Selling in the B2B SaaS Marketplace
Selling in the B2B SaaS marketplace will definitely have commonalities with how you have been selling in other channels. Invariably, the major process and steps are similar. However, the differentiator lies in how you approach each step. The expectations of your customer from B2B SaaS marketplace will be quite different from conventional channels. Thus, your approach needs to be well thought through.Tips for 6 buying stages in the B2B SaaS marketplace
Based on the experience of ISVs and marketplace experts, here are the best practices you can leverage to navigate through the 6 buying stages in the B2B SaaS marketplace.Explore
The first buying stage is exploring. In the B2B SaaS marketplace, your customers will first of all focus on understanding your solution as an answer to their business problem. Thus, the focus will be on determining if it has any relation to their business requirement. Mostly, in this stage, the customers don’t interact with the solution provider, and, thus, you should have a clear description, features and benefits illustrated on the landing page of your cloud marketplace offer. Furthermore, you should ensure significant marketing efforts to ensure that even if the customer is not aware of your solution, searching their needs results in your offer listing. The SaaSify advantage: To conquer the first buying stage successfully, SaaSify enables ISVs to take their listing live within a week without any development efforts. Furthermore, as a white-labelled platform, ISVs can leverage SaaSify to create a unique brand experience with their logo, templates and custom domain to help explore their listing fast. Finally, GTM services by SaaSify empower ISVs to make their listings powerful with the right sales messaging, etc.Evaluate
The second buying stage largely revolves around evaluating your solution, not just as an option, but as a perfect fit. This generally involves comparison between different solutions, etc. The B2B SaaS marketplace provides a great platform to help ISVs score high with customers. You should focus on converting the website visitors to prospects. Offering free trials, test drives and interactive demos can help. They can give customers a first-hand experience of your solution and make the evaluation skewed in your favor. The SaaSify advantage: In the second stage, SaaSify enables ISVs to communicate with clients, provide customized quotations, offer expert support and technical guidance from a single dashboard which help customers evaluate their options better. At the same time, with SaaSify, ISVs can create public or private offers to suit different customer needs and make them an instant choice during evaluation.Purchase
Once the customer has thoroughly evaluated your solution and is ready to make a purchase, you must focus on ensuring the transaction is seamless. Again, the B2B SaaS marketplace brings unique benefits that you can leverage. You can make your offers transactable, allowing your customers to access the same directly, without any friction. You can also encourage your customers to utilize their pre-committed cloud budgets with cloud providers to transact, rather than taking approval for additional budgets. This will help you close deals faster. Furthermore, when your customers transact or purchase your offer through the cloud marketplace, the procurement and due diligence process is hassle free, leading to a great purchase experience. The SaaSify advantage: When it comes to purchasing, SaaSify has helped ISVs to provide their customers with their preferred platform for transactions. With SaaSify, ISVs can create contact me offers for third party payment options. But more popularly, SaaSify empowers ISVs to create transactable offers for purchases powered by the cloud marketplaces which also allow customers to use their pre-committed cloud budgets. Furthermore, SaaSify caters to specific selling requirements by integrating custom subscription offers across different usage meters, providing a pleasant purchase experience to your customers.Expand
Your customers may start small with a few licenses or subscriptions of your offer to try initially. However, you must focus on providing exemplary support and customer service to ensure that they expand this relationship by procuring additional licenses or offers from your solution offerings. The expansion can be achieved by offering discounts on subsequent licenses or following different pricing opportunities to help customers understand why more licenses or subscriptions make more sense. This will help you expand your sales and boost revenue growth, without any efforts or investments in new client acquisition. The SaaSify advantage: During the expansion in the selling lifecycle stage, ISVs can rely on SaaSify for co-selling advisory and support. With SaaSify, ISVs can easily make their listing for co-selling with cloud providers and other partners. SaaSify’s GTM advisory can help ISVs develop cloud co-marketing strategy, joint sales messaging and enablement activities, co-sell sales motion campaigns and account-based customer content for expansion.Renew
Once a customer’s license is due for expiration, you should start the follow up for renewal early on. You may want to collate the impact your solution has been able to create for the customers or a comprehensive document illustrating how the solution helped them when you request for renewal. Again, the benefit of the B2B SaaS marketplace will be the opportunity to capitalize on pre-committed budgets for both you and your customers. Expansions and renewals can play a major role in helping you achieve the co-sell status with cloud providers, further expanding your business leads. The SaaSify advantage: Advanced reporting and analytics by SaaSify helps ISVs to proactively facilitate renewals and upselling. SaaSify’s in-built data tracking enables ISVs to keep an eye on every move, every sale and every dollar they generate to analyze customer behavior, identify opportunities for upselling and make better business decisions.Advocacy
Finally, when you have built a strong relationship with your customers, the advocacy stage of the buying cycle takes over. You should make your customers your advocates and brand ambassadors. Start by highlighting their case studies and testimonials as use cases for other prospects who reach your listing. Illustrate the impact you were able to create for them and the associated business benefits. These can become a part of the collaterals you use in the B2B SaaS marketplace. The SaaSify advantage: By providing customers with a smooth overall experience using SaaSify, ISVs can easily make them advocates and brand champions. Right from seamless listing to transactions, SaaSify enables ISVs to create a pleasant buying and selling experience, which often translates to customer loyalty and advocacy.Ace the B2B SaaS marketplace with SaaSify
To navigate through the 6 buying stages in the B2B SaaS marketplace, you need to ensure that you have a technically sound solution and an operationally sound listing. As a SaaS enablement platform, here are a few ways SaaSify can help you sales team march through the buyer’s journey:- Start selling instantly: Leverage zero engineering to start selling within days without engineering changes to your SaaS product
- Transact instantly: Create transactable offers to enable customers to purchase your offer in real time, leading to greater realization of opportunities and business
- Sell how your customers want to buy: Promote specific selling requirements by integrating custom subscription offers across different usage meters
- Explore co-selling opportunities: Capitalize on SaaSify’s long standing relationships with cloud providers to build credibility and gain co-selling status
