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Revenue teams face significant headwinds these days—rapidly changing technology, shifting industry philosophies, the inability to retain top performers, all on top of an unpredictable market. Tough times, indeed.
For sales software solutions companies, tough times can mean opportunity for innovation and expansion. From AI agents to keeping up with rapidly changing demands, here’s how two SaaS companies, Salesloft and Demandbase, are approaching some of the revenue world’s biggest challenges.
Brave new sales world
The emphasis on behavioral analysis and broader data availability have given sellers more tools for finding and closing deals, according to Mark Niemiec, Salesloft’s chief revenue officer. For Niemeic, who has more than 20 years of experience in and around the sales world, the shift to a more data-centric selling approach is like moving from a “dark art” of handshake deals over lunch to a more “scientific” approach.
“Whether it’s calls or emails or interactions, analyzed against what are the winning patterns that have existed in 100,000 or 100 million sales engagements, we can do that now,” Niemiec said. “And so we get a much more scientific and fact-based analysis of what sales is and what buying is.”
Moreover, Niemiec alluded to the more traditional or “rigid” approaches to sales like non-data driven forecasting and lead generation as antiquated. For Salesloft, this means designing more adaptable technologies that can satisfy data-specific needs for customers looking for greater precision.
Another day, another technology
Niemiec explained that technological change is a tension point for revenue teams, which often struggle to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape. Getting leaders comfortable with the reality that they’re not going to be able to micromanage their teams—observing every call, for instance—but will still get all the relevant data is part of this evolution.
“Oftentimes there’s a manager onboarding and adoption curve that we need to go through with the customer,” Niemiec said. “They think about this as rep technology, and it is in many ways. But in order for the rep technology to work, the managers need to be committed to it as well, because they’re going to use it to coach; they’re going to use it to guide.”
Sales people are sold on leaving
According to Mark Turner, VP of revenue operations at sales intelligence company Demandbase, market flux means salespeople are starting to look at opportunities elsewhere. As a result, retention is front of mind for many companies right now, as replacing experienced sellers can be an arduous process.
“Someone who’s entrenched in the account, who’s been with that account, and knows all the players, that’s a relationship that you’ve lost,” Turner said.
Beyond losing business, Turner explained that in a delicate sales environment replacing employees comes with risk.
“You’re trying to bring in somebody new, get them up to speed on the accounts, maybe there’s a personality mismatch. It’s tough, and it puts existing customers at risk,” Turner said.
Your guess is as good as mine
Market volatility touches all industries, and Turner said it has made the planning process for sales teams that much more difficult.
“I think the age of annual planning and having that plan locked in is almost going away,” Turner said. “Are you really going to have that path mapped out over the next 12 months? Probably not with both market volatility plus the pace of technology change.”
Turner is increasingly seeing customers request short-term technologies that can navigate a quarter rather than a year. However, he also mentioned that for Demandbase, volatility intersects with the earlier challenge of technology.
Technologies unique to specific sales challenges, like market ups or downs, need time to build and adapt, which means that they may lag behind the fluid demands of consumers. This can leave sales professionals frustrated, Niemiec said.
“I’ve definitely observed folks that struggle with this sort of profit disillusionment,” he said. “Folks buy stuff, they have great expectations, and then it maybe didn’t get adopted the way they hoped or expected. And, there’s a re-implementation, or sort of a recast of, ‘Hey, how should we be doing this? Why don’t we get the results we’re looking for?’”