What are SaaS Sales and How to Improve Them?

SaaS sales is the process of selling web-based software to clients. SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which essentially means digital software delivered online. Businesses provide this software to customers to offer a solution to their pain points and help them grow. These customers can be B2C, B2B, or B2C2B.

Selling SaaS products requires a specialised approach and comes with its own unique set of challenges. It isn't as simple as creating a dazzling product page and fine-tuning your SEO skills. SaaS sales teams need an end-to-end strategy that maintains the client's attention and interest throughout a long, complex sales cycle.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deeper into SaaS sales and cover everything you need to know to build a strategy that works for your business. Let’s start by exploring how SaaS sales differ from traditional selling methods.

Whenever you sell a conventional piece of software, it’s usually fairly straightforward: the customer expresses interest and makes a purchase after a short sales cycle. This marks the end of the transaction.

SaaS is a different ball game because the business isn’t just providing a product, they’re offering a service. Specifically, they’re offering to run, maintain, build, and support the software on behalf of the company.

As such, SaaS sales require a more organised, streamlined approach than traditional sales cycles. With more touchpoints, SaaS businesses often rely on multiple departments to help close deals.

This results in a much longer sales cycle, with far more touchpoints for salespeople to navigate. For instance:

• A marketing team nurtures the lead until that lead becomes ‘sales qualified,’ helping to save time for sales reps.
• SaaS sales people help to guide the qualified lead to the point of purchase, enlisting support from other departments as needed.
• A finance team can collaborate to create custom pricing models for enterprise clients with specific budget constraints.
• A product team can provide tailored product demos for upcoming product updates.
• Engineers provide insights into the technical implementation of the software, helping to ease client concerns.
• Executives can step in for high-value deals to build trust and reinforce the company's commitment.

A SaaS sales cycle won’t necessarily be linear, and it’s rarely straightforward. Clients have a lot to lose, so they tend to be extremely diligent when deciding whether to make a purchase. This brings several challenges that SaaS businesses need to consider.

Here are five of the biggest challenges that SaaS businesses face when it comes to selling.

The SaaS market is ruthlessly competitive, meaning customers have a lot of options to choose from. Sales reps must be able to prove that software provides unique value. They also need to personalise each interaction. Customers want to feel listened to rather than the subject of a sales pitch.

As sales cycles are longer with more touchpoints, it can be difficult to align teams and individuals on the best strategy for each lead. Without every team working in unison, it’s nearly impossible to collaborate effectively to close a deal.

SaaS is complex. Sales reps need to have an in-depth understanding of the software so that they can not only explain the product but also state its benefits in a way the client can understand, which is especially important for sales calls or online product demos.

The SaaS buying decision is often made by multiple stakeholders, often spread across various departments. Each of these decision-makers has their own pain points and needs. It can be challenging for SaaS sales teams to personalise their approach for different buyer personas.

An effective SaaS sales funnel relies on data. Without an understanding of previous client interactions, reps will struggle to nurture leads effectively. In some cases, a lack of data also lets potential clients slip through the cracks, especially if teams aren’t communicating effectively.

These challenges mean SaaS salespeople need to be highly knowledgeable to close deals consistently. They need a good understanding of how the sales process works and how each segment interlinks. Let’s take a closer look.

The SaaS sales process is long and complex, often taking months to go from lead generation to closing the deal. Here’s what the cycle typically entails:

Before a SaaS business can nurture leads, they need to find them. This often begins with creating an ideal buyer persona to hone in on their target audience.

Based on the information in the ideal buying persona (IBP), the business can identify optimal lead generation channels. They may opt for direct outreach via social media sites, a comprehensive marketing campaign, or organic strategies. For instance, many organisations offer lead magnets such as eBooks or newsletters in exchange for an email address.

Once the marketing team has a list of leads, they can begin the process of qualifying and nurturing these prospects.

Lead nurturing involves building relationships with leads to decide whether they’re ready for a sales demonstration.

At this stage, a sales development representative (SDR) will nurture and qualify leads to assess if they’re the right fit for the company’s product. For instance, they may send out personalised emails and check for open and response rates.

Based on the prospect’s actions, SDRs can use lead scoring to assign point values to each lead. Once the lead expresses enough interest and appears ready for a presentation, the marketer can classify them as sales-ready and pass them over to the sales reps.

This saves time and ensures salespeople can focus their efforts on prospects who are most likely to buy.

Once the sales team has a sales-qualified lead, they can make direct contact and present the product as a solution to the prospect’s pain points.

Naturally, this stage differs for every business based on the SaaS product they’re selling and the client’s unique needs. That said, here are some common techniques:

• Providing a free trial period to the prospect to let them experiment with the service themselves.
• A salesperson offers a free product demonstration to explain the offering. This is especially important for complex products.
• Holding a sales call to help the prospect understand how the product can fix their problems and fit into their existing tech stack.

Objections are common at this stage, so the sales professional needs to spend time understanding the prospect’s pain points and listening to concerns.

This is where experience comes into play: the more the salesperson can tailor their approach to the lead, the better their chances at moving negotiations forward.

The negotiation stage is the crucial juncture that will decide whether the prospect will go ahead with the purchase.

Again, this stage requires finesse from the sales team. Depending on the prospect, they may need to offer additional incentives (such as a small discount), add in extra services, or slow down the sales process if needed.

This is also the stage where SaaS sales reps may choose to bring in sales support from other departments, such as the financial division or customer success team, to build trust with the lead.

Once the business has made the sale, it still needs to onboard the prospect and help them integrate the SaaS solution once the start date approaches.

