All SaaS company owners and managers will have either a) already seen the problems the economy can cause and the impact it can have on their business, or b) be anticipating any potential issues on the horizon.
In a tough economic climate, SaaS business leaders want to do what they can to proactively avoid a decline in sales, and to do so, communication needs to be clear with your GTM team. Buyers are more reluctant to make purchasing decisions when the economy is unstable, but there are various ways to ensure your business doesn’t suffer too much.
Here, we look at the best way to continue closing deals in a tough economic climate.
PROVIDE FURTHER OR ADDITIONAL SALES TRAINING
No matter how long your employees have worked for you, there is always a valuable piece of information they could learn, a skill they could improve on, or a process they hadn’t used yet. Providing your sales team with regular training will not only refresh their memories in regards to closing deals, but it’ll also give them the boost of motivation they need when closing deals might be tougher than usual.
Your best option would be to analyse your numbers prior to training sessions to see what needs to be improved - and we aren’t referring to your sales figures. Take a deep dive into your data and see where gaps can be closed. For example:
Are your salespeople making enough contact with leads via email or telephone?
Are they following up with people who wanted a period of time to decide on a purchase?
Is there an alternative product your salespeople could offer buyers who are unsure?
Is there any flexibility on pricing for startups businesses wanting to buy your software?
Do your salespeople know how many leads are coming through from marketing each week?
Are all your platforms and tools efficient and user friendly?
By answering these questions ahead of, or during, training sessions, you’ll be able to tailor training per team or even per employee.
OFFER YOUR GTM TEAM REGULAR SALES COACHING SESSIONS
How often do your sales managers provide your sales employees with robust, motivational, informative sales coaching sessions? Along with a sales enablement strategy, sales coaching is one of the most important factors to increase your sales, or at least avoid a decline in sales during an economic downturn.
According to Korn Ferry, sales coaching has an incredible impact on sales success, including:
+32.1% win rates
+27.9% salespeople make quota
-29.0% voluntary turnover
+8.3% revenue attainment
2x more seller engagement
If your sales managers are yet to provide coaching sessions for their team, invest in training for them, first and foremost. Despite knowing how to close deals themselves, it is a completely different skill being able to pass the baton to team members and enable them to make as many sales as possible. Sales coaching is invaluable to all SaaS businesses; reinforcing skills to keep teams motivated and increasing sales is on a par with teaching new sales skills from scratch.
SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS
One missed opportunity SaaS companies are facing when wanting to close more deals is solving problems for customers when they have volunteered the information to your salespeople. It may take some project management and software development time on your end, but the long-term value in solving problems for your customers is far greater than the investment you make to create the solutions.
For example, if your software offers everything a potential customer needs, apart from one thing - say a built-in calendar and daily schedule - this could result in your customer either not buying your product at all, or buying yours along with someone else’s. If your salespeople provide regular feedback directly from customers to their managers and/or the development team, this could help them to close many more deals in the future.
Provide incentives for all sales employeesOffering incentives, or compensation on top of existing salaries and bonuses, doesn’t always immediately jump out to business leaders who are keeping an eye on their budget. However, in the grand scheme of things, there will be no budget without your sales staff selling your product - so if incentives are the best way to motivate them to make as many sales as possible, it’s an investment worth making.
Don’t simply offer all salespeople the incentives based on one specific target - decide how to do so based on what your data is telling you, as well as what your employees are asking for. If they would benefit from an additional day’s holiday per quarter if they exceeded a certain target, weigh it up and see if the financial gain for the business is worth an additional day’s annual leave for your employee.
STRIVE CAN HELP YOU DEVELOP A BEST-IN-CLASS GTM TEAM FOR YOUR SAAS COMPANY
Here at Strive, we source top tier sales talent for scaling and hypergrowth tech companies. To learn more about how we can help your business scale, contact our team on 0203 983 0770 or email hello@scalewithstrive.com.
