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The curious case of B2B SaaS Startup’s inside sales and marketing

Amazing but how? This question pops out of every startup founder’s mind while reading success stories. Persistence, determination & hard work, great to know, but nobody tells the real thing. Where are the techniques? With any magic, the logic behind is what a technician always looks for. So, where is the secret formula of startups having millions of dollars of revenue in SaaS?

‘XYZ’ startup got Series A $3M from ‘The one who every founder dreams of’ 10K Signups in a month (What were you doing? Tell me NOW!) $1M ARR in just 4 months of product launch (Who are these rich kids?)

These stories are highly inspiring, and to achieve such fabulous growth you need experience, the right product and perfect techniques of sales and marketing (Yes, funds could wait!). Being an early stage startup founder and that too into SaaS B2B, also an engineer who codes. I personally feel this is a deadly combination, where people like us know EVERYTHING when we start out BUILDING and half the way we realize about SELLING(hopefully we do!), the path to revenue, well the only reason we could be SUCCESSFUL.

The Invitation

While I was looking for my answers reading the book traction, building flows and learning by experimenting different traction channels, SaaSx happened (SaaSx was not like any other conferences or meetups, but really an experience to cherish, I now literally wait for the next one to happen) and there I met Avinash, he invited me to the PlayBook RoundTable Zero to One — Marketing and Inside Sales — SaaS happening in Delhi.

The invitation looked something like this..

Roundtable Focus Areas
– The PlayBook Roundtable will focus on how Early stage SaaS startups can get their first 10 and then the first 100 customers.
– The founders will share their experience of the initial steps to be taken, key metrics to focus on and the team structure for inside sales and marketing.

Facilitators
1. Sachin Bhatia (Ameyo/Inside Sales Box)
2. Ankit Oberoi(AdPushUp)

Bang On! it is very few times when you get the opportunity to hear from those who are just steps above you in the ladder, their learning from successes and failures could help you make the most out of your current situation.

Hops and Drops

11 founders at different stages of their startup journey in one round table conference hitting the bottom line with the right questions and right people to answer them.

  1. First 10 Customers, hacks to reach them? (Ankit’s hacks make you realize it is not that difficult)
  2. When to start marketing and help generate leads even before the product launch? (Conversations, Sachin even mentioned how first 100 conversations helped him get the Product Market fit)
  3. What is the actual Traffic / Conversion / Cost per lead from their experience? (These numbers helped to validate stuff you dream of)
  4. Initial Teams, Hiring Experiences and Compensation plans? (Most of us, funded or bootstrapped are struggling with this)
  5. Key learning in the initial lead generation and sales efforts?
  6. Content Marketing Strategy, to build for Google or Readers?
  7. Medium vs WordPress vs Your Own Blog? (It is not good for me to answer this here!)
  8. Launching product in the foreign market, the Hows of it? (SaaS businesses largely aim countries outside India)
  9. How to make your website the best marketing tool? (The number of leads generated from there, some mind boggling statistics we went through)
  10. To put pricing or not? (A million dollar question in itself)
  11. Hacks around Adwords and minimizing cost per click
  12. SEO, Keywords, On Page, the real metrics, and the lead generation techniques
  13. Tools to trigger drip marketing campaigns
  14. Social Platforms their reach and how to maximize with minimum efforts and cost
  15. The strategies worked for DIY tools
  16. Lead tracking, Website Chat
  17. Content — Blog / Ebooks / Video
  18. To go for PR or not?
  19. How to experiment more with current traction channels?
  20. Mistakes which led them to lose customers, and how reduce churn rate?

And much more.. A day full of insights, no presentations, no mind-boggling figures but real conversations based on the real fears we as founders and startups face everyday.

To not let go..

The journey of a founder has lots of ups and downs, engaging with the right people who could help you in a way you just imagined could be a path breaker.

Thanks a lot to the team at iSPIRT — Avinash and Rajat for making it accessible to the community.

Ankit and Sachin were as candid as they could be, the secrets of their business are going to help us take leaps with our startup.

