SaaS vendors habitually have a critical problem.
And it leads them to do unproductive things in their sales and marketing process.
We'll be looking at these timewasters and sales losers over the next few posts. Here's a surprise: the same issues plaguing the field in 2007 remain today. For now, though, let's concentrate on the seminal issue.
A lot of SaaS vendors built something nobody wants.
The founder thought it was a cool idea. They went ahead and dumped the few, precious resources they had into their "baby."
What's the issue? They made it in isolation.
Look at that list of SaaS sales problems from 2007:
- I don’t have enough leads
- My customers want to customize my application
- Getting new customers up and running is too long and hard
- My prospects aren’t Internet savvy
- My sales cycle is too slow and takes too much effort
- My prospects always seems to want that one thing we don’t have
- My prospects don’t have enough time or interest to talk to my sales staff.
These apply to ERP, accounting software and CRM tools as well, many of which are sold as SaaS solutions.
Why do you think these things happen? Does it sound like the SaaS solution matches up with the buyers' problem?
The Key Issue of Struggling SaaS Vendors
They didn't solve a problem a buyer said they'd pay to have fixed.
If you're one of the SaaS vendors, now you've got a real problem.
You've got a solution in search of a problem.
See, it's not what you say that gets people to buy. It's what they say.
Their problems. Their situations. Their specific language.
Yes, the terminology they use.
When you don't use the language your buyers use to describe the problematic situation they're in which your solution will get them out of, you miss your target.
What do SaaS vendors who don't know this do?
Run to features.
We'll be looking at this in more detail later, but nobody ever bought because of features.
That's why demos don't work.
Cranking Up the Number of Demos Is NOT the Right Solution for SaaS Vendors
Occasionally, if you run enough of them, a demo is going to accidentally match up a problem with your solution.
But this is an accident.
You won't really know why they buy.
And it's obviously incredibly inefficient.
SaaS vendors run into a couple business-killing issues when this happens:
1 - Not Invented Here syndrome, which makes them believe the only possible solution is to do more demos
2 - Burnout of tech staff forced to do unending demos and becoming increasingly frustrated with the results.
We'll look at each of these in greater detail in upcoming posts.
For now, though, if you're one of the crowd of struggling SaaS vendors, ask yourself...
"Did I build something buyers actually want enough to pay for?"