SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2021

“[You] have to get some sort of dollar commitment for pilots in Mid Market and Enterprise deals. ” and “Something we found really effective at CoursKey, and other vSaaS businesses will likely find as well: Instead of running pilots, sign a multi-year contract but give them an opt-out after 3-6 months. Jason, ed. :

Pricing 298

Pricing Scale Enterprise Onboarding 298

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

Only 42% of you find free pilots generally convert to Paid. Consistent with my experience that Free pilots only work for a subset of buyers, and where the vendor is really, really good at managing them. I’m actually surprised even this many folks say free pilots work for them. #3. Otherwise, there is no engagement.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

So, how do you train and onboard new employees and make them productive? By having AI as the onboarding and training co-pilot. Lean into the AI co-pilot. Then, you, as the human, can enhance and further personalize and enable the sales engineer to become much more productive.

AI 238

AI Scale Generative AI Sales Hiring 238

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

You cannot force Fortune 500 companies to buy six and seven figure deals in the same way SMBs buy a $10/month product. Four, and importantly — don’t fear the Paid Pilot / Paid Trial / Paid POC (Proof of Concept). Once for the pilot, and again in just a few months for the longer-term deal. So get zen about pilots.

Scale 345

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Pricing 345

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

They see every SaaS product starting as a hack, no matter who builds it. They know they getting anyone to buy Yet Another SaaS product means something. They believe a strong team can literally will revenue into existence as long as there is the most basic product-market fit. Pilots-Don’t-Count Risk. They want that.

Scale 343

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 343

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2021

Nicole Culver, Director of Product Marketing, SaaS @Bandwidth. Jen Taylor, SVP, Chief Product Officer @Cloudflare. Waseem Daher, CEO @ Pilot. Chloe Stewart, CRO @ Pilot. Kazuki Ota, CEO @Treasure Data. Aaron Levie, CEO @Box. Chris Cabrera, Founder and CEO @ Xactly. Alex Rosemblat, CMO @ Datadog. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired.

VP of Engineering 284

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

AI is typically divided into three buckets: Infrastructure Co-pilots Pre-AI SaaS Infrastructure — Infrastructure will be owned by big tech companies and paced for a big M&A exit. Co-pilots — Co-pilots are where startups and founders can do new things that big companies won’t go after.

SaaS Payments 227

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions AI SaaS 227

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2021

Q: Can SaaS free pilots and trials periods count towards gross revenue then deducted as a marketing expense? First, if you really want to do this — i.e., net a pilot against marketing expense — then you do have to still charge for it. The post No, Free Pilots and Free Trials Aren’t Revenue. Second, it’s misleading.

Revenue 273

Revenue Metrics Scaling Software 273

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What are some benefits you can add to get people to buy a product besides discounts and add-ons? Buying a product is just Step 1, at best. Help make sure any pilot or test usage truly goes well. Get and find out honest answers to questions and make sure potential product limitations are addressed.

Sales 272

Sales 272

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2021

They help you figure out the best ways to use the product. How to do a pilot. Know the product cold. The best SaaS sales reps are mini-solution architects. Who to socialize it with, and where to get buy-in. You’d be surprised how many sales reps don’t. Create urgency. This is hard.

Sales 342

Sales SaaS 342

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2020

If you have a product that (x) uniquely, or in a importantly superior, fashion (y) solves a real, large painful problem for a Big Co … they will buy from a start-up. Write very high-value blog posts. A bit more here: Corporate Blogs Always Work. Minimize risk by encouraging pilots and small deployments to start.

Startup 254

Startup Business Technical Review Enterprise 254

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2021

Buyer might buy many products this year. Often real work to do a pilot, get product into production. Often the only significant product that buyer will buy that year. Success of product roll-out often tied to buyer’s career success. She helps design the pilot. Buyer is often the only decision-maker.

Sales 262

Sales Enterprise Pricing Data 262

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Pilot’s leading team of US-based experts, supported by elegant software, delivers world-class bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services trusted by growing businesses like yours. Let Pilot focus on your financials, so you can focus on your business. Welcome to Payfac-as-a-service. appeared first on SaaStr.

