How to sell when no one is buying: lessons from a successful pivot during a global pandemic - Alex Theuma
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Alex Theuma is founder and CEO of SaaStock, Europe's largest SaaS conference organiser. Alex is also the host of the SaaS Revolution Show in which he interviews SaaS founders and executives from around the world. Key Points: 1. Never let a good crisis go to waste - pivot your business to see opportunity in challenges. 2. Be quick or be dead - companies that are agile and quick to change have a better chance of winning in a crisis. 3. Keep your customers close - You will be remembered for how you reached out to your customers in a pivotal time. 4. Leverage your peer groups and ask other people for best practice and advice for navigating a crisis e.g. recession, low revenue. 5. Outbound still works - tailor your messaging to acknowledge the pandemic’s impact on the SaaS community and wish your prospects well.
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How to sell when no one is buying: lessons from a successful pivot during a global pandemic - Alex Theuma
- 1. In This Together How to Sell When No-one is Buying: Lessons From a Successful Pivot During a Global Pandemic Alex Theuma, Founder of SaaStock hello@salesimpactacademy.co.uk CEO and Founders Live 4pm UK Time A live broadcast series in partnership with:
- 2. How to sell when no-one is buying Lessons from a successful pivot during a global pandemic Alex Theuma, Founder and CEO, SaaStock
- 3. About me - Dad of two - 11 year career in sales - First time entrepreneur - founded SaaStock in 2015 - Host of The SaaS Revolution Show podcast - No background in events About SaaStock - Community of SaaS investors, founders and execs - Mission to help SaaS companies grow and scale - Host conferences in Europe, LatAm, North America and APAC
- 4. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” Winston Churchill
- 5. Be quick or be dead
- 6. Overcome external and internal hurdles
- 7. Keep your customers close
- 10. Landing a big brand
- 11. Don’t shirk your ambition
- 12. Recap - Speed matters - Overcome external and internal hurdles - Keep your customers close - Learn from others - Don’t forget about outbound - Land a big name and use it as a reference - Don’t shirk your ambition
Editor's Notes
- What quote motivates you when things are tough? What’s your mantra?
- Speed and flexibility was imperative - sprints/agile methodology Response time to inbound - change from 24 hours to 1 hour response Deal velocity - push to improve from 30 days to 20 days
- Global pandemic Looming recession Market Layoffs Team motivation - lockdown Buyers don’t want to make a bad decision How did we overcome this - external challenges - The whole world was in lockdown. Our customers were unable to travel. Unable to do in person events. We showed them a way were they could be connected when they couldn’t meet in person. How they could continue to learn, from the safety of their own home. How they could get more leads for less. We created a strong value proposition that made the difficult decisions easier. The main hurdles from sales was that initially they were getting more No’s than they were used to. Our VP sales ran coaching sessions on objection handling. We started to include product demos, which we’d never done before.
- Top relationships Lead with help How have they been impacted Find your champions You’ll be remembered for how you act now
- How do you pivot? How do you run a business in a pandemic? I’d never been in this position before. I turned to Peer groups: whats app groups for virtual event pioneers, entrepreneurship forums, Guild groups. Coaches Conferences - attended topical online events such as Scaling up - crisis edition Books - Jim Collins book, Great by choice was THE book for the pandemic.
- 80% of our partnership opportunities were the result of Inbound leads. I was continuously hearing from the team that outbound was not working in this environment. That nobody wants to be sold to and receive a cold email at this time. They felt awkward sending outbound. I understood, and we need to adapt our messaging to be empathetic. But outbound deals generated more than $100k for the quarter, thus providing that we were right to include this in the sales strategy mix. I’m a big believer in those that schedule time in for prospecting and include outbound in the mix will outperform those that don’t.
- We used prior/existing relationships to help us close Stripe and Intercom - Intercom wanted to support SaaStock during a difficult time and we were fast to get them onboard early as a titanium partner. Quickly followed by Stripe, who’d never partnered on an online conference before and we took them through the sales process to make them the second Platinum partner. Both added huge credibility to what we were doing and were soon followed by Sage, Zoominfo, Workato and Okta, making Platinum partnerships one of our most popular levels
- From the outset i knew there would be winners and losers from this pandemic. There would be a land grab Those that retreated would lose market share and possibly shutter Those that were brave and ambitious would include the winners My mindset from the outset, whilst having both a defensive and offensive play, was to be ambitious. To set ambitious targets. To push the team towards great goals. To be amongst the winners.