to give your clients and prospects greater accessibility to your reps. Replace live events with creative digital solutions, like webinars, virtual office tours, and live demos using remote access tools or videos showing your product in action.

Moving Forward in the Upcoming Months

4. Reflect and Act – Change is always a good catalyst for reflection on what’s working, what’s not and what’s needed going forward. As sales leaders, we know that the key to improving our win rate – regardless of the current economic climate – is maximizing the effectiveness of our sales force. Once the immediate needs of the moment are addressed, the next step is to look at what that means for our specific organization.

A basic SWOT analysis can be a good place to start, to gain a better understanding of your overall business and how it now fits in the changing environment. From there, a more thorough sales team evaluation can provide a detailed look at your sales force and help you identify the weaknesses and skill gaps that are limiting your sales results. Those insights will allow you to develop an effective action plan for resolving them and ensuring your team’s ongoing success.

This kind of assessment is particularly important now, when the labor pool is about to expand as other companies cut budgets and workforce. Talented sales reps will become available, and savvy sales leaders are preparing themselves to make smart hires that will shore up skill gaps and create a well-rounded sales team.

5. Build Your Go-Forward Plan – When the dust eventually settles and we’re all allowed back out in public, we know that not everything will go back to the way it was before the pandemic hit. Activities like digital meetings and virtual sales training will continue to be used in greater scale after the crisis.

Companies may have been forced to switch to virtual options as a short-term solution, but reports have shown that virtual sales training can double sales reps’ confidence and increase pipeline creation by 23.2%, compared to reps who participated in live classroom training.

Partner with an Expert Team for Long-Term Success

Developing top sales talent is an ongoing need, regardless of the current sales climate. Using comprehensive, science-based sales performance assessments, HireDNA’s experts can help you identify both immediate and long-term opportunities for growth, and uncover skill gaps that may be holding your team back. We partner closely with you to create a high-performance sales culture, with a clear picture of what it will take to improve your people, processes, and systems.

HireDNA was also recently recognized as an emerging leader in corporate training and coaching. Our experts can assist with any questions about building first-in-class, on-demand sales training tailored specifically for remote sales forces.

How To Improve B2B Cold Calling Success Rates

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Cold calling has been one of the major selling tactics over the years, requiring reps to approach complete strangers and win them over through excellent interpersonal skills that persuade the prospect to covert. Cold calling can be very challenging, but there are some tactics that could help improve your success. Here are some thoughts on how to improve B2B cold calling success rates.

At HireDNA, our sales evaluation and training systems are the results of 20 years of experience. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help to improve your sales team. Talk to an HireDNA expert.

How to Improve Cold Calling Success Rates

If done effectively, cold calling can yield great success. Take the technological giant Uber for example. Did you know what laid down the foundation of Uber and ultimately the entire trend of the sharing economy? A cold call.

According to founder, Travis Kalanick, he dialed a number of people he found on Google when searching for ‘San Francisco chauffeur’ out of which three replied. The rest, as they say, is history.

With so many organizations deriving great returns from their cold calling strategy, if it’s not working for you, chances are that you may need to tweak your strategy. Don’t worry! This article will offer tips that can help enhance your cold calling success:

Improve The Quality Of Your Data

62% of organizations rely on prospect data that can be inaccurate or incomplete by as much as 40%. Not only does this result in wasted effort, it also costs your business valuable resources. According to a report by Harvard Business Review, ‘bad’ data costs businesses more than $3 trillion each year in the United States alone.

As consumers become increasingly aware of sales tactics, they tend to only respond to products and services that are tailored according to their needs. If your sales reps are reaching out to prospects based on incorrect, inaccurate, or incomplete data, you are bound to get underwhelming results.

Consider investing in solutions like SalesIntel that allow you to analyze your database and identify any lacking information that adversely affects your quality. Additionally, optimize your prospect data collection strategy. Adding relevant questions to your forms and allowing prospects to express their answers in detail can significantly improve the quality of your data.

Talk Less, Ask More

The art of converting prospects through cold calls is heavily dependent on what you do after the prospect picks up. You can have the most suitable product that can solve your consumer’s problems, but if you don’t have the right tone, chances are you might not close the deal.

