In other words? Buyers’ expectations are all over the place, and the G2 report posited that it’s due to a lack of trust in salespeople. As sales rep err on the side of reactivity over proactivity, buyers are increasingly returning to self-service options. Chris Heard, CEO of software sourcing platform Olive Technologies, believes this “growth at all costs” mentality is leading SaaS companies to overpromise roadmaps and obscure pricing until sales can position expected value. 

To learn more about the escalating tensions between buyers and sellers, the Demand Gen Report team sat down with Heard to dive deeper into the issue.

Demand Gen Report: How did the world of software become so murky? What are some of the factors that contributed to it?

Chris Heard: Inconsistent software pricing isn’t new, and the rise of agile development in the 2000s exacerbated the issue. This led to incomplete product understanding during the early stages, hindering the creation of clear monetization models for sales teams. The focus on product development resulted in pricing becoming a neglected “product attribute” rather than a dedicated function. 

What hinders software sales today is a dysfunctional system that discourages transparency in pricing discussions. Because pricing remains obscure for buyers, it creates an uneven playing field where similar customers pay different amounts. Sales teams often lack the training on how to discuss pricing openly, which hampers early price conversations.

DGR: Let’s dig deeper into the “growth at all costs” mentality — why is it troubling for businesses and how can sales teams work to move beyond that mentality?

Heard: The “growth at all costs” mentality is often to the detriment of long-term customer satisfaction and sustainable growth. Investors usually prioritize rapid growth above all else, pushing companies to adopt aggressive sales tactics. This strategy leads to a hyperfocus on closing deals quickly, even if it means making misleading promises.

{loadposition GIAA}Also important is embracing data-driven decision-making, using data to track customer behavior, measuring the effectiveness of different strategies and making informed decisions about product development, pricing and marketing. And finally, businesses should foster a company culture that values customer satisfaction above all else, empowering employees to focus on the customer experience and make decisions that benefit them in the long run.

DGR: Why should vendors provide more transparency around software pricing?

Heard: Transparent pricing reduces friction from the buying process and potentially leads to higher conversion rates and faster sales cycles. Transparency also fosters trust between customers and vendors. Knowing precisely what they’re paying for upfront reduces ambiguity and the potential for bait-and-switch tactics. Finally, more transparency about pricing empowers businesses to plan their software budgets accurately, allocate resources effectively and avoid unexpected costs in the future.

Let’s not forget that vendors benefit, too. Transparent pricing attracts customers who are serious about buying and who understand the value proposition, leading to fewer wasted sales resources on unqualified leads. In a competitive market, transparent pricing becomes a differentiator, attracting customers who value upfront information and fair dealings. Customers who understand the value they’re receiving for the price are less likely to churn due to hidden fees or unexpected costs.

DGR: How can salespeople work to generate more trust with prospects? What steps can they take to align?

Heard: During an interaction, salespeople should pay close attention to the prospect’s concerns, questions and unspoken cues and ask open-ended questions to encourage the prospect to share their feelings and thoughts openly. This approach helps build understanding and rapport.

You also need to commit to transparency — be honest and upfront about the product or service and share any limitations or potential drawbacks earlier (not later) in the conversation. Listen to prospects’ objections and proactively address them with empathy and clear explanations. Finally, be yourself! Authenticity goes a long way in building trust.

DGR: What are some key sales strategies you’ve deemed successful?

Heard: SaaS vendors should dedicate time to generating and nurturing leads by creating content, guides and webinars that attract and educate potential customers. Companies can optimize content for search engines and relevant topics. Salespeople should actively participate in relevant social media communities, engage with industry influencers and share thought leadership content. The teams should leverage data and insights to personalize cold outreach, ensuring relevance and minimizing intrusiveness.

DGR: In general, how do you see the sales landscape evolving over the next few years?

Heard: More and more sales processes will become automated. The sales process already has more AI applications than most other industries, and while automation helps significantly reduce bias, it will also make it increasingly difficult for companies to stand out.

Branding will become important early on, and many of the trends we see in B2C purchasing — an empowered buyer but with a herd mentality — will become more prevalent in B2B, and larger organizations will thrive. Smaller organizations who haven’t yet established their brand will need to have very clear differentiation, highlighting all that’s wrong with the large organization, like slow to innovate and scale, not trendy, etc.

The post Navigating Trust, Transparency & Transformation: Insights Into Modern Sales Strategies appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Pliable features a no-code architecture designed to help all practitioners consolidate, organize and explore their company’s data across all aspects of their business. The platform seeks to help marketers:

• De-duplicate records across different systems;
• Create a repeatable, consistent way to update company metrics; and
• Leverage tools compatible with Pliable to add, enrich and standardize information, such as phone numbers, addresses and more.