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Payment Services PayFac as a Service Payfac 217

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

So we’ve had a ton of great conversations over the years on SaaStr on when and how to go multi-product. Answers from the CEOs of Twilio, Veeva, Amplitude, HubSpot, Gainsight and More I wanted though to do a deep dive on just one piece — a few thoughts how to sell that second product. An AI co-pilot to an existing product?

Scale 221

Scale New CTO CTO AI 221

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2022

Show me a product I want to invest in — I’m in. Claiming pilots, unpaid users, and anything similar are “customers ”. Be clear what is a pilot, what is paid, and what isn’t. Metrics, team, product, financial goals. But if it isn’t … what do you do when it doesn’t? Asking for coffee to “share notes”.

Consulting 299

Consulting Investment Cloud Data 299

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2023

They are great at explaining not just what the product does, but what it can do to solve your problems. Done wrong, it just devalues the product and/or leaves you with less revenue than you’d otherwise have. The better you know the competition’s products, the better you can clearly show a prospect where you win. It’s not easy.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Revenue SaaS 248

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

They help you : They educate you on the product. They help you pilot / test the product first, in a way that drives things forward without too much pressure. Q: Why do customers hate salespeople? Disalignment. A truly great salesperson is a resource. They honestly answer your questions.

Education 295

Education Enterprise Pricing Sales 295

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2020

Well, if you’re closing even deal you are, you’re not been invited to the deals where your product has competition. The product just isn’t there.” The usage was low during the pilot.” But couldn’t you have helped more, so the pilot went better? Where it has gaps. Too expensive for them.” Sometimes it is true.

Sales 258

Sales Onboarding Enterprise Software 258

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2020

So they may have a worse experience than if you did a carefully planning Pilot. Many likely would prefer a carefully planned Pilot, run by a human — free or paid. Many likely would prefer a carefully planned Pilot, run by a human — free or paid. The products we love and admire the most have Free Trials and Free Editions.

Onboarding 239

Onboarding Enterprise Branding B2B 239

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2022

What really moves the needle in in sales is very similar companies using, and loving, your product. Multiple unpaid pilots. This is why once you have 1 leader in a space, you should run the tables in that segment. Have 33% of the leaders in a space, they all find you. Have 60%+ of the leaders in one segment, the rest are yours to lose.

Sales 234

Sales Revenue 234

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2023

A few objections reps think they can overcome … that they can’t: We literally do not need this product now. I need to start with a pilot. But sometimes, a 15 month deal for price of 12, or an agreement to not start billing until the product is rolled out can really help get a deal signed now vs. later. Priorities do change.

Sales 207

Sales compliance Enterprise Pricing 207

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Business leaders don’t have the advantage of building on the knowledge people already have about a product, and they’re not coming in with an alternative to something already in existence. . And then, they handed companies a compelling and easy-to-use product that quickly became a staple in the tech stack of tech companies. .

Sales Hiring 224

Sales Hiring Sales Compensation Branding 224

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2019

They check out your blog. Then, sales’ job, the account executive, is to help them understand why an initial decision they’ve already made— to maybe buy your product — is the right one. That claim the product does things it doesn’t. They talk to their peers. Salespeople in 2019 that employ high pressure, rip-off tactics.

Enterprise 172

Enterprise B2B Sales SMB 172

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2021

The discovery calls, the demos, even a tiny pilot. Switch to your own product from the competition for real. And then create a checklist and have product own it, and work through it in the New Year. Even if your app is “better” than the existing vendor a prospect is using, it’s too much work to switch. It’s just not worth it.

Innovation 262

Innovation Investment Data SaaS 262

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2020

Show me a product I want to invest in — I’m in. Claiming pilots, unpaid users, and anything similar are “customers ”. Be clear what is a pilot, what is paid, and what isn’t. Metrics, team, product, financial goals. Winners always find a way to win. No matter how hard it is. Asking for coffee to “share notes”. They aren’t.

