Dan Martell - May 29, 2017


SaaS Sales： How to Shorten Your SaaS Sales Cycle and Avoid Wasting Time


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

196.25238

Word Count

1,578

Sentence Count

86


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.960 Oh, it's like a gremlin.
00:00:03.600 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:00:13.940 How do you reduce the enterprise sales timeline?
00:00:18.640 Look, if you're frustrated, you're working with big companies
00:00:20.820 and you're trying to get them to adopt and buy your product
00:00:23.380 and you've done that, but then you've got to go through
00:00:25.500 procurement and legal and compliance and security
00:00:29.380 and, and, and this video's for you.
00:00:32.420 I'm gonna walk you through exactly
00:00:34.280 how to get rid of those frustrations, you know?
00:00:36.820 And also, when you do this right,
00:00:39.160 you can actually improve your experience with the customer,
00:00:43.160 get paid up front, joking, I can't commit to that.
00:00:46.500 I'm not gonna, you can get paid faster,
00:00:49.060 but I just really think that you need to understand
00:00:50.900 how it all works to really reduce, compress,
00:00:55.000 and make it happen faster.
00:00:56.480 You know, I was working with a big bank,
00:00:58.140 I can't mention them, but they are
00:00:59.600 the entrepreneur's credit card.
00:01:02.480 So they rhyme with latex.
00:01:06.020 I'm gonna let that one sink in for a second.
00:01:07.680 Anyway, I was working with them,
00:01:09.020 and we were doing a big deal for my company Clarity,
00:01:11.520 and I was all excited.
00:01:12.520 I had the VP on board, ready to go.
00:01:15.400 Gonna deploy our technology into their customer base.
00:01:18.700 And really quickly, if you've ever dealt with a bank,
00:01:22.140 a financial institution, you learn that it is literally
00:01:26.740 the most complicated review, audit system thingamajig.
00:01:32.680 I mean, the checklist is crazy.
00:01:34.740 They sent over a document and when I looked at it,
00:01:37.940 I was like, this is gonna take forever.
00:01:40.100 Like, at first I was like, there's no way we're doing this.
00:01:43.040 I thought for sure it's gonna take like 16 to 18 months.
00:01:45.640 I mean, most companies, you're five people.
00:01:47.640 You're just sitting there and you're trying to figure out
00:01:50.140 how to even get a feature deployed
00:01:51.580 and they give you this long laundry list.
00:01:53.640 But here's the deal.
00:01:55.120 What I did in that scenario is I actually asked them
00:01:57.020 to invest up front.
00:01:58.120 I said, look, if you guys put,
00:01:59.760 and it was significant five-figure investment,
00:02:02.900 because I said, look, we're a little startup,
00:02:04.800 and if we go forward and you decide in a year
00:02:08.360 somebody changes jobs or doesn't want to do this,
00:02:11.100 then we essentially invested a bunch of time
00:02:12.740 for something that's not core to our business yet
00:02:15.780 for your guys' value, so they actually wrote the check.
00:02:19.080 It wasn't even an issue, and the cool part was
00:02:20.980 is the VP did change jobs, and we still got
00:02:24.740 deployed but we ended up keeping that deposit to make sure
00:02:27.180 that we had our cost and time covered.
00:02:30.640 But what I'm gonna walk with you is how I've been able to
00:02:32.880 navigate over the years.
00:02:34.180 I did an enterprise company called Spheric.
00:02:36.020 We were a consulting business.
00:02:36.920 I sold to the CTOs.
00:02:38.780 I understood how to navigate the complexity of enterprise
00:02:42.620 sales and really get things down to months, not a year.
00:02:45.920 Most deals are nine to 12 months.
00:02:48.000 This is the way you want to think through it.
00:02:49.740 First, when you're talking with the customer, number one,
00:02:52.560 you gotta test the virtual close, okay?
00:02:55.460 This is what happens.
00:02:56.760 So, you talk to a company, they're interested.
00:02:59.000 Then you have another meeting, talk with the rest of the team.
00:03:01.660 They ask you a bunch of questions, you answer them.
00:03:03.340 They go, this sounds great.
00:03:04.640 This is what you need to do at that point.
00:03:06.500 You actually need to ask them and say,
00:03:08.300 hey, it sounds like we're really getting along,
00:03:10.620 sounds like we can add a lot of value for you guys,
00:03:12.620 and it sounds like we'll probably put a deal together
00:03:15.320 in the near future, I'm just curious.
00:03:17.260 What's the process for a company
00:03:20.160 to get deployed within your organization.
00:03:23.160 If we're good today and we get everything approved,
00:03:25.200 what's next?
00:03:26.040 And they say, well, we need to get it approved
00:03:27.360 through budgets.
00:03:28.140 Perfect.
00:03:29.000 And once we get the budgets approved
00:03:30.700 and everybody's happy, then what happens next?
00:03:32.740 Oh, well, then it's gotta go to,
00:03:34.940 you need, are you an approved vendor?
00:03:36.040 So it's like, oh, we're not an approved vendor.
00:03:37.340 Okay, well, you need to become an approved vendor.
00:03:38.840 Okay, and how does that process work?
00:03:40.880 And they walk you through it.
00:03:42.140 And then, and then, and then, literally,
00:03:45.060 you just repeat this.
00:03:46.460 And once we do this step successfully,
00:03:49.080 What happens next?
00:03:50.380 Perfect.
00:03:51.220 And what's involved in that step?
00:03:53.080 Okay.
00:03:53.880 And if we get through that and that's successful,
00:03:56.620 what happens next?
00:03:58.120 And I know this might sound trite and you guys are like,
