We're a 5 year old company that offers services + SaaS products, around 3D and product visualization. We've managed to gain a decent amount of traction with a few Fortune 500 brands and major retailers. Analytics show our product providing a real lift in conversion rates, so value has been established. PMF isn't quite perfect, but is mostly there, and we're flexible around terms and pricing to make deals work.
Our sales team consists of 2 AEs and one BDE. The AEs are experienced and have done SaaS sales successfully before. The BDE is junior, but motivated. The team is new, having been with us 5-7 months. I (co-founder/CEO) sold in most of our current customer deals, with a couple coming from a sales guy we had a few years back. I stepped out of full time sales, so as not to compete against them, and am now in a manager/support role while doing the exec level stuff as well.
We have a decent amount of leads and what appears to be a strong pipeline (mainly thanks to tradeshows they attended), but nothing ever seems to close, and we had an abysmal Q1 (less than 30% of goal). Current customers are keeping us afloat, almost no new ones are being added to the list. We have conversations that start off hot and seem relatively certain, then just die of non-responsiveness over the weeks after.
Each person on the team has successfully sourced/closed deals. They understand that they need to be consultative, build personal connections and establish trust, but I don't see a sense of urgency to produce. They show up after 9am and never stay past 5, I see emails with generic text like "touching base" and "following up" that I know don't work. They don't seem to be putting effort in to thoroughly learn the product and the market. I've suggested that they listen to sales podcasts and research strategies, but haven't seen much - every day seems to be the same, with decent levels of activity, but very little to show for their efforts.
We pride ourselves on having a culture that's fun and flexible, it's difficult to know what to do to create accountability when the whole function seems to be at a loss. It feels like I'm the only one who can sell this damn product, and it's driving me insane. Any help is welcome. Thanks!
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