Consumers are changing, and this has never been true than in the SaaS industry. Thanks to the Internet which has made all types of information accessible with just a click. The Internet has also allowed buyers to connect with their peers faster; thus, they can get other people’s opinions about a product or service before they buy.
However, this is not the only change that is happening in the SaaS buying process. There are other areas that you need to understand to effectively reach out to your buyers and ultimately close a deal.
Paying Attention to Details: The SaaS Buying Experience
The SaaS landscape is changing, and there are four prevalent factors that SaaS vendors need to focus on if they want to capture the attention of their potential customers effectively:
#1 The buyer makes the purchase decision without vendor engagement.
In the past, buyers interact with vendors when they want to know more about the product. With social media, however, people get more connected, and the modern buyer doesn’t need to go straight to the vendor to ask about the products and services they offer. Instead, they ask their fellow consumers and ask for an honest review – talk about glorified word-of-mouth advertising.
#2 Vendors with recognizable brands still gain the upper hand.
Whether you like it or not, consumers will still choose the familiar brand over something unfamiliar unless they see something of unique value. A well-thought brand strategy will help put your brand on the map.
Start with your core values – what do your brand and your company stand for? Next, how do you want to present your brand to your consumers? Do you want to be quirky or you want to be the voice of luxury?
#3 If you can’t present your product in a few sentences, forget about it.
If you are an unfamiliar brand, you can gain the upper hand by providing consumers an easy-to-use trial because who wants a hundred and one operation guideline? Stop using jargons and technical words that only you or a chosen few can understand. Start using the language your target audience is using, then you have a fighting chance. So you have a choice if you want to gain some market share – be popular or make consumers’ lives much easier.
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#4 There’s not only one decision maker.
Decision makers are not the only ones involved in the buying process these days. In fact, they only get in the picture at the end when a final decision has to be made. It shows that there are other people who are given the responsibility to check different products and services. While they might not be the major decision-makers, these people have the power to influence decisions because they are the ones who give the input to the decision makers.
Strategy for the SaaS Buyer
Seeing how the SaaS buyer experience has changed, it calls for an overhaul of what is familiarly used in how we present our products and services to buyers. It’s not about changing the selling strategy but the product itself. This time, however, you are also designing the product with sales in mind. Here are some factors to consider so you can engage SaaS enterprises more:
Single sign-on
As mentioned above, SaaS consumers want products or services to be uncomplicated. It will do you good if you can design products that only require a single sign-on because it reduces administration efforts.
Login audits
A lot of documents are passed on to different people and departments that organizations sometimes do not know who has access to which document. Creating a feature that shows who accessed a document and what time they accessed it makes it much easier to trace any errors or mistakes that might have occurred.
Limited credentials
Aside from login audits, features that give users different levels of access to certain documents and software are recommended. This protects any sensitive information in case some credentials got lost or phished.
Multi-level security
Cybercriminals are busy trying to wreak havoc to any system that has low-security levels. Your product or service will be more appealing to consumers if you have addressed different security concerns and implemented some solutions to those problems.
In Conclusion
While there is no panacea to making the perfect SaaS solution to different types of buyers, an excellent marketer knows how their target customers think, what kind of information they have access to and what interactions they have. Doing this can increase your conversion and your revenue as well.
This article originally posted at The Savvy Marketer.