High-Touch vs. Low-Touch SaaS Selling: Which is the Right Model for You?

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:07

Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a weekly live show for tech startup founders who want to improve how they sell. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for the day. I'm a computer scientist and ex Software Engineer with two decades experience in B to B sales and marketing, and I'm delighted to tell you I'm joined by B2B sales expert and my close friend, KIran Gill today. Hi KIran.

Kiran Gill 0:40

Good afternoon. Alastair, hello, everyone. My name is KIran Gill. I'm also a co-founder of The Uplift Partnership. I've got 25 years experience in frontline business development and sales operations in complex B2B selling.

Alastair Cole 0:53

And together with our co founder Douglas, we're the uplift partnership. We accelerate sales for tech startups. This is The Sales Scoop. Every episode we bring you, we unpack the hottest topics in sales for tech startups, and bring you the shiniest pearls of wisdom from experienced sellers. Today's show is all about high touch versus low touch models for selling SaaS, and it's really a critical area that we hear from, from our clients and in the in the network and in the industry, and choosing the right sales model, whether it's high touch or low touches, is absolutely paramount. You know, it directly affects customer acquisition costs, sales efficiency and the scalability of your SaaS platform. So a really important topic today, obviously, you know, a high touch model can build stronger customer relations, but a low touch, you know, can get you up and running faster self services is really important. Where, where do you? Where do you stand on this high touch versus low touch KIran, where can each be used for tech startup founders on the call.

Kiran Gill 2:08

So, yeah, realistically, it comes down to the complexity of what you're selling. So from my background, Ted was more towards the complex selling model. So it was frontline sales and working with very difficult items to sell into very complex selling structures. So that was more of your high touch selling where in the last few years, especially with since cloud and all the SaaS products, have been coming out, low touch is now grabbing, grabbing a lot more kind of traction, especially even in the B to B space. So you're finding the kind of things maybe a few years ago that would have been seen as more complex in selling now being sold as low touch. But that doesn't change the fact that you know you need to have an understanding of what your models are, and understanding where you really fit in as a founder and as your product developed, and maybe parts of your product offering are more high touch than low touch. So it's a really interesting kind of conversation to have. It's also something that is super important to your business.

Alastair Cole 3:13

Yeah, totally. I mean, there's so many factors and things to consider, you know here, you know your sales. Model covers everything from onboarding to customer retention, and for whether you're going low touch or high touch, the difference can be quite stark, right? There's lots of terms here, and what we're going to do is unpack seven steps right by the end of this session, as a tech startup founder, you'll be able to you'll know what steps you need to go through in order to make that decision about whether you should be going low touch or high touch. And we think there are seven steps that you need to take on that journey, and the first of them is to understand the true product complexity. So the complexity of using your product, but also crucially, right onboarding it, and this is a big area that we spend a lot of time discussing, so that that onboarding is right, evaluating the product setup requirements and the learning curve of users. I know that you are onboarding is something that you, you love chatting about KIran. It's so important to self service and low touch to talk to us about the different kinds of onboarding approach and how that influences the model.

Kiran Gill 4:35

So when you're looking at the complexity of your product, you need to think to yourself, have you got all the assets that you need for somebody? If you're building a low touch, kind of a low touch sales model, that means somebody who is not really interacting with anybody in your company, they're getting all the information they need from your web. Website. They're able to find all that you know.

Unknown Speaker 5:00

FAQs. They can get an understanding of the product. They can even get a free trial, whatever it is, but they can basically get themselves started and onto the product with virtually no assistance from you. If there is assistance from you, then that's where suddenly, the cost of sales starts going up. So having an understanding that your product can be onboarded by somebody. Can I come to your website and purchase your product without talking to anyone that is low touch as soon as there's a button there where I have to either book a meeting or request a demo, we're in the world of high touch, even though I might be able to find out lots of information about your product on the website. I might even understand what you're selling. However, I need to talk to somebody to purchase it. So where do you fall in that world at the moment? Now, maybe you're in the place where, really, at this moment in time, you're in the high touch place, because that's where you are in your development and your kind of development of your company. You haven't got to that phase where you can be purely low touch because you haven't developed all those onboarding videos and, you know, all those items that you need on your landing pages to make sure that me Carrie can get onto your website and purchase what I want to purchase without talking to anyone, even though the product you're Selling might be very, very low cost.

