Selling SaaS to B2B? No sales experience. Resources, tips?
I have a lot of development experience but no sales/marketing experience at all. I am now looking to create some start up. I am currently in the idea/brainstorm phase, however anxiety on how I will acquire customer is slowing me down. I've been thinking:
Will it be organic?
Will it be ad driven?
Content marketing?
Is there any resource or tips on how to go about this and creating a successful B2B strategy as a one man team?
Trending on Indie Hackers
One step at a time. You are at the “idea phase” and worrying about the sales process.
You will never know everything beforehand, be comfortable with that. Start by talking to your potential customers (they will answer lot's of your questions), validate if they would pay and actually execute the project (don't get paralyzed at the plan phase).
Figure things as they go.
I strongly disagree with your advice.
The first thing when I evaluate startup idea is that can i actually sell the product. If you cannot sell it, then it is left as technical bedroom exercise, and eventually dies.
B2B sales to other startups or SMBs is fine. But enterprise sales (6 figure deal value, 6+ months sales cycle), that you referred to, is almost impossible for bootstrapped indie startups with early stage product.
I know you meant well, and may have used 'enterprise sales' incorrectly, but an evil politician could twist your advice to: "worry later about something that is nearly impossible, and if you don't succeed in the nearly impossible, it will kill your startup". Which does sound a bit irresponsible advice? :)
Hi, I edited "enterprise sales" to "sales process"
The main point of my comment was: he/she said this was bringing them anxiety and slowing them down. 99% of the people get stuck on this "idea phase" and never actually do anything. If you don't get the "execute" mindset and attitude, you will be an wantrepreneur forever.
I get your point and respect your opinion, i just disagree with it :)
When a person doesn't have idea he's passionate about, but tries to "generate" idea for the sake of starting a startup, it usually goes badly. And if the idea he's not passionate about is also nearly impossible to sell, then the probability of failure is pretty damn high.
I understand your school of thought that it is better to just do something and gain experience and you learn from failure and all that.
But startups take hell a lot of time, with massive opportunity cost, and failure hurts regardless of what motivational posters or desktop backgrounds you have.
Instead of facing near inevitable failure, I think it is better to travel the world, drink beer, finish college, get work experience, collect savings etc. With more life experience comes more ideas, and with more work experience and money comes higher probability of successful execution.
My old boss who's a serial entrepreneur once gave me the best advice about sales. He said, it's just like rap.
When you start out as an unknown rapper, you start by creating something, anything. Then you show it to some people, and they might show it to some other people. You might get enough people to like your mixtape, that you can hustle to get your first feature in the song of a slightly better-known artist. Suddenly their whole fan base knows you. You use that to get your next feature, produce more of your own stuff, and so on. After a while you're getting signed, making your own album, and featuring other artists.
There's your B2B strategy - start with the first customer, make them super happy, then use that one to get the next.
Makes sense! Just got to hustle, ship, get that first customer, and go from there.
Try reading "From Impossible To Inevitable"
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1119531691/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
Will check this out!
Hi, @mrk786,
Book a free call here and tell me more, maybe I can help: https://www.sergiubungardean.ro/en/
Thanks,
Sergiu
I found http://www.enterprisesales.nyc/ useful. It is a collection of guides on the topic selling enterprise software but most of the ideas can be transferred to SaaS.
I would recommend the book "The Mom Test". If you're doing discovery and brainstorming now, it's probably the best, no-risk, time to onboard potential customers.
Thanks! I will check it out! Does this book look into customer acquisition strategies?
it's about how to talk to potential customers. it's a 10 minute read.
Here's a video that summarizes it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT4Ig2uqjTc