Need Input Trying to Understand the Customer Expectations When Buying and Renewing SaaS Products
Hi!
Three questions to help understand the customer expectations when buying and renewing SaaS products.
- Through direct sales channels, do customers prefer to buy hosted or on-prem offerings?
- Do customers expect to renew SaaS purchases online?
- Do customers expect to manage SaaS purchases and entitlements online? The "online management", such as changing internal processes, financial controls, and online licensing view/purchase/decrease.
Your input is greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance,
Edly
cc. @DavidBaca
Comments
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Hi @EdlyVillanueva,
I've responded based on my experience interacting with a wide variety of software & SaaS clients and customers.
- Preference of hosted vs. on-premise offerings? There are a lot of variables involved behind the buyer's preference, but it's clear that most hosted offerings increasingly the preferred option in many cases. Rationales span thing like: ease of deployment and maintenance, 24/7 accessibility across various devices (mobile and desktop) of the user, connectedness with shared users (e.g., company colleagues), auto-back up of data.
- Customers expect to renew SaaS purchases online? Yes, especially if the renewal is straightforward and does not necessitate the need for consultation with a human or fresh negotiation.
- Do customers expect to manage SaaS purchases and entitlements online? Yes, definitely. This is consistently found in research done by various industry sources, such as Forrester, Gartner, and the TSIA. Just as with our own personal subscriptions and services, it's clear substantially all of us have the same preference in our business lives as well. This is even true in big ticket industrial and transportation assets and services. Buyers and users want to be armed with data & insights and the convenience to self manage their use of services 24/7 without having to speak with sales reps or other supplier agents.
Thanks,
Doug
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Hello @DougCaviness I appreciate your thoughtful responses based on your experience. @Giuseppe Cirigioni this was a topic that is of interest at your organization, re: email threads. See Doug's responses above. Your thoughts?
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Thank you for these insights! My assumption is that self-service capabilities we see in the consumer world will span into the more traditional direct sales/support model and we need to adapt.
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@CrisJohnson, I agree with your assumption that consumer self-service adoption is a very good indication of what we need to adopt in traditional direct sales/support models. Legacy B2B tech vendors seems roughly 5-7+ years behind in self-service adoption compared to what we see in B2C. Most points of resistance against self-service and digitalization that I've heard B2B organizations are quite similar to what I used to hear from orgs selling B2C. I personally spend a good bit of time following trends in PLG (Product Led Growth companies like Atlassian and Datadog), because they really seem to point to the future of B2B selling.
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