Mary Crampton, Director and Founder of Magnify Consulting, NZRise member, rose early to listen to a webinar by Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight, @NRMehta and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Co-Founder, SaaStr, @JasonLK. She shares her key takeaways below.
1. Focus on retaining your existing customers
Take assets which are focussed on demand generation and put these into customer marketing.
2. Have appropriate sales messaging
Do not send out an email taking advantage of coronavirus – be empathetic
• You may be thinking of lots of things
• We’re here if you need some help
➢ Not a hard sell
3. Focus your sales efforts on gaining market share
Sales cycles may increase, so what do you do with your time?
➢ This is the time to gain logos (customers)
➢ This is the time to gain mindshare (people thinking about you/your brand)
You need to comfortably invest in day to day activity that lets you grow share, so that you come out of it better.
So – you will come out stronger if you gain share, even if you can’t monetise it right now.
4. Think about what your customers are doing right now
➢ People are not eager to spend money
➢ But people are eager to be spending time
➢ People are at home, eager for respite
So, spend time on
• Evangelism
• Education
• Demos and discovery
Get them ready for the moment they take their business case to their boss.
5. Drive salespeople into customer success, go deep into your accounts
• Go deep into your accounts
• Drive up retention
6. SEO searches will increase with so many people at home
Get people into
• Free trials
• Webinars
• Content marketing
When we come out of this slide, you are going to dominate your market.
7. The digital catalyst to drive you more online is well and truly here
8. Focus on putting more people into the top of your sales pipeline
• Webinars
• Content marketing
• Best practice info
• Free trial
Even if you can’t close the sales right now, you can take them another step down the funnel.
Offline lead generation (in-person sales) is declining due to Covid-19.
Go into
• Podcasts
• Newsletters
• Paid webinars
9. Run a weekly webinar on a topic that’s tactical to your customer
People have more time for discovery as they are all at home.
10. When evaluating your staff needs, never let a good engineer go
11. Recurring revenue will help you get through
If revenue is truly recurring, and NPS (Net Promoter Score) is high,
then you just need to get through this.
➢ This is the time to grow your market share.
12. This is a good time to talk to VCs about capital raising
VCs also have a lot more time for discovery
There are now folks who want to learn a lot
➢ These people will take a zoom or a call which they normally wouldn’t
➢ Note – it doesn’t necessarily mean the deal will close.
13. Variable revenue contracts help maintain cashflow in tough times
Have a long-term view – You want to get your customer’s cash for 10 years.
➢ Do whatever you can to keep your customers, even if they need to shrink deal size.
14. If your customers want/need to cancel, let them down well
Don’t hold them to the number of seats – even if they signed a contract, let them down.
15. SaaS companies will get an uptake on useage, not necessarily the number of seats
➢ More usage of your application might be a good retention metric.
So – reach out (to the customer) and help them to do more with your company.
16. If you offer free trials, make it work better for the customer
See if you can architect the product so that in 1 hour to 1 afternoon, folks can fully deploy it.
Customers have a lot more time for discovery.
➢ Let people have a larger trial
➢ Architect the product so that it can be fully deployed in an hour, in an afternoon
Use this time (during Covid-19) to get people into your pipeline, and they will close when we come out of this.
Mary is more than happy to expand on these points directly with you if you wish, and she’s got a deep-dive document with more information on the points above. Magnify offer a 30 minute free sales strategy call you can book on their website.
Connect with Mary Crampton on LinkedIn, or find out more about what Magnify do.
Hello – I’m Mary and I just love sales. For a long time, I didn’t value this skill. Because it was just talking and listening – and everyone can do that, right?
Then I started to realise that I saw new client opportunities where others saw brick walls, and so it started.
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