Together, advances in hardware and software have revolutionized our society multiple times over. These days, the industry in the United States alone just for software publishing is worth more than $411 billion every single year! On top of that, the industry employs more than 800,000 people!
Of course, an industry that large is bound to have a lot of competition. When it comes to software as a service company, the right sale strategies can help you stand out from your competitors and make a name for yourself.
So what exactly should you be focusing on to take your sales success to the next level? Read on to learn all about the most powerful sales techniques and strategies that can help your potential customers understand what your software can do for them!
1. Focus On Their Situation
Some sales strategies focus on the wrong things. You can increase your sales success by focusing on the situation of your potential customers.
For instance, at 10-8 Systems we offer similar software solutions for government agencies and private companies. Despite similarities in software, the approach for selling security scheduling software to a private security company might be different than selling police scheduling software (also known as POSS scheduling) to a police agency. Therefore, we heavily emphasize the importance of customizing the software for their specific company or agency.
This strategy sounds counterintuitive to some people. There is certainly a place for focusing on the individual characteristics of the decision-maker you are trying to sell to. At the same time, if this has not been working for you, you might find that you enjoy greater success by focusing on the situation that they find themselves in.
With this focus in mind, you should talk about the state of your potential customer’s company or project. You want to continually focus on how using your software will change that state.
One of the great things about this strategy is that it removes the dynamic of you versus the other person. Instead, both of you stand shoulder to shoulder and look at the situation of your potential customer together. That puts you on the same team and helps them to focus their considerations on the practical effects of buying your services or not.
2. Focus Their Attention on Other Factors
As long as a potential customer is considering you but not yet buying, they are probably unsure about whether you will be worth spending money on or not. That lack of certainty suggests that they see some positive reasons to work with you and some negative reasons not to. You will have a much greater chance of making a sale if you can then add more positive reasons into their calculations to push them more in the direction of a sale.
The first part of this strategy is understanding what the other person is considering. You want to know why they think you might be a good choice. You want to know why they are hesitating to seal the deal.
You can find these things out simply by asking them. You may even win some points if you ask about some of the reasons they are not sure they should work with you if you do not attempt to change their mind at the time.
Along with knowing the pros and cons that they see, you want to know how heavily they weigh each one. You want to know which of these pros and cons are major items and which are minor contributors to their calculation.
Once you know all of this, you can brainstorm factors that they have not yet considered. Bringing up these factors can help them adjust their final calculation. Pointing out further positive benefits to working with your company can shift their final feeling in the direction of the sale.
3. Use Plenty of Contrast
Contrast is a powerful tool that people do not often stop to think about. Simply by mentioning something very big, you can make other things seem smaller. This simple principle has many applications in sales.
For one thing, you can describe your potential customer’s current situation and their potential future. This creates a contrast that can highlight aspects of their current situation that they would like to escape from.
At that point, the point is simply to express how your software as a service could be their path away from unsatisfying aspects of their current situation.
4. Avoid Common Sales Mistakes
Avoiding mistakes is as important as making effective moves. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is focusing on ways that they are the same as their competitors. If every other competitor on the market can save a potential customer money, then you should probably not focus too much on it as a selling point.
Instead, you want to focus on what you provide that your competitors do not. Of course, you can only do that in so far as it is also what you provide is something that your potential customer values.
5. Avoid Wasting Your Time With Excess Information
Some people think that the more positive information they provide, the more likely they are to make a sale. Knowing how to develop a sales strategy means knowing what to leave out as well.
When it comes to SaaS sales strategies, parsimony is key. That means that you want to use the best sales strategies for SaaS businesses, not every potential strategy.
One of the most important pieces of sales strategy advice is not to tire out your potential customer. Some people run sales presentations in a way that makes people dread them. The people-watching get bored and start to tune things out.
You can be much more effective by standing out with brevity. Talk about your most important points and then wrap things up. You should even make sure that your potential customer knows that you will be keeping things brief so that they know that they do not need to tune you out.
Understand the Most Effective Sales Strategies
We hope learning about sales strategies for your SaaS business has been helpful for you. Many software as a service companies struggle for a long time trying to improve their product in order to get more sales.
What they do not always realize is that you can often greatly increase sales without having to change your product. The right sales strategies can help take your business success to the next level.
Author: Kevin Ruef
Kevin Ruef co-founded 10-8 Systems after exceeding multiple companies’ sales records (both domestically and internationally). With more than a decade in sales, his experience ranges from B2B, B2G, and B2C. Since the company’s start in 2019, Kevin has been responsible for business development, strategic partnerships, and business operations.