“Regardless of the size of your business, companies should have access to comprehensive data capabilities,” said Jason Raede, Co-founder and CEO of Pliable, in a statement. “While the technology for this exists, most solutions require clean and consolidated data to function properly, and others require costly investments in data engineers or infrastructure. It shouldn’t be this way — most companies don’t have the resources or time to transform their data management practices. With the launch of Pliable, we’re changing how data management works, significantly reducing costs and increasing access to trustworthy data.” 

The post Pliable Generates $2.5M In Seed Funding appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Premium Content is designed to assist companies with tracking mentions about their brand, competitors, industry and more by relevant analysts and other influencers. The solution collects and displays these mentions from analyst research, blog posts, quotes in the media and social channels. With its new capabilities, Premium Content helps users:

• Receive automatic notifications via email, Slack and in-app when relevant reviews are posted;
• Customize notifications for different ARchitect seat holders to reflect their role, needs and the product line(s) they work with;
• See a synopsis of relevant reviews with each review’s title, summary, technology “pros and cons” (PeerSpot) and customer “likes and dislikes” (G2):
• Get an at-a-glance, aggregate view of relevant review activity from the Premium Content dashboard; and
• Track and report on review trends over time.

“ARchitect is the leading influencer management platform, and nowadays, influence comes from many different places: Analysts and other industry experts, as well as technology users themselves,” said Andy Zimmerman, CEO of ARInsights, in a statement. “These customers often sway others, especially through reviews, and exert influence on the buying cycle. So, it’s advantageous for AR pros and customer marketers alike to track what customers are saying — and providing the means to do so is part of our strategic evolution. G2 and PeerSpot are both premier and trusted sites for people to leave and learn from reviews, and bringing their information into Premium Content is a natural fit.”

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The Lowdown

360insights aims to help decrease the hours of administration running partner programs on email, documents and spreadsheets. The result: A streamlined process for funding co-marketing activities, incentivizing sales and partner teams and applying price discounts and promotions across a user’s portfolio of products.

360insights also surrounds its technology with a suite of expert services that help fill the gaps in a user’s channel strategy and program design to promote higher levels of participation and engagement.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

At the heart of the 360insights product portfolio is a set of core capabilities:

• Program qualification: Allows users to set partner eligibility, qualify transactions and manage approval workflows to increase efficiency and reduce error;
• Governance and compliance: Designed to help implement audit processes and internal controls to ensure the proper use and payment of funds;
• Partner payments: Provides the ability to offer flexible payment methods, including bank transfers, prepaid cards, digital wallets and merchandise;
• Reporting and analytics: Provides access to a rich set of BI dashboards on partner program participation, effectiveness and engagement.

The flexible nature of the products are designed to ensure users can start small, then grow. The solution aims to help increase the number of programs and complexity, expand into new geographies and add incentive solutions based on brand priority.

Who It’s For

360insights is designed for sales and marketing leaders with an indirect route to market — whether that’s through wholesalers and distributors, a network of agents and dealers, digital agencies and system integrators or a full ecosystem of different partner types.

What It Solves

According to the company, an indirect route to market creates distance between a brand and the customer. 360insights aims to help brands bridge that gap and rethink how to drive customer engagement through its partners by:

• Boosting brand awareness;
• Aligning marketing and sales activities; and
• Guiding the right mix of incentives to drive behavior change.

What Makes It Special

360insights empowers brands to create, customize, measure and manage incentive programs. From distributors and dealers to influencers and integrators, users can maximize their return on partner spend while strengthening relationships. 360insights is said to be the only SaaS application that enables orgs to run partner programs and promotions to/through/with the channel, analyze their impact and take action to drive growth.

Contact

360insights
1307 Valence Street
Suite 360
New Orleans, LA 70115
1-866-684-2308
Talk to sales

The post 360insights Aims To Support Channel Success With All-In-One SaaS Platform appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The platform’s natural language interface also enables users to ask questions and receive answers. Knowledge workers can access Seek AI’s natural language interface by email, Slack, text and a range of customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

“We’ve built a platform that uses artificial intelligence to reduce inefficiencies in accessing data,” said Co-founder and CEO Sarah Nagy, in a statement. “Currently, data scientists and business analysts waste time manually writing repetitive code. We’ve automated that process with sophisticated natural language processing and machine learning.”

The post Seek AI Launches Platform To Automate Access To Data appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

Marketers are continuously challenged to deliver compelling messages to their customers through email, ​​push notifications, SMS, web and social media. The more personalized these messages are, the more likely they will resonate with and influence customers. Phrasee’s technology uses data from historical campaigns to understand the type of marketing language and messaging individual users most engage with based on opens, clicks and conversion data. While the campaign is live and running, the data is then matched to the sentiment of the individual subscriber.

