How NOT to Sell in SaaS and Increase Paid Conversions

So you have a product! you’ve worked so hard on making it the way you want (iteratively of course) and now you want to sell it – so how do you do that? The answer, as strange as it might sound, is that you don’t!

As I wrote in my previous post, two very common sales models which have recently evolved are the zero-touch and the low-touch models where there are no sales teams or a very small sales team respectively. Why have these models evolved? because they were needed! in the SaaS reality, where the Internet is flooded with information, customers prefer being the active searchers and find solutions for their specific problems. They tend to rely less on non-objective salespeople to convince them why their product is good for them – they prefer to simply read or hear about a solution from someone else and if they feel a solution might help them, they can simply sign-up to it’s free trial period or free account (freemium) and try it themselves!

Come to think of it, it’s kind of a revolutionary state of mind where your customers want to be able to choose their products based on its true value! After choosing it, they’ll evaluate it and only then, if they find it really helpful for their needs, they’ll convert to paid users.

The key is not to sell the product but to give away value – if you honestly & utterly try to gain customer success and help other people with their existing needs, they will feel your pure intentions and stay for more. Once trying to sell, the whole focus will go in that direction and you risk loosing the audience loyalty.

This very much like Google organic search: if your website truly provides relevant and valuable content, it will be ranked high in Google and attract prospects. Similarly, if your product is truly relevant and provides value to customers, prospects will try it and convert into paying customers.  Your solution should, of course, solve a very common problem and preferably have a unique answer (and that is a subject to a whole different post).

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  1. […] goal was to increase customer engagement for their 30 days trial users and increase the free to paid conversion that way: “We changed how people experience sending and receiving customer service tickets during […]

  2. […] users to your application in a way they’d be more successful due to it and therefore happier. If you think about selling, chances are it won’t going to happen… especially when your sales model contains a trial […]

  3. […] users to your application in a way they’d be more successful due to it and therefore happier. If you think about selling, chances are it won’t going to happen… especially when your sales model contains a trial […]

  4. […] users to your application in a way they’d be more successful due to it and therefore happier. If you think about selling, chances are it won’t going to happen… especially when your sales model contains a trial […]

  5. […] goal was to increase customer engagement for their 30 days trial users and increase the free to paid conversion that way: “We changed how people experience sending and receiving customer service tickets during […]

  6. […] However, we should also keep in mind, that for freemium to work it needs to engage users! In order to succeed, a business first priority should be in adding value to users and not earning money. […]

  7. […] added value to its customers and focusing on the quality of its service rather than on sales (read: How NOT to Sell in SaaS and Increase Paid Conversions), that would lead to a win-win situation as both the users will get added value and the business […]

  8. […] Hudson, CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games about how he uses analytics system to increase free to paid conversion. Charles indicates that they’re trying to find a pattern of the paying customer and try to […]

  9. […] These topics are highly relevant to every SaaS business and I’ve been writing a few posts about it lately, including my previous post. […]

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