How to Set a Sales Philosophy for a B2B SaaS Company

Background

There is no magic to sales. It is a process like any other, complete with the end goal of satisfied customers. We want to maintain that process-oriented outlook to sales and marketing as we strategize. We want to turn the sales and marketing blackbox into a definable, predictable series of goals, milestones and dependencies so we can build and maintain high growth over time.

To that end, it is important to have a theoretical understanding of a company's growth model before we refine your company's go-to-market strategy. We believe one of the best frameworks for understanding a company's growth model has been created by Geoffrey Moore in his book, \"Crossing the Chasm.\"

Generally, Moore argues there is an adoption curve for new technologies. There exists a certain, small group of individuals, labeled \"Innovators,\" who will be your first customers. These are the techies who are always up for trying a new, unproven technology. As a company, you can deliver your core, minimum viable product to them, and they will gladly experiment with it and give you important feedback to refine your development and direction.

Once you have exploited your Innovator market, you progress as follows:

1. Early Adopters: While not necessarily willing to try an unproven product, these Visionaries search for new-to-market tools to get a competitive edge. They are willing to pay more for your product than an Innovator, but will expect a whole product as opposed to the minimum product. At this stage you are still highlighting the innovation of your product, but only selling when you can prove improvements in productivity. The Chasm: After exploiting these two groups, your company will need to \" cross the chasm\" as you enter the mainstream market. The key to crossing the chasm is having a fully developed, \"whole\" product and a convincing ROI story for your customers.
2. Early Majority: After crossing the chasm, you are pursuing a much larger group of customers who no longer see your product as \"new\" but as \"mainstream.\" These are the pragmatists who have high expectations for your company and will also fuel major growth for your company.
3. The Bowling Alley: as you first begin exploiting the early majority cohort, you are in the \"bowling alley.\" Here, your strategy will be to pursue one \"head pin\" client who will then help you win the next. Again, the early majority group is one of pragmatists, and they want to stay with the herd rather than getting left behind.
4. The Tornado: once you have made significant impact in the bowling alley, your company will enter \"the tornado,\" during which you will experience rapid growth and sales. By this point, it is key to have developed a highly efficient channel to deliver and implement your product within your client companies and then ensure adoption.
5. Late Majority and Laggards: The final stages of growth will include the remainder of your addressable market. This is considered \"Main Street,\" where your sales, marketing, and customer strategies are refined and in place.

The sales process rewards the disciplined, those who efficiently use their resources to approach the right prospects with the right product at the right time. We will walk you through the process of defining that disciplined strategy so that you have a repeatable and scalable sales process.

Play

1. Before we do a more rigorous discovery process to identify market, customer segment, buyer personas, and value propositions, we would like you to use the framework above to brainstorm potential customers and then individuals (not necessarily in the same companies you already listed) that fit into each category in the adoption lifecycle.
2. Given their needs and motivations according to Moore, brainstorm what value proposition your company makes to companies / individuals in each group (ie what is the value prop to an Innovator? How does that differ from the value prop to an Early Adopter?).
3. Brainstorm what product features would add value according to each group's needs and motivations.
4. Brainstorm what liabilities or weaknesses your company needs to overcome in order to successfully sell to each group.
5. Finally, in a theoretical, hindsight exercise, brainstorm what might prevent your company from crossing the chasm and entering the mainstream market.

We think this exercise establishes a strong foundation for future exercises. And as we get deeper into the weeds in future plays, we think this will serve as an important high-level reminder of your goals and needs as a company.