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SAAS NORTH NOW Blog

4 Tactics To Increase Your Close Rate In Any Market Condition

David Priemer, Founder & Chief Sales Scientist, Cerebral Selling

SAAS NORTH NOW #64

Hello to Canada’s SaaS Community,

Everyone buys, yet most people hate being sold to; breaking through this dichotomy is essential if you want your startup to succeed. Speaking with SAAS NORTH, sales expert David Priemer shared four tactics any startup can use to bolster close rates and foster a stronger connection with prospects.

Key takeaways:

  • Selling is not about listing features; it’s about fostering connection with prospects.
  • Founders and sales leaders should speak the language of problems, bring human emotion into the conversation, and use data the right way.
  • In the end, don’t forget that you’re selling not to a corporation or budget line item, but to a human.

Dave Tyldesley

Co-Founder/Producer, SAAS NORTH Conference Editor, SAAS NORTH NOW

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In the Seed to Series A stage, selling is an odd activity. In most cases, few of your prospects have actually heard of your company—or if they have, it’s not with the same resonance as enterprise competitors.

How can you build credibility and stand out in that environment? What if your product simply isn’t as mature as the competition?

The answer lies in how you sell. Speaking with SAAS NORTH, David Priemer, a serial sales leader and founder of Cerebral Selling, shared a few tactics you can use to increase your close rates in any market conditions.

Sales isn’t about selling

A sales leader for many years in companies both huge and small, David leveraged long-standing sales tactics that initially felt fine… until someone tried to sell to him using the same tactics.

“I realized that a lot of the tactics that my team was executing… none of those tactics were working on me [as a buyer],” said David. “The same stuff my team was going out and doing.”

Diving into why those tactics sometimes delivered results but landed so poorly with him, it occurred to David that those tactics didn’t feel human and thus could not be executed with conviction. They were sales motions, sure, but they didn’t foster a deeper connection with him as a buyer—this insight informed his new approach, which he calls cerebral selling.

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This approach focuses more on the human you’re selling to and the problems you’re solving. Here are four tactics he teaches in his different programs that you can bring into your sales efforts:

1. Speak the language of problems, not products

Regardless of product or company maturity, think about what you can offer prospective customers to help solve their problems.

As individuals try to grow their business, they think about problems that need to be solved. While a certain brand might pop into their heads, business leaders spend most of their time thinking about problems and are likely to trust vendors who understand those challenges better than they do.

“The same problem will be interpreted differently by different people within the customer’s organization,” said David. “So if you understand the problem that those people are facing and can articulate it in a way that is clear in their mind, that’s important.”

2. Know the emotional reasons people buy

People might have specific reasons for buying technology, such as driving revenue or saving money. But emotions influence those decisions; you need to know which emotions are at play.

David shared the example of Salesforce, a premium-priced, feature-rich software that doesn’t intuitively make sense for early-stage startups. Yet many startups buy. Why? He said it’s for two reasons: some like the feeling that working with Salesforce means they’ll never need to replace their CRM software as their busines scales. Others like it a signalling device that they are serious about their business.

Prospects may not disclose these reasons to you, but trusted customers often will; you can then use this insight to drive at what David calls the “emotional agenda” in future sales conversations.

“It’s important to understand the unspoken emotional drivers by which your customers are going to make that [buying] decision,” said David.

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3. Think about love and hate

Talk about your product in terms of who it’s for to draw those people in and repel any other prospects who, at this moment in your company’s history, would be a waste of time.

To accomplish this, David recommends phrasing your description in terms of love and hate—a “polarizing statement”. For instance, David shared the example of the now-defunct Trunk Club, which exited to Nordstrom. Rather than describing it literally—as a personal shopping offering for men—the love-hate phrasing aligns well with Trunk Club’s initial pitch of saying it’s “for men who love to dress well, but hate to shop.”

“The idea behind the polarizing statement is to really get in tune with what it is your customers want, and the blocker—the thing that’s preventing them from getting that,” said David. “And using that in a statement to describe what it is that you do.”

4. Use emotionally compelling data

Psychologists say that data helps tell stories because it’s precise. However, it only helps your sales efforts if it drives a deeper connection with buyers.

For instance, one of David’s clients offers a small business payments solution. On a premium plan, merchants get charged only 2.6% on credit card transactions, down from 2.9%. Simply saying your rate goes down 0.3% doesn’t inspire much confidence. But if you say the same information differently—that fees go down by 10%—then suddenly it’s more interesting.

“When we’re trying to strike at the emotional heart of our clients, it’s really important to pick emotionally relevant and compelling data,” said David.

Advertisement

Talking to humans about SaaS

In the end, you’re talking to someone else and seeing if you can help them out—you can’t forget the human side. You’re not likely to win deals on product or brand alone, particularly at early stages when your offering isn’t mature enough. The way to win, then, is to prioritize the other person you’re speaking with—build a connection with them, talk about problems they are facing, and go from there.

