Sell outcomes, not features
Credit: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Sell outcomes, not features

‘SaaS’ is such a boring word. I mean, look at it – it even looks like someone yawned in the middle of writing it. “Saaaaaaaassss...”

SaaS is a contraction of the term ‘software-as-a-service,’ which basically means ‘services you pay a subscription fee for and access online.’ That’s most new software these days, making the ‘SaaS’ distinction almost meaningless. But the language SaaS services use to promote themselves on their websites certainly isn’t boring or meaningless – we can learn a lot from it.

In this article, I’ll look at the homepages of SaaS products aimed at businesses. That’s because I find the way they have changed over time fascinating.

The traditional way to promote business software was to focus on functions – what the software does. Take the original Dropbox.com in 1996 (screenshot via the Internet Archive). This wasn’t the same company we know today, but I find the difference in wording to today’s Dropbox.com noteworthy:

We can see the Dropbox of 1996 was a mail server for the internet or your intranet. There are links to features (major features, no less!), system requirements, and the technical standards the software is based around. There are other functional details like pricing, but other than the offer of a free trial version, there’s nothing here that you could really call marketing.

Now, let’s skip forward to 2010, and see how the Dropbox we know today presented itself relatively early in its life (again, credit: the Internet Archive):

Dropbox was a serious work tool, but marketed more to individuals than enterprises at the time. Still, while the design is a little more pleasing to the eye, it’s all about functions and features – the things you can directly do with the software.

Now compare that to today’s Dropbox.com:

Look how the copy has shifted from functional language to emotional language.

“Keep teams flowing with Dropbox. Dropbox is a modern workspace designed to help teams work in sync and stay in the zone.”

It’s now all about outcomes, not features. Forget ‘use Dropbox to do good things,’ now it’s ‘use Dropbox and good things will happen.’ That’s a subtle but important shift that reflects how enterprise software isn’t just bought by technically-minded IT managers anymore. SaaS software is sold directly into teams working in marketing, sales, human resources, data analysis and many other business areas.

People who aren’t IT managers don’t care so much about what the software literally does, they care about how it can make their lives better.

You can see the same approach on these five business-focused SaaS homepages:

The bright colors and twee artwork apparent in most of these homepages might not be to your personal taste – it’s a trend I hope evolves itself out of existence soon, because these homepages do look a bit samey – but they work well alongside the language used.

A lot of the work I do these days focuses on helping companies figure out what it is they really do, and how to communicate that with the world. This lesson comes up time and again for many kinds of tech companies: focus your language on outcomes, not features, and you’ll convince more people of your strengths quicker than by assuming they understand your product and just want a list of features.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t list your product’s features on your website – they’re definitely important. But it's more important to lead with your ‘vision’ about what potential customers can achieve with those features.

Your product will evolve over time, but that vision you present to your customers is a product-focused 'north star' for your company, so it makes sense to embed it in the minds of the people you sell to as quickly as possible.

In sales we refer to this as FAB Feature Advantage Benefit. For example This camera has a gazillion mega pixels. You'll be able to take better photos. Your memories of those great holidays will be more enjoyable. Great sales people flip that on it's head. Your memories of your next holiday are going to more enjoyable because of the great pictures you'll be able take with this camera. It takes great pictures because...

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