Understanding the impact of behavioral competencies of sales representatives on the sales performance of SaaS companies.

Abstract

Software as a service (SaaS) companies have witnessed fast growth in recent years and this trend has been predicted to continue, resulting in entry of new players having similar offerings. Hence, sales representatives are playing an increasingly important role to help differentiate products. Aim of this thesis is to identify, what are the important behavioral competencies of sales reps? And how the existence or lack of these behavioral competencies influence sales reps ability to successfully close sales deals, according to potential customers? How the behavioral competencies of sales reps in SaaS companies can be improved based on the feedback from potential customers? According to literature review communication skills, effective listening, product knowledge, objection handling, and adaptive selling were identified to be the most important behavioral competencies of sales reps. Based on in-depth interviews with potential customers they highlighted these competencies had a strong positive relation with sales performance. It was also uncovered during the interviews, that most of the sales reps lacked these behavioral competencies, resulting in potential customers feeling frustrated and not being able to trust sales reps fully. According to potential customers sales reps can be taught these behavioral competencies with the help of training and regular feedba