The biggest mistake deep-tech founders can make is to use the SaaS GTM playbook to scale their deep-tech startup. Worse still is if they hire a seasoned SaaS GTM executive to help them scale and they in turn try and apply the learnings from SaaS. This just doesn’t work. The core principles of sales & marketing apply, but not the entire playbook.
Target audience
The core reason why the SaaS playbook fails in deep tech is that the target audience is completely different. The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not the typical combination of industry, country, size or function. The target audience is scientists and researchers at RTOs and Universities trying to further their own research with your technology. They are the innovators and early adopters of a path breaking product. Their main driver is advancement of research and pushing the boundaries of science rather than cost or increased top line. Sure, cost is a consideration but it is not the primary reason for their purchasing decision. Often, their research is niche and requires precision technology or a path breaking product – not a commoditized offering.
Marketing
Due to the nature of the audience, the marketing strategy and tactics that worked in SaaS do not necessarily work in deep tech. The target audience is not responsive to the usual marketing approaches. The researchers want to read, inform themselves, understand, compare and question. You need content that speaks their language in the depth that is convincing to them with the proof that is ratified by fellow researchers.
Marketing in deep tech is also not a volume game, it’s a value game. The usual motion of increasing inbound by increasing the content, SEO and traffic needs to be looked at with a different context and different expectations. Before anchoring on high-velocity content, you need to get the technically deep, peer-reviewed content out.
Sales
Just like marketing needs to adapt and adjust, sales also needs to change. Because the buyer is different, the seller profile also needs to be different from that at a typical SaaS company. You do not hire commission-driven Account Executives (AE) or Sales Development Representatives (SDR). You need Sales Engineers (SE) that come from the same background as the researcher the company wishes to sell to. For instance in the quantum industry, a typical sales person will come from at least a Masters if not a PhD in Physics. It is only then that they can convey the benefits of the products aligned with the specific research the target researcher is doing.
The toolchain and sales tactics need to change as well. The audience is very cold-call averse and most likely won’t be listed on the platforms for the usual SaaS sales tools to pick up and make sense of. This means you can no longer rely on tools like ZoomInfo, Clay, and a dozen other such tools. You need to rely on research networks, referrals and one on one communications to get your sale across.
What else changes
There are several other differences between SaaS and deep tech that require another dedicated post. For instance, the buying process involving grants and government funding vs annual budgets, long sales cycles, non-recurring revenue, capital expenditure, metrics and reporting, and so on.
SaaS playbook doesn’t work, but principles do
This doesn’t mean the SaaS GTM playbook is worthless. Quite the opposite. The core principles of sales and marketing do apply – identify your customer, speak their language, establish trust, go the extra mile – all of these are still relevant. SaaS GTM has introduced a lot of tools on top of these principles in a good way. Deep-tech startups just need to be mindful of which of these tools work for them.
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