Who It’s For

AI-generated brand language helps enterprises scale their personalization efforts across channels to absorb what resonates with their audience by building customer profiles about language sentiment preference. Phrasee’s customers include senior marketers who oversee all digital channels and specialists who lead CRM, email, social media and website performance.

What It Solves

Phrasee’s personalization technology helps enterprise brands create fully automated, set-and-forget campaigns that generate, optimize and personalize the language that each customer receives.

What Makes It Special

Creating personalized customer experiences has long been the goal of brand marketers. Phrasee’s language personalization can help drive customer engagement and ROI through its automated, real-time machine learning technology.

Contact

Phrasee

+44 (0) 20 8870 6968

The post Phrasee Launches Language Personalization Technology To Help Increase Customer Experiences appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Serving more than 5,000 global and local brands and agencies such as iHeartMedia and Rakuten Advertising, LeadsRx collects anonymous customer data from 2.5 billion customer touchpoints, empowering customers to make more informed decisions faster.

“Attribution is one of the most painful parts of marketing — validating your costs and ROI to your CEO, clients and investors is harder than ever as competition and new marketing channels continue to grow at a rapid pace,” said Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer of Unbounce, in a statement. “LeadsRx solves these pain points for marketers by showing them which channels are performing and which aren’t. By combining LeadsRx’s wealth of new data with our conversion intelligence platform, we have the opportunity to deliver conversion value to marketers across a wider spectrum of the marketing funnel. We’re thrilled to welcome LeadsRx to the Unbounce team as we continue our journey of bringing conversion intelligence solutions to marketers around the world.”

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With assistance from this new fund, startup vendors can receive the necessary capital to improve their platforms’ SaaS capabilities, build new integrations and partnerships and enhance their interfaces to create engaging experiences for their users.

The CRM Platform Fund is an expansion of its $30 million investment firm HubSpot Ventures in 2018, a subsect of HubSpot that is committed to helping technology companies scale their businesses for digital growth. Since then, the firm has made an active effort to increase investments in B2B SaaS companies, such as Clari and Goldcast, to help them develop their software for the digital market.

“Since launching HubSpot Ventures in 2018, we’ve had the honor of supporting a wide range of companies that are building the next generation of powerful software for businesses,” said Andrew Lindsay, SVP of Corporate & Business Development at HubSpot, in a statement. “Our position as a leading CRM platform for scaling companies gives us a unique perspective into the types of tools growing businesses need, which is where we’ve focused our investments. The ventures in our portfolio share our commitment to putting the customer first, and we’re thrilled to launch a second fund to invest in even more innovative, customer-centric companies.”

This announcement follows the release of HubSpot’s CMS Hub, a website editing platform that provides tools to enhance visitor experiences. In conjunction with the CRM Platform Fund, these moves highlight HubSpot’s commitment to helping B2B businesses improve their buyer experiences in the digital age.

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The technology unicorn’s IPO was listed on NASDAQ under the ticker FRSH, becoming the first publicly traded B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) company on the stock market. The company plans to raise $1.02 billion in its IPO and sell 28.5 million shares by the end of the week at a valuation of $10 billion. Freshworks will allow underwriters to purchase additional shares at the IPO price.

In an interview with Forbes, CEO Girish Mathrubootham explained that the success of Freshworks’ IPO highlights the relevance of SaaS technology in modern marketing, and will allow the company to expand its product offering to India and other markets looking to improve their customer engagement.

“Our mission is very clear,” said Mathrubootham. “We want to make it fast and easy for every business to delight their customers and their employees. We truly believe that the world of CRM technology needs a refresh, pun intended.”

The public offering is set to close on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, with Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America Securities serving as its lead-book managers.

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Reflektion is designed to analyze buyer behavior to determine their preferences and level of buying intent. Users can leverage these behavioral insights to improve buyer interactions in real-time across multiple digital touchpoints with relevant content and products.

Reflektion’s integration into Sitecore’s platform will allow Sitecore users to better educate and engage their buyers while empowering them to make smarter purchasing decisions, which increases buyer satisfaction and drives revenue.

“Search is about more than just entering words into a box and hoping for the right results — it is the cornerstone of a digital experience,” said Steve Tzikakis, CEO of Sitecore, in a statement. “With Reflektion, a brand can add various types of search including personalized search, preview search, conversational search and voice search. This reduces customers’ effort and anxiety to find exactly what they need — with more convenience and speed — and leads to increased customer satisfaction with more conversions and revenue. Acquiring Reflektion reinforces Sitecore’s position as the leader in digital experience technologies that meets customers in the moment with more relevant, intuitive and human experiences.”

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