Your Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company has all the markers of industry-disrupting game-changing technology. You and your team are fully aware of how awesome your SaaS product is, but you might be wondering how to best support your sales team to help your company see continued growth and success.
The secret is to focus on your customers. That might seem too simplistic, but it will be the underlying foundation of your success. Customer-centric companies, who focus on delighting customers, are consistently more successful than companies who focus only on their product and use outdated marketing practices.
Table of Contents
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Centralize Everything in a CRM
i. Finding SaaS Sales Prospects: Avoid These 3 Big Mistakes
ii. Is HubSpot CRM the Best CRM SaaS Solution for Your SaaS Company?
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Focus on Helping Clients Through the Buyer’s Journey
i. Increase Customer Lifetime Value in Your SaaS Company
ii. How to Increase High Tech Sales with Word of Mouth Marketing
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Align Sales & Marketing for Better Quality Leads
i. How To Reduce Friction in the SaaS RFP Process
ii. How To Shorten Your SaaS Company's Sales Cycle
iii. The Best Way to Align Marketing and Sales in a SaaS Company
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Track Your Metrics for Sales Success
i. How To Support SaaS Company Growth with Highly Scalable Systems
Top 5 Ways to Focus Your SaaS Company on Customers
There are a few important things you can do to get your sales team on the right track.
1. Centralize Everything in a CRM
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is essential to streamlining your sales prospecting and promoting sales growth. Every piece of customer and prospect data should be in a CRM, like Hubspot. This includes your sales processes and pipelines, client information, email campaigns, and marketing campaigns.
Everyone in the company should have access to the CRM in order to:
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reduce redundant tasks and information
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allow teams to provide better customer service
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track important analytics on your sales team’s performance
Well-managed customer profiles in a CRM will allow you to develop targeted marketing for specific groups of contacts at various stages of the buyer’s journey. Targeted marketing content that is relevant to your target personas will bring in far more leads than generic advertising or cold-calling. A global tech giant persona is going to value very different content and require a bit of a different approach than a smaller local customer might. It’s important to tailor your content so that it’s relevant to your ideal customers.
Check out these articles for more information on how to get the right leads – and organize them in your SaaS CRM.
i. Finding SaaS Sales Prospects: Avoid These 3 Big Mistakes
Prospecting has changed – with less cold calling and in-person meetings, it's now easier than ever for SaaS companies to scope out cost-efficient prospects. But be sure to steer clear of these three common mistakes when prospecting for your SaaS company.
ii. Is HubSpot CRM the Best CRM SaaS Solution for Your SaaS Company?
Choosing the right CRM for your SaaS company can be daunting. You'll need one that fits your growth goals, long-term. Here's what we think of HubSpot's CRM – and why it might be right for you.
iii. 3 Ways to Attract Valuable SaaS Sales Leads
Explore some of our favourite tips for attracting the leads that are already looking for your SaaS company. Get creative with your prospecting and help these customers find you!
iv. Add This To Your SaaS Sales Process for Massive Growth
Leads searching for higher-tech products tend to need more information on the product than the average consumer. You'll need to make sure you have a solid content strategy in place to make sure they find you – here's how.
2. Focus on Helping Clients Through the Buyer’s Journey
Helping your customer is the baseline of all customer service, but this usually assumes a customer approaches you asking to purchase a product. Once you've brought customers in and introduced them to your product, you'll want to increase their customer lifetime value. But first, you first need to offer them value. You can help them make decisions, learn something, and solve problems. Education is the key element. The more you can teach your leads before they even talk to your sales team, the better.
Educating your leads can be done a few ways, but inbound marketing is most likely to be successful. Inbound marketing provides your potential customers with information relevant to the current business decisions and struggles they are facing. This means educational posts about your products and services should help them understand something new, try something new, or buy something new (hopefully your SaaS product). Your content is a chance for you to provide the research your potential clients need before considering purchasing your product. Helpful content that solves problems also builds trust. Once you've delivered value and established that trust, you'll get a happy customer who is likely to tell their entire network about your amazing SaaS company.
