A Programmer Built a $230,000,000,000 B2B SaaS Company Without Selling Directly to Executives
Growing a B2B SaaS business is 10x harder when you target busy executives.
Most executives avoid direct sales pitches.
Executives will give you excuses like:
- Our IT roadmap is set for next year.
- I’ve had negative experiences with a similar product in past.
In that case, how can you grow your B2B SaaS without selling directly to executives?
I studied the techniques of Marc Benioff, who grew Salesforce to a valuation of $230 billion without selling directly to executives.
1. Take initiative to start word-of-mouth
Most marketers believe that word-of-mouth phenomena should occur naturally.
They believe that if the quality of their product is excellent with good customer service, people will naturally start talking to each other about their product.
That’s why they tell founders to create a high-quality product and continue waiting for word of mouth to kick in.
If we founders know that word-of-mouth is a powerful way to get clients, why do we keep waiting?
When Marc Benioff was building Salesforce at first, he grew his startup by attacking the market leader, but as time went on he had to change their marketing strategy.
He knew word-of-mouth was one of the most powerful ways to grow the company.
How did he force the word-of-mouth phenomenon to start?
The Salesforce team started with events.
They planned to invite different types of people to their events.
At the first event, people such as analysts, philanthropists, the press and potential users were invited.
Initially, they didn’t know if people would attend their event or not.
50 people were invited but only 15 people attended the event.
We have all seen this repeatedly. If we organize something for the first time and invite 100 people, only a small part of those people will come. The mistake we make is we start to feel low because only a small part of those people come.
Marc and his team were not discouraged because fewer people came to the event.
Instead, they welcomed everyone who came and let people talk about what they wanted to talk about. Also, they promoted their product.
Due to the smaller number of people, everyone was adequately cared for according to their needs. Because of these events, people started talking about Salesforce.
What can we learn?
Not all of us have such a big budget to host events.
But we can all do it on a smaller scale.
A small event can be done via video call. Make sure the event is valuable to everyone attending it.
The first time you do it, don’t try to control everything.
Just let people express what they want.
When you start doing these types of events frequently, you will automatically understand what you need to control.
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2. Use the power of testimony to inspire
>90% of modern companies fear their customers.
That’s why they only call their happy customers to their events.
If you’ve ever been to an event organized by a private company, you might notice that they either don’t invite their customers or only extend invitations to their satisfied customers.
These companies’ executives believe they are doing good by not calling angry customers, but that is rarely true.
A customer is a customer, he is neither happy nor angry. He/she has been paid his/her hard-earned money.
Why should a company differentiate between a customer?
Most top executives think that angry customers will damage their brand image. These customers might share their negative experiences with the product, raising some questions about the product.
However, if the company executives handled the negative comments appropriately and explained the entire situation properly to everyone.
Do you think the people present will trust your brand more or less?
If executives properly handle negative feedback, people attending the event will start to care about your product and happily attend future events.
How did Marc use the power of testimony to inspire?
When the Salesforce team started doing events regularly.
They discovered something strange.
People weren’t coming to the event to talk to the Salesforce team or listen to them.
They came to meet other people who also used the product.
After noticing this pattern, Marc and his team began encouraging customers to talk and share their stories about the product.
He used to randomly call someone from the public and let them share their experience with the product.
The Salesforce team never tried to censor anything and let customers say what they think.
Some people would have shared their negative experiences with the product. But they never try to stop them.
This made people start trusting the Salesforce brand.
What can we learn?
You should consider hosting small events.
It could be online or offline.
Invite your existing customers and some potential customers.
Let the customer share whatever they want related to your product or the theme of the event. This will inspire others to buy your product.
3. Not targeting the senior executives of companies in B2B Space
I have been advised by founders of several companies to create a product that can be sold directly to businesses (B2B).
Every time I asked them a reason for doing it they told me:
- You will be able to sell your product faster.
If you go directly to the end user you will need:
- More marketing efforts
- Better customer service
- Fast user education
Before reading and listening to Marc, I had decided I would build a product in the B2B space.
The reason being:
- It’s easy to sell the product to a company’s top executive rather than hundreds of individual customers.
When I read about Salesforce I discovered that despite developing the product in the B2B space, they were still focused on selling directly to individual users.
How did Marc leverage end users?
Salesforce’s main customers were sales, marketing, and customer service people.
These people were using old software products.
The old enterprise software was difficult to manage and these people faced many problems.
Traditional enterprise software did not focus on its end users. They were busy keeping the executives happy.
Companies that were new and still in the establishment phase focused on selling to company executives. The final purchasing decision was in the hands of the executives.
However, Salesforce went directly to end users instead of selling only to senior executives.
Since no companies were marketing directly to these users, it was an untapped opportunity.
When end users saw how good the Salesforce product was compared to other traditional software.
They became one of its strongest defenders. They began to push the Salesforce product in their respective companies.
At events, the Salesforce team began recognizing these customers and posted large photos of them. Users who were recognized by Salesforce began to rise within their respective companies.
Because of all this, the number of Salesforce users began to grow.
What can we learn?
Try to sell your product to end users even in the b2b space.
Recognize end users. They will help you grow.
Summary
- Make the word-of-mouth phenomenon a reality
- Use testimonials to inspire others
- Don’t forget the end user