Unknown Speaker 6:21

Yeah, and you know, for me, it extends beyond that come on boarding, which is absolutely critical, right into those kind of early that early phase of product adoption and usage, the learning curve that is is required so that first step right, absolutely critical that you understand the true product complexity, and the reason, one of the reasons we said true, is because it's important to try and get independent analysis of your onboarding approach. A lot of tech founders we work with, we speak to, they're very close to their product. They're obviously totally in love with it, and they often don't see

Unknown Speaker 6:59

that it might be harder than they think. So, getting independent evaluation

Unknown Speaker 7:05

That onboarding approach is really important too. So you know, once you've understood the true complexity of that product, right, really critical for onboarding and beyond, the next step is to get some real clarity on your customers. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 7:26

talk us through. What are the cornerstones of that, my friend, what would you advise in terms of getting clarity around customers? Well, you should know who you're selling to, realistically, who is your ideal customer, what? Who's, who are the buying personas within that customer, you know, is there more than one person who could potentially use your product, and where are they potentially going to be so you can get to them, and is your product? Now, you've understood that whether your product falls into, you know, something that's more complex or something that is easy to onboard. Now, can you bring those people in? And that's where, realistically, when we're talking about understanding your customer, this is where you need to know, how did your customer want to purchase your product? How would you want them to purchase the product? Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 8:11

And also assessing things like deal size, lifetime value, the potential lifetime value, really understanding that clarity around the customers, the target market out there, really, really important, right? Because in the day, those are the ones that are going to buy your product and then on board. The third step we'd recommend is to then with those customers, map out the buying process and the customer journey.

Unknown Speaker 8:39

Talk to us about decision making. KIran, what are you hearing in the market around numbers of decision makers in a group or or how that process is changing?

Unknown Speaker 8:54

Looks like he might have frozen just there. So I shall, I shall pick up in his absence till he comes back. So, you know, in terms of mapping it out, right? The decision making unit that we're seeing is normally five strong hubspots. Recent data suggests that an average of five individuals are getting together to make a decision on a B to B purchase. You've got to map out that buying group and the decision making process that they go through that's really important, and then the customer journey, mapping out the customer journey and looking at the buying journey. Touch points are absolutely, absolutely critical as well.

Unknown Speaker 9:36

And you know, we do this by mapping out with a pencil paper, exactly what the steps are that you want that buyer to engage with you on on the website.

Unknown Speaker 9:49

So that's really, really critical in terms of number three, KIran, now we know we have your expertise back in the room. My friend. Any thoughts on.

Unknown Speaker 10:00

Be mapping out the buying process, a customer journey, in readiness for making that decision. I think it's what you already said. Alastair, you hit it perfectly, map it out, get a piece of paper, get some post it, and basically build how your customer is going to have all those touch points. What happens when they come to your website? Where do they go? What do they do, potentially? Where could they go other than that? You know, not every customer will go through the same buying process if it's low touch. However, when it's high touch, you can kind of build it in a way that you're taking the customer on the journey, because you're the one who is guiding them through the purchasing process. So that's what you need to remember when you're designing those things. So in the high touch world, as a guide, as somebody who's supporting the purchasing process, that's what you're there to do. You bring the customer through, and you can give them the right information they require at the right time. If it's low touch, they're doing this themselves. And we know what people are like. They're like cats. They'll go wherever they want to and do weird things on your website. Then you never even thought they would even go. So even when you've designed your website in a certain flow, suddenly they're doing things in another way. But that's where you need somebody who really understands this world, who can help you design that process. So to have a look at it, to say, let's make this squeaky clean and very easy for the customer to understand, because if we can get them to purchase and then onboard themselves, we purely have a really good low touch process.

Unknown Speaker 11:32

Yeah, I think you make a great point there about the fact that in the high touch world, you're there supporting them along the buying journey. It's very different approach to low touch, where they're on their own, and

Unknown Speaker 11:44

as well as thinking about what happens there, you should be mulling over the kind of messaging that you're sending at that stage, because obviously, if it's if it's low touch or on your own, it's a different message than they're getting at that high touch. Right?

Unknown Speaker 11:59

We've got the buying process now we understand the product and the product and the customers and the buying process. The next step is to review, you know, the resources that you have available and the capabilities that you've got right within the team. Do you have mountains of developers who can go and build a whole load of self service tools? Or have you got, you know, an enormous sales team?

Unknown Speaker 12:18

How should that be? What else should people watching and listening here be thinking about in terms of the resources they've got available and team capabilities?

