Systematizing Sales with Software and Processes

https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/sales_automation

by jplarson • 12 years ago

206 49 12 years ago

training.kalzumeus.com

Patrick, if you haven't yet gotten any emails about this, the Amazon link to "Predictable Revenue" is to the .co.jp domain.

patio115• 12 years ago

Thanks. D'oh. I understand how I missed that when QAing the links but I'm clueless about how it got into there in the first place.

lmorris842• 12 years ago

rather than giving Cindy the quote which she asked for, I should have asked Cindy to hop on a quick call with me to discuss how they were planning to use Appointment Reminder

I get this all the time when looking for vendors for various things and have to say I usually do an internal eye-roll when it comes up - sometimes I just want a rough quote in an email that I can look at when I get the chance. Most recently we were looking at some load testing tool and I had to sit through a sales call only to find out the cost was ten times what we were prepared to pay. I had zero special requirements so why that price couldn't have been emailed is beyond me.

I understand in some cases like this it might be useful to have a call, I just feel I'm getting the sales BS when it happens to me.

patio115• 12 years ago

I'm on your side here with regards to that, but this story is exactly why your vendor can't do that to you. You know you have no special requirements. They don't know you have no special requirements. They also don't know whether you're serious yet. For better or worse, asking you to put something on your calendar and show up to it is a great way to verify whether you're serious or not: if you're not willing to make yourself available for a phone call, it is possible you'd be able to organize your company to pay $10k for software but that isn't the way I'll bet.

I regretfully have years of anecdata on the close rate of doing things the geek-approved way versus the close rate when I get on the phone with somebody and it, ahem, is not a close call.

lmorris842• 12 years ago

In the case I mentioned I wasn't serious at all - I was just putting feelers out and trying to gauge pricing across a few different vendors. A call at this point is probably wasting my time and theirs.

For me, the stage after finding out a standard price is to perhaps have a call and determine if my requirements match up to the product.

I guess it also depends on the size of the company, type of software etc. If the company has trial versions then it's more likely the person buying knows what it can do etc.

As a hard example, I go to jprofiler's website[1] and can order there and then, no messing around. I go to neotys[2] and it's the sales induced hell I mentioned above.

[1] https://www.ej-technologies.com/buy/jprofiler/select [2] http://www.neotys.com/product/neoload-licenses.html

rmc2• 12 years ago

You know you have no special requirements. They don't know you have no special requirements.

I presume "The company and the customer have different ideas of 'special requirements'" can also be a factor?

aragot• 12 years ago

The eternal high-touch vs low-touch debate...

Atlassian's whole sales system is to display the prices upfront and have no rebate. Last time I checked, their competitors (resp. IBM Rational and Microsoft Sharepoint) didn't grow by 35% every year for 10 years in a row.

I needed an office for 2 people. With Regus you need to plan a call. I ended up at a coworking space, mildly satisfied with the noise, with a bill 70% higher, but at least I don't have a 90-days commitment and I didn't sit with a salesman.

There are number of situations when you dodge providers who are just a dead weight.

philfreo3• 12 years ago

Many products & services should have clear upfront pricing on their website - no quote needed at all.

Once you get into the realm where a quote is needed though (due to complexity of the deal, level of customization, very high price points, legal work, etc.), then Patrick's advice is especially golden.

rrggrr2• 12 years ago

I am happy to give you information (your rough quote) in exchange for information (learning about your need). That is a fair trade because while I can scale my product or service, I cannot scale my time. If I misallocate my time on customers who are not qualified, I starve. You are uncomfortable with this because you are not serious. When you are serious, when there is a real need and real value, this isn't an issue for you.

hvidgaard• 12 years ago

He specifically say "I had zero special requirements", so you should be able to give him an answer in less than 2 min. That's a low cost for potentially cultivating a lead.

mc808• 12 years ago

customers who are not qualified

In other words, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it." That's fine and I will just assume it's true, even if it's not.

ianmcgowan• 12 years ago

There's a somewhat legitimate case to be made for both points of view here. As a potential customer trying to gauge costs, what's been helpful for me is to ask about license structures and a broad range of per/user, per/server, whatever to make my own order of magnitude estimate. Or you can just come right out and ask "how many zeroes?"

