A visual guide to selling Software as a Service | Hacker News Reader

A visual guide to selling Software as a Service

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161 pointsSePP32 comments

I clicked on the linked out of curiosity. I must say, I am glad I did. By far the best presentation I have seen on this subject. It is a bit pro slack, but I can forgive that for the content.

On slide 25, could anyone give context? Are they saying that they engage 60% of their users, of this they get 2% paying? That even seems a little high to me.

It aren't our actual numbers. They are a lot lower, unfortunately.

I took these numbers from the initial presentation on pirate metrics by Dave McClure. http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pir...

wow, glad you make sense of that!

+1 on the best presentation I have seen on the subject. I'd like to download it.

How can I get this as a .pdf without submitting myself to social network analysis by Slideshare? I think that's too rich a price to pay for the privilege of downloading a file from a hosting company.

You can download the PDF on http://www.prezly.com/pirate-metrics-compass

I did the "Pay with a Tweet" option, but the PDF I downloaded was just the image on the page.

HelloMcFly will get back to you when we offer the full slidedeck download

there's a tool for that ;)

http://www.extramaster.net/tools/downloadFromSlideshare/

> Server down :(

> Well, it looks like this server will be nonfunctional for the next 24 hours or so. Thank for you visiting this site...

Is anyone able to upload the PDF anywhere?

Since this is a long (but very well done) presentation, I found that I wanted to share a specific page with a colleague.

Fun Slideshare tip that I just learned, you can link to a specific slide by adding "/13" to the url. Replace 13 with your desired page.

Cool, didn't know this. Thx for sharing :)

Cool, thats just what I was after.

Anyone here get resistance from your sales people when trying to get them to use CRM? If so, how did you overcome it?

At my company people basically refuse to do it, saying it turns them into a data entry person instead of a salesperson.

The easiest way to get them to use a CRM is to only pay commissions on deals marked as closed in the CRM. Run all meetings off the CRM, and if someone's lead status isn't updated make a point of asking why. Requires a bit of discipline, but if you make it the rules of "the game", sales people will play along.

I'd argue that using a CRM isn't in the sales people's best interest. If they can keep all of their contacts in their personal contact list they are better off. Plus, from their perspective any time entering stuff into a CRM System is time when they're not closing sales.

It is in the companies best interest to use a CRM system. It gives reporting, visibility, and a different sales rep can pick things up with some history if the old sales rep leaves (turnover can high).

In my opinion the only way to get sales reps to use a CRM System is to tie it to comp. Any other method is a waste of time.

Hi Emarthinsen,

We use incoming/outgoing hooks that communicate with a very simple slack PHP service/class. For CapsuleCRM the command 'elvis leads' dispatches a call to the capsuleCRM API, parses the results and outputs does in the channel (with an incoming web hook). I would be happy to tell you more about this and share snippets

For quick and dirty integrations or integrations that are less time critical we use Zapier and IFTTT

Thanks digitalbase. That's exactly the info I was interested in.

The pirate metrics compass (after 90 slides) that lists a lot of SaaS services looks like this https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2011477/Screen%20Shot%20...

This is really well done.

How are you integrating Slack with, for example, CapsuleCRM? Did you write some custom integration code or are you using something like Zapier?

Hi Emarthinsen, We use incoming/outgoing hooks that communicate with a very simple slack PHP service/class. For CapsuleCRM the command 'elvis leads' dispatches a call to the capsuleCRM API, parses the results and outputs does in the channel (with an incoming web hook). I would be happy to tell you more about this and share snippets For quick and dirty integrations or integrations that are less time critical we use Zapier and IFTTT

Doesn't the funnel metaphor imply that all people come to the end, just not at the same time?

What they are talking about seems more like a sieve to me.

The sales funnel has been commons sales parlance for decades, its not new.

Most of the stuff he talked about is not new(most established companies do it), he just put it all together on a simple guide.

I see, thank you.

Just out of curiousity, what is the ideal format for this type of "simple guide" ?

Is there a way to access the links on the slides somehow?

All the links are clickable. I might follow up with a blog post and will include them there.

Has anyone used BuzzSumo or Moz? Would love to hear if they're worth the money.

Try the free plan of BuzzSumo. It's sufficient for our needs.

I've used Moz. It's worth it if you have time and resources to follow the advice that they give. It's not one of those tools that is a fire and forget, because you still have to make the effort when it comes to content marketing or linkbuilding.

The usefulness of Moz depends on how much time/effort you're putting towards SEO. If SEO isn't a top source of traffic/customers for you, then I'd say don't bother. Otherwise, it's useful mostly for tracking keyword rankings.

(It's too bad they don't have any plans smaller than $99. At that price, I'm constantly wondering whether I'm getting enough use out of it to justify the cost. If it was any lower, say, $49, I wouldn't even second-guess it.)

Amazing presentation!

Great presentation.

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