Success is about culture, execution, and the ability to sell value. Everyone in your company must view the relationship with your customers as a perpetual one. From a SaaS perspective, you should expect customers to engage with your company before the initial sale and long after. For you to be able to deliver value after the initial sale, your clients must know your company will be able to address their long-term needs.
Creating a culture of customer centricity.
Success in a SaaS model is based on months, not years. It requires exceptional leadership, a customer-centric culture, and a logical, measurable, and repeatable sales process that’s flawlessly executed. You’ll also need an organization that’s aligned and committed to winning new business, maintaining the highest degree of customer satisfaction, and continuously adding value.
Customers need to be comforted and know that your company is capable of and committed to addressing their future needs. Therefore, it’s vital that your company be viewed as a thought leader in the marketplace, and the content your marketing team produces must be relevant to your customers’ prolonged needs. Continue to add value and you should have a customer for life.
Due to their proximity to the market, salespeople can offer valuable insights into buyer needs and establish how your solutions can address them. Many of my clients regularly host sales and marketing meetings to discuss go-to-market strategies, typical client issues, and the content that would be most relevant.
Centralizing communications via a dedicated workgroup communication tool will allow everyone to see how marketing is planning to engage prospective buyers.
The 4 keys to keeping customers for life.
- Leadership: Leading a sales and marketing organization is much different than managing one because leadership is all about people. You can only lead people—people in sales, account management, and marketing that have been inspired by your vision and your ability to effectively communicate it. Work with them, teach them, and coach them. Enable them to participate in designing and building your vision and your processes. If you do, they will not let you down.
- Culture: Remember that your long-term success, especially in the SaaS model, will be dependent on your customers’ success. Winning must be mutual and based on creating value. This means that you first must understand what the customer is trying to achieve, identify their issues, and then work together on solutions that address them. Creating a culture based on offering continuous value will drive organic growth.
- Execution: The ability to execute the phases in any sales process demands that you provide consistent coaching, identify areas requiring remediation, and collaborate on strategy and tactics to produce a win-win result. Remember that you’re changing behavior from the old ways of selling to a customer-centric approach, and this necessitates practice and repetition.
- Alignment: Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin and must be viewed as a unified process in which strategy and tactics are aligned within the company. Alignment around a shared vision and constant communication among your marketing, sales, and account management teams is critical to success and to overcoming challenges.
There is an old saying: “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Winning at SaaS will prepare your go-to-market professionals to meet their opportunities with confidence.
Learn more about generating revenue and profitability in a SaaS business by scheduling a consultation with Steve with the form below.
