A new breed of B2B sales representatives are laying kinder foundations and closing more deals. Here’s how they’re creating a top-notch buying experience.
Over the last few years, SaaS companies have collectively pivoted to the concept of “creating value,” which is a shorter but more marketable way of saying “helping our customers.” For sales, part of that pivot has been making revenue a byproduct of their approach rather than its primary objective.
It might sound counterintuitive, but it makes sense if you think about it.
Who are you more likely to buy a pair of shoes from: A pushy salesperson who recommends leather boots even though you live in a hot climate, or a friendly one who asks about your needs and recommends a pair that keeps your feet comfortable and ventilated?
As with selling shoes, there are more and less effective ways to engage in SaaS prospecting. Below, we’ll cover a few of the best tips for SaaS prospecting to help you level up your game.
SaaS prospecting is the process of identifying and connecting with potential customers for your SaaS company and working to turn them into buyers. The goal of SaaS prospecting is more than just closing a sale – it’s beginning relationships with prospects that will hopefully lead to recurring revenue.
What is a typical SaaS sales process?
The typical SaaS sales process involves finding potential customers, reaching out via cold sales prospecting techniques, and strategically communicating to qualify and convert those leads.
How are SaaS sales prospecting techniques changing?
In SaaS sales, several factors have made old-school techniques unviable:
People get too many pitches: There’s no way buyers can field every call and reply to every email, so they’re prioritizing only what’s most important to them. As a result, they’re setting the pace of sales cycles and the tone of conversations.
Communication ethics are changing: Privacy and boundaries are paramount in our digital world. Bombarding prospects is a one-way ticket to their spam folder. You can’t rush, trick, or bully your way to meeting quota.
Revenue teams got hooked on automation:Marketing automation isn’t bad, but it has been used in some questionable ways. ‘Set it and forget it’ drip campaigns are one example of how sales development sometimes forgets that they sell to people.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way around these challenges. A buyer-centric approach to business development puts conversation ahead of pitches, prioritizes support and education over the hard sell, and rewards a willingness to walk away from prospects who might not benefit from what you’re offering.
DOWNLOAD
Want to learn from the masters?
The Sell to Win Playbook collects 55 of the best expert sales tips we’ve ever published. Download it today!
Customers are, and always will be king, queen, and viceroy in any business. Modern sales development reps know that and start by understanding their buyers at a visceral level, such as the psychology behind how they make decisions.
Then they discard dated prospecting tactics such as buying lead lists that probably didn’t consent to their data being sold; bombarding inboxes with dry, impersonal, 12-step sequences; and using language rooted in guilt, aggression, fear, and pressure.
If you really want to book meetings that stand a high chance of closing, try some of these other SaaS sales prospecting techniques and tactics:
1. Do personalization the right way
Treat every prospect like an individual. Find out what challenges they’re likeliest to be concerned about, and connect the dots between that and what you can offer. No one opened an email because of that {Fname} tag.
DOWNLOAD
Need to Warm Up Your Cold Outreach?
Follow this step-by-step outbound campaign template to get on your contacts’ radars before you start dialing.
Use these 7 pattern interrupts to surprise prospects. Most B2B and SaaS sales pitches are cold, selfish, and follow a very predictable script. Pattern interrupts change the flow, disarming people and allowing them to feel less defensive.
3. Minimize the weight of your ask
Winning someone’s attention isn’t easy. Don’t ruin a good result from your first touch by pushing a 30-minute demo. Gauging whether there’s further interest is more likely to keep the conversation open.
4. Take advantage of automation – but write high-quality copy
B2B (and especially SaaS) sales reps will find that today’s buyers can spot impersonal automation from a mile away. The only solution is to get so good at writing that people have to notice you. According to Will Allred, co-founder of AI email assistant Lavender, a big reason writing is necessary is because sales reps are “being asked to be more and more.”
“They need to be experts in their field; they need to be social media influencers; they need to be prospecting on top of it all. Reps need to be able to take complex ideas (research about prospects, market trends, etc.) and articulate clear logic. Writing is the best practice for honing that skill. Practice putting thoughts down on paper. Do it in public. Do it in private. Do it.”
5. Align your team’s goals with company goals
Understanding your prospect’s priorities and how you can support them is important, but you also need to know your role as part of a larger revenue team. People are complex creatures and rarely make decisions on logic alone, and if they sense that something’s off, it probably won’t matter how great your offer is.
