Product led growth and self selling self serving saas can go only so far – $50 to $100mn but rarely beyond in the same manner. Enterprise sales needs to kick in for hyper growth and this article by Mark Cranney in the A16Z blog of 2014 has some interesting insights. Mark headed OpsWare – a data center automation services company it outlines a model for attempting Enterprise sales. True job of sales people is not to communicate value to customers but to create new value for them.
What does this entail?
Help customers answers the question ‘ Why should I do anything?’
Why your solution(Vs your competitor )
Why now (vs inviting in another area of our business)
Peppered with charts it is a great read and still very relevant.
And here is how it is done: A Sales rep came back and told Mark that there was no budget for data center automation at a client account (of-course, because it was still not a thing). Mark showed him ‘a long list of initiatives they needed to look for in companies which is where the missing budget for datacenter automation could be found’.
Where I learnt this #311
If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales?
https://a16z.com/2014/05/30/selling-saas-products-dont-sell-themselves/
