Successful SaaS salespeople have a secret weapon, just like Thor had his hammer. At my previous SaaS company that we sold for $400 million this one principle carried us through the years of exhilaration and turmoil that any company that goes from startup to IPO will go through.
Picture this. You walk into a car dealer looking to buy a new hatchback. You test-drive the car and like the feel of the vehicle. The sales rep tells you everything in exhaustive detail about that car, and answers questions. You walk feeling good about the hatchback, but don’t make the purchase. Something isn’t right.
You walk over to a competitor’s showroom to look at other cars. While test driving one, you develop a great rapport with the sales rep who, through active listening and targeted questions, understood what you were really looking for. The sales rep recommends that you try a smaller SUV model. That evening you drive out of the second dealership in an SUV instead of a hatchback.
What changed your mind? Somewhere during your second experience, you realized that you could trust this sales rep, and hence the company, a lot more than the previous one. Your first impressions immediately tilted your preference.
Building customer trust is fundamental to quicker sales and higher revenue. It is just as important to have a customer believe in who they are buying from, as is the product in itself. When a customer feels personally invested in an organization or vendor, they are less likely to break away during the sales cycle or even after a sale.
Here are some methods that work for sales teams when the “trust” factor comes into play.
Awareness
Ask any customer what their favorite topic of conversation is. Their secret answer is always — me. While a sales representative spends hours on preparing detailed explanations on every aspect of the product so they can provide the customer with all the information necessary for making a purchase, what a customer sometimes really wants is to see how this particular product will solve their one pressing problem or issue.
Asking the right questions, paying attention to the customer’s today’s burning problem and working with the customer to formulate a solution with the product in hand will really help your customer stop picturing the sales rep as — well, a sales rep.
What your customer needs is someone who will understand their challenge and help them get through it. They will instantly warm up to someone who wants to actually help versus someone with just a sales hat on.
Proactive Engagement
A sales rep probably has dozens (or more) of prospective clients he is selling to at any given point. Being proactive will give him the edge that sets his organization apart. A proactive sales person is organized, knows exactly what all his deal situations are. A proactive sales rep is thorough; he does his homework before and after his client meets to understand everything about the customer’s business and their challenges. A proactive sales rep is a self-critic and has foresight, loves to test his own product’s limits and reports any likely issues that could impact his deals. A proactive sales rep never lets a deal go to sleep. He ensures prospective clients don’t forget him easily, and he does this simply by keeping in touch, so even if a customer doesn’t have a requirement now, he is who the customer will first think of when there is a relevant need.
Honesty
Nothing turns away a customer faster than watching a sales rep hide something that is obviously a glaring problem. Acknowledging an issue upfront takes away so many unwanted side effects that could surface from trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Whether a problem is in the product itself, or in the contract, or in the solution satisfying the customer’s need, being honest about one’s errors could have a positive impact on a sale, where a customer believes that this is an organization that is transparent and will not take them for a ride.
Most of the times, they just want to know what is going on and aren’t really looking at the issue as a show stopper, unless of course the sales rep blunders by being dishonest. An honest attitude will only reinforce a customer’s trust in the product and organization after a sale, when they see that this company does not tell one story before a deal and another soon afterwards.
Keep it real and keep things transparent for the customer!
Service Quality
It is just as important to retain customer trust as it is to earn it when they make the purchase. The relationships that are built during the sales process are sometimes the ones a customer wishes to fall back on even later. Ensure that the organization has a very forward support team that you can direct the customer to, a team that is not just looking at closing tickets quickly, but one that exhibits ownership and hand holds customers all the way to the solution.
Customers who learn to trust the organization with time not only become sticky and don’t leave easily, but they also become great referrals, thus leading to increased business and hence to the success of a company.
A sales rep who learns the customer’s real need through effective communication, who proactively tries to solve the customer’s problem with innovative ideas and recommendations, who stays transparent about every aspect of the product and the available solutions and who delivers exemplary service by always putting the customer first, can bring in more deals, and more often than not, these deals either turn into top end SUV purchases at the first sale or eventually become one with time.
The Thor Hammer for SaaS sales is the last letter in the word SaaS — “Service”. It’s simultaneously that obviously simple and amazingly hard for us all. I never forget, every day of our life at our company Dossier — which is the #1 onboarding software for application owners — that we’re in the service industry first, and software company foremost. And that, dear reader, is what it means to be a Software-as-a-Service company.
From Zero to Connect in Sixty Seconds
At Dossier, our mission is that our SaaS client’s sales reps establish continuous, prompt interaction and engagement with their customers through our industry-standard, easy-to-use customer success software that helps application owners connect with application users. We’d be happy if you checked us out at http://www.dossier.work.