Unknown Speaker 12:31

Yeah, when you're looking at your capabilities, especially in the high touch world, you'll probably need very expensive potentially. You know, seasoned sales people selling your product. Now you might not have that start, or maybe it's the founders themselves selling the product who are front of house, and that takes, obviously, a lot of time and effort and a lot of resources and money can be spent in a high touch world. Now, a critical again, is what's your price point? Now, if your price points a lot lower, and you've then still got these very expensive sales people selling things for you, you've got a problem, and that's where the critical point comes out. Now, in the low touch world, as you've already said, There Alastair, that is where you have to think about it. There, does your technical team, or your technical guys have the skills to be able to build that self service model on your website, so they have an understanding. And again, these are two different things, so you need to weigh up there. And once you have an understanding of which way you're going, and by the time you come to this question, realistically, you already know this could be make or break, because if you don't have the right selling right, the right sellers in place, then even though your product's really good, it might not be able to be sold, because you just haven't got the right team in place.

Unknown Speaker 13:51

Yeah, and it's worth noting that you know, even if you're going down the low touch route, right, it could be creation of those self service features and functionality that could be done by third parties, you could pay for that, but you are absolutely going to need somebody on point for selling, right? Even if you've got a really relatively basic SaaS platform, you're going to need to have somebody to oversee sales in terms of making sure those those features and those interactive tools work,

Unknown Speaker 14:23

and often that is, you know, often when it's just the founder doing sales with a lot of businesses we work with, they do need somebody on the side to help kind of keep the lights on with those tools and keep an eye on them. Because that can be, it can be, you know, administrative tasks to make sure they're all working, even liaising with third parties. So let's skip on once you've reviewed the resources and looked at the capabilities and decided you're ready to make a decision about which route you're going to go down. Okay, but the last step before we get there is to think about finances.

Unknown Speaker 15:00

Year olds, right? Obviously, you know, self service tools sound fantastic because they're really cheap, but expensive to build. They're challenging to maintain. They have to be looked after on a monthly basis. So and there are other financial factors, what else should we be thinking about from a finance point of view? KIran, this is the best part of the whole conversation for me today. Pricing is so important. So think about what you're selling and how many units you need to sell for a salesperson to actually be involved in that. Now, the rule of thumb in my head would be, if your product is costing less than a couple of 100 pounds, realistically, you should be looking at a sales self service model in some such way there. Because, tell you the truth, if you've got a sales person involved in that sales cycle, it's expensive. How many units does it need for you to pay somebody to be doing this continuously? Even if these products are worth 200 pounds, or whatever it is. Now, whether it's a subscription model, and it's 200 pounds a month, that's a different thing, and this is why it's so important, because sometimes when you run into companies where you start looking at their business model, their selling model, and what they're selling, and nothing makes sense, so that customer acquisition costs are ridiculously high for the price point that they're selling, and then their customer lifetime value because they're not being able to retain their clients long enough they are not able to pull that money back, so their customers aren't staying with them long enough for them to then make the money back. Now, realistically, there is a calculation you can do. But when you're selling something, let's say, and I remember, I've sold things for a lot of money. Now it's fine having very

Unknown Speaker 16:48

I think, I think we've just lost COVID there briefly, connection issue, maybe in, in, in Austria, but no doubt he'll be back. He'll be back very soon. He'll reconnect. I'll just pick up where he left off that, you know, you know, customer acquisition cost absolutely critical. And like he was saying, you know, it is make or break if you obviously, you can unpick work you do. But getting that pricing strategy right and which model, which selling model, you're going to in the SAS world is, is absolutely, absolutely paramount. So it's worth modelling out, you know, in a spreadsheet, in fine detail, what your costs are going to be for

Unknown Speaker 17:35

to deliver the self service model. If that's the route you're going down, if it's low touch, then you need to model out the costs for that. That's those self service tools. Hello, mate. And also what your expectations will be in terms of onboarding new users, how quickly they're going to come on board, how quickly they're going to become paying customers on which tier you're going with. So you've got to model that cost out. Because as my learned friend here was saying, it's absolutely, like, absolutely paramount. This last step,

Unknown Speaker 18:11

choosing the financials, right, analysing the financial implications, absolutely critical.

Unknown Speaker 18:21

Let's move on. So the next, the next step after, after making a decision on financial implications is the big one, which is, you know, making a decision about which of the two models, or there might be a third option that you're going to go with, and then how you implement that.