Great salespeople often talk about the rush of closing a deal where the stars aligned, but not all opportunities are equal. Being willing to walk away from potential deals that don’t serve both you and your prospect takes courage, but it can be incredibly freeing when you no longer see every interaction as simply another opportunity to get closer to your quota.
Source: Dale Dupree via LinkedIn
7. Be coachable
While modern sales reps need to adapt to the current market, there will always be more changes. The ability to mold yourself to suit what buyers of the day want is paramount.
Marianna Atrash from Chili Piper’s sales development team says, “The sales development world is constantly evolving, especially with technology advancements that leave people with smaller attention spans than ever before. We used to get minutes of people’s time and now we’re lucky if we get a full 30 seconds! Modern SaaS prospecting demands that you adapt quickly to any changes, but also be prepared to constantly learn. There is a basic formula to sales, of course, but a person should never stop learning about best or newest practices in their field.”
8. Increase your focus
With so much software being built for every part of the sales process, it’s not uncommon to fall for shiny object syndrome and lose focus of what truly matters: people, product, and the connection between the two. Great sales reps know what to prioritize so that they meet their goals.
According to Saad Khan, a business development manager at Dooly, “There’s a new selling tactic and methodology every day. If you choose to master those, then it’s a race against the clock to burn out. Modern [sales reps] are mastering frameworks—choosing to talk relevance and problem-oriented questions rather than purely focusing on personalization. These problems have business-wide relevance and messaging that can be sent at scale.”
Knowledge and ability are fundamental, but the right sales prospecting tools can reduce the time and effort needed to reach the next level. Here are some tools (mostly) outside the unicorn club that can improve your prospecting and apply your skills at scale.
ProspectorIQ is Nutshell’s native prospecting tool that allows you to find your ideal prospects and automatically add them to your CRM contacts. Not only does this make prospecting much simpler, but your sales process can go much more smoothly. You can add newly-created contacts to your CRM sales pipelines and start the sales process ASAP – no need for time-wasting manual data entry.
Sales Navigator is a classic for finding prospective accounts and people in your target market. Its real value shines in today’s market where remote work and competition for talent play significant roles. Because it’s tied to LinkedIn, it’s easy to avoid situations like two reps from the same company (owning separate geographies) contacting different people on the same team.
Klue’s competitive intelligence offering lets sales development teams build better battlecards and prospecting playbooks. When you build those on top of cohorts of prospects that share similar challenges, your team will be able to personalize at scale.
Lavender is an AI email assistant that uses data from real sales rep outreach to help you write emails that are more likely to get you the meetings you want. Lavender covers length, tone, readability, responsiveness, and many other aspects of email that alternatives neglect.
Nutshell’s no-frills, no-stress sales CRM is great for businesses that do things their way—especially if their way involves making sure their prospects and customers always have a fantastic experience. Of note are the collaboration features that let you deliver great handoffs between sales development and account executives.
Fireflies offers AI call transcription that lets you create a CRM-based library of sales intelligence. Search for keywords and phrases across calls, demos, and other interactions. Make coaching and handovers easier by highlighting key information.
Find your ideal customer from your CRM
Connect with your future buyers and spend less time doing it!
Define your ideal customer and ProspectorIQ does the heavy lifting, so you can add new contacts to your CRM and start making more sales!
Take your new SaaS sales prospecting techniques for a test drive
Sales development is a job that never ends, but finding your sweet spot—for the benefit of both your business and your own career—takes time. These last two recommendations are a great place for any sales representative to get started.
First, remember to link up with your account executives, both to make sure your messaging is consistent and to have a plan to contend with the increased volume your new approach is likely to deliver.
Second, be sure to warm up your prospects before contacting them. Put yourself on their radar first to reduce the friction of introducing your product, and go straight to how you can help.
Save yourself the hassle of third-party B2B prospecting and begin your search from within your CRM! ProspectorIQ (one-third of Nutshell IQ, our comprehensive lead generation suite) streamlines the prospecting process by letting you find your ideal buyer from a database of 200 million people and companies. Filter your search to get refined results based on job title, industry, company size, and more.
Pair ProspectorIQ with other tools like sales automation and Email Marketing to connect seamlessly and get your message in front of more people.
Want to warm up our cold prospects? Use a winning campaign outline that hundreds of revenue teams have run together. And be safe carrying all those commission checks to the bank.
