As part of the ritual of examining local commerce and SMB Saas strategies, Localogy goes right to the source: SMBs themselves. How do they feel about marketing and operational software? What features do they want? And how has their hunger changed in a pandemic? This is all a moving target.
Localogy’s Modern Commerce Monitor (MCM) Wave 6.1 answers these and other questions across SMB SaaS, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After examining SMBs’ software sales interactions last week, we switch gears to look at their satisfaction with those interactions.
Specifically, how satisfied are SMBs with sales-rep experiences when they’re sold software for various operational needs? The short version is that their satisfaction levels are trending up, with “very satisfied” responses at 30 percent of SMB respondents, up from 23 percent in the previous survey wave (6).
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Data Dive
Going deeper, a few other insights jump out from these figures.
– As noted, there was a notable uptick in SMB responses for “extremely satisfied” going from 23 percent to 30 percent in the latest survey wave.
– Similarly, the least satisfying response (“not at all satisfied”) declined in the same period, going from 13 percent to 12 percent.
– Though this was only a small dip, it followed a larger dip from the wave before that (5), going from 17 percent to 13 percent, representing a longer-term decline in “highly unsatisfied” SMBs.
– Meanwhile, “very satisfied” SMBs dipped from the previous wave but the decline was not as great as the increase in “extremely satisfied” responses, resulting in a net positive outcome.
– These results are notable on their own but carry even greater relevance when viewed in combination with last week’s featured data.
– Specifically, sales interactions are returning to (and even exceeding in some cases) pre-Covid levels. This is especially true in software sales for communications, POS & payment processing & fintech.
– The fact that higher satisfaction correlates with an uptick in in-person interaction is a strong demand signal for in-person sales… at least among SMBs.
–Though it’s not a one-size-fits-all assessment, SMBs often need their hands held through software sales, so this correlation is logical.
These variables are also category-dependent, as some areas of software sales are more conducive to in-person sales than others.
– In some cases, the in-person sales that have sustained to greater levels include those that have more complex or specialized functions, such as finance & operations.
– In other cases, categories that have a simpler orientation have bred a greater propensity towards self-service.
– For example, marketing & advertising has seen a large-scale shift towards self-serve procurement over the past decade
– These were functions already primed for this shift… Covid simply accelerated it.
– Other software categories will always be more conducive to in-person sales, and will continue to boomerang back to pre-Covid levels.
– The key for software providers is to figure out where they are on that sliding scale and optimize sales strategies accordingly.
Time to Shine
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – website-based or otherwise – continues to grow rapidly. SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving as it continues to grow as a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe. There’s a long-tail opportunity at play.
Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users could represent permanent adopters – a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to boost their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of marketing and operational functions.
We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper into Localogy original survey research. That will include SMB goals and success factors. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data, and stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.
