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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.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.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.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.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.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.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
