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Ask HN: Top 3 tips Advice on selling enterprise SaaS

12 points by taphangum 16y ago

What are your top 3 tips on selling software to the enterprise? I'm launching a SaaS startup and need a little advice on how to approach big companies. Advice is appreciated. Cheers.

radu_floricica 16y ago
The best way so far would be to have (or seem to have) a generic version of the product, and let the clients find you. This is unfortunate for me because in practice most SaaS I make turns out being completely custom and rather expensive (for my corner of the world at least, somewhere between $100 - $600 per month). So the "generic" version, which I assume is what people usually think of when they say SaaS, tends to remain rather unused and gather dust.
seven 16y ago
Starting as well at the moment, I can tell you about my strategies and tips: * Find somebody who already did work with big companies. Make her your test customer. * I teamed up with an 'old' guy. He is an very experienced businessman and has already a sales infrastructure in some countries. I can focus on development. He makes sure that guys with ties run around and do the selling. * Prepare to shift from SaaS to shipping hardware. * Be sure that integration into existing infrastructure is painless. * Try to talk to the people who would use your software first. With that knowledge go to the person in power to purchase. * Sort through your friends list and check their companies. Some of my friends are currently calculating how much their boss would save if they could use my product. * Know your targets. Which person will do the decision? Who reports to and influences this person? (If you would want to sell something technical to my 'old' guy... I would be one of the filters you would go through.) Unfortunately my landing page is not ready yet. The plan is to divide the information into 'for business people' and 'for technical people'. Business guys will see how my products saves them money and helps them look good. I will put up some kind of animation to show some use cases. The technical people can read about the technical concept and how to do integration. As one of the keys in my product is easy integration, I have a ton of examples ready. Although coding is not necessary most of the times, I included some samples in different languages on how to extend the default package. Hope that helps a bit. Good luck and have fun.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- kirvyteo 16y ago
  I find your points interesting, especially "Prepare to shift from SaaS to shipping hardware". Can you elaborate on this? As in why and the situation that causes it? thanks
  - seven 16y ago
    Those few bigger companies that I have talked to, just do not like the idea of having their sensitive data or parts of their critical infrastructure in the hands of an other company or accessible via internet. I can perfectly understand that. In Germany for example some laws make it hard to outsource data processing especially if customer information is included. One example would be the fud about whether German websites can use 'google analytics' without breaking certain privacy laws. Some of my clients are based in third world countries. Although they have satellite based internet, the latency is annoying enough to want something local.
shafqat 16y ago
We've been successfully selling to medium-to-large businesses for a year now. 1) B2B sales is hard and takes a lot longer than in takes Get used to it now and be patient. 2) For us, only two metrics matter. MCRR (monthly committed recurring revenue) and cashflow. Focus obsessively on cashflow because it's easy to confuse booked sales with cashflow. Money comes in a lot later than you expect. 3) In an early stage startup, the CEO should be selling. A sales guy can't replace the passion and product knowledge that a CEO has. Just my opinions and lessons learned from the past year. Ping me anytime for specific advice.

12 points by taphangum 16y ago

What are your top 3 tips on selling software to the enterprise? I'm launching a SaaS startup and need a little advice on how to approach big companies. Advice is appreciated. Cheers.

radu_floricica 16y ago

The best way so far would be to have (or seem to have) a generic version of the product, and let the clients find you. This is unfortunate for me because in practice most SaaS I make turns out being completely custom and rather expensive (for my corner of the world at least, somewhere between $100 - $600 per month). So the "generic" version, which I assume is what people usually think of when they say SaaS, tends to remain rather unused and gather dust.

seven 16y ago

Starting as well at the moment, I can tell you about my strategies and tips: * Find somebody who already did work with big companies. Make her your test customer. * I teamed up with an 'old' guy. He is an very experienced businessman and has already a sales infrastructure in some countries. I can focus on development. He makes sure that guys with ties run around and do the selling. * Prepare to shift from SaaS to shipping hardware. * Be sure that integration into existing infrastructure is painless. * Try to talk to the people who would use your software first. With that knowledge go to the person in power to purchase. * Sort through your friends list and check their companies. Some of my friends are currently calculating how much their boss would save if they could use my product. * Know your targets. Which person will do the decision? Who reports to and influences this person? (If you would want to sell something technical to my 'old' guy... I would be one of the filters you would go through.) Unfortunately my landing page is not ready yet. The plan is to divide the information into 'for business people' and 'for technical people'. Business guys will see how my products saves them money and helps them look good. I will put up some kind of animation to show some use cases. The technical people can read about the technical concept and how to do integration. As one of the keys in my product is easy integration, I have a ton of examples ready. Although coding is not necessary most of the times, I included some samples in different languages on how to extend the default package. Hope that helps a bit. Good luck and have fun.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
kirvyteo 16y ago
I find your points interesting, especially "Prepare to shift from SaaS to shipping hardware". Can you elaborate on this? As in why and the situation that causes it? thanks
- seven 16y ago
  Those few bigger companies that I have talked to, just do not like the idea of having their sensitive data or parts of their critical infrastructure in the hands of an other company or accessible via internet. I can perfectly understand that. In Germany for example some laws make it hard to outsource data processing especially if customer information is included. One example would be the fud about whether German websites can use 'google analytics' without breaking certain privacy laws. Some of my clients are based in third world countries. Although they have satellite based internet, the latency is annoying enough to want something local.

shafqat 16y ago

We've been successfully selling to medium-to-large businesses for a year now. 1) B2B sales is hard and takes a lot longer than in takes Get used to it now and be patient. 2) For us, only two metrics matter. MCRR (monthly committed recurring revenue) and cashflow. Focus obsessively on cashflow because it's easy to confuse booked sales with cashflow. Money comes in a lot later than you expect. 3) In an early stage startup, the CEO should be selling. A sales guy can't replace the passion and product knowledge that a CEO has. Just my opinions and lessons learned from the past year. Ping me anytime for specific advice.