In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, one of the next two mistakes (mistakes 9 & 10) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 here.)

9) Sales is about numbers, not solutions

While this wasn’t generally true in the early days in our space (probably because the overall investment was low and S2P+ plays weren’t getting a lot of attention from the big VC and PE funds investing in them) this has now become a big problem and at the majority of big players, or VC/PE backed players (funded before any whiff of profitability), who are focussing on numbers only … and if you don’t make them, every quarter, you’re out.

Moreover, at the bigger firms, it’s don’t worry about solving the problem, that’s the implementation partner’s problem, and their failure if they don’t, which, sadly, could only be true IF they are the one that sold the solution through a partner (referral) platform. (But still is a situation that should not happen. More later.) Otherwise, your customer’s success is entirely your responsibility, no ands, ifs, or buts,

And if you don’t focus only on customers you can support, you won’t have happy customers, which will mean a few things for you.

• unless you replaced (part of) the ERP/MRP and became the ERP/MRP, good luck getting a renewal,
• you won’t get a reference, and
• when potential customers run into your customers at events and ask about you, you’re going to get a very bad review and even if those customers aren’t CXO/VP cheque signers now, the fact they are trying to improve themselves means that they will be, and you can forget about ever getting any business from any organization they will ever work for (and we’re not in the boomer times where you had a job for life, we’re in the times where most people change jobs every 2 to 3 years because greedy corporations, instead of focussing on retention, focus on recruitment and, thus, the only way these buyers can get the raise they deserve is to switch jobs on a regular basis).

It’s time to get back to basics, and ask:

• what solutions can you sell : and focus only on customers with appropriate problems
• what upgrades can you sell later : and not only focus your development roadmap to support them, but educating, supporting, and maturing your customer to the point where they would get value from those upgrades and want to pay for them
• what’s the best price/package combo to maximize the overall lifetime value of each customer : it’s not about how much you can sell now, it’s about how much you can sell as long as you both shall be in business; and that will require figuring out how much value you can deliver over time in a controlled expansion, and pricing appropriately so your customers see bang for their buck year after year and ensure that, if times get tough, your solution is off limits as far as the chopping block is concerned
• what sales people can sell this way : you want sales people who are focussed on the long term success of a customer and willing to close a smaller deal now for a bigger deal later; however, for this to work, their remuneration has to go beyond the traditional sale, and you can’t rip a customer away from them, because you qualify that sales person as a “hunter” and want them to focus on new sales, and give the client to a “farmer” who will then get big commissions on effortless upgrade sales later based on all the hard work the initial sales person did in the beginning; you hire “hunter/gatherers” who are not only responsible for closing new clients, but keeping those clients at renewal times where they should be able to renew the license at a fair increase (due to inflation and increased core platform capability) as well as sell the new modules / upgrades appropriate for the client; and, finally, you need sales people in it for the long haul, not a sales person who jumps ship every two years (because they know they sold silicon snake oil)

X) Any temporary price cut to get those initial clients can be made up later!

This is bullcr@p and, guess what, your investors know it.

You have to ask yourself, because this is what your customer is asking, if it’s not worth it now, why is it worth it later?

The reality is that if it was worth it, your customer would pay it now. If you have to cut more than 10% to 20%, your software is not worth it, and you’re fooling yourself or your investors if you keep saying it is.

Moreover, you’re ruining you reputation when you say it’s a million dollar solution that is yours for the low, low, one time price for $200K. Enterprise buyers are a bit savvier than trusting, uninformed consumers. And the reality is that even an uneducated hillbilly who lives in the mountains and only comes to town twice a year to stock up on supplies would see through the hogwash and call you out as a con.

Your investors might want big sales as fast as possible, but the path to true success is happy, repeat, customers who buy more at every renewal. Fair, honest pricing and a bit of patience will lead to greater success than sleazy car-salesman tactics.

Stay tuned for Part 8!

In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the next mistake (mistake 8) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 here.)

8) If there is interest, your product is the solution

Every inquiry is a lead, and every lead is one we must sell and close.

Let me be clear here: Nothing could be further from the truth!

If we go back to mistake #7, buzz and sound bites are more important than timeless educational content, a lot of inquiries are going to come from people trying to figure out what the h3ck you do and if your product has key functionality or process support that they might be looking for.

And if you pass that bar, then they need to know that it meets enough of their requirements to be a consideration — if they can get budget to put out an RFP.

Which means that, the more buzzwords and sound-bites you use, and thus the more confusing your messaging is, the less correlation there is between inquiries and actual interest in your product and, as just stated, actual interest doesn’t mean actual budget, or, more importantly, that your product is the solution.

There was a time when most vendors, with integrity (and without the constant push from greedy investors to sell first, solve later) would qualify a lead before trying to sell that lead, but these days, it seems that most vendors have adopted the Big X strategy of “everyone’s a client, close the deal, and figure it out later” — and they do so even if they don’t have a clue how to solve the problem or the software to do it, when nothing could be further from the truth.

the doctor knows we’ve all forgotten about the Miracle on 34th Street, but it had a timeless piece of sales advice you should never forget if you want to maintain integrity: if you don’t have what the customer wants, send the customer elsewhere. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. It means that when they have a problem you can solve, they will come back because they know they can trust you, and in the world of SaaS where they need constant support, they want a vendor they can trust.

At the end of the day, the reality is this:
if there is interest, there’s an opportunity to qualify … and that’s it

And, more importantly,
it there’s an opportunity to qualify, there’s an opportunity to learn … and that could be more important than a sale!

If you stop pushing and start pulling, i.e asking, you can learn about:

• the real problems potential customers are having,
• what they are looking for in a solution, and
• how your solution could be improved to not only solve more problems, but be more appealing, as well as
• why they contacted you, and use that insight to figure out
• how to tweak your messaging and content to get more relevant inquiries in the future

Once you get this information you can,

• tweak your roadmap appropriately
• improve your usability (which does not mean add flash to your UI)
• ensure you have the right price point for a timely, but still profitable, sale

All you have to do is fire your marketing morons^*, stop talking gibberish and start listening.

Stay tuned for Part 7!

^* the doctor is not implying all marketers are morons, there are still a few very smart ones out there, just that the percentage of morons focussed on hits and not success or meaning has greatly increased over the past decade and the odds are, if you’re a dead company walking, your marketer is a moron and not a maven.