6.8 months!
That is how long it takes to close a deal in the range of 50k-100k Euro ACV!
About half of the companies in the SaaSiest Benchmark Report 2024 experienced longer sales cycles in 2023 than the previous year. Only 12% reported shorter sales cycles.
Here is the good thing, while companies will continue to be smart about their budget allocation, and CFOs will continue to be involved in the buying decisions, there are companies out there still doing lots of deals and at a pace.
Here’s what the top performers have done according to our interviews:
1. Sharpening their ICP to be more crisp than ever and double down on that. Cliche but more true than ever. You can’t be something to everyone anymore, you need to be the best for a specific homogenous group of customers (for most of us this is true with a few exceptions for the really big ones out there with bigger product portfolios). This means focusing on your target group, tailoring your communication to them instead of some broad messaging, leveraging the channels where they are present, and communicating in a way that makes sense to them (not everyone needs to do Tiktok funny videos :))
2. To truly understand the jobs to be done by the customer. Customers don’t buy products for the sake of buying a product, they buy them to solve a problem or fill a gap. Too many reps out there speak about the product they are selling without really understanding what real priority problems the customers sit with (problems that make or save real $$$), and thereby don’t know how their product will solve these problems, and by doing so can’t present the added value in bringing in that said product.
3. To invest in more enablement of the GTM teams to equip them for this new world. The time when a marketing manager could swipe the card to try a new platform out is long gone, purchases are done with much more scrutiny, and rightfully so. This means that your GTM teams need to be even better equipped than in the past to understand the business of your customers, its people, and problems…..only then you know what real value you can offer them.
The irony here is, that the SaaS companies that already had the most focus on enablement (proper programs beyond the initial onboarding, dedicated enablement teams, regular scheduled trainings, etc) seem to be the ones that continue to invest in it, while others are lagging.
Everyone wants to become a must-have vs a need-to-have – above are some of the steps the best in class are taking to get there. Now is the time to make the adjustment and investment if you don’t want to risk of suffering from unnecessary long deal cycles.
