What You Didn’t Know About Selling Software As A Service

When selling software as a service, a conversation with a customer sometimes begins with the question, "So, what exactly do you sell?" Then onto "How will it benefit us? Will it reduce my expenses or boost my revenue? And over what time frame?"

The answers to these questions can be tough if you are selling software as a service, any type of technology, or anything that exists in the cloud. Today's most profitable technology companies don't just offer goods; they sell something more.

If you sell an innovative product that requires your client to 'Cross the Chasm' of the early adopter, that customer can occasionally traverse 57 percent of the way through the buyer's journey and still not grasp what you're selling.

This is especially true if your marketing prioritizes product characteristics over the value your items provide. It's even more prevalent if your items have the ethereal, shape-shifting properties of a cloud service or app.

However, if you talk about the value you're delivering rather than the product, this communication gap between you and your buyer might be an advantage.

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The New SaaS Sales Pipeline

The conversation that effective salespeople have with their customers has been dramatically altered by access to information. Customers are far more knowledgeable about what they want and where to acquire it.

Most people make the mistake of starting their sales pitch with a discussion of their goods. They'll go over the features and capabilities, show the prospect some screenshots, and possibly even guide them through a demo.

'You require this product!' they exclaim, dismissing the consumer who seemed to have heard it all before.

Traditionally, a product is described as what we deliver to a customer in exchange for money, commodities, or services. A brief look at some companies that have made a name in selling software as a service reveals something fascinating.

While all of these companies claim to offer something concrete, such as a product, the emphasis is on their relationship with their customer and the value they provide to that consumer.

All of these organizations have one thing in common: the value they provide is scalable, and you can mix and match their solutions to solve your specific challenge.

Components are organized such that each client can freely access and use what is valuable to them in order to address their own specific difficulties.

Every customer is unique, as is the problem they're attempting to address.

The easier you can make it to fix the customer's problem, the happier they will be. Cloud technologies make this easier than ever before. It's a fantastic situation for both the seller and the buyer.

The dialogue is about more than just the product; it's about the value that's delivered at the end.

Sell value rather than products

Technology firms frequently struggle with the problem of cramming whatever they do for their consumers into a box labeled 'product.' Trying to limit what you do to something concrete known as a "product" is a valid technique to uncover your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), but what else do you offer? Better sales discussions necessitate selling more than just a product.

A novel approach to selling

The majority of our talks with customers begin with us learning about their issues and hurdles so that we can assess if the value we provide meets their needs.

Customers frequently ask us if we are selling software as a service, a smart application, training, or a sales style. What enhancements do they provide to the Salesforce CRM? What exactly is Sales Transformation, and how can it benefit me?

Upland Altify is yet another cloud-based SaaS startup that provides more than just products. When you first meet Upland Altify, they aren't attempting to sell you anything. No, not right away.

Putting the solution last and learning about the customer and their particular challenges first is part of the Target Account Selling (TAS) technique.

When you've agreed on the customer's difficulties and challenges, you may market a solution, or, more importantly, you can talk about the value you'll provide for your customer.

TAS sales methodology is based on first aligning the customer's challenges with your solutions and then discussing shared value attainment.

To accomplish so, you must first understand the customer and their needs, as well as what they value most, in order to give that value directly to them.

By locating your business in the cloud, you will be able to provide a solution that includes not just a real product, but also a variety of other components such as expertise, smart coaching, analytics, models, and templates, all of which are meant to offer value.

Using cloud technology, or any modern distribution mechanism implies selling more than just items.

Always keep in mind that providing value to the consumer is more important.

How do you sell worth?

As part of your SaaS sales pipeline, there are five important processes to selling value:

• Understand what value means to your customer.
• Learn everything you can about your customer's business.
• Work with your consumer to identify their demands based on the challenges they confront.
• Align your customer's concerns with your solutions.
• Agree on the value you can provide.

According to Jill Konrath, the best way to increase sales is to cease selling. When people believe they are being sold something, they throw up barriers:

Stop selling stuff and start selling value to win sales and consumers.

Conclusion

The world is changing at a rapid pace. Consumers are finding it easier to research their options online, they are creating more informed choices, and are becoming fickle in what they want. They also have more choices than ever before.

At the same time, markets are crowded with competitors where customer loyalty is low, costs of entry into the market are low and hence profitability is low.

How do you win in this environment? It starts by looking at your product or service offering through the eyes of the consumer and deciding whether you can add value or not.

If you look through their eyes your business will see problems that customers care about solving rather than problems that they don't care about solving. Once these problems become apparent the focus is on the value that you can add to solve them.