Tag: saas sales performance

Identifying Sales Rep Struggles: How to Recognize and Address Performance Issues

Posted on by Nick Mann

According to Salesforce, “67% of sales reps don’t expect to meet their quota this year, and 84% missed it last year.” Also, 53% of sales pros say it’s harder to sell than a year ago.” While I doubt that the numbers are this high across the board, this data shows how common sales rep struggles are.

And let’s be honest. This is not an easy profession. With quotas to meet, tons of stress, and skeptical customers, most reps have their work cut out.

For this post, I’ll identify what I believe are the biggest sales rep struggles, pointing out how to recognize and swiftly fix them to get your sales team operating at its peak potential.

Poor Product Knowledge

Let’s start from the top. Sometimes the main reason for a rep struggling isn’t due to anything complex or convoluted. Sometimes they simply don’t have proper command of the products they’re selling.

When this is the case, it creates a negative domino effect where they struggle to convey value to leads, demonstrate how your products will make the lives of your leads easier, build trust, and so on.

And it’s easy to see why poor product knowledge can be such an issue, especially when it comes to SaaS. Many SaaS products, for example, have a wide range of solutions and features, and cater to different demographics like solopreneurs, small businesses, and enterprises. Just look at how many popular features HubSpot has.

If you throw a salesperson in head-first without adequate time to learn the ins and outs of your products, understand the greater context, and how the dots connect, their conversion rate is likely to suffer. That’s why offering robust training to ensure new reps not only learn how your products work and their benefits but how they fit into a customer’s business processes.

Also if you offer a wide range of products, it’s usually best to allow new reps to only focus on a few initially and gradually have them branch out over time as their knowledge grows. To learn how salesperson training can have up to 350% ROI, check out this article.

Inefficient Time Management

Here are a few stats I couldn’t believe regarding salesperson time management.

If your sales team is anywhere near these numbers, it’s guaranteed to hurt their performance. Just imagine only spending two hours a day actively selling.

So what’s the solution?

First, I suggest creating a tech stack that features the perfect mix of tools for activities like:

  • Setting appointments – Calendly is great for this
  • Customer relationship management – HubSpot is an excellent choice
  • Task management – I love Trello
  • Time tracking – Toggl Track is great

That alone can make a big difference.

Next, your salespeople must prioritize tasks and focus their attention on 1) actually selling rather than administrative tasks and 2) going after hot leads rather than squandering their time on those that still need nurturing.

There are a ton of lead-scoring platforms out there, but ActiveCampaign is one of my favorites because of its simplicity and user-friendliness.

Also, if you find your team constantly swamped with repetitive administrative tasks, it’s smart to hire someone to handle this part of sales so you can free up your sales reps’ time for more important matters.

Lack of Motivation

Even if you have the most skilled, talented, superstar salespeople, their productivity will likely be minimalized if they lack motivation. And considering 79% of today’s workers are disengaged to some extent, this is an issue you’re almost guaranteed to encounter at some point.

So what leads to a lack of motivation?

Poor compensation and lackluster incentives like rewards and benefits are a big reason. Overlooked achievements where major accomplishments go unnoticed are another. Also, having little to no career development opportunities can cause salespeople to stagnate, as there’s not much of a reason to keep pushing.

While you can’t necessarily expect every rep to give 110% effort every single day, your workforce should be sufficiently motivated. Otherwise, you’ll want to identify the root problem (likely one of the issues I just mentioned) and figure out what you can do to remedy the situation.

For a deep dive into this topic, I suggest reading this article from The Harvard Business Review.

Difficulty Closing Deals

Imagine this. Your marketing team has done an amazing job cultivating high-quality leads — individuals who have expressed a clear need and interest in your product — and served them up on a silver platter for your sales team. But despite being ultra-qualified, the conversion rate is far lower than what it should be.

This can be incredibly frustrating, and if left unchecked, it can suck the life out of your ROI and put a damper on company morale. But what can you do about it?

It starts by understanding some common reasons why reps fail to close deals, such as:

  • They don’t fully understand your product (this goes back to our first point)
  • They’re unable to explain the full value of your product
  • They’re not truly listening to the needs of your leads
  • They’re not skilled at persuading leads to pull the trigger
  • They give up too easily

Of course, there are a ton of other potential reasons for a low conversion rate, but these are good places to start. Once you identify a possible culprit, zero in on what you can do to help your reps improve in that department.

For instance, if they’re unable to convey your UVP, you may want to create a bullet list of the core benefits for each customer persona. Or if they’re not fully listening to your leads, you may want to provide coaching on how to improve active listening.

Identifying and Overcoming Sales Rep Struggles

Even the best of the best salespeople will struggle from time to time. Your job as a team leader is to quickly pinpoint performance issues and help steer your reps back on track.

