Dear SaaStr: What Sales Techniques Helped You Consistently Succeed While Others Failed?

Dear SaaStr: What sales techniques helped you consistently succeed while others failed?

A few that basically always work in sales … but that so many don’t do actually do:

Being a product expert. 95% of the sales execs I talk to in software don’t know the product much at all. A huge miss as half the reason you talk to sales is to get your product questions answered.Being great at the product demo. Truly great. Not being able to demo your product like an expert just leads to a mediocre sales process, at best.Mapping out and contacting all the stakeholders. Too many in sales just talk to whomever inbounds. But especially in bigger deals, there are often 3–4 stakeholders you really need to convince.Showing up in person. If you show up in person for the bigger deals, and the competition just shows up in Zoom … the odds you win the deal go up. A lot, really.Focusing on solving the customer’s problem. Sell second, solve their problem first. If they’ve given you up the time to talk about a problem, there likely is budget to solve it. If you can solve it.Followng up regularly. Too many just … don’t. The right time to buy just might be 3, 4, 9 months from today.Just doing the darn pilot. Too many reps don’t want to do pilots because it’s work. They fight it. Because you have to basically resell the deal again at the end of the pilot. But as a start-up, just do them. They reduce perceived risk.Being there as CEO. It sends a message when the CEO shows up in person. It doesn’t always yield a win. But it shows the customer / prospect matters. You can’t be in every deal as CEO. But be in as many of those that matter as you can be.