Fundamentals of building an effective SaaS sales team

Building blocks of cloud sales teams, and how a company can build a productive SaaS sales team to scale.

Building an effective saas sales team: Scaling a business is no child’s play. During the transition, time, energy, and an effective strategy must create a perfect synergy that makes expansion constructive, as this is a critical time for a business. Many organizations, like old empires, have crumbled under their own weight, expanding rapidly but failing to maintain the essential balance.

Building an effective saas sales team

One crucial factor, perhaps the most important one, is bringing together an effective team that makes the expansion process sustainable and creating a structured sales process. In SaaS and cloud sales, good hiring can make or break scaling, thereby enhancing the importance of bringing the right people on board. In essence, building a strong SaaS sales team is analogous to building a strong foundation for a large structure. 

So, what does the research say about building a high-performing cloud sales team that builds a strong foundation for sustainable growth and perpetual expansion? How can a company bring in the best people that beat the competition out of the park and establish the authority of the SaaS product in the expansion arena?

An efficient team building process for SaaS sales

Building a SaaS sales team usually starts with a recruitment advertisement that attracts potential candidates. Every company is doing this on a regular basis but not every business is building a strong team at the end of this process. One reason could be a generalized attitude towards hiring.

Thomas Smale warns against such a practice, declaring the ‘one size fits all’ approach completely counterproductive. Scaling businesses in particular have this perennial problem of handling menial tasks to sales team reps and other specialized employees, thereby wasting their potential on tasks that should be delegated. 

The recruitment stage

Next comes the recruitment process, normally consisting of attracting suitable candidates through ads, their skills evaluation, interviewing, and offering the job to a successful candidate. Here, an essential ingredient is a narrow approach towards skills and aptitude rather than time and general experience. Time might be money but skills are the key to that treasure.

A fresh graduate with SaaS knowledge and excellent communication skills could potentially be far superior to a veteran salesperson with no knowledge of the SaaS product. In this process, the selection process, especially the interview, should be designed to select a candidate without any prejudice towards their appearance or any other superficial characteristic. The process must select on the basis of qualification and aptitude rather than based on the liking or disliking of the selection panel.

Teams are built after the recruitment 

Finally, a successful SaaS sales team does not form overnight. Product awareness, specific skills related to a specific SaaS product, and an overarching strategy are still missing. Once you get some efficient and skillful people onboard, polish and shine their skills, hone their raw and hidden talents, and create a team out of individuals through interpersonal workshops and training.

A long-term perspective instilled in employees should guide their hunger for learning about product knowledge, market trends, customer personas, and comparative advantages of the SaaS product. This however should not be too narrow-focused as changing dynamics need flexibility in sales approach and tactics. 

How can SUNODOS help?

By engaging with hundreds of businesses, from start-ups to corporates, both up and down-scaling, and putting business book theories in practice, we have gained experiences and knowledge to benchmark your team against the market. We can analyze where your hidden pain points are and give you direction regarding performance-based marketing. 

As a strategic recruitment partner, we know our way in the candidate market because of maintaining our candidate relationships. We can deliver the candidates who are not responding to on-job ads. Additionally, we can take a lot of your work from your plate by doing the heavy recruitment-lifting so you only speak with the right candidates to save time and energy. Need help with building a team? Contact us

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