Want Your Sleep Back? How to End Underperforming Sales Revenue

And it’s not just a revenue problem that manifests in staff layoffs and budget cuts. These challenges can put a ton of stress on you and your teams which means longer hours. Tougher expectations.  

That’s when the sleepless nights kick in. And possibility anxiety. All stuff that you don’t need.  

What Causes Sales Underperformance and Loss-Making Deals? 

It’s only from understanding the causes of sales underperformance and loss-making deals that anything can be done about it.  

Here’s what we hear CEOs talk about the most. Do any of these sound familiar?   

Poor market research: Skimping on market research never works out well – it just means you waste time and money offering a product that doesn’t resonate using marketing messages customers don’t care about.  

Many companies overlook research (ideally segmented research with personas) will give ideal customers’ needs or preferences. B2B buyers are researching SaaS companies before they get in touch for solutions, so when SaaS companies don’t do the same, they put themselves at a huge disadvantage.  

Bad pricing: Pricing can be a nightmare in the SaaS industry because of all the factors involved. There’s a lot of complexity that can turn keeping up with customer demand and the ever-changing landscape of competitors’ pricing into an impossible ask. And we haven’t even gotten to the differences in pricing between individual customers!  

Discounts and promotions can be a total killer. When pricing doesn’t reflect the value your products and services give, you’re stuck with either loss-making deals or deals that have customers jumping ship the millisecond a competitor offers something better.   

High Customer Acquisition Costs: This can be down to sales salaries being too high compared to the 4-5x of revenue they’re supposed to bring in. It can be down to a bad website that causes people to bounce within seconds. And it can be down to marketing.  Often it’s all three. No matter what it is, it’s a costly disaster.  

Subpar CX: There’s no denying that customer experience is one of the most important factors in sales (and customer retention!). SaaS businesses ignore this at their peril, even if they’ve got an exclusive or genius product. 

Why? There’s simply too much competition out there who will swoop in, and give customers the well-designed user interface, simple navigation, targeted offering and messaging, and knowledgeable and organized sales and service that get them to say yes.   

Admin: Soul-sapping, repetitive tasks are everyone’s natural enemy, but this is particularly true with sales teams. According to McKinsey, only 39% of a sales rep’s time is spent selling or interacting with prospects and customers. The rest is admin. If they don’t have tools that sort admin, revenue will never be what it could be.  

It can all be a mess that you constantly mop up. Fortunately, there are ways of turning it around.  

Strategies for Boosting Sales and Preventing Loss-Making Deals 

When you’re ready to boost your underperforming sales and bring in more of that sweet, sweet cash, there are strategies you can use. Here are some of the most effective:  

• Get to know who your customers are: Research your ideal segments to shape your products, services, pricing, and how to best reach them.  
• Optimize that pricing: The best pricing strategies are flexible and tailored. They’re easy to keep track of no matter how complex. And they reflect the true value of your products and services.  
• Cut down on customer acquisition cost: Boost the relationship between sales team salaries and incoming revenue by giving them the support they need to sell as much as possible. Ensure your website performance is excellent. And invest in marketing that uses SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, and influencer marketing to boost your reach and credibility. 
• Enhance customer experience: Give your existing and your potential customers the best experience possible. Make it easy for them to learn what you’re all about. Communicate with them on their terms. Give your sales and customer relations people the time they need to grow those relationships.
• Train your sales team: Your sales team should have a solid foundation in your product and service offering and how to know what to pitch to potential customers. They should also be trained in building long-term relationships with customers. And they should know how to work with your revenue and customer service teams to keep information accurate and streamlined.  
• Monitor your competitors: It’s absolutely vital to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing all the time. It’s a big ask, but how else will you know what’s out there attracting your potential customers? The great thing is that you can keep an eye on their failures just as much as their successes. You’ll learn from both. 

All these strategies do take a lot of time and resources, but if you need to boost these sales, they’ll have to be done.  

If it feels like too much of a drain on your time and resources, there is one option you can do that takes care of almost everything in one fell swoop.