SaaS_Slinge

Head of Growth

Need Advice: Highly differentiated product + New Space + Difficult to communicate value prop

Hi All,

I've built a highly differentiated product in the consumer identity space. Sales cycles are slow because we need to do is educate the consumer. And quite frankly, it's hard for me to run the business and close all of these deals.

I recently closed a 500k deal, but it took 4 months to close. (Maybe thats not long?) This deal will provide a very valuable case study for our software that will certainly help us acquire new clients. But we're a startup and these long sales cycles are killer.

How can I speed this up? What processes can I created? Can AI help? Am I just better off hiring a bunch of sales professionals and giving high/uncapped commissions?

Thanks!

👑 Sales Strategy

📈 Closing

☁️ Software Tech

21 comment

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TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

a few things:
1. $500k in 4 months is NOT slow. thats pretty solid homie.
2. a way to decrease the sales cycle is not to hire more sales ppl, but to better educate your buyer. if your buyer comes to you, more educated about why your product exists and the problem it solves, sales cycles length will go down.

This is obviously not an EASY or QUICK thing to do, but its critical.

some of the items you CAN control:
1. how long does it take an inbound lead to get a meeting.
2. how long does procurement take? (getting legal docs signed)
3. Are there any meetings taking place that could be eliminated if your other meetings were set up better (duplicate demos, numerous alignment calls ect)

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

Awareness is not a nut I have cracked just yet. I've tried social, with no success on Twitter and limited success on Linkedin.

My customer is CMOs, of companies willing to be innovative, sectors are entertainment, hospitality, sports, cultural attractions and events.

I've had success at trade shows and conferences, but that doesn't scale well.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

nice. if your looking for CMO's....linked in has GOT to be a big tool for you

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

Sounds like you have a big marketing need TBH. You need people educated before they come to you/you hit them up. Sales people can educate, but that's tough if the prospect doesn't already know they aren't doing it right.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Not sure how are you creating awareness? Are you giving any sandbox accounts to customers so they can find value in the tool? Who are your customers - only MM and Enterprise or even an SMB?

You will have to spend sometime also marketing my product initially so more and more people know about your tool and what it does. It’s better to have the conversation going with 10 clients vs 1 and you need that.

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

We have considered creating sandbox accounts for prospects, but would need some additional functionality built into the product.

The software can be used for clients of all sizes, but we've made a decision only to focus on Enterprise. The value of the software is significantly higher for larger the organizations. Smaller companies the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. We actually "fired" a client 2 weeks ago because of this.

I've created content on Linkedin, attended conferences/trade shows and spoke as a guest on several podcasts. Open to suggestions.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

If you ask me, if there is an SMB use case, I would definitely try to put some brains there and try to make is sort of self serve model. Though the value isn’t significant, volume, cash flow, profitability will be high, sales cycle and effort will be small/low. Of course Enterprise is where the diamond is and hence you need real people to work with those people.

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

Undoubtedly there is. The value prop changes, and the pricing REALLY changes. Smaller clients paid 10k for the software, larger ones 50x more. And I think we can go higher. I think it's right to focus on bigger clients?

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

Can you afford to turn a client away? That could technically be another case study and success story and revenue. Sure maybe the goal is enterprise only, but at this point, a sale is a sale.

CPTAmerica

Opinionated

President/CRO

Congrats on the close! $500K in 4 months is actually fantastic given the environment you described.

I work with lots of founders and I can tell you the sooner you employ a solid sales method the better. Create defined steps so you have quantifiable metrics you can benchmark against.

Many startups are making it up as they go. Constantly changing how they sell, how they price, how they package, etc. This is fine at the very beginning but the sooner you get a foundation in place the sooner you can scale.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Velocity cannot be fixed through AI. Velocity probably cannot be fixed with marketing spend. Velocity definitely cannot be fixed with a case study...at least at first.

You need to increase your top-of-funnel activity to get as many shots on goal as you possibly can. That means hiring full-cycle AEs that can prospect and close business, and are not afraid of doing it.

Document these conversations and pull out as many market and product insights as you can. This will accelerate the development of an ICP, which you can use to drive clean demand (targeted vs buckshot funnel building), and will accelerate your rep's ability to close by having the right person, at the right company, with the right problems, in their pipelines.

Don't go out and spend a ton on talent just to find out they don't have the capabilities to work in a scaling, ruleless org. You are going to end up coddling egos instead of finding dogs that can rip through a few cycles of improvement before they start getting any success from their efforts.

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

This is helpful. When I first started, I used the "buckshot" approach and set up a funnel using Lemlist to automate emails+linkedin DMs. But it became to much work for me to manage in addition to all the other hats I had to wear. I hired 2 reps and they failed miserably. Communicating the value prop isn't easy, especially via email.

I never set out to build a business where I need to educate the customer, but here I am. Any advice or hacks to educate at the top of the funnel?

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Are you creating a problem or solving a truly painful one that has never been attacked before?

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

That's a good question. Our initial vision was probably one we create. However, the client we closed, helped pivot our product in a manner that solved their problem. We weren't far off, but lacked some insight. For them it's a major problem and a blind spot in their customer journey.

So I feel comfortable saying it's a major problem that hasn't been attacked in this manner before.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Find EVERY SINGLE company that looks like them (size, industry, etc) and go after that as your current TAM. You are about to break into the goldmine or find out that it was a one-off. Either way, you're learning.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

There are already some valuable insights here, but I'm curious as to how you found the first sale, and what messaging worked. Can you replicate that? Are there other companies in this space?

edit: grammar

SaaS_Slinge

Contributor

Head of Growth

Honestly, it was dumb luck. I had an idea, and I spent one hour researching the vertical I wanted to target, found the biggest player in the space, and used Linkedin to find the point of contact in the org. And it worked.

I could replicate this in other verticals like sports, hospitality and entertainment. It's something I plan to do, but having just closed the client I wanted to wait so I have more data and can put together a proper case study. Maybe thats the wrong approach though?

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Or you go after the next biggest player. You have a beginning of a process that worked for that vertical - so that should be your "easy (ish)" button.

And you can go after the biggest player in the next vertical you think is a fit for what you do and see if you can get that one to land.

Honestly, if you were able to land one big customer with no case study, you should be going after others and not waiting.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

$500k is bottled lightning given the scenario. I'm in a similar spot. Don't mind spilling it here either. ML, but with a window into the decisioning. I'm in the trustable decision business. And there is just no short cut. Nobody thinks it's important. They're much more shiny object AI focused. They hype is helpful. Anyone will talk about AI these days, but this solution ain't the same as chatbot prowess.

At this 7 weeks. 2 smallish deals have contracts in play. Total $200k. Both likely to close, but I'm I'm envious of your 5. Either way. I am honestly still trying to figure out how to find, develop and cure my ICP. At this point, it's been all hard outbound. Nobody will call me for this, with or without marketing.

So, I try to find businesses with the same problems I'm just about to be able to cure. Then the parlay game begins. My friend, it's just hard labor. Not sure there's any kind of magic cure. I do with you the best kind of luck imaginable... because we need a bit of that too.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

How's it going?

Maximas

Tycoon

-2

Senior Sales Executive

Come on bud 400k within 4 months only and wanna call that slow, guess your team is acting like a beast, so good job here.
Recommend you to work on expanding your network and hiring more reps besides working more on marketing your product, believe it would be good enough to find the required demand for it once being recognized enough!

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SaaS_Slinge

Need Advice: Highly differentiated product + New Space + Difficult to communicate value prop

21 comment

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