The number of questions and the relevancy of your posed questions also play a big part. An extensive survey that analyzed 519,000 cold calls found a directly proportional relationship between the number of questions posed by the sales rep and the percentage of closed deals. To put it simply, it was found that asking 11-14 questions over the course of your call significantly increases the chances of your success.

However, be careful to not overdo it. Sales reps who asked 15+ questions only fared marginally better than sales reps that asked 7-10 questions.

HireDNA offers advanced training tools and customized content-based training methods to enhance your sales performance. Learn More.

Take Rejection As A Learning Opportunity

Regardless of how much value your product can add to your prospect’s business, the fact remains that cold calls often result in rejection. And over time, rejections can become demoralizing. The hallmark of a successful sales representative, however, is their ability to take these things as part of the business and continue to tweak their sales strategy to counter such rejections.

If you are giving up too easily, then cold calling will never bear fruit. You need to be motivated to pick up the phone with a defined purpose every time. Whenever a prospect hangs up on you, ask yourself, would it be any different if you hadn’t tried calling them?

Focus on the key takeaway: why did they hang up? Did your opening statement fail to catch their attention? Did you not address their pain points adequately? By learning from such challenges, you can quickly turn such prospects into paying consumers.

Explore our blog on How to Motivate Your Sales Team When Sales are Down for strategies to inspire your team even in the face of defeat.

Hire Top Talent

Beyond training your existing reps, bringing in highly skilled sales reps can be a quick and easy way to improve your team’s overall B2B cold call success rate. When you hire top talent, they will often have a track record of success. If cold calling is a priority for your business, be sure to make that known in the hiring process, and consider including interview questions or posing scenarios centered around cold calling when vetting candidates.

HireDNA predictive sales candidate assessments allow you to predict success before hiring with proven data and science, not impressions and instincts. Learn more.

Train Your Sales Reps For Unprecedented Success

Cold calling is far from dead. But many organizations need to work on their strategies to enhance their effectiveness. That’s where HireDNA comes in.

We offer sales performance evaluations to uncover skills gaps in your team, and we deliver advanced training through a customizable cloud-based learning platform to improve performance. Not only do we customize our learning offerings according to the skill gaps found in each individual salesperson, but our interactive approach ensures your team absorbs every bit of it with quizzes, role play scenarios, guides, and action plans.

Get in touch to learn more about our sales recruiting, evaluation, and training offerings. Create your winning sales team today!

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Strategies To Improve Your Sales Onboarding Process

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Modern sales organizations are always in the process of hiring, whether you need to replace team members or increase sales capacity. That’s why an effective sales onboarding process is crucial. The success of your team comes down to how quickly your new hires can pick up the necessary skills and become a productive part of your sales team.

With industry reports stating that the average new hire can take as long as nine months to ramp up, sales managers are always searching for strategies to improve their onboarding process and reduce training costs. Consider these tips!

HireDNA can help you identify training needs and ramp up your new hires more effectively. Talk to an expert.

4 Strategies To Improve Your Onboarding Process

As employee turnover rises, companies face the pressure to speed up their sales hiring and training process to maintain their revenue. According to a CSO Insight survey, 45% of sales leaders place reduction of the sales onboarding time as their topmost priority.

Here are four proven strategies to improve your sales onboarding process:

Invest In A Comprehensive Training Process

Onboarding isn’t something that can be completed within a week. Depending on your niche and business complexity, it may take several months before a new sales rep is ready to take on new clients alone.

By creating a comprehensive training program with daily, weekly and monthly checklists, organizations can remove the guesswork from the onboarding process, giving every sales manager a precise idea of how to ramp up a new hire.

As you improvise with each hire, you will gradually formulate an exhaustive training process that allows new salespeople to integrate with your organization seamlessly. This includes everything from incorporating them within your workplace culture to educating them about your products and finally helping them to understand your target audience.

This training process can be used for both new hires and existing salespeople. HireDNA can help you identify and resolve weaknesses and skill gaps limiting your sales results, then deliver comprehensive training to close those gaps. Learn more.