If you wish to know the answers to the above asked questions, reach out to iSPIRT. I’d love to hear from all of you who are at different stages and learning like all of us in the space.

Guest Post by Anshuli Gupta, Co-Founder @WidelyHQ, My twitter handle @anshulix

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Setting up Inside Sales to sell SaaS into US – Learning’s from iSPIRT #PlaybookRT

Inside Sales was presented as one of the strategic levers for SAAS companies selling to the US market at a recent Google Accel event. no wonder when

iSPIRT arranged for a round table on this topic there was a buzzing interest.

If you are not familiar with the round tables of iSPIRT check them out here. (Highly recommended)

Suresh of kissflow.com who has been successful in cracking the US market with his DIY Self-service workflow product conducted this round table.

Agenda

What was interesting is when the group was setting an agenda. It sort of covered areas from the complete funnel from marketing to Sales. Here are the sections and key learnings that were discussed in each. End of the article we also have links to tools and resources that can help.

Leads/Marketing
This is concerned with generating leads. These might be signups on your free-trial self-service product or request for demos. [Inbound]

These might also be leads that you have gathered by list building/event which you might be nurturing through email marketing or Inside Sales for outbound.

Learning

  • SEO is a must and early start helps
  • Start with a keyword list (Commercial intent) and then keep building backlinks and writing content. In Suresh’s words its do-able and needs discipline and not hacks. [In my own opinion we as Indian entrepreneurs have done a shoddy job in this area and need to learn this fast]
  • Keywords, which you cannot rank on, go with PPC. The typical signup costs discussed were between 50 USD – 200 USD per signup / MQL
  • Data for outbound prospecting is very important; Mass Emailing does work but it is super important to spend time on defining segment well and crafting messaging which is relevant.
    [In my opinion one would actually have to go a step further with personalization if you are not a mass market solution and selling to mid-large markets]
  • Having a strong Web Engineering team which works on Google Analytics and conversion optimization is a must

Inside Sales

Roles

You may be calling this team with different names. In theory the following are possible

  • Lead Development Rep – Qualify Inbound leads
  • Sales Development / Account Development – Generate Qualified meetings from outbound
  • Other names discussed were BDRs (Same as SDRs or some times channel)
  • Account Executive – Someone who closes
  • Product Specialist – Someone who knows product well and closes
  • Should you have a product specialist closing or Account executive?
  • Self-Serve product with low complexity AE (sometimes even an SDR) can close
  • If a product requires mapping use cases configurations (Like KissFlow) then Product specialist are in the best position to close
  • If you selling 50K + ACV then a field Sales or experienced AE in the US is recommended.

Where to Hire Inside Sales

There were different thoughts and opinions on what talent can fit into this role. Typically the options are

  • Someone who has been in a BPO
  • Fresh Graduate who wants to build a career in Sales
  • Experienced Lead Generation in IT Services / SaaS

It was recommended that if you are starting out get someone who is more experienced and can then train new members. Training was an important aspect of Inside Sales and once you have 2-3 members it’s best to invest into training.

One of the learning I have had is that the player coach model does not work. If you are getting someone to manage / coach a team do not have a individual quota for them.

Compensation Structure

  • At one point this became a discussion of Chennai vs RoW ☺
  • SDRs should be compensated and evaluated on meetings / opportunities passed and accepted.
  • AE should be compensated on MRR addition (and may be a bonus on long term contracts)
  • The starting costs of SDRs discussed varied from 4L – 8L [Inbound is far easier than outbound]

Metrics discussed

  • Inbound leads per Rep per month – 200 – 300 this is for ACV <10K kind of deals. Larger deals lesser leads
  • Outbound accounts per SDR per month – 200 – 300 and aim for 1-2 meetings per day
  • Email Open Rates for Cold Emails – 20% – 30%
  • Right party Conversations per Day – 8 – 12

Tools discussed

Resources/Books

Guest Post by Sachin Bhatia, Founder at InsideSalesBox