00:04:01.120 so I just, yes, you write down.
00:04:03.500 As they're giving you this, you're writing down every step.
00:04:07.240 That becomes your hit list.
00:04:09.840 And the reason why it's so important is most entrepreneurs
00:04:12.140 don't realize that there's literally several steps
00:04:14.680 to get an enterprise deal closed.
00:04:15.980 It's not the initial buyer.
00:04:17.440 It's not getting the champion to support you.
00:04:19.540 It's not getting somebody to just make the commitment.
00:04:22.180 You literally have to go through,
00:04:24.080 I mean, I've even seen some crazy stuff
00:04:26.180 like compliance, pull-up stuff.
00:04:28.020 I mean, I was doing a deal with Babcock and Wilcox,
00:04:29.880 they're a huge energy company about 10 years ago,
00:04:32.720 and we got held up for four months to try to get the deal.
00:04:36.520 And this is like a motivated manager,
00:04:39.300 like wants us to start working on this new project,
00:04:41.800 and we can't even get him to go there.
00:04:44.040 And he like went up to the C-suite
00:04:46.400 where all the, you know, mahogany walls and like,
00:04:48.700 it's like, I went up there and I tried to get it
00:04:50.220 and they're just, it's blank.
00:04:51.540 Look, people have jobs to do,
00:04:53.580 but you need to do a virtual close
00:04:55.460 where you walk through virtually every step
00:04:58.700 in the closing process to get commitment
00:05:00.820 and buy it and build that checklist.
00:05:03.040 Then number two is to compress those stages.
00:05:06.320 And the way you do that is through paralyzing the steps.
00:05:09.580 So you might be like, all right,
00:05:10.520 so next step is for us to talk to your security team
00:05:12.920 and then we gotta become an approved vendor.
00:05:14.580 Do you mind if we start those processes in parallel?
00:05:18.180 And I know that there's still some unknowns,
00:05:20.660 but I just wanna start talking
00:05:22.220 and building those relationships with those people
00:05:24.580 so that we can get things to a point
00:05:26.620 where we understand what's involved.
00:05:28.620 I call this multi-threading, okay?
00:05:31.400 So compressing, which is the second step,
00:05:33.800 requires multi-threading an enterprise company
00:05:37.740 to really get things pushed forward, okay?
00:05:40.580 So you virtually close, then you compress the process
00:05:43.600 by multi-threading into the different people involved
00:05:46.760 to make that happen.
00:05:47.600 The third step is asking for the connections,
00:05:50.140 building that rapport.
00:05:51.500 Sometimes I've gotten on planes
00:05:53.100 just to go visit the customer.
00:05:54.120 If you're talking, you know, 100,000 plus dollar deals,
00:05:56.980 some of you guys are doing million plus dollar deals,
00:05:59.220 get on a plane.
00:06:00.780 Like literally, get the whole process laid out,
00:06:04.520 get the introductions, connect the people,
00:06:06.800 and go visit them in person.
00:06:08.400 Nothing will move something along faster
00:06:11.000 than anybody that's built rapport.
00:06:13.460 Like, if you're talking with some guy on the security team
00:06:15.500 and he doesn't know you, you're just like an email to him,
00:06:18.100 the response rate, the care, the interest,
00:06:20.860 it's just not there.
00:06:22.000 But if you're that guy that showed up and connected
00:06:24.780 and maybe brought some Dunkin',
00:06:25.880 I mean, I'm just going back to the East Coast days.
00:06:28.800 Little Dunkin' Donuts went a hell of a long way.
00:06:31.580 No, literally, I'd be like, I just landed.
00:06:33.640 I'll be in there in an hour.
00:06:34.680 Just curious, does anybody want any coffee?
00:06:36.680 Do you know how crazy easy that is for you to ask the people
00:06:40.720 you're gonna meet if they want coffee?
00:06:42.320 And they're gonna say, no, I'm good,
00:06:43.580 but you just, I mean, that was super kind of you.
00:06:45.980 So literally, the process, really quick recap,
00:06:48.720 one, virtually close.
00:06:50.620 And then once we're successful there, what happens next?
00:06:53.280 And then once we're successful there, what happens next?
00:06:55.280 And you make that full strategic checklist to close.
00:06:58.360 Then you compress it by multi-threading the account,
00:07:02.520 by paralyzing the different steps involved.
00:07:06.020 And the third way you do that is by connecting
00:07:08.360 and having conversations with the people.
00:07:10.640 And if you have to, get on a plane for the bigger deals.
00:07:13.460 Don't be that guy that sits behind an email.
00:07:16.080 Try to do Skype if you can't get on a plane.
00:07:18.340 But connect with the companies and really bring down
00:07:21.860 the life cycle of an enterprise deal.
00:07:23.960 That is how you will close faster, better,
00:07:27.680 build better rapport and not feel frustrated
00:07:30.100 and be able to commit on the sales quotas
00:07:32.540 that you've committed to the rest of the team.
00:07:34.560 I hope this video finds you excited and well.
00:07:38.020 As per usual, I wanna challenge you
00:07:39.480 to live a bigger life and a bigger business
00:07:42.140 and I'll see you next Monday.
00:07:43.640 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channels
00:07:45.920 for other tips and strategies on how to start
00:07:47.920 and grow your business and I'd also invite you
00:07:49.880 to join our newsletter for exclusive invites,
00:07:53.140 community contests and other free entrepreneurial trainings
00:07:56.120 and if you're ready to keep going,
00:07:57.980 I got two videos queued up ready for you right there.
00:08:01.080 I'll see you next Monday.