At LiveRamp, trust is foundational to everything we do. As the leading data connectivity platform, we champion an ecosystem rooted in trust. For successful SaaS salespeople, trust is also paramount to building relationships that lead to the best results. Given the dynamics of a SaaS sales deal—long sales cycles, deep product evaluations, large buying committees that have to agree on financial commitments of a year (or more)—learning to build trust as they guide buyers through the customer journey becomes the most essential skill for any SaaS salesperson.
Buyers—which include budget owners, procurement teams, technical vetters, and future product users at the organization—spend months evaluating partnerships. To be successful in forming those partnerships built on trust, the SaaS salesperson must become a diligent resource to buyers during their research process. Here are three ways the best sellers build trust:
- Have empathy. Closing a SaaS deal is all about helping the buyer with a critical need. It’s important that SaaS sellers not only have a good comprehension of their prospects’ business, but put themselves in their prospects’ shoes. Understanding how the prospect carries about their day-to-day activities can help sellers draw insights into how their product can improve a future user’s daily tasks. Similarly, understanding the buyer’s business and personal goals will help the seller better align the proposed partnership to reach those goals. The seller can better demonstrate that investing in a certain product can help improve their overall efficiency and well being by truly empathizing with the buyer.
- Thoroughly understand the product. It’s crucial that SaaS sellers have a clear comprehension of the product, how it works, its capabilities, and the solutions it provides to the end user. Solutions engineers can play a role in the SaaS sales cycle, but the salesperson should have the fundamental knowledge to connect the dots between product capabilities and the buyer’s needs. During a sales cycle, the seller must teach their prospect how the product will help their business—and it’s impossible to teach something you don’t understand.
- Have a strong work ethic. The best SaaS sellers are also the hardest working people. Being responsive to prospects’ questions, committing to what they’ve promised (eg. providing more detail as a follow-up as promised on a call), and being proactive is hard work, but it also earns the trust of your prospects.
It’s also worth noting that building trust is essential to partnering with internal teams who are helping move the deal forward. Excellent SaaS sellers must effectively collaborate with multiple teams that help orchestrate and complete a deal: legal, product, marketing, finance, and more. Building trust and respect with colleagues through these core principles—empathy, knowledge, and hard work—will help sellers move through the internal process easily to drive the best results for their buyer.
LiveRamp is hiring in every sales role. Visit our careers page to learn more.