Sean Cantwell in Forbes: The SaaS Buyer Is Changing. Here Are Four Strategies For The Future Of Software Sales
Sean Cantwell for Forbes Council, March 7th, 2022.
During the last two years, the nature of an organization’s tech stack has changed considerably. The rise of low-code/no-code platforms and microservices has led to a democratization of software and business applications, with companies trading monolithic architectures for a collection of agile, targeted solutions.
While this shift has led to big changes for the end-users of the software, it has meant an even bigger reckoning for the software companies and their salespeople. A decade ago, enterprise software carried an eye-popping price tag, and sales executives would invest months in converting a single corporation for a multi-year contract. But with massive software products broken down now into dozens of smaller solutions, the process of buying new software has changed considerably.
The CIO and other IT leaders still have significant power and oversight over software procurement, especially related to security and guardrails for things such as low-code solutions, but the rise of application-specific software has led to an increase in purchasing decisions from line-of-business users as business units increasingly opt to independently procure SaaS licenses as software grows more decentralized.
What changes do SaaS founders need to make to take advantage of this new market?
Sean Cantwell is a managing partner and member of the founding team at Volition Capital. He focuses primarily on companies in the Software and Tech-Enabled Services sectors.
