Which Techniques Shorten the Sales Cycle for a SaaS Product Manager?
SaaS Perspective
Which Techniques Shorten the Sales Cycle for a SaaS Product Manager?
To help you shorten the sales cycle as a SaaS Sales Executive, we asked industry experts for their most effective techniques. From offering time-sensitive promotions to leveraging value-based selling, here are six insights shared by a Senior Growth Manager and a Senior Account Executive, among others.
- Offer Time-Sensitive Promotions
- Create Personalized Landing Pages
- Discuss Budget Early
- Understand Customer's Compelling Event
- Conduct Thorough Initial Discovery
- Leverage Value-Based Selling
Offer Time-Sensitive Promotions
One of the most effective techniques we’ve implemented to shorten the sales cycle is offering a time-sensitive promotion to prospects after conducting demos.
We recently introduced a Buy-Now-and-Get-a-Month-Off offer, where prospects who subscribed to our product within 48 hours of a demo received a special discount of one month off their subscription.
This approach resonated exceptionally well with our target audience. What began as an experiment quickly proved successful, prompting us to roll out the strategy across the entire organization, significantly increasing our conversion rates.
Create Personalized Landing Pages
One of the best ways to shorten the sales cycle for a SaaS company is to build out landing pages that are personalized to specific groups you are targeting in your marketing. For example, if your target audience includes lawyers and real estate agents, then you need to build landing pages for each group and separate your campaigns so that you can direct each customer persona to their own customized landing page. If you want to take things to the next level, drill down inside a specific niche (i.e., lawyers who practice family law) and create landing pages for that sub-niche. The more personalized you can get with your landing pages, the more at ease your potential customers will be, which will shorten the sales cycle for them.
Discuss Budget Early
In the competitive and fast-paced landscape of SaaS sales, efficiency is paramount. Every sales executive knows the frustration of a promising lead going silent, often due to misunderstandings or misaligned expectations. One effective technique to mitigate this issue and shorten the sales cycle is to address the budget directly in the initial meetings. This proactive strategy not only fosters transparency but also significantly reduces the chances of getting ghosted by prospects. Ghosting in sales, where potential clients abruptly cease communication, is a common hurdle. This often occurs because prospects, initially enthusiastic, later discover that the solution doesn’t fit within their budget. Instead of engaging in potentially uncomfortable financial discussions, they choose to disappear. This not only wastes valuable time but also stalls the sales pipeline. Introducing budget discussions early in the sales process can transform the dynamic between the sales executive and the prospect. Here’s how to effectively incorporate this practice: First, initiate early conversations. Bring up the budget within the first or second meeting. This can be done tactfully by framing it as a means to better understand their needs and to tailor the best possible solution. For instance, ask, 'To ensure we can provide the most suitable solution, could you share your budget range for this project?' Next, transparency is key. Provide a clear and detailed breakdown of your pricing structure. Explain the value and return on investment (ROI) that your product offers. Transparency in pricing builds trust and positions you as a credible and honest partner. Furthermore, early budget discussions help in qualifying leads right from the start. If a prospect's budget does not align with your pricing, you can explore scalable options that fit their financial constraints or decide to move on, saving time for both parties. Addressing the budget early in the sales cycle is a straightforward yet powerful technique that can significantly shorten the sales cycle. By setting clear financial expectations from the outset, you build trust, qualify leads more effectively, and avoid the frustration of being ghosted. This approach not only streamlines the sales process but also lays the foundation for transparent and lasting client relationships. In the highly competitive SaaS market, this simple yet effective strategy can be a game-changer in closing deals faster and more efficiently.
Understand Customer's Compelling Event
Don't waste time with crappy deals. Take qualification seriously and know your ICP inside and out.
Part of qualification should be understanding your customer's compelling event. A compelling event needs to be something measurable and tied to an organization's 2-3 key priorities, i.e., what the CEO/CFO most cares about during a snapshot of time.
If your contact doesn't know this or is new to making SaaS purchases, help guide and educate them. Work together.
Conduct Thorough Initial Discovery
We changed how we approached the initial discovery stage with our prospect to be more thorough and complete (with a 'templatized wizard')—by identifying and asking the important questions up front to the decision maker(s), focusing on the key pain points they face, freely sharing what has worked for our other customers, and qualifying if our SaaS solution was even a fit for them. This has helped us understand our prospect's challenges better, their goals for engaging with a vendor like us, and by using data from other similar meetings, we have been able to provide solutions and ideas right from the start. Due to these points, our conversations, demos, and negotiations with the prospect are more personalized and efficient, and we are seen as a trusted resource and partner. The end result is that our overall sales cycle is greatly shortened (>60% reduction in time from initial contact to close). Even if the initial discovery stage takes a bit longer than normal in some cases, the depth and quality of the initial work more than makes up for lost time in the later stages of the sales cycle.
Leverage Value-Based Selling
In SaaS, we're often accustomed to longer sales cycles. However, one effective technique for shortening the sales cycle as a SaaS Sales Executive is leveraging value-based selling combined with personalized demonstrations. During the initial meeting, it's crucial to dig deep to uncover the third- and fourth-level pain points of our clients. This means understanding the true impact of their inefficiencies, the repercussions of not having the right systems in place, and clearly identifying how the solution we're presenting will benefit the organization. By addressing these core issues and demonstrating the tangible value of our solution, we can expedite the decision-making process and reduce the sales cycle.