Modernize Your Communication Channels

Traditional onboarding tactics made frequent use of charts, books and other items that have been duly replaced by our smartphones and laptops. As managers continue to interact with an increasing number of millennials sales reps, the onboarding training channels should evolve to maintain a process that is effective and efficient.

Make use of explainer videos, online training modules and interactive case scenarios that allow sales reps to apply what they have learned in real-life settings. Additionally, organizations can provide relevant product guides and descriptions to new sales reps during their training period. This increases their interest, resulting in higher retention and an effective training process.

At HireDNA, we use Rapid Learning Institutes’ (RLI) Micro-Learning Platform , which features a library of training videos, modules, role play scenarios, quizzes and more—all of which can be customized to meet your unique training needs. Learn how we can help you reduce onboarding time by 50%! Learn more.

Enforce ‘Shadowing’ As A Focal Training Process

While newer communication channels are a must-have in any sales organization, they don’t negate the importance of some evergreen training methods, such as shadowing.

Consider encouraging new hires to shadow veteran salespeople as they go about their usual routine—prioritizing prospects, conducting customer outreach, giving demos, etc. This allows the new hire to pick up vital traits, and is a more hands-on way to introduce them to the company culture and related procedures.

The ideal mentor should be an experienced salesperson who has the capacity to teach the skills required to make it to the top level while also possessing the temperament to answer any questions the new hire may have. Organizations need to identify the right mentors as well as develop the right training regimen to optimize this technique even further.

Don’t Rush Your Training Process

Impending team quotas and organizational pressure can get to the best of sales managers, resulting in new hires being rushed to their workstations before going through the entire training process.

While you may be recruiting experienced sales professionals with a history of achieving their quotas, you must understand their prior experience is of a different workplace culture, dealing in different products or maybe a different industry altogether.

To become a valuable member of your organization, every new sales hire needs to receive adequate, personalized training that can allow them to integrate with your organization’s sales process. While rushing sales reps through the hiring process may look like a beneficial step in the short run, the long-term implications can be unsatisfied team members who might not want to continue. This is why it is important to allow sales reps to complete their training in due time.

Train Your Sales Reps More Effectively With HireDNA

As sales managers continue to ramp up new hires, they face challenges that hinder sales reps from learning effectively before being moved on to the next phase. At HireDNA, we utilize modern strategies and innovative tools to cut down on your training time by half.

Leverage a modern cloud-based micro-learning platform that provides custom mapped training content tailored to the skill gaps for each individual sales representative. With interactive learning, quizzes and real-world simulations and more, we make sure your new hires are ready to perform in no time.

Why Choose Us?

  • Employees ramped up by HireDNA provide 33% more sales opportunities
  • Our proven, data-backed methods increase top-line revenue by 25%
  • Our innovative techniques cut down the training period by up to 50%

CONTACT US

B2B SaaS Sales Strategy: The Ultimate Guide

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The sales process for B2B SaaS products is significantly different from selling any other product. How do you sell something in a market where the consumer is highly informed and the competition is increasingly fierce? This is where a well-defined sales strategy can help, as it ensures that your sales process remains as smooth and intuitive for the client as possible.

Devoid of a well-rounded sales strategy, you cannot predict how your revenue and the organization will scale. In this post, we’ll provide a guide to B2B SaaS sales strategy to help your team strive for success.

Want to speak to a SaaS sales recruiting and training expert directly? Set up a consultation with HireDNA today. Contact Us

Beginning Your SaaS Sales Journey

Most SaaS startups are small, product-centric companies that do not have expert sales representatives. The CEO often has to multi-task, operating as the de facto Heads of Sales.

However, this is the stage where you need to begin organizing and formulating a sales strategy that will guide you through the initial phase, toward sustainable growth. The emphasis should be on closing deals that ensure the future profitability of your startup.

In this scenario, your sales process will likely be prone to errors—and chances are that the cost of acquiring customers will exceed the customer lifetime value. But this is may be imperative for bagging the first batch of clients who can keep your revenue cycle functional.

Establishing Goals & Metrics

Identifying key sales goals and defining quotas can help to ensure progress is on track for the company. But applying goals in B2B sales can be difficult. Here are a few tips to help you define achievable goals for your reps and metrics that can help you ensure your reps stay on track.