Consulting 335

Consulting Investment Cloud Data 335

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2020

Your product continually gets better. Pilots are fine & even encouraged. If you need a pilot to get comfortable, you get one. If your product benefits from professional services, having a truly A+ team really helps. A named Customer Support Manager they can talk to. Not just bots, not just automation, or tickets.

Pricing 239

Pricing Engineering Churn Customer Support 239

Panintelligence

APRIL 3, 2024

In a recent webinar with industry experts, we uncovered four key steps to successfully leveraging AI—which we'll dive into in this blog post. Hold user groups and forums to find out what they would like to see change, things they’re trying to achieve, and how it needs to work for their product. Prefer to listen? Keen to get started?

AI 59

AI CTO Coach Scale Cybersecurity 59

SaaStr

APRIL 11, 2021

In my first start-up (and really my second, too, but most importantly the first time) I shipped product way too early to a Very, Very Large Key Prospect / Customer. But if you aren’t sure you can ship an enterprise-grade product to the Fortune 100 — maybe don’t until you are sure. Just way, way too early to meet the customer’s needs.

Technical Review 237

Technical Review Sales Enterprise Pricing 237

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

The premise is that big companies ride the iterative disruptive wave and get so big that they have to sell big products for big profits. Take another three years to test the next market or product and get to $50M. Jeff Bezos Didn’t Set Out To Sell Books Jeff Bezos didn’t set out to be a book salesman, but that was the first product.

AI 269

AI Technical Review Startup Management 269

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2020

That means after all the time and money put into building your product, marketing your product, trialing your product, demo’ing your product, selling your product, closing the deal, celebrating … and then … a ton of those customers are immediately at risk. Think about that.

Churn 286

Churn B2C Metrics B2B 286

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Q: What factors that make it difficult for a salesperson to sell a new product to a customer who has been buying a competing product for many years? Why their product is so great (why do I care?). We’ll install it, tweak it, and even let you do a totally risk-free pilot for 90 days if that helps.”. Not really.

Pricing 283

Pricing Sales Software SaaS 283

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2020

In the last year we’ve been leveling up a lot of our systems at SaaStr, and as part of that, moving from a lot of self-service and simple products to more robust ones. According to research from Talkdesk, the average company deploys more than 50 SaaS products. Such is the way as you grow. We’ve all learned to buy SaaS. Fast and easy.

Construction 330

Construction Pricing Software SaaS 330

Blulogix

MARCH 15, 2024

Pilot and Iterate: Implement automation in stages, starting with areas that promise quick wins. Implementing End-to-End Automation Achieving comprehensive automation requires a strategic approach: Assess and Map Current Processes: Identify all subscription management processes and pinpoint areas where automation can bring the most benefit.

Payment Features 59

Payment Features Payment Services Subscription Payments 59

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2021

Not being able to do a free trial, or even really try out a product first. A salesperson discouraging a pilot, even when one is possible. Freemium tried to revolutionize how we buy and try software, but that’s not a model that works for most solution-oriented products that require more evaluation and business-process change.

SaaS 279

SaaS Pricing Software Churn 279

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2023

It’s possible to have high growth if you have a solid product and aspire to be profitable within a reasonably short time frame. Strategy #1: Iterate Using Real User Feedback Make it a habit to iterate on your product using real user feedback. It’s pretty obvious that your biggest ally is your product. It’s your biggest asset.

Outsourcing Services 252

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 252

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2021

Even if they don’t always have the most current state-of-the art products. If your product is in a brand-new category, then maybe it’s not a lot of work to rip out an old system. Can you get it done during a pilot, so it’s less risky? Can you get it done automatically, even, before the pilot?

Scale 142

Scale Cloud Enterprise Onboarding 142

Blulogix

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

How to Harness the Power of Digital Market Dynamics for Product Innovation By BluLogix Team Innovating Subscription Offerings in the Agile Digital Landscape The digital marketplace is an ever-evolving ecosystem, characterized by rapid changes in technology, consumer behavior, and competitive landscapes.

Innovation 52

Innovation Marketplace as a Service Tiered subscription models AI Search 52