“As the number of solutions on the market continues to increase… to your customers you all just kind of sound the same,” said David. “You’ll establish your credibility by virtue of the fact that you understand the problem at such a deep level, on a level that the customer cannot describe to you in the same way that you can.”

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Hello to Canada’s SaaS Community,

Everyone buys, yet most people hate being sold to; breaking through this dichotomy is essential if you want your startup to succeed. Speaking with SAAS NORTH, sales expert David Priemer shared four tactics any startup can use to bolster close rates and foster a stronger connection with prospects.

Key takeaways:

  • Selling is not about listing features; it’s about fostering connection with prospects.
  • Founders and sales leaders should speak the language of problems, bring human emotion into the conversation, and use data the right way.
  • In the end, don’t forget that you’re selling not to a corporation or budget line item, but to a human.

In the Seed to Series A stage, selling is an odd activity. In most cases, few of your prospects have actually heard of your company—or if they have, it’s not with the same resonance as enterprise competitors.

How can you build credibility and stand out in that environment? What if your product simply isn’t as mature as the competition?

The answer lies in how you sell. Speaking with SAAS NORTH, David Priemer, a serial sales leader and founder of Cerebral Selling, shared a few tactics you can use to increase your close rates in any market conditions.

Sales isn’t about selling

A sales leader for many years in companies both huge and small, David leveraged long-standing sales tactics that initially felt fine… until someone tried to sell to him using the same tactics.

“I realized that a lot of the tactics that my team was executing… none of those tactics were working on me [as a buyer],” said David. “The same stuff my team was going out and doing.”

Diving into why those tactics sometimes delivered results but landed so poorly with him, it occurred to David that those tactics didn’t feel human and thus could not be executed with conviction. They were sales motions, sure, but they didn’t foster a deeper connection with him as a buyer—this insight informed his new approach, which he calls cerebral selling.

This approach focuses more on the human you’re selling to and the problems you’re solving. Here are four tactics he teaches in his different programs that you can bring into your sales efforts:

1. Speak the language of problems, not products

Regardless of product or company maturity, think about what you can offer prospective customers to help solve their problems.

As individuals try to grow their business, they think about problems that need to be solved. While a certain brand might pop into their heads, business leaders spend most of their time thinking about problems and are likely to trust vendors who understand those challenges better than they do.

“The same problem will be interpreted differently by different people within the customer's organization,” said David. “So if you understand the problem that those people are facing and can articulate it in a way that is clear in their mind, that's important.”

2. Know the emotional reasons people buy

People might have specific reasons for buying technology, such as driving revenue or saving money. But emotions influence those decisions; you need to know which emotions are at play.

David shared the example of Salesforce, a premium-priced, feature-rich software that doesn’t intuitively make sense for early-stage startups. Yet many startups buy. Why? He said it’s for two reasons: some like the feeling that working with Salesforce means they’ll never need to replace their CRM software as their busines scales. Others like it a signalling device that they are serious about their business.

Prospects may not disclose these reasons to you, but trusted customers often will; you can then use this insight to drive at what David calls the “emotional agenda” in future sales conversations.

“It's important to understand the unspoken emotional drivers by which your customers are going to make that [buying] decision,” said David.

3. Think about love and hate

Talk about your product in terms of who it’s for to draw those people in and repel any other prospects who, at this moment in your company’s history, would be a waste of time.

To accomplish this, David recommends phrasing your description in terms of love and hate—a “polarizing statement”. For instance, David shared the example of the now-defunct Trunk Club, which exited to Nordstrom. Rather than describing it literally—as a personal shopping offering for men—the love-hate phrasing aligns well with Trunk Club’s initial pitch of saying it’s “for men who love to dress well, but hate to shop.”

“The idea behind the polarizing statement is to really get in tune with what it is your customers want, and the blocker—the thing that's preventing them from getting that,” said David. “And using that in a statement to describe what it is that you do.”

4. Use emotionally compelling data

Psychologists say that data helps tell stories because it’s precise. However, it only helps your sales efforts if it drives a deeper connection with buyers.

For instance, one of David’s clients offers a small business payments solution. On a premium plan, merchants get charged only 2.6% on credit card transactions, down from 2.9%. Simply saying your rate goes down 0.3% doesn’t inspire much confidence. But if you say the same information differently—that fees go down by 10%—then suddenly it’s more interesting.

“When we're trying to strike at the emotional heart of our clients, it’s really important to pick emotionally relevant and compelling data,” said David.

Talking to humans about SaaS

In the end, you’re talking to someone else and seeing if you can help them out—you can’t forget the human side. You’re not likely to win deals on product or brand alone, particularly at early stages when your offering isn’t mature enough. The way to win, then, is to prioritize the other person you’re speaking with—build a connection with them, talk about problems they are facing, and go from there.

“As the number of solutions on the market continues to increase… to your customers you all just kind of sound the same,” said David. “You'll establish your credibility by virtue of the fact that you understand the problem at such a deep level, on a level that the customer cannot describe to you in the same way that you can.”