Unknown Speaker 18:41

KIran thoughts, my friend, on whether it can be one of those two or something in the middle. What's the deal there

Unknown Speaker 18:50

For us founders who started this journey, the chances are we're going to go down the hybrid route originally. So we're not ready for self service. Maybe our product probably isn't there. So maybe, you know, our price points are probably a little bit higher than we thought it would be, and we probably do a hybrid. So our website really isn't ready to take down the low cost. But then also, we need to be a little bit understanding that we probably don't have the expertise, maybe in the high touch, or we're not selling enough units to actually say that we really should be a high touch company. So in the initial phase, when we're going through, you know, the pre seed and the early stages of our company, yeah, we can do a bit of a hybrid. But realistically, what we want to be doing at this point is understanding, we should have an understanding of which way we want to go here. And it might be a bit of both, but that's not a problem. But you need to have a clear understanding of which way you're going to go, because your sales model or your sales kind of development is as important as your product development, because you need to have that mapped out. Because if that's not mapped out, then no matter how amazing your product is, your.

Unknown Speaker 20:00

It's not going to sell.

Unknown Speaker 20:03

Yeah, so, you know, it's decision time. It's time to, you know, implement that, that model that you're going for a lot of work would have done beforehand leading up to that. So you should feel empowered right at that stage that you've got the necessary information in order to make that decision.

Unknown Speaker 20:25

You know, you've got key metrics, if you're looking at all that analysis and work you've done today, right? Product complexity, customer needs, internal resources, that all boils up to this decision making moment

Unknown Speaker 20:40

and but you know, our recommendation would be to, you know, you're probably selling already. So wherever you get to, then our recommendation would be to implement that as quickly and boldly as possible. Make some bold moves. There's always going to be time

Unknown Speaker 20:59

to review and iterate. You're going to analyse, you're going to

Unknown Speaker 21:05

pull out the insights, you're going to watch and see what happens when you move down that route. And you can always iterate, review and change. So that would be the seventh step that we'd recommend, review and iterate. So those are the seven steps that you need to follow in order to make that decision around you knowing which is the right model for you. And if you follow those seven steps, you'll be in a very good place in terms of having made a decision and with all the backup of the information that you've accrued during that time, there's another area that we want to dive into, and that's some examples, right? And a good way to couch this is looking at a chart we've used previously when looking at self service versus sales teams, right, which is effectively low touch versus high touch. And on the left hand side here, going up the blue arrow, we've got zero to 100%

Unknown Speaker 22:06

self service. So So startups that have no self service and those that are fully 100% self service, and across the right those that are based using human sales teams, okay? And there's four areas here. You know, when you're in the bottom left hand corner, you're in a pretty early stage. Are you at the beginning of your journey? Top left hand corner, your high, very high levels of self service, your 100% or heavily technology led. Bottom right hand corner, where you've got more sales teams and little self services and more traditional, non digital way of selling. And the top right hand corner, where you're kind of pushing on both, and you've got, you've got full you've got full coverage right of both self service and sales teams.

Unknown Speaker 22:52

And to bring that to life, we're going to just talk through where different types of businesses and yours will probably be one of these on this slide, where these, where different businesses sit, and what they should be doing next. So let's start in that bottom left hand corner, my friend talk, talk to me about, or tell us about, you know, what should be doing at that early stage, or a pre seed stage, where you really haven't got anything of either?

Unknown Speaker 23:22

Yeah, well, it's like we've already said in this Cole today, it's a little bit of both. You're trying to figure out that, have you got the capability to sell lots and lots of units to one client? That will probably be complex. If you haven't got that capability, or you haven't got that opportunity, you probably want to be forcing yourself down the self service route where you're getting all your onboard collateral together and everything together that in the early days, realistically, we don't have a lot of anything, do we? Yeah, we're kind of making you up as we go along. We're trying to do everything we're chasing after those really big deals because we want to get money through the door, but we're trying to get investment. So we need to look really professional. Obviously, our investors, our potential investors, want to see that we're scalable. So they probably want us to go more than the self service, because they think, oh, self service. Now that sounds good, low cost, massive scalability. However, on the other side, big numbers, but that's going to be expensive. Where are your sales people? Do you have the experience of running a sales team? It gets but these are all the questions. This is all the fun part of being a founder.

