Today at LSA 19 we had a breakout focused on how to sell full stack software solutions – those digital equivalents of a Swiss Army knife.
The full stack concept makes a lot of sense, at least on paper.
Why not make it easy for SMBs to run their business in the cloud with one login, one bill and one place to go for help?
The challenge is that sales organization, particularly local media organizations, struggle with selling these full stack products. How do you boil down a simple sales message about a solution that does 16 different things?
The panel was designed to unpack how to sell these solutions without getting bogged down in long, unproductive conversations.
The LSA’s Tech Adoption Index small business survey has consistently demonstrated through three waves of data that small business operators are looking for a single solution that does all or most of what they need to do to run their businesses, from marketing through payroll.
As the chart below shows, 65% of small business decision makers would welcome one login and one bill for all of their cloud software requirements. this as the highest reading among the three waves of Tech Adoption Index surveys.
Yet today very few SMBs actually take full advantage of all in one software, even when it’s offered by a solutions provider they already use. One case in point is Zoho, which calls itself the “Business Operating System.” When Zoho’s president Raj Sabhlok spoke at LSA 18 in Chicago, he acknowledged that the average Zoho One customer used four apps, when the entire suite includes more than 40 available apps. This utilization rate is fairly typical.
Today, after I set the scene with a short deck laying out the pros and cons of selling the full stack, we had a Q&A with Eran Feldman from Camilyo, one of the companies out there pitching all in one platforms, and Francisco Sánchez Fernández, the CMO of Seccion Amarilla. His company is the leading directory publisher in Mexico and has been selling the full stack for the past 18 months.
Francisco said the initial experience was a disaster. Reps got bogged down in the weeds of the individual components of the stack. After pausing and retraining, the reps focused on doing a needs analysis and applying the piece of the solution that addresses their most pressing need. Francisco used the example of barber shops. Talk to them about online scheduling and the sale is much easier.
Then Seccion Amarilla uses after sales service reps (which they call “experts”) to drive more engagement with the platform.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of selling the full stack for Seccion Amarilla is the impact on churn. Francisco said customers on the all in one platform are churning at a rate of 3%, which is enviable by any standard.
The conversation also addressed how automation and DIY would ultimately factor into selling the full stack. Both panelists acknowledged that the economics of selling a monthly subscription product are challenging with a process heavily reliant on human capital.
Francisco said Seccion Amarilla will adopt DIY this year and expects about 10% of its customer to come in through that channel.
