How to Sell Software Using Sales

Speaker: Steli Effi, Close.io (Steli)

Background

Elastic Inc.

• Offered outsourced sales team on-demand
• Helped 200+ venture-backed startups in Silicon Valley scale sales
• “AWS for sales”

Podcast with Steli and Hiten from KISSMetrics: thestartupchat.com

Close.io

• Evolved from Elastic, Inc.
• Built as sales software they wanted to use
• Didn’t consciouly develop software to be in the CRM space
• Aimed at inside salesforces
• Team currently is 8 people
• Venture-funded & self-funded
  • Raised a convertible-debt round from previous business that never converted because they never raised Series A
• Semi-remote & small
  • Employees around the world; other employess just like to travel, so office is small
• Premium price in competitive market
• Nearest and smallest competitor has a 10x larger team – ~100 employees (but smaller in revenue, not just profit)

Sales Calls

• Inbound (quality, activate)
• Cancellations (gain insights)
• Outbound (if market fit)

Call customers to learn to get insights. When someone first signs up, call them and ask: “How did you hear about us and what made you sign up?”

How To Make Sales Calls Work

1. Reach People
   1. What is your “reach rate”? The number one reason your sales calls don’t work is that you are not reaching a decision-maker on the phone.
   2. Typical cold calling reach rate might be 15%. So if you call 100 people, you only reach 15 people.
   3. Call people within 5 minutes of them signing up–dramatically increases your reach rate. If you call them 1 hour later, reach rate drops dramatically.
      1. Typically they say “I just signed up.” We say “that’s why we called”. We’re calling to welcome you. How did you hear about us and what made you sign up?
   4. Your reach rate needs to be above 15%. If you can push it to 30-40% great. But if your reach rate is below 10%, it won’t work.
2. Sound Good
   1. 80% how you sound and only 20% what you say
   2. Used to run a test by saying “I can save you $5 in 5,000 years”. The brain re-writes what they say.
   3. How you sound will influence what they think of you and how they will respond to you.
   4. You must sound:
      1. Excited
      2. Smart
      3. Authoritative – you are an authority
      4. Authentic
      5. Empathetic – you need to care
3. Ask Questions
   1. First answer the question “Who is this?
      1. Hi, my name is <blank>, I’m calling from XYZ, Inc.
   2. Next answer “What do they want from me?”
      1. I’m calling to…
   3. Keep asking the first qualifying question until they answer it
      1. Let them get their no’s out
      2. Wait until they are listening
   4. Ask questions to know who this person is and are they a good fit. Need to answer two basic questions:
      1. Can I help you?
      2. Can you help me?
   5. Then ask BANT questions
4. Manage Objections
   1. Create a word document with the top 10 objections. Create 1 sentence to answer each one. Update the objections and answers regularly.
5. Close
   1. Go for the close. The truth might be hard, but you need to ask for the money

E-mail

Most e-mails are marketing e-mails, not sales e-mails.

Marketing E-mails

• HTML
• Nice design

Sales E-mails

• Quality: written more like a human (small letters, errors, etc).
• Format: Should never be HTML
• Subject Lines: Human subject likes, e.g. “quick question”
• Semi-Personal: yourname@domain.com, “Sent via iPhone”
• Call-to-Action Oriented
  • Tell them 1 thing to do now:
    • Schedule a call
    • Reply to this
    • Something else to read, click, etc

Optimizing Sales E-mails

Four stages a sales e-mail goes through on the recpient’s end:

1. Open
   1. Focus on a subject line that gets them to open the e-mail
   2. Write e-mails that deliver on the promise of the subject line
   3. Easy to game open rates, e.g. the subject like “very disappointed…”. Open rates aren’t everything.
2. Read
   1. Each sentence is a pitch to keep reading
   2. Each sentence must be short and to the point
   3. Ask yourself: if I only read this sentence, would I continue reading
3. Respond
4. Follow Up

The Break-Up E-mail

When a customer isn’t responding, send them the Break-Up E-mail:

• Goodbye from HubSpot
  • You are off my list. You will never hear from me again.
• If you take something away from someone, they want it.

Demos

• Time: 15 minutes or less
• Qualify First: can/should they buy, is it worth the time to even give them a demo
• Benefits vs Features: Focus on what’s relevant. Don’t demo all the features & functionality.
  • Don’t click things. Watching the spinning dial during a demo is a waste of time.
• Sales vs Training: Demo value, don’t teach functionality
• Errors/Mistakes: Be prepared for them
  • Error messages
  • Lost Internet connection
  • This is not your first rodeo–be prepared.
  • Open all tabs before the demo
  • Have a PowerPoint with screenshot backups
  • Use errors to show how you report errors in your product.
    • When an error occurs, say “This is great. I really didn’t plan this, but let me know you how you report an error when it occurs.”
    • Go to live chat (or however you report errors) and say “Hey Phil, I’m doing a demo and just got an error.”
    • Show them how your software can be fixed.

Follow Up Relentlessly

Keep following up with people until you get a Yes or a No. Follow up indefinitely until you get a definite answer. Don’t equate silence with rejection; equate it with people being busy.

Visit Your Customers

• Not all of them, but some of them
• Nothing is more powerful than getting the full context of how your software is being used. For example, you get to see what other applications are running.
• Visiting customers creates more champions for your product
• For Close.io, everyone travels a lot. Whenever someone is in a city, they plan a visit with a customer.

Customer Support

• Everyone should do support
• When things go bad, you can use those problems to provide excellent support and can often turn that support request into an upsell
• When Close.io had a big outtage last year, they called every customer and told them they apologized. Customer loved it. They then offered to give them a cheaper price–an annual contract–and converted a decent percentage from monthly customers to annual customers
• Call your people even when you don’t have an answer. Let them get out their aggression and feelings

Enterprise Sales

• IBM doesn’t buy software. The people who work there do.
• Salespeople deal in people, not companies.
• Don’t pitch the overall benefits for the business, pitch the benefits for Bob or Mary, the people doing the buying.
• Three levels of interests you need to satisfy–often these are in conflict with each other:
  • Individual
  • Group
  • Corporate
• Ultimately you need to pitch to all three levels at once.

Resources

Books

• The Ultimate Startup Guide to Sales
• The Ultimate Startup Guide to Inbound Sales
• The Ultimate Startup Guide to Outbound Sales

“In the end, people will forget what you said, what you did, but never how you made them feel.”

Summary

Five ways to sell software:

1. Call People
2. Send Lots of Sales E-mails
3. Give Good Demos
4. Visit Customres
5. Give Real Support