Selling an Apple MacBook Pro to a buyer whose budget is 1000 USD makes no sense. But selling it to a buyer whose only demand is a laptop specifically designed for graphic designers makes absolute sense.
Sales strategy is not about selling but buying. It’s about how the buyer interacts with a brand and a salesperson before making a purchasing decision.
Software sales is not tricky. Most sellers unintentionally complicate the situation by applying the wrong strategy at the wrong time.
For example, you can’t start talking about “Why does a buyer need your product?” with a customer planning to give you feedback after a Free Trial. We hope you aren’t making the same blunder!
Whether you commit these mistakes intentionally or unintentionally, there’s something you need to learn.
A few software sales strategies, specially in the B2B world, work well all the time. But a few don’t resonate with all customers. However, a few changes in all software industries give the same outcome.
Today, we won’t confuse you with multiple changes that need attention–just four key changes that can drive better sales results:
- Sell product features that the buyers want to use.
- Understand who is buying your product.
- Spend time where the buyer hangs out.
- Don’t respond, use sales data to respond.
So, let’s get started and transform your selling strategies a little bit.
Highly Recommended: Explore 7 unique B2B sales strategies.
But before going that way, we wanted to highlight a few interesting nuggets about customers that salespeople must consider when selling.
How are your prospects thinking?
- Customers are not looking for you. They don’t know you.
- They don’t believe you, so they perform their pre-requisite research before meeting you.
- Your products are not what they wanted. Hence customization is their way of showing tantrums.
- If the product is right, the price is wrong. Price is always high, which means they’ll negotiate.
- You can never be a lone contender. Customers will pit you against the competition to get the best offer from you.
- They may or may not give referrals, but discounts are expected.
- Some sales objections are intended to test you. Don’t take them all too seriously!
The above pointers are not created with the intention to intimidate you but make your sales strategy implementation more realistic. Reading this sets the context for what a seller is getting into.
We can get into the four software sales strategy changes for better results.
Four essential changes in the software sales strategy
1. Sell product features that the buyers want to use.
Imagine this, why do you purchase chocolate ice cream? Do you purchase it because it's cold, brown in color, and made of milk? No, right?
You purchase chocolate ice cream because it makes you feel cool on a hot summer day or quenches your sweet craving.
Don’t press your product features on your buyers. Trust us, 90 percent of customers perform product or service research before making a purchase decision.
This means that they know your product considerably well. The features may not be too alien to them.
At this stage, try to sell value and benefits. And attach those pieces of features to the sales pitch that support the value and benefits.
Another example is Convin’s software- Conversation intelligence, which makes it easier to focus during the sale meetings. Why? Because, with the help of the software, the sellers don’t need to worry about taking notes–it’s automatically performed by the software.
You see how one feature makes an impact and offers a benefit.
Recommended read: How to sell faster than the competition?
2. Understand who is buying your product.
Let’s say you are selling $200 worth of product vs. a $5000 worth of product. Do you think the decision-maker and approvers would be the same in both scenarios?
Certain high-ticket deals and expensive software products need the engagement of the CXO, while certain software purchase decisions can be handled at the VP level.
Customer experience expectations for every buyer persona vary depending on their KPIs.
Not to mention, the sales presentations also need to be tweaked so that every buyer persona can be handled.
3. Spend more time where your buyers hang out.
Imagine receiving plenty of emails from your favorite interior designer and barely any footprint on Instagram. Being an ardent Instagram follower, wouldn’t you be disappointed?
Unless you spend time at the right playground, you’ll hardly know your buyers. In fact, you’ll be targeting the wrong audience in some cases.
A buyer showcases their life and choices on the social media platforms like Linkedin.
Before setting off on a sales pitch meeting, social media platforms will give plenty of nuggets about them.
If nothing, you’ll at least have a few common topics to discuss, and the buyer would be impressed that they were researched(shows proactivity).
Lastly, do your research before engaging. Deep dive into each community and channel. Explore how your target audience uses every platform and where you can contribute.
At the end of the day, your aim should be to get noticed and engage with your audience.
4. Use sales data to react.
A confectionary selling shop owner doesn’t keep the shop closed on important days such as Thanksgiving, New years eve, and Christmas eve. In fact, learning from the previous year's sale, the shopkeeper plans the raw material and items to meet the insane festival demand.
Software sales can’t function without data. The majority of companies aren’t making the mistake of doing so, but sellers don’t exploit the sales analytics tools enough.
For example, sellers rely on email open rates as a parameter but turn a blind eye to call statistics like talk ratio, interactivity, etc.
Sales analytics and data should be a top priority of the company and the sellers.
Sellers should make more efforts to engage with prospects after referring to the sales data analyzed by the analytics tool.
Bonus Tip: Invest in your sellers and their happiness.
Wondering how on earth does that fit into software sales strategy?
Before attempting to write it, we too had second thoughts, but we realized…
Humans buy from humans, not robots.
Unless the sales team is motivated, valued, and appreciated, they’ll fail to make the customer feel the same.
Sadly, around 60% of sales reps feel undervalued and underappreciated in the business industry.
A small change that’s grown in popularity is how software sales companies can reward smaller success parameters. The incentive for smaller goals and successes will have a far better impact on the reps than expected.
Surprisingly, you’ll find them putting extra effort into winning bigger goals.
Achieving big business goals is impossible with a disgruntled team. Invest in your team as much as you invest in sales technology.
Speaking of which, have you invested in the right sales call technology for your sales team?
If not, there’s something exciting happening in the AI world. Go read about it!
Results first, payment later
This blog is just the start.
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