Defining Goals

When defining goals, it’s important to be specific. Pursue actionable steps at each stage of the sales process, like the following funnel from GrasshopperHerder:

  • Lead -> Start Conversation
  • Qualifying -> Discover Economic Buyer or Budget
  • Qualified -> Set up appointment
  • Discovery -> Identify Situation, Pain, & Impact
  • Conceptual Agreement -> Send proposal
  • Proposal Sent -> Follow up
  • Invoice Sent -> Track Payment
  • Lost -> Weep
  • Paid -> Celebrate

Keeping Track With Metrics

Here are some key metrics to help you and your team stay on track:

  • Leads. Define a lead quota and pursue it. Pursue qualified leads that your organization defines based on targeted budget, authority, needs, and timeline to buy.
  • Scheduled & Completed Demos. How many demos are your reps scheduling, and how many are actually being completed? From there, what is the ration of completed demos to closes? These questions can help you determine if a change to your demo is needed.
  • Revenue Booked. Subscription-based SaaS businesses typically keep track of both monthly and annual recurring revenue. The goal of any sales team is to elevate this metric.
  • Churn. How often are you losing customers? This is usually recorded on an annual basis as a percentage.
  • Acquisition Cost. How much are you spending on marketing and sales in proportion to the number of deals?

With key sales goals and metrics defined ahead of time, you’re armed for growth and have the means to ensure your team is meeting expectations.

Understanding The B2B Landscape

Your sales strategy is heavily influenced by the target audience you’re catering to. Establishing an ideal buyer profile can help you determine your price point and can serve as a good indicator of what your sales processes should look like.

It’s worth noting that a B2B SaaS offering typically matures over the years, segmenting into different hybrid versions of the product to cater to multiple audiences. This allows companies to apply different SaaS sales models over time. Still, the starting point usually orbits around a specific target audience. Here are some tips to help you define your strategy based on your product model:

Entry Level Product

For companies with an average order value (AOV) of less than $500/month, the sales strategy should be focused on a self-service model. A less complex product coupled with a lower price point is bound to attract leads through simple inbound marketing channels.

Following a low acquisition cost, zero-touch policy, this model requires minimal interference. Any educational material required can be easily disseminated, without the explicit need for a complex sales process.

Mid-Level Products

This segment covers an extensive range—from $500/month to $10,000/month price points. With the increased cost of your services, customers expect efficient support from the SaaS provider. The product is inherently more complex, which requires SaaS companies to include dedicated sales representatives.

Check out our blog post on the Building A SaaS Sales Team That Gets Results.

This model may require face-to-face meetings, and it generally includes a longer sales cycle that requires human touch points throughout the process. Your sales representatives deliver value by effectively communicating the benefits and value proposition of the product.

Enterprise Level Product

The sales model for such highly complex and high-value products requires constant communication between sales representatives and clients. SaaS organizations that create or scale to such products need the assistance of an entire sales and support team to solve specific and personalized issues for their customers.

Veteran sales experts at HireDNA offer complete sales cycle evaluations to help you identify your target audience, assess your team, and recruit and train top talent for success. Learn More.

A Comprehensive Sales Strategy Is A Must

For B2B companies in the SaaS industry, the customer pool often defines their sales strategy. However, every lead has distinct problems, objections, and questions that must be answered before they convert.

A comprehensive B2B SaaS sales strategy ensures that you are not just communicating features but also solving your client’s key problems. From startups to large enterprises, having a sales strategy and a dedicated sales team can prove to be the difference between a high churn rate and satisfied customers.

Build A Successful Sales Team

A well-constructed and detailed strategy requires optimal execution to be truly successful. Sales representatives are at the very core of any successful B2B SaaS company. HireDNA is proud to offer comprehensive sales rep assessment, training and recruiting services to help you grow your organization.

Why Choose Us?

  • 33% boost in sales productivity
  • 80% of our sales talent search ends in a successful hire
  • Training time decreased by 50%
  • 92% of our recommended candidates reach the top half of the sales force within 12 months
  • Eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes
  • Our partners experience 25% top-line revenue growth

Are your sales representatives ready to accelerate growth? Get in touch today.

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