The global B2B sales downslide that started in 2021 landed hard in the UK in 2023: we saw a 30% dip in net new SaaS sales across our portfolio. In some cases upsell and cross-sell picked up the slack, but this wasn’t the norm. I realised that none of the founders I work with had yet experienced a downturn or disruption this major, meaning that this was a brutal shock to the system they just hadn’t foreseen. Even experienced founders were tripped up by 15 years of bull run.

Most of the headlines in startup land were focused on investor appetite and slow down; what many founders missed was a savage client shut down and behaviour shift. This is where you have to move fast, ask different questions and sometimes sell a new offering, often to a new persona. The oddest downturn detail is that mostly it’s just a positioning shift where nothing else changes. Same product, same people, same service, just a different pitch with implicit message. 

In January we started to see ‘green shoots’ data from the end of last year come through - the doom was lifting. For this reason, I believe now is the time for B2B SaaS companies to put their foot on the gas and accelerate sales activity. Now is the time to steal the lead and create a new world for clients. Leveraging past learnings of 20 years in SaaS and the current economic conditions, here are my 5 tips to sell effectively into corporates.

Step into their shoes

You’re selling person to person after all, so what are *they* going through? Do ask. From the user as well as buyer perspective consensus sales will cover multiple stakeholder types. Start at the (business) strategic objectives level. Find out what the business needs to achieve this next mission. Then, come down to (personal) operations: ask how the heck they can use this thing to make their life easier, quicker, more productive on the shop floor. Position your solution as the painkiller, not the vitamin, to each and give *them* the materials to support your case as you hero *them* within the organisation. You don’t matter, it’s only ever about them. And remember - language matters.

Create the Playbook

In early founder-led sales it’s messy and runs on gut, muchly. As sales moves mainstream and into corporate land, your stakeholders will want to know that they’re in safe hands. Implicitly, this is usually baked into a documented process. So, start that early. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it will iterate: test everything and don’t be afraid to get wet. Start with your ideal customer,which must be filterable i.e. if you can’t drill down and find your customer in Sales Navigator, it’s wrong. Then use any exciting sales framework that best suits your business. In B2B SaaS an example would be MEDDIC, but there are many. Do not reinvent the wheel, and just keep it simple.

Pick up the phone

Everyone hides behind email, or LinkedIn messaging, or expects product-led growth (PLG) to burn the website down (it never does) - but hardly anyone calls. Yes, cold calling can be a dirty word, but it works. If anything, prospects will email you back if you threaten to call. Either way is a win. You’re not *just* looking for a yes, you also want to know the reasons behind the no’s. Organisations that don’t call grow at much lower and slower rates than those who do, by some margin. A study by Medina, Altschuler, and Kosoglow in their book ‘Sales Engagement’ found that those who believed that cold calling was no longer effective experienced 42% less growth.

Don’t wait to apply AI

The ability to automate much of the sales process is here. It’s live and it works. The cost of hesitating is higher than trying and failing. LLMs and this current generation of AI tech is formidable. In some cases, it’s still so innovative that it creates a competitive edge but that will dissipate quickly and of course it must be used with real care and attention. You have tools available for every stage of the process: warming up your prospects’ inbox (e.g. instantly.ai), find prospects (e.g. lusha.com), enrich your database (e.g. noki.so), create content (e.g. writer.com) and sequence messages through multiple channels (e.g. reply.io). These are all moving so quickly that by the time I’ve published this article, the list could likely be out of date. That’s all the more reason to experiment with existing tools to try, test and learn faster from your sales process. Just don’t spam.

Target the right people and avoid lovely but pointless cups of tea

The head of innovation at Acme Corp would *love* to spend time with you and find out more about your business. That’s their job. Just know that virtually nothing gets sold from ‘innovation’ into the mainstream business. This is a corporate patter that pervades. Always ask if you’re a target and what the next step is. Find out who will be the ultimate decision maker and focus on them as a priority.

Lastly, never be shy.