What is saas sales and how do the commission structures typically work?

[Andrew]

I would like to change my career and get into the tech sector, and I continue to hear that SaaS sales is a rapidly expanding sector. I understand the basic concept of selling software, but I'm curious what is saas sales specifically in terms of the day-to-day workflow and how it differs from traditional hardware or one-time B2B sales? The recurring revenue model, in particular, and its impact on the sales cycle and the emphasis on new deals or high retention rates, are of particular interest to me. Somebody in this niche must work as an SDR or Account Executive, so can anybody explain what the funnel stages are usually and what exactly is the technical background that is actually needed to succeed?

 

[RickieShee]

SaaS sales fundamentally refers to the sale of a subscription as opposed to a box. Mostly you begin as an SDR, so you have to waste your day cold-calling and emailing to arrange meetings. When you are good, then you are promoted to an AE position to put in the deals. The majority employ a 50/50 type of compensation where half of it is your base pay and the other half is your commission which is typically approximately 10 percent of the annual value of your contract that you bring in.

 

[CeceliaRut]

Welcome to the place of smile and dial. As a sales development rep, you fundamentally do the work of professional professional-annoyer until a person consents to a 15-minute demo. No computer science major is required, although a strong tolerance of people calling back and an extreme addiction to caffeine is. The technical one is simply gaining the skills of using Salesforce without breaking it and memorizing three buzzwords such as synergy, scalability, and cloud-native.

 

[NIJDianna3]

B2B to SaaS is changing with the focus on Lifetime Value (LTV). When selling hardware, you just sell it and go. The land and expand model is the king in SaaS. Your commission program will probably have so-called accelerators- once you have achieved your quota of 100 percent, you may see your commission rate increase to 15 per cent on all money earned thereafter. Customer Success is the one overseeing retention but as an AE, you have a clause (the clawback) that states that in case the client cancels your commission in month three, you could lose that commission.

 

[Rue]

Oh, it's a total dream! You receive a list of warm leads which in fact are only people who three years earlier got the unlucky combination of clicking a LinkedIn ad. You will take hours to tune the pitch only to have the prospect ghost you on the basis he or she lacks the budget even after just raising a Series D. And the best part? The uncapped commission that is totally possible provided you put 90 hours in a week and the stars are in perfect line.

 

[Santino]

Be mindful of the hyping about the rapidly growing. It is a stressful working conditions environment. According to many companies, there is a churn and burn culture, in which if you fail to meet your quota in two months, you will be on Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) quicker than you could even utter the words, recurring revenue. Technical background is not about code it is about how your software can fit into their existing stack. Unless you can describe an API in plain English, then you will have a hard time closing enterprise deals.

 

[William]

I crossed the bridge between teaching and SaaS sales two years ago and I never turned back. The community is excellent as the learning curve is steep. The majority of the places do not mind about your background provided that you are capable of communicating value and consulting a process. Begin as SDR to get acquainted with the ropes; it is the bootcamp of the business. It is a funnel that consists of Prospecting, Discovery, Demo, Proposal, Closing. When you know the pain points that you are addressing, everything will become clear.

 

[Zephyr]

The amateurs and the pros are differentiated by the technical stack. You will be in Outreach or Salesloft to sequence, LinkedIn Sales Navigator to mine leads and Gong to watch recordings of your calls. Your technical competency is actually in the data management, which is to make sure that you have a purring CRM to make the recurring aspect of the revenue come true. Commission is normally based on ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). You can earn 5k in your next paycheck, should you sign a deal that has 50k.

 

[Ethan]

SaaS sales refers to the sale of subscriptions in cloud software. The leads are located by SDRs; they are sealed by AEs. There is much outreach and demos every day. The percentage of commission is typically 10 percent of the initial year of contract. No serious technical training was required, just good communication, and understanding of how the product is of business use. It is less time-consuming than traditional sales since software is less complicated to implement and expand.