Sales as a Disservice (SaaD) — Part 2
The likes of NetSuite, Salesforce, Marketo, and Zoom are out of control. Honestly, what they have done to the profession of sales remains a travesty. It is two years after my post on SaaD, over in the land of SaaS, and nothing is better. It is hard to fathom any of this. The switching costs are high while the endgame promises a simpler life and less pain to the pocketbook. It is a Faustian bargain.
Two minutes before writing this post I am literally having a nonsensical exchange with SaaD-Man over at Salesforce. His proposal: we should stick with our existing contract requiring 1/2 to 1/3 more seats than we now need and add 2 more for the pleasure and privilege of only a 7% increase instead of one that is 9%.
That’s supposed to be a win??? This is beyond Venus and Mars. I now wonder what planet I’m on. As for solution selling? SaaD-Man and his ilk haven’t heard of it and they don’t care.
I decide to focus on a more fulfilling topic. We just completed our sales benchmark for Q3 and held a meeting with CEOs and CROs/Heads of sales to discuss findings. Per usual our partner Christine Rogers from M3 Learning joined. The key takeaways this quarter:
66% of respondents are experiencing year-over year-quarterly growth which is a positive sign too. Buyers, however, are relying more on tighter vendor portfolio management practices, higher scrutiny on ROI, and longer decision cycles (still) to close the gap between tighter budgets and price increases like the ones SaaD-Man at Salesforce thinks he can row home.
Anecdotally and thru another study we just completed, we are seeing budgets particularly stretched in academia and government markets. The belt-tightening is real.
Some leaders in our industry are yanking the tools they’ve come to rely on feeling the tech bloat and outsize contracts and the likes of Salesforce are trying to obtain are taking it one step too far. We discussed GenAI to improve productivity in one another’s sales and marketing functions and the research we have done on that topic.
Just in the past week, three executives in three different companies lamented their use of ZoomInfo for issues around quality, timeliness, or their inability to support the targeting of micro niches (increasingly a strategy for information services businesses.)
It’s also harder to keep lists up to date. One went so far as to build their own agent to home-grow the data they need and match it with auto-dialing technology. Clever.
Where there is a will there is a way. Businesspeople don’t like being ham-strung by other businesspeople. In the area of agentics, a lot of sins are going to come home to roost in the SaaD land of SaaS. It can’t come soon enough.
For those who don’t get up in the morning forcing renewals on customers that make no sense… (I am still dumbstruck by SaaD-Man’s proposal) Here is a recipe for success:
- Follow Christine’s advice: Focus on the five issues that matter to senior level decision-makers where budget authority often lies: ROI, Time, Brand, Risk, and Leverage.
- Join our quarterly sales benchmark by contacting Michael (It only takes a few minutes and is confidential.)
- Join us at RevvedUP 2026 co-produced by H2KLabs and Outsell, where CEOs and their revenue facing C-suite teams will stoke the wheels of progress in their revenue engines. Hurry — the front runner rate expires November 30.
We can’t wait to see you there!