SaaS companies are particularly susceptible to the perils of friction in the sales process. Just as literal friction creates resistance and impedes velocity, sales friction involves obstacles to conversion and retention, either overt or subtle in nature.
Reducing or removing friction eases the sales journey, increasing up-sells and cross-sells and decreasing active and passive churn. How can you accomplish this? The first step is to identify the areas where friction is likely to occur.
Potential Friction Points
There are several key points in the customer experience where friction can occur. Generally speaking, friction evolves around revenue moments. You could encounter resistance from potential or existing customers in these areas:
- Initial trust or confidence in your brand
- Apathy about or active dissatisfaction with your product or service
- Dissatisfaction with your pricing model
- Unhappiness with one or more of your company policies
- An unsatisfactory customer experience
Once you have identified these trouble spots, you can begin to smooth the road for future growth. Here are some tips for removing friction in your SaaS selling process:
Tip No. 1: Build Initial Trust in Your Brand
While it is true that real trust is developed over time, you have to clear the initial hurdle of persuading a client to interact with your company. This can be done by ensuring your website presents an accurate depiction of your company mission. Since the website is often the first thing a customer sees, it should be professional in appearance. Things to include might be positive customer reviews, professional certifications or awards your SaaS company has achieved, and so on Tweet . A/B testing with small tweaks can significantly improve a customer’s initial impression of how trustworthy you are.
Maintaining a healthy presence on various social media platforms also helps to establish your brand reputation. Robust inbound marketing strategies are essential.
Tip No. 2: Know Your Competitors
Are there other SaaS offerings in the marketplace that make your product seem second-rate? If so, it is time to create your own competitive advantage. Evaluate your offering compared to others in your space, and consider making changes so that it has as many areas of superiority over the offerings of serious competitors as possible. Once you find your strengths, promote them heavily in all of your marketing efforts Tweet . The goal here is to make potential clients say about your company, “Oh, yeah, that’s the company that does (whatever you do) so well.”
Tip No. 3: Find Your Pricing Sweet Spot
Price your products too low, and your customers will not perceive their true value. Price them too high, and customers will go elsewhere. This is an area where comparison to competitors can work in your favor. By knowing what your competitors charge for similar offerings, you can tweak your offering to be the more attractive option.
Testing in this area is wise. Pricing strategy must take into account multiple variables. A/B testing of similar product prices may reveal that bundling products is more popular with your clients. Or, you may find that offering discounts in other areas will prompt conversion more quickly. In either event, analyzing the results of your tests will steer you in the right pricing direction.
Tip No. 4: Streamline Your Purchasing Processes
To eliminate friction at the all-important moment of conversion, it is important to make it incredibly easy for your client to purchase your SaaS product. To this end, you can A/B test different pricing page and cart designs to see what makes the most sense to your customers
Tweet. If there seems to be a particular inquiry that your support team gets most often from customers going through the purchase process, go through the process yourself and imagine how that sticking point could be streamlined.
Some common friction-inducing items include:
- Complicated order placement
- No money-back guarantee
- Surprise charges at checkout
- No contact information given in the event of problems with checkout
All of these points can be easily addressed with a little forethought and good design strategy.
Tip No. 5: Create a Culture of Excellent Customer Service
Volumes can be written about ways to improve customer service. Here are a few suggestions to improve the quality of your customer interactions and alleviate points of friction:
- Optimize your website user interface with fast speeds, easy navigation, and uncluttered page design
- Proactively manage subscription enrolment
- Offer ways to connect instantly with support such as live chat or toll-free numbers
- Keep order form fields short and sweet
- Offer ongoing support in the form of emails, white papers, e-books, blog posts, infographics, social media marketing, and so on
- Create a system to recapture clients who terminate their SaaS subscription that includes cost and service incentives to reactivate their subscription immediately
- Collect and study customer feedback on an ongoing basis to address any areas of concern quickly and efficiently
Of course, there are many other ways to remove friction from your SaaS sales process. Continual testing and improvement is the key to sustainable revenue growth. Identifying and eliminating friction in its infancy will help you firmly establish your brand in the marketplace.
Avangate powers modern Digital Commerce, solving the complexity of online commerce, subscription billing, and global payments for Software, SaaS and Online Services companies. Backed by a proven cloud platform, unmatched expertise and a depth of digital commerce services, Avangate helps digital business leaders drive the fastest path to revenue, maximize the value of every customer, and expand global reach. Contact us for more information about how our digital commerce services can help you grow your business.
