How to Sell Your SaaS Amidst Rapidly Changing B2B Buyer Behaviours?

 AI-SaaS has led to somewhat of a buyer behaviour flip:

🌳 Enterprises: they only want to pay for actual, incremental value created (preferring to stick to incumbent vendors instead, provided they append the given AI functionality to their offering)

VERSUS

🌱 Mid-market/SMBs: they now expect 'Point Customised' offerings as the new table stakes, any AISaaS must deliver as per their specific workflow & needs

The big buyer can now unexpectedly act like a thrifty small buyer, whereas the small buyer will not easily pay for a vanilla point/modular product since a smarter AI variant is always around. This only adds to cross-segment buying friction. ⚔

To complicate things further, the spam resulting from overuse of AI generated sales content in emails/LinkedIn and AI cold callers has degraded them as channels. ⛓️‍💥

This trend in SaaS buyer priorities can be explained using the modified version of the 'Gamification Pyramid'. It describes how in games
🃏 the big picture 'Dynamics' (narrative, constraints, relationships) that underpin
👣 the 'Mechanics' (cooperation, knowledge & resource acquisition, competition, transactions, rewards), which in turn drive
🎯 the 'Components' (tasks, results, leaderboards, content)

Those in software sales can often see the above trends manifested in newly coined terminologies like 'Inbound Signal-led Outbound' or 'Buyer-driven Selling' on LinkedIn, sales podcasts etc.

Big sales orgs. have ample resources & backups, but how are the best early stage founders/small sales orgs. able to deal with this and still hitting quota? 🤔

By aligning with changing times.

1) Prioritize Retaining Customers Over Gaining New Ones

$100k+ ACV products are likely to be centrally purchased while those below $10k are handpicked by individuals or small teams. However, $10-100k products represent a significant cost & may be cut if they don't address top buyer priorities. (Emergence Capital 2024 report)

Consider investing in Customer Success before investing in DemandGen or sales automation esp. if you sell to mid-market.

2) Make lead magnets & ancillary collateral your friend

While you must not overuse AI for LinkedIn & web content, it's a great idea to leverage it for creating content and guides for every point in your ICP's journey.

Use helpful sales collateral from other companies as reference for AI prompts. Explore tools like https://instantlanding.page/ & Tome App. Leverage tech documentation to create relevant lead magnets for technical buyers.

3) Make investing in your product engaging

Justifiably, there's lots of chatter around multi-threading & MAPs. But they're not enough on their own.

Build buyer curiosity by sharing insightful peer strategies, custom views & teasers of how a key implementation could look for them, and visualise how much value they're leaving on the table. (Ex: A fintech SaaS startup incentivises buyer action by offering discounts tied to MAP milestones.)

4) Ensure your sales org. is in sync

As US Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf said to Joe Rogan, "Danger brings clarity." But that doesn't mean you have to chase danger.

Involve your team in testing assumptions around buyer narratives e.g.

So how are you tackling this diffusion of buying behaviours in your domain?