I’ve been conducting sales with Pilvi for the past half a year now, and everything has gone pretty well. The basis being, we have found a Product/Market fit, and the extent and content of our message has resonated fairly well for many SaaS companies. However, there has been some sluggishness out of the gates.
I’ll attempt to keep this piece positive, but I need to raise an issue come across all too often, time or the lack thereof. Being too busy to do everything but the things that would help make you less busy. Being too busy walking, and having no time to buy a bike.
People tend to have many different things keeping themselves busy in their personal lives, and that is not something I am getting into. I am focusing on the matter in a business development sense. So when you are in too much of a hurry to do it all, you have no time to do what really helps the business in an ever-changing world, which results in sluggish growth.
“We are currently so busy selling in the field, (…that we have no time to think about online sales automation.)”
A bike is an investment of course, one that costs money, while your feet are free. And the wear and tear on your shoes only gets noticed once you feel that stabbing pain in your heel.
Change is scary — but e-Commerce of services is already here!
Trade in services (Software, SaaS, IoT) is nearing a big breakthrough. It is the second phase of e-Commerce, web-shops for services. And again just as was the case 20 years ago, when we attempted to bring webshops to chains (“No One buys clothes online, they need to be tried on.”), they are not interested in investing in webshops. There seem to always be grounds for reasoning that the world will not change, or at least we do not need to change with it.
Too often, I seem to hear the following from software companies, at least here in Finland:
“Our product can’t be sold online.”
“Our product requires demonstration, customization, or instruction.”
“We aren’t ready (…as we are busy doing everything else).”
At some point, I cynically thought that it was laziness or a lack of understanding, but I’ve come to realize that these are not the real reasons. The reason seems to lie in strategy, or lack thereof, or a failure to comply. When there is no clear direction, we wander, experiment, tinker, and build.
At this point the proofreader told me to say something positive. Fortunately creating a strategy does not require a miracle. Getting mobilized can begin with reading a good book on the subject, here are a few of my personal favorites:
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t — Jim Collins
Blue Ocean Strategy — W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
And the situation is not entirely bleak. Many are already well on the move, especially young startups that develop their own SaaS product. Here the sales models are created to take place directly online, even if supported by direct sales in the beginning.
Trials and sales automation are a scalable foundation for growth. If a company’s most important strategic objective is not Customer Activation and Sales Automation, it would be worthwhile to go back to the drawing board. A bold statement of course, and while this may not always be the case for everyone, if you are looking for scalable rapid growth this would be the model I would choose. So choose the most effective sales model, and a product which fits it.
As such, if the product can not be sold online, the product needs changing. If it requires presentation, customization, or instruction, then it is too complex and requires simplification — make an MVP you can sell online. If you are not yet ready, stop and think about what all needs to be done, and above all, what can be left undone.
That is how strategies are built, choosing what not to do. In the end the path is as clear as the goal — learn how to ride that bike.
Tapio Talvisalo
-SaaS Enthusiast, Builder of Cloud Castles