Winning in SaaS
How to Keep Yourself Honest About Sales Effectiveness Achieving Growth by Maximizing Sales Effectiveness SaaS can be incredibly lucrative due to its inherent scalability and high margins. However, there’s a specific threshold that SaaS businesses need to achieve to start making profits. SaaS sales teams have to be involved in acquiring new customers, as well as persuading existing customers to scale up. The combination of all these factors makes effective selling extremely critical. Evaluating Sales Performance It is prudent to assess if your sales organization is productive and realizing full value of customers across the entire span of a customer relationship. A quick self-assessment would help you evaluate your sales function and identify areas of improvement. How to Conduct Your Organization’s Sales Health Check IDENTIFY Determine critical self assessment criteria and set measureable goals for each customized criteria
MONITOR Track and rate sales function based on actual performance v/s goals for specific time period; monthly, quarterly or annually
BENCHMARK Compare sales performance on a periodic basis to know the progress you are making towards achieving goals
TRANSFORM Identify and Prioritize Areas of Improvement
Self-assessing your performance against goals will allow you to measure real and actual progress. The goals for sales performance should be examined on a periodic basis and the time period for setting goals and measuring performance against goals should be monthly, quarterly and annually. Comparison of your sales performance from one time period to another will illuminate the impact of any activities or strategies that you may have implemented to improve your sales. It will highlight areas where the sales function has excelled, as well as areas that need to be further improved.
© Market Strategy Group, 2017
MSG Insights – March 2017 www. mkt-strat.com
Below is an illustrative self assessment chart based on a set of proposed criteria. You can use the proposed criteria or customize it to meet your needs.
Self-Assessment Criteria
Sales Self-Assessment chart Criteria
Potential Causes of Low Performance
Customer acquisition cost
Poor marketing mix
Customer lifetime value
Lack of solution-based offerings to upsell initial sale
Customer retention rate
Lack of resources for relationship building
Monthly recurring revenue
Annual renewal model as opposed to subscription based sales model
Lead generation v/s conversion
Inadequate lead qualification and coordination between inside and outside sales
New orders (monthly)
Inadequate coordination between sales and marketing on outreach conversion
Action Areas for Improving Sales Function Opportunities for improving the aforementioned sales criteria lie in each of the main components of selling: prospecting, executing, engaging and enabling. By rethinking the important aspects of the sales process and pulling the right levers, you can make sales more effective.
Key Components of Selling Prospecting
Executing
Engaging
Effective lead generation Define target markets Prioritize customers Understand their needs Identify decision makers
Higher conversion rate Create value proposition to meet customer needs Effectively communicate value to customers
Better up/cross selling Engage with customers at all stages of buying process to nurture and grow relationship
Enabling Improved productivity Synchronize marketing efforts Provide tools and training Assess compensation
Getting Started Every business will have a different starting point and a different end goal when it comes to increasing sales effectiveness. Self-assessment of sales performance is a starting point to identify areas of improvement. Beyond simply understanding areas for improvement, it also is important to address the areas rapidly. About Market Strategy Group Market Strategy Group sees business differently. To us, winning isn't about going from Point A to Point B. It's about aligning three distinct dimensions — business direction, people & process, and markets & customers — to drive growth. We have worked with multiple organizations to resolve growth challenges. We have developed tailored sales and marketing strategies for clients and helped drive change. We should chat if revenue growth is an issue. Joel Krauss (joel.krauss@mkt-strat.com) or Alex Kruzel (alex.kruzel@mkt-strat.com).
© Market Strategy Group, 2017
http://mkt-strat.com/
MSG Insights – March 2017 www. mkt-strat.com