Any company which sells SaaS products simply must read the recent blog article which was published by the brilliant Josh Melick. Josh has been going in deep on sales options for these businesses and with his third dimension he thinks that a great deal of companies are missing a trick regarding the way in which they sell.
The third dimension refers to the way in which packages are split up, between the bronze, silver and gold level deals. Whilst most developers will split these up using the number of users or the amount of usage which is allowed, Josh believes that without a time limit on the package, the companies are missing out big time. Above all the benefits that Josh describes, the ability to upsell is the best one, and here is how companies can seek to do just this.
Extended Time Upgrade
One of the most efficient ways in which you can encourage your customers to upgrade is through the offering of extended time on their next package. So for example let’s say that you have a customer on your silver plan, who is looking to renew it for the coming year. What you can do is to offer his customer the chance to continue on the gold package, which of course would see them upgrade, and in return you could give them an additional month or two on their new year’s plan. This is a perfect incentive to get people to spend a little extra.
Lower Cost Hike
Each year prices will have to rise, simply to cover the costs which the developer has in their business. What you could do here however is opt to lose a small amount of profit in the short term, in order to get the client to invest a little more in the long term. And so you could give them an upgrade to a package which will cost 10% more than the previous year, yet offer them that upgrade at a cos of just 8% of an increase on the following year. This may be enough for them to want to upgrade and take advantage of the chance to get a better package for the coming year, yet still pay less than they would’ve done for a standard upgrade.
Bundling Packages
It is fair to say that most companies which develop software will have a range of suites which they have created. A great way to get clients to upgrade here is to incentivize the purchase by offering them multiple software products within the upgrade. This could be great for a client who could then save money elsewhere in taking on these upgrades and the extra software products which they will be able to count on when they do so.
These are just a couple of simple options for upselling which you could employ if you have added that important third dimension to the sales plan, which Josh discusses in the blog piece.