Check out these articles for more information on how to guide your leads through the buyer's journey.
i. Increase Customer Lifetime Value in Your SaaS Company
Do your customers really know what your product offers? To max out your customer lifetime value, you'll need to strategically educate your audience as they make their way through the buyer's journey. We promise it's easier than it sounds – just follow these steps.
ii. How to Increase High Tech Sales with Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to get more sales without lifting a finger. With just these three tips, you'll have everyone talking about your SaaS company.
3. Align Sales & Marketing for Better Quality Leads
Your sales and marketing teams need to work together towards the same goals – and if you've ever experienced friction in the SaaS RFP process, you know how important it is for these teams to align. If everybody is on the same page, you’ll see consistently better sales numbers, shorter sales cycles, and happier customers.
Sales and marketing teams should develop ideal customer personas together. Customer personas help your marketing team tailor content to specific people and help your sales team develop a better understanding of your ideal customers before they even meet them.
Your sales and marketing teams should also brainstorm ideas for content together. Sales staff often have lists of questions they regularly receive, and feedback from customers. Frequently asked questions are an excellent basis for helpful blog posts and social media content. If a potential lead can get the answer to their question on your blog instead of having to call a salesperson, they’re going to appreciate your honesty, transparency, and efficiency, developing more trust.
With your sales and marketing teams aligned you will more easily attract new leads and experience sales growth. Your marketing team will qualify your leads with inbound marketing content. Once qualified, you can automate lead nurturing in HubSpot to provide even more relevant content to your prospects. When your sales team finally makes contact, they’ll have a good idea of who the lead is and what they’re interested in. With a better understanding of your leads, your sales team can more naturally and effectively sell.
If your marketing team does not have the capacity to develop and maintain an inbound marketing strategy, you can outsource your content creation. Your sales and marketing teams will still work closely with the outside growth agency, but you can relieve some stress knowing that lead-developing content is being produced consistently.
Check out these articles for more information on how to align your sales and marketing departments.
i. How To Reduce Friction in the SaaS RFP Process
Skip the stress of preparing proposals in response to RFPs. With these eight strategies, you can streamline the proposal preparation process – and keep everyone on the same page.
ii. How To Shorten Your SaaS Company's Sales Cycle
Do you know what your sales team is losing time on? Shorten your SaaS company's sales cycle by fine-tuning your processes and getting clear on your goals.
iii. The Best Way to Align Marketing and Sales in a SaaS Company
Your sales and marketing teams are both tending to the same goal: better leads and more sales. But if they're not working together on that common goal, it can be hard to actualize results. Here's how you can align the departments – and the benefits of doing so.
4. Make the Sales Process Painless for Your Customers
It’s almost inevitable that there will be some friction points for customers as they learn your software. There may be small glitches or bugs that customers come across, which testing may have missed. It’s important to identify and alleviate these friction points as quickly as possible.
Learn more about how to streamline your sales process in the article below.
i. How To Keep Your SaaS Sales Team's Focus on Sales
If your sales team seems unmotivated, it might not take much to get them back on track. Here's how to keep your sales team engaged and focused.
5. Track Your Metrics for Sales Success
In order to focus your development, marketing, and sales on customer-centric goals, it's important to track and monitor your analytics to celebrate your sales growth or alert the team to any gaps they might not be seeing. Develop metrics for success in customer service, and monitor the progress regularly. If something isn’t working, change it up. You can also track metrics for sales processes and sales pipelines in HubSpot, to make sure customers aren’t falling through the cracks. The metrics also offer insight into your sales team’s performance, and can identify areas where consistency is lacking, or potentially identify opportunities to scale.
To learn more about developing metrics for success, read the articles below.
i. How To Support SaaS Company Growth with Highly Scalable Systems
Explore these three easy ways to integrate highly scalable systems for your SaaS company for better growth.
ii. How To Jumpstart Your SaaS Sales in 2020
Looking for tips on how to energize your sales team? From trends to top advice articles, we have tons of resources to help your team crush sales and stay ahead of the curve.
Energize Your Team by Promoting a Customer Focus
Implementing these systems will set your SaaS company up for steady sales growth. Delighted customers will refer their colleagues and friends and they’ll become repeat customers. Word of mouth referral is still the best way to scale your company fast.
Streamlining the marketing and sales process so your team can spend more time on what they love and less time on admin work and cold calls will help your staff be happier and more productive. Happy staff, delighted customers, and more sales is a win for everyone.
More Ways To Boost Your SaaS Sales