Someone like IBM/Oracle will refuse to tell you boo, because they're planning to tailor the quote to match the value delivered. Just kidding, they need to measure your pockets first ;_)

Spooky23• 12 years ago

On the other hand, when the sales dude sends that quote that you wanted blind without any due dilligence, and you order the wrong crap, what happens?

"Boss, these idiots from <insert vendor> don't even know what their product does!"

pbiggar2• 12 years ago

If the vendor doesnt have pricing on the website, they dont sell to people like you. They only sell to people with big money to spend, and you should buy from someone else.

If you are buying from someone like AR who _does_ have pricing on the website (https://www.appointmentreminder.org/pricing), then you must have a special requirement, and as such you should have the call or you're wasting his time and yours.

Generally when people tell you "it depends on what you need" they really do mean it depends on what you need. If you're going to run AR in a hospital for 1000 emergency surgeons, vs your run a 3 person beauty salon. If you're the former, patio11 sending you an email saying "it'll be $x/mo" is meaningless.

gingerlime4• 12 years ago

If you're going to run AR in a hospital for 1000 emergency surgeons, vs your run a 3 person beauty salon

As you state earlier, there's some kind of bracketing going that matches certain service providers (saas or otherwise) to businesses. A 3 person beauty salon won't buy Oracle, but a hospital with 1000 emergency surgeons* would. How can AR fit both audiences then? Even if at its core it's the same service, all the other "layers" make it a completely different business.

[*] are there any hospitals that big??

philfreo3• 12 years ago

Thanks for the Close.io (http://close.io/) shoutouts Patrick!

If anyone needs help doing similar Close.io API integrations, feel free to reach out at phil@close.io - would be happy to help.

gingerlime4• 12 years ago

OT, but I'm on holiday in Laos at the moment and can't open your page. Other links work fine, albeit slow. Are you blacklisting certain countries?

philfreo3• 12 years ago

Do you have a problem loading http://close.io or https://app.close.io/ or both? Shoot an email to support@close.io with details + your IP address please!

oviya1994• 12 years ago

We have actually built a system to automate our internal sales process (http://customertrialportal.com). It is ideal for software product trial management, sales followup and license issuance. If you are looking for one send us an email.

adwf• 12 years ago

This is one of the hidden gems within the article:

"Selling to your existing customers is orders of magnitude easier than selling to new customers. We’ve never really strictly enforced the quotas differentiating our tiers from each other, so I had poor visibility into how many people were over quota, but it turns out that it is almost 10% of the user base. I built out capability in our billing system to upgrade a user’s account without forcing them to log in and initiate it themselves. Then I built a screen in our admin dashboard which shows all the accounts that are over quota and links them to their contact details in the CRM."

How great is it for a customer to hear that they've gone over but it's OK? So many companies would put a sting in the tail of the contract and charge overages (frequently at nasty rates), or just suspend their account until it's upgraded. Instead it's being used as a perfect opportunity to upsell an existing, qualified - and therefore presumably very happy customer - on a bigger plan.

hglaser• 12 years ago

I get so much love from customers when I email them a few days ahead of the renewal and let them know that they're over quota, that I didn't want them to be surprised by the CC bill, and give them an opportunity to pare back down if they want to.

This is one of those areas where "being a good person" is a competitive advantage and drives lots of retention. Plus, after a couple months of this, they'll all upgrade anyway as paring down gets harder and more time-consuming.

patio115• 12 years ago

"being a good person" is a competitive advantage

I get so much mileage out of the phrase "Don't worry, we aren't the phone company" it is unreal. Sure, we have hard costs associated with providing services, but I'd rather loses a few bucks occasionally on an account than routinely bite the hands that feed me.

electromagnetic• 12 years ago

I think this is the better approach.

My Cell provider charges me overages, I can't upgrade to a better plan - there is none (honestly, how?) - so they charge me. The result? Last time my contract ended I changed provider.