Unknown Speaker 24:28

Yes, it is. And then if you come out of that bottom left hand corner, early stage pre seed bubble, you're heading towards seed right. You're looking for the next round of investment, the next stage of growth, which is C right, where you've got probably a little bit of both. You've built some self service tools. You've got at least a founder seller who is out there deriving new business. And at this stage, you've really got a choice. You're either going to kind of head top left towards the self service model, you're going to go mature.

Unknown Speaker 25:00

Your Self Service, or you're going to come across to the right, where you're going to be using more high touch selling techniques, sell complex tech solutions and others. What would you what would you pick out, my friend,

Unknown Speaker 25:15

after that? So either, either going up to top left or out to the right. I think when you get to the point where you're going to the seed point, you've got an understanding of how your customers are purchasing. Can you land those big deals? Is it worthwhile? You having a an expensive sales team that can actually generate and make sure that they actually pay their way? You know, remember that cost of sale you need to justify having SDRs, account executives, all of that things that you probably want, and then also the complexity of the product you're selling. Can it be on boarded by people? By the time you're at seed, you should have a great understanding of how your customer wants to purchase your product, and also the opportunity within the market, and this is where the rubber really hits the road, isn't it? This is where you're looking for that series A money now that's where everybody gets serious. Because by that time, you should really understand the market, understand how your customers are purchasing, and this is where you can really make a difference. And maybe you're still going to be undecided on which way you're going to go however. You should really have one place where you're probably more likely to go towards, you know, you might say, well, you know, we're selling something very complex. We need to keep on going down the consultancy road. Yet, however, we want our customers to still onboard themselves a little bit on their own, and we want them to come into the website and start understanding and hit that request for dumb demo button when they really understand that they want to talk to us, so we know that we've got a hot lead. So that is also a part of your sales process. Yeah. And so if you're if you're doubling down on self service and low touch, you're moving up to the top left, past, you know, mature self service and and up to the top where the kind of tech monsters, as we call them, you know, the huge platforms, the sales forces, the hubspots and those tech unicorns with with huge amounts of funding, they're set up at the top. They are, you know, you can be 100% self served on a platform like HubSpot at the same time, they have sales teams ready to close those enterprise deals. And if you're, you know, if you're leaning more towards a high touch model, you know, going towards the right hand side. Then, like KIran said, yeah, you may have some small self service going on, but you're going to be pushing down the, you know, complex selling, consultative selling approach over on the right. So hopefully you've been able to pick out where you are on on that chart,

Unknown Speaker 27:45

and really that that's us wrapped up. So that's a little bit of additional background beyond the seven steps you need to step through.

Unknown Speaker 27:54

I had a comment live from Sam Tosh asking for the slides. Yes, absolutely. A recording of this episode will be available for you to grab after the show,

Unknown Speaker 28:09

If you're wondering where to start, right or more detail behind these seven, whether you should be self service, whether it should be sales teams, you know, then a great place to start is our 360 sales diagnostic. It's a rapid assessment of your sales function in seven areas. 52 individual metrics underpin those seven areas. And the result of this rapid approach is that you get a full score and breakdown of where your sales function is today, bespoke recommendations in a 25 page, hyper personalised document and a revenue roadmap about how much additional income you could be generating if you follow the recommendations that we make. You can get more about that at our website, at TheUpliftPartnership.com/360.

Unknown Speaker 29:03

and

Unknown Speaker 29:05

coming up next on this show week today,

Unknown Speaker 29:12

brand new. Always exciting. Sitting down with

Unknown Speaker 29:16

Dan Hammond, a friend of the business and a client as well. We'll be sitting down. I'll be sitting down with Dan, interviewing him in a week's time, and learning what his Sales Scoop is, what is his number one thing that he'd like to pick from his experience in new bids and share with everybody. So tune in a week today for Dan. Dan Howard, Dan Hammon’s Sales Scoop, and if you want to watch the recording back from today, or any of the other 30 plus shows we've done, you can head over to TheSalesScoop.com and watch them at your leisure. Well, it's 12: 30 and we’re bang on time. Thanks very much for your time today. KIran, it was great to hear your thoughts.

Unknown Speaker 30:11

Thanks, Alastair, sorry about the internet connection, everyone. It's absolutely fine. I think we think we styled it out pretty well.

Unknown Speaker 30:17

We did. We did good. We'll wait for the comments positive or otherwise on that. Thanks for your time. Really great topic, great show. Loved it.

Unknown Speaker 30:22

I guess it's just time for us to say goodbye, see you next time bye, everybody, bye, bye, bye.