Hey fellow sales people; fired up and humbled to be in here with y'all.
Where I've sold SaaS (Commercial, MM) across industries, I wanted to power rank - perhaps for utility, but mostly for humor/entertainment, the best/worst personas to sell to:
- Sales- brutal because they know what you're doing, but still the best persona to sell to. At least 1/2 know how to buy, and sell internally, and they're rev generating, so can find budget if (big if) your product isn't garbage. A lot of really fun conversations, a lot of really batshit conversations, and the shitty conversations are an ego boost because you realize how much better you are than them even though they somehow have a better title/role than you.
- Finance- I mean, I've been selling a while and I still get hangover like sweats before meetings with important people in Finance. They obviously know how to buy, and if you're not completely on your shit they're going to tear you apart and make you regret being in sales. But they literally own the budget, and if you are completely on your shit, they're going to get you the deal, and sign the contract, and get you a fun Troops gif in your Slack channel that makes you feel good for a second before you remember you're at 50% quota and it's December.
- Marketing- I mean, of course people who aren't good enough to be in sales don't like sales people, and they're going to do whatever they can to make our lives miserable. But they have budget, and are more fun to talk to than anyone other than sales. So hard to prospect into because they get 100/1000's of emails/day.
- Professional Services/Customer Success- PS is better than CS, but I'm going to lump them into one because I'm lazy and want a concise list. Some of the same good elements as Sales, with some of the same warts as IT. They are usually brutally overworked and have antiquated, shitty systems, and if they don't deliver really bad things happen that C-Level cares about. So if you can sell, you should find budget.
- Devs/Engineering- I'm sure this is #1 for a lot of people, and that's fair; they're often working on really interesting shit that you wish you knew more about, if you can save them more than 10 seconds in their day their CFO will give you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're sharp. But we're sales people- we don't understand them and they don't understand us. Kudos to you if you know how to spark an engaging conversation here, but I do not.
- IT- Lol, have fun in the RFP process, and I hope you know how to win deals by way of coming out on top of a subjective/feature based Excel matrix. Kind of have budget, so not the worst. I'd rather do QBR's or tier accounts than talk to IT.
- HR- adding no color on whether or not they should, but HR has no seat at the table. They're never going to give you honest feedback on your offering (generally will always tell you they absolutely love it), and by no means are they going to introduce you to power. Generally don't have budget, though that's changing a bit; the space is wildly competitive, so you're prob going to have to discount by 40% to win, even if you're a "leader"
- Talent/Recruiting- have never sold to them, but I hope never to have to. Doesn't sound fun; tiny deals, yuck.
- Operations- Ops isn't really a thing. I mean I know it is, but are they ever a decision making team? I don't think so, but let me know if I'm dumb. Pass.
- Consumers- Is B2C sales? Should that be it's own post?
Curious your thoughts!
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