If a customer is >X% over their limits, you should be selling them something better. If they don't want to upgrade their plan then it's time to start penalizing them for abusing the boundaries of the agreement.

If my cell provider had emailed me with "Your usage has been over your bandwidth limit by >5% we have Plan X for $$$ more that gives you XX% more bandwidth if you're interested, or overage charges will start being charged if plan overage continue."

Heck, I changed internet provider to one that offered sizeable bandwidth caps when I got Netflix, and I purposefully opt to pay extra for unlimited. I've only gone over their highest cap twice in two years, but I've often skirted near the limits. I'd rather pay a little more and be a happy customer, than be price gouged on overages.

toumhi• 12 years ago

Great stuff there Patrick. Also, I strongly recommend close.io newsletter for startup sales. Steli Efti is to startup sales what Patrick Mckenzie is to startup marketing.

A lot of the SaaS companies out there don't have a proper sales/marketing process in place. In particular regarding free trials, too many of them are doing only two things to interact with a user:

  1- when the user signs up, send a welcome email
  2- when the free trial expires, send a "free trial about to expire" email

And in between these 2 steps, crickets. The new user is left to figure out what to do on his own, and whether the product is even a good fit for him.

Any kind of process to move a user from "just signed up" to "paid customer" is better than no process. How do you move a user on that journey? By identifying the steps that a user has to go to realize the value of the product, and figuring out a way to move from one step to the other.

It can be automated (marketing) with lifecycle emails, in-app messages or with specific UX. It can be high-touch (sales) with a customer success/sales rep assisting the user to go to the next step.

Just don't leave the new users alone.

magsafe• 12 years ago

Since this discussion is about sales, I'd like to share a nifty little app for tracking sales that have already been made: http://www.bottomlinehq.com

JamesBarney• 12 years ago

The article mentioned "and S-1 filings of SaaS companies trying to IPO are, to many people, hilarious for this reason".

Being outside of start up circles I was curious why this was hilarious.

mikey_p• 12 years ago

Some recent S-1 filings have included numbers that show the company spending as much as two and half times their annual revenue on sales and marketing alone.

Some argue that this may demonstrates and unsustainable business model, while others would say it's just an early stage startup and that it'll correct itself.

MichaelGG• 12 years ago

Splunk's been public for quite a while and is the same way. In fact, even eliminating their entire R&D wouldn't result in them being profitable.

gingerlime4• 12 years ago

while I could probably have done something with Trello or a spreadsheet, those aren’t quite as scriptable as I’d like

Can't comment about close.io since it's inaccessible from where I'm at[0]. Trello is quite scriptable though and I've been using it with a couple of rough scripts to keep track of our own sales process. This was inspired by an interesting post called "A system for selling"[1] that I'd recommend reading and sounds similar to what Patrick was doing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8775958

[1] http://casjam.com/system-for-selling/

davidw• 12 years ago

my sales rep (who is very, very part-time)

Interesting. I'd definitely like to hear more about how this works.

Ask me if you’re curious about going into depth on that — I might write an essay about it in the new year.

Yeah! Anything that lets me figure out support and sales better would be extremely welcome. I'd be very grateful if you found the time to write about it.

inthewoods2• 12 years ago

Personally, I giggle when anyone says that SaaS has changed the way enterprise or b2b software is sold (as opposed to delivered where it has made big changes) - I've been in the business for a while and most deals still require sales people and cocktail hours. This is especially true as the price tag goes up - when you're selling $1m deals, it is just about always done on personal selling basis.

With the exception of Atlassian, most of the low/no-touch companies I've seen are pretty limited in scalability - I don't know many that have reached a $100m in sales without having a traditional sales team. As another example, Mixpanel, which would seem to have a low-touch approach, is building a huge sales team. Zendesk is interesting - but I know they've got salespeople because we just negotiated with them.

I should also differentiate between those that show prices on their website or not - many show pricing - although it is often generalized. Many show pricing up to a certain level and then you have to talk to a rep - Mixpanel goes up to $24k a year and then you have to talk to a rep.

Would love to see more examples other than Atlassian if anyone has them.

Systematizing Sales with Software and Processes

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