Providing an exceptional customer experience is essential at this point. The SaaS company needs to prove that the customer has made the right choice. Regularly checking in and addressing any lingering concerns will create a stronger relationship, supporting long-term customer retention and loyalty.

Here are six simple steps to get started with SaaS selling.

First, choose a SaaS sales model based on your needs. There are three available to you:

• Customer self-service model: This model involves using free trials to get users to sign up. It doesn’t require a sales agent, so it is best for small teams selling less complex products.
• Transactional sales model: This popular model involves contacting small and medium-sized businesses to drive sales on a tiered pricing or commission structure. It needs a larger, more structured team.
• Enterprise sales model: The enterprise SaaS sales model involves aligning all team members across departments to provide personalised, unique sales experiences and support to prospects.

A transactional model is an ideal solution for most small-medium businesses. It doesn’t require as many resources as enterprise models, but it still allows for personalisation.

Start by creating a well-defined customer persona outlining the target audience for your product and the problems they’re facing.

Understanding your target audience's pain points is essential. This will allow you to develop a value proposition that shows how you'll solve these problems.

For instance, one of the biggest reasons businesses find SaaS sales difficult is that it’s tricky to unify teams to align on a strategy. Let’s explore how we can turn this pain point into a value proposition in the next step.

Next, use your customer’s pain points to develop your USP. How can your target audience benefit from using your software? How will your solution fix their problems?

For example, here’s a value proposition for Salesforce based on the pain point in the previous step.

“Closing deals is a routine challenge when teams and departments aren’t aligned. If a salesperson isn’t fully aware of the marketer’s interactions with a client, they can’t make an informed decision about the best way forward.

Salesforce CRM unifies all of your teams under one roof, giving you a 360-degree view of every customer. This gives your teams the data they need to personalise customer experiences and close more deals”.

There’s little use in sending every possible lead to your sales team. If a rep engages with a prospect who was never interested in your offer, this wastes resources that could be spent nurturing quality leads.

Now that you’ve identified your target audience, you need to qualify them. Set clear lead qualification criteria and take time to understand lead scoring. This helps you sift through prospects to find sales-qualified leads that are most likely to close a deal.

Decide how you’re going to engage and convert prospects at every touchpoint. Answer common questions like:

• How will we personalise outreach for different clients?
• What questions will we ask each lead to assess their interest?
• At what point will we move a client from stage to stage?
• How will we identify high-value leads?
• How will a sales rep handle objections?
• How long will we wait to contact a prospect after an initial rejection?

The more you prepare here, the better. Provide sales reps with a comprehensive sales playbook containing qualifying questions, email templates, scripts, and workflows. You can also provide characteristics of different buyer personas to help salespeople personalise their approach.

With everything in place, set some goals and sales quotas to give your salespeople something to work toward and improve your sales efficiency. For instance, you could set objectives for cold calls made, emails sent, meetings held, or even deals closed.

At this point, you can begin to track key metrics and adjust your strategy as needed. We’ll take a look at some of these metrics below.

Let’s briefly run through nine essential SaaS sales metrics you should be tracking to measure the success of your SaaS sales strategy.

How many leads is your marketing team classifying as sales-qualified? Too many, and your criteria could be overly relaxed, especially if you’re only closing a small percentage of deals.

Lifetime value examines how much money each customer spends over their entire lifecycle. If your CLTV (also known as LTV) is lower than you’d like, consider gathering opportunities or finding opportunities to upsell and cross-sell.

Your CAC tells you how much it costs on average to acquire a customer. If this SaaS sales metric is too high, you may be scaling too quickly.

How many leads do you gain each month? This tells you whether you’re gaining more leads than you are revenue, allowing you to allocate resources and set goals.

This measures how quickly your business finalises contracts and signs deals. If this metric is low, it indicates there’s a problem with your negotiations.

How much revenue does each rep bring per lead? You can use this metric to determine how many leads a rep can handle before they become inefficient.

This metric measures the amount of money generated by your SaaS subscriptions on a monthly basis. It’s useful for gauging performance and predicting annual revenue. It’s also known as recurring revenue.

The amount of money you make via your annual contracts and subscriptions.

How many customers do you lose each year? If you’re consistently losing clients, dive deeper to figure out why this is the case.

Let’s finish up with five SaaS best practices to get the most out of your selling efforts.

The better your sales team understands your product, the easier they’ll find it to clearly state benefits and address prospect concerns.

A CRM system will unify all of your teams and customer information in one place. This means everyone can view prospect data and interactions from a central location, leading to fewer missed opportunities and more closed deals.

SaaS sales are about providing value. And to do that, you need to know the unique pain points of every prospect. Listen to your clients and understand their concerns to provide a personalised solution. This will always beat reading from a script.

Design a cheat sheet of resources that your sales team can leverage. Include everything from specific objection-handling scripts and FAQs to broader market trends.

If a lead goes cold, reach out for feedback and ask what went wrong. This is an opportunity to refine your processes for the future. It can even win the prospect back, as it shows you value their experience.

Selling SaaS products requires a more involved approach than most other types of selling, but with the right preparation, it’s possible to build rock-solid, loyal relationships with potential clients.

Focus on creating a personalised customer experience that gives value to each prospect. Make sure your sales reps are knowledgeable about your service, and choose a CRM that keeps your data in one place. With that, you’ll create a SaaS strategy that drives massive returns for your business.

With Salesforce CRM, you’ll have everything you need to generate, nurture, and convert qualified leads. Our platform unifies all of your sales data in one place, boosting your sales team’s productivity by allowing them to view prospect records and interactions in real time. Try Salesforce CRM for free today to learn more.