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MenuWhat are the most effective distribution channels to sell SaaS products?
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There are several options available which would work for SaaS. The best one I can suggest is Referral Program. The referral program would need to have Training Documentation well defined as well as marketing material. This would allow you to pay other consultants or individuals to pipe leads or signups to your site to get exposure. This is especially effective in SMB market and tends to be targeted to the customer who would purchase. The second is to be more specific in contacting specific demographic targeted customers (be aware in the US you must be subscribed to Do Not Call Registery to Scrub call list for telemarketing or be potentially be fined by US Government). You can engage Lead generators to accomplish this for you but be careful that they are registered and scrub their list against the US Do Not Call Registery. Email Campaigns are good if you have users who have requested to opt into receiving an email and also have opt out options to remove themselves from the list to comply with US and other countries SPAM Laws. Then there are advertising though multiple media types beyond email and banner advertisements such as radio, TV, Billboards, Magazines and other print media.
There are many ways to do it.
One way to do it through more of a "growth hacking" method is to create a profile for your target customer, then build your own proprietary database of target customers by scraping data online.
Once you have contact info added to your database, you should be able to effectively build out a direct marketing strategy using a marketing automation tool such as www.close.io to help automate a high volume direct sales effort.
This will be the most cost effective strategy, but there are many other ways to do it too if you have a budget for customer acquisition.
Have your considered a partner/reseller/affiliate program?
Unlike direct sales force that require a high upfront labour cost, partner programs are highly scalable as partners only earn commission when a sale is generated.
I'd advise that your company be as partner friendly as possible. Commission is rarely the primary motivator for partners who earn the majority of their income offering their own services to your potential clients. If your company is hard to do business with, or the user experience tarnishes your partner's reputation they will stop sending new clients your way.
Cheers,
Mick
Related Questions
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What do (bootstrapped) startups offer to new sales hires? Commission only? What are some good examples to keep people motivated and still survive?
Generally bootstrapped startups should avoid salespeople, for a few reasons: a. they typically can't afford the base and overall comp required to attract sales people who can actually sell / or afford to support them with marketing, management, etc b. it will be very difficult to find the rare person with the right mix of sales and startup DNA along with the critical domain knowledge, consequently the startup is likely to settle c. the founders need to be very involved in the selling and customers will demand it That said, if the plan is still to hire a salesperson, find someone who has demonstrated sales success in startups and is excited by the early stage in company building. Create a comp plan heavily leveraged on sales results (unless you are in an industry where 100% commission is a common practice, would recommend against $0 base as this creates the false impression that your hire isn't passing time with one company while looking for another job with a richer comp plan - you want your rep focussed). Sell the vision and opportunity to be part of a growth story. I have written a several blog posts on hiring sales people into start-ups. You might find these useful: http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/ceo-question-should-i-learn-to-sell-or-hire-a-sales-person/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/start-up-sales-and-hiring-advice-dont-stop-selling-once-you-hire-your-first-sales-rep/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/hiring-start-up-sales-reps/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/startups-and-salespeople/ Good luck!EB
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What's a reasonable profit margin on merchandise?
Are you the manufacturer or reseller? If you are the reseller, typically about 40-50% above cost. Use the MSRP as an indicator.ZR
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Whats the best way to find commission sales reps?
This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - NickNP
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What would be a good answer for describing the size of your company to a potential prospect who might consider you too small to service their account?
What an awesome question! Businesses are running into this issue more frequently that ever, good news is, it can be done. Having worked on projects with oDesk, Fox Television and Wikipedia and having a very very small staff, it's certainly possible. Here's how I say it in our pitches to larger organizations: "Tractive West provides tailored video production services to organizations of all sizes. We have developed a distributed workflow using the latest digital tools. We leverage our small creative and management team with a world wide network of creative professionals, that means we can rapidly scale to meet the demands of any project while keeping our infrastructure and overhead lightweight and sustainable." Cheers and best of luck.SM
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How should I start selling on farfetch.com or yoox.com?
This depends on where you are located but in many major cities (U.S., Europe and Asia) there are showrooms buyers shop. This means, for a fee, your products are guaranteed to be viewed by buyers (though there is no way to guarantee they will select to buy them). These buyers range from local shops to regional chains to department store and boutique buyers. If you are picked up by one or more and show data to these online specialty stores, that is more appealing than a cold turkey approach. Simultaneously building an online following is key as well since both retailers have e-commerce-savvy demos.SC
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