To streamline the process of identifying and eliminating weaknesses in your sales recruiting, check out the HireDNA Hiring Readiness Assessment.

How to Enhance SaaS Sales Performance By Leveraging Key Data

Posted on by Nick Mann

I think we can all agree that efficiently using data is an asset. For perspective, McKinsey & Company reports that “data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times more likely to be profitable.” But what are some specific ways you can enhance SaaS sales performance by leveraging data?

That’s what I’ll tackle in this post so we can have a clear understanding of how to put SaaS sales data to use in a practical way. More specifically, I’ll cover core areas of SaaS sales that can be dramatically improved by leveraging key data.

Let’s jump in.

Audience Segmentation

Today’s customer is more sophisticated than ever, with most having incredibly high expectations. This is true in traditional e-commerce, and it’s especially true in SaaS.

One of the best ways to meet or exceed customer expectations is with audience segmentation, as it paves the way for personalization. For reference, “80% of audiences tend to do business with a brand that personalizes their experience with it,” and “80% of companies that use market segmentation report increased sales.”

For example, you could use SaaS sales data to break your audience down into different segments, such as demographics, purchase history, engagement level, product interest, and so on. From there, you could tailor your sales approach to address each segment’s unique needs, thus creating a more enjoyable lead experience and increasing your odds of converting.

Lead Scoring

Your SaaS sales team’s time is valuable. If they spend time pursuing the wrong leads with a low likelihood of converting, they waste time and money, often with nothing to show for it.

On the other hand, if they pursue the right leads — sales qualified leads — with a high interest in buying, your conversion rate can’t help but increase. And you can send leads that aren’t yet sales-ready to your marketing team to be nurtured.

But how do you quantify leads and know who’s sales qualified and who’s only marketing qualified? This can be done with lead scoring.

By assigning leads points based on behaviors like website pages visited, website interactions, and contact methods, you can assign each lead a score.

For instance, a lead that simply read a couple of your blog posts and visited your pricing page would receive a lower score than someone who visited your pricing page, signed up for your newsletter, downloaded a PDF, and contacted you through a web form.

Using lead scoring data like this can be invaluable for identifying which leads to prioritize, which to nurture, and in some cases, which leads will never close.

Customer Journey Analysis

Every customer journey consists of a series of touchpoints. From the very first time someone learns about your SaaS product to the moment they actually buy, there’s a customer journey that takes place in between.

The better you understand the customer journey, the smoother you can make it. In turn, this creates a better customer experience, which sets the tone for more SaaS sales. And in the grand scheme of things, this can factor into deeper customer loyalty because it creates a great first impression, which will make many customers want to stick around longer, renew their subscriptions, become brand ambassadors, and more.

Another key way to enhance SaaS sales performance with data is through customer journey analytics, which “is the process of identifying customer touchpoints and understanding how they affect customer experiences and business outcomes.”

Here’s an example of what that looks like using a customer journey analytics platform like Woopra.

Using data like this gives you a bird’s-eye view of each customer touchpoint end-to-end so you can understand the customer journey on a granular level. This brings us to our next point.

Identifying Friction Points That Lead to Drop-off

By having customer journey analysis data, you can see exactly where leads are dropping off in the sales process.

Say, for example, there’s a higher-than-average drop-off from the sales demo to the free trial signup. There’s a smooth transition from one touchpoint to another throughout the rest of the customer journey, but your data shows that not as many leads are signing up for your free trial as there should be.

This would signify that your sales demo could use improvement. As a result, you could zero in on your sales demo further to figure out what’s wrong and come up with a solution. Then, once you optimize your sales demo, this hiccup in the customer journey should be resolved, and an increase in conversions should occur.

Identifying Strengths in the Customer Journey

Besides spotting friction points, you can also use customer journey analysis data to determine what you’re doing right.

Say that a higher-than-average number of leads are moving from your pricing page to requesting a demo. This would indicate that the core elements of your pricing page like design, informational structure, layout, CTA, and so on are working well and leads are responding favorably.

In this case, you’d likely want to leave your pricing page alone, as it’s already getting results. Also, you could analyze your current pricing page so you can pinpoint precisely what’s working for future purposes.

For instance, you could take screenshots and share this information with new members of your sales team.

Using Key Data to Enhance SaaS Sales Performance

There’s no denying the impact that data can have on SaaS sales performance. Companies that use it intelligently have a much greater advantage over those that merely “rely on a hunch.”

By understanding tangible ways to put data to use and which areas to focus on, you should be able to get the most from your SaaS sales team and make everyone’s life easier, while simultaneously creating the best possible customer experience for the ultimate win-win.

To build an elite sales team, register with HireDNA today. This software uses cutting-edge, science-based technology to find the best of the best salespeople.