What are the biggest mistakes that B2B SaaS Startups Make in Sales?
As a B2B SaaS startup, you probably know how difficult sales can be.
A business has a lot of moving parts, and if one of them doesn’t work properly, it can be disastrous.
To help you avoid making these mistakes and make your business successful, we’ve compiled this list of B2B SaaS startup sales mistakes.
What are the biggest mistakes that B2B SaaS startups make in sales?
1. Hire a bunch of closers when there is no pipeline
Experience AEs spend all of their time trying to get a meeting when there is no pipeline for B2B SaaS startups, their pitches are bad because they haven’t practiced them enough, and after a few months, they get frustrated and leave. That’s what happens when you hire a bunch of closers when there is no pipeline for B2B SaaS startups.
Without a solid foundation of leads and prospects to work with, the reps cannot reach their full potential, resulting in a decrease in revenue and inefficient use of resources. In addition, a lack of sales opportunities can result in the startup missing its sales quota, which can severely harm morale and motivation.
2. Hire AE and SDR hybrids
As a B2B SaaS startup, it is important to hire hybrid sales and marketing roles because these roles enable you to nurture relationships with your customers.
Your business cannot identify and acquire the right customers without the right sales and marketing team in place. By hiring hybrid roles, the marketing and sales teams can collaborate closely and develop an effective strategy that will increase customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.
In addition to focusing on customer-centric strategies more quickly and effectively, hybrid sales and marketing roles allow SaaS startups to identify target markets. By providing a seamless customer experience that increases revenue, they are able to identify target markets, create relevant content, and create relevant messaging.
Moreover, these hybrid roles can help startups build relationships with existing customers and maximize revenue growth by focusing on customer retention.
B2B SaaS startups need hybrid sales and marketing positions to build sustainable businesses. They are capable of identifying the right customers, developing a customer-centric strategy, and increasing customer retention and long-term revenue.
3. Establish a quota way too high
If your quota for B2B SaaS startups is too high, you risk them becoming quickly disengaged and unmotivated.
Having unrealistic quotas can result in sales representatives becoming overwhelmed and unable to reach them, which can lead to burnout and decreased performance.
A decrease in sales and loss of revenue can result from a low morale and a lack of trust in the management team. Moreover, this can lead to high turnover rates, as sales staff might look for other opportunities where they are rewarded for their efforts and actually hit their targets.
Last but not least, unrealistic quotas can lead to a loss of credibility, as customers may begin to doubt the quality and effectiveness of products or services.
4. Having no formal onboarding or training
In order to ensure that customers are able to effectively use B2B SaaS products, formal onboarding, and training are essential.
A customer onboarding process is crucial to customer retention, as a disinterested customer will eventually churn if they cannot use the product or service. It is possible for SaaS businesses to ensure that their customers understand the value of their product and are able to effectively use it by providing a simple onboarding process.
You can do this by creating a simple sign-up process, designing an onboarding process, sending an email as part of the welcome process, providing product walkthroughs, setting in-app messaging settings, and providing a resolution process for tickets.
In addition, entrepreneurs should ensure that they thoroughly qualify their prospects at the beginning of the sales process so as to avoid wasting resources on customers who will not sign a contract and instead focus on more promising prospects.
Furthermore, entrepreneurs need to remember that they can develop a SaaS startup without technical expertise as long as they gather the right team and keep learning about their business’ technical aspects. As a result, formal onboarding and training are essential for B2B SaaS startups because they ensure that customers are able to understand and use their products effectively.
5. No Appointment Setting Process
The appointment-setting process is one of the most important steps for B2B SaaS startups, as it is the first point of contact between the company and potential customers.
It is important to be able to qualify prospects thoroughly in order to determine who has the highest chance of signing a contract and investing resources in them. Without setting clear goals and expectations in the appointment-setting process, founders can waste valuable resources on customers who are unlikely to become customers.
As such, the appointment-setting process should be approached with clarity and intention. Founders should define the ideal candidate, define the role accurately, and provide clear expectations.
In addition, they should find the right sources to search for top talent, as the cream sales talent is rarely actively searching for jobs. Lastly, they should focus on acquiring A-players that can commit to their vision and mission, as this will help them in achieving 10x growth.
6. Have SDRs acting as the “executive assistants” of field reps
Having SDRs act as the “executive assistants” of field reps can help B2B SaaS startups with sales by providing valuable insights into their target markets, testing new messaging, and creating a well-qualified pipeline of leads.
By leveraging their SDR teams to gain a better understanding of their prospects and customers, B2B SaaS startups can refine their product-market fit and create a repeatable lead generation and qualification process that can be used to guide their sales success.
Additionally, SDRs can provide field reps with valuable insights into the market and help them craft more effective pitches and close more deals. Finally, having a formal onboarding and training program for new reps can help reduce their ramp time, enabling the sales team to get up and running quickly.
7. Poor Customer Engagement
Poor customer engagement is when customers do not feel connected to a business, resulting in a lack of trust and loyalty.
This can be caused by a lack of communication, not responding to customer complaints, or not providing a satisfactory customer experience. For B2B SaaS startups, poor customer engagement can have devastating consequences.
It can lead to fewer customers and a decrease in sales, as well as a decrease in customer loyalty and trust. Furthermore, it can lead to bad press, which can further damage the reputation of the business.
To avoid these consequences, B2B SaaS startups should strive to provide consistent and high-quality customer service, respond quickly to customer queries and complaints, and create a positive customer experience.
8. Have a messy sales funnel
A messy sales funnel is a common problem for B2B SaaS startups, and is caused by a lack of structure and processes in the sales process.
This leads to inefficient use of resources, longer sales cycles, and a higher customer churn rate. When there is a messy sales funnel, sales reps often don’t have a clear view of where they are in the sales process and are less likely to close deals.
This can also lead to sales slippage, where the deal never actually closes, or the customer is not adequately serviced and leaves unsatisfied with the product.
To avoid having a messy sales funnel, B2B SaaS startups should focus on staying organized and avoiding common sales mistakes. These mistakes can include adding territories too early, hiring a bunch of AEs when there is no pipeline, hiring AE and SDR hybrids, setting quotas too high, neglecting onboarding and training, and having SDRs act as executive assistants for field reps.
By staying organized and avoiding these mistakes, SaaS startups will be able to create a well-structured sales process that is more efficient and leads to more successful outcomes.
9. Not automating mindless tasks
One example of a mindless task that B2B SaaS startups should not automate is manually entering data into a spreadsheet for a content calendar.
Doing this manually can be time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated when a tool like CoSchedule can be used instead. This tool can help streamline the process and reduce the time required for content creation.
Another task that should not be automated is manually creating infographics. While this may be tempting to do from scratch, it’s a more efficient use of time to use a tool like Canva to quickly create high-quality infographics. Canva saves you the time it takes to design and fine-tune a graphic and still produce a great-looking result.
Finally, B2B SaaS startups should not automate their keyword research for SEO. While it can be tempting to use a tool like Google Adwords to quickly generate a list of relevant keywords, this can often produce a list of generic terms that have already been overused.
It’s better to use a free keyword research template or other free resources like Appsumo to find more unique and specific keywords that will improve your search engine optimization.
