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’ satisfaction with in-person software sales interactions, we switch gears to look at automating the process altogether.
In other words, when being sold software for various operational needs, are SMBs getting to the point where they want to not deal with traditional sales reps? Do they want to self serve? Many developed such muscles in the Covid era when they were forced to take that option. Where do they stand now?
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Data Dive
Going deeper, a few insights jump out from these figures.
– Resurfacing last week’s data, the biggest SMB objections to in-person software sales interactions usually focus on the quality of the sales rep.
– For example, the biggest objection (57 percent) was that the salesperson didn’t seem knowledgeable.
– The second biggest objection (50 percent) was that the salesperson didn’t seem prepared.
–That lack of preparedness was also the SMB sentiment that grew the most from the last wave of research, going from 30 percent in Wave 6 to 50 percent in Wave 6.1.
– Those results are further contextualized when viewed together with this week’s featured data on SMB feelings towards automation.
– Specifically, the growth in dissatisfaction towards in-person sales reps seems to align with more openness toward self-serve or automated sales processes.
– The key term is ‘openness’ as SMBs have gotten less binary or absolute over time.
– in other words, there’s a sharp drop-off over 3 survey waves in SMBs that prefer automation “in all circumstances”
– That figure now stands at 27 percent of SMBs, down from 57 percent in Wave V.
– Similarly, the number of SMBs that are open to automation in some circumstances shows a clear upward trend over the past three survey waves.
– This figure now stands at 42 percent of SMBs, up from 24 percent in Wave V.
– This openness is likely due to broadened perspectives and practices that were forced in the Covid era. SMBs tried new things and are now less intimidated by them.
– On the other hand, the sharp drop in absolute interest in automated sales processes could be due to a different subset of SMBs that tried self-serve advertising during Covid lockdowns and were turned off by the experience… thus emboldening their disinterest in automation
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.
