The SAAS Sales Method: Sales as a Science

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Science over Superstars

Inspect the Process
Technology
Enablement
Skills
Team

Process first
Data-driven
Team > Individual
Methodology

Provocative Selling

But in order to be effective in provocative selling, you need to understand the market, the problems the market experiences, the solutions needed to solve them, and the impact of the solutions on the business. This means that you need to know your customers’ business better then they do.

SAAS Sales Method Data
Volume metrics: leads, deals, meetings, wins
Conversion metrics: Inputs needed to create outputs
Time metrics: how long it takes to convert input into output

Our goal is to attach the PLG motion to the total deal cycle. We are the pre-deal cycle

The SaaS Sales Method is built on the idea that revenue is the product of connected activities across a series of meetings working together in a system.

To take advantage of the unique characteristics of a system, companies must measure and optimize around: Volume metrics (#), Conversion metrics (CR) , and Time metrics (ΔT).

You see… what The Magic Castle has figured out is that, to delight customers, you need not obsess over every detail. You just over deliver on a few moments that matter most, to the customer.

We need to deliver value in the discovery and demo phases because that's where we best align with the business

Moments That Matter
Get the key moments right from a customer perspective
Align the key moments around how to create impact on the customer's business
Identify the critical events to achieve the impact
Assist the customer with decision criteria based on impact

Get the key moments right
	Sellers Perspective
Outreach - the first time the customer hears about you, initiated by you, designed to help the customer realize they have a problem. (ad, outbound email, blog post, blog post, cold call)
First Contact - First person to person communication. Goal is to find out more information about the customer and their problem and to qualify them.
Discovery - Diagnose the customer's problem, share how your product or service can be used as a solution, sometimes combined with product demonstration
Close - Customer commits to your product or service
Kick-off - Onboarding the meeting which the customer is set up with your product or service and both agree to plan to achieve the desired impact 
Review - Check in to ensure usage of the product and the problem is being solved. And the customer is getting intended results using your product or service
Renew - If customer is getting results they will renew

Buyer's Perspective
Outreach - Reach out to me because you noticed I have or going to have a pain
First Contact - Have a conversation with me to gain a better understanding of my situation
Discovery - Diagnose and demo the impact of your product based on my situation
Close - Help me sell this internally and make a trade off to match my budget
Kick-off - Orchestrate the next 90/180 days to ensure it works as advertised
Review - Measure and ensure that the promised impact is achieved
Renew - Grow by helping identify other areas where impact can be created

Emotional v. Rational Impact
Emotional impact benefits people. Rational impact corporations/organizations

Principle 1: Understand their pain. Do your research and only reach out to those who have a pain or whom you think you can help avoid it.

Principle 2: First emotional, then rational. Understand that generally emotional impact benefits people first, rational impact benefits organizations first. Focus first on the emotional impact

This is another problem we need to solve for. What is the emotional problem we're solving. For inbound here are some I can think of
Intellectual understanding 
Leveling up (acquiring competence)
Appealing to Virtue (Why you must be using Kafka and anybody who doesn't use Kafka is an idiot)
Saving mental cognition (energy budget) by explaining everything they need to know about Kafka

Principle 3: Educate do not pitch. Trust that if you educate the customer, they will make the best decision. Therefore, help your customer think through the problem they are experiencing and share best practices of others who experienced the same

We need to start to shift from sellers to educators. We want to educate our customers on event driven architectures and we need them to agree on the concepts as we move them along the sales cycle

Principle 4: Assist the buying process. People hate being sold but they love to buy. So why don't we stop selling and instead focus on helping them to buy

Principle 5: Provide value in every interaction. Don't just do check-ins; Provide value in every interaction with every client, every time. Offer market information, insights use-cases and whatever else you can to add value

Seven Key Moments

Reach out based on pain they may have, be relevant to them from the first moment
Have a conversation as a human being, not a sales qualifier
Perform a diagnosis on the client's situation before you prescribe a solution: Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice
Trade items of equal value
Orchestrate not onboard, redo the deal once the client is signed
Achieve impact, not pursue usage; look for both the emotional and rational impact
Grow in different areas: Renew, Upsell, Resell and Cross-Sell

Talker
Tone of voice. Don't be afraid to be human like using emoticons. 
Ask questions. Ask closed and open ended questions but also learn to ask diagnostic questions like a doctor
Listen actively to patterns in the customer's words, their tone and even their emotional state. Learn how to recognize emotional words
Keep accurate but brief notes, differentiating situation, pain, and impact while identifying causality 
Elaborate and follow the thread of a conversation while teasing out pain and impact
Repeat what you've heard to ensure you understand what is being said.

Starred

Dunk (exclude from study)

The SAAS Sales Method: Sales as a Science

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