b2b saas - selling to enterprises part1: a roller coaster up & down the customer pyramid
DESCRIPTION
This first Part of the series "B2B SaaS - Selling to Enterprises" contains thoughts, observations and concepts related to the Selling of SaaS to Enterprises _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Unfortunately THE single "define it once - execute forever" type sales strategy when selling subscriptions does not exist. This document shows some execution examples about how to put a sustainable, longer term structure into a SaaS company's sales strategy. In most cases the customer target group is changing, or better expanding, over time. In other words, the ideal (or additional customer target group) can most likely be found on many levels of the customer profile pyramid. However before a start up SaaS company can define the customer target group (1-5 employees, i.e. "pro-sumer" type companies, versus Fortune 5000+ enterprises or somewhere in between), management needs to clearly define what the key selection criteria are, e.g. - is there enough VALUE for a specific target group? - can they PAY the anticipated subscription fee? - can this target group provide relevant product and market INPUT? - (see details in the full documents, link above) Once those criteria are defined, the next exercise is to slice the next 4 - 5 sales years into "digestible" phases. Once those phases are defined, the relevant selection criteria can be defined for each of the 3 to 4 phases. The outcome of this exercise will be a suggestion for the right customer target group within each single phase. Needless to mention that the ideas and examples in this document cannot meet every SaaS companies specific requirements. So please do not consider this document a blue print check list of how to build your sales strategy. The approach about how the get there may be similar for most companies, but you have to add your own specifics to make the concept work for YOU. If you have any further questions after you screened the attached article, please don't hesitate to contact me via LinkedIn or email.TRANSCRIPT
