Hardest adjustment when switching to SAAS sales?

I’m currently in industrial sales and have recently been looking at a few SAAS jobs after being contacted by recruiters. I’m trying to realistically weigh out my options as I work for a great company, I just sell into a niche market.

What was the biggest adjustment you had to make when getting into software sales from a separate industry? Any advice on how to minimize the learning curve and be successful?

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YoungMoney

Good Citizen

Director of Sales

I went from elevator service contracts to SaaS. First adjustment was understanding the rejection I was bound to get in the interview process because I had "0 tech experience". The job I ended up getting was when I followed up with, "I was able to learn how to sell elevator contracts to major universities and property management firms for 6 figures. Is there anything that I can do to make you prove I'm ready?"

2nd was that cold calling into 100s of business who are hearing from 100s of sales people is arguably the hardest job on the planet. "We don't care that you work for <insert Fortune 500>." was something I heard a lot.

3rd adjustment was knowing that cold calling 100 people a day meant that 95 people would not answer, but 5 would. You don't know which ones will pick up so you have to dial and be ready to land the meeting the moment someone picks up, if not, leave a message and quickly get ready for the next one.

Great money is SaaS, fun work environments, hard job.

FilterNerd

Member

Territory Sales Manager

Appreciate the insight! The money seems to be in software sales, and it’s hard to not want to dive in.

MMMGood

Celebrated Contributor

Senior Account Executive

Longer, more technical sales cycles. More stakeholders in each deal.

Gotta be a lot more organized, both on a strategic and tactical level. Leverage as many resources within the company as you can; ops, legal, marketing, product, services. With SaaS, it takes a village.

BlueJays2591

Politicker

Business Development Manager

It's about the same as any other industry in my opinion. for me the hardest part was the technical side of things. I'm not interested in tech in the slightest bit. i only got a smart phone because I had to for my job. i had a flip phone until 2014 that I paid $5/mo for. so learning the in depth technical stuff so i didn't sound like a complete moron was the hardest part for me. now i sound like a complete moron that can say a few technical sentences while waiting for my SE to join the call.

FilterNerd

Member

Territory Sales Manager

Thanks for the response.

It’s comforting to know other people openly refer to themselves as morons with a great support team lol. I don’t think I would have ever made a sale if it wasn’t for my engineers.

BlueJays2591

Politicker

Business Development Manager

I'm a dot connector. I don't say I'm technical nor do I act like I am because real technical people will see through that in a heart beat and call you out. I'm saying this from unfortunate personal experience back in my younger/dumber days. I start the conversations and let the smart people take it from there. I have no shame in admitting that.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

Senior Account Executive

Did you switch over?

FilterNerd

Member

Territory Sales Manager

Lol I did for about 6 weeks and learned the hard way about how much start ups lie. Told me everybody was over quota to make 150k a year. Found out nobody was making that, their lead gen was terrible, and they didn’t have any real traction with customers. I bailed and am back in industrial sales and I likely won’t be going back to the SAAS world

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