Most SaaS companies would agree that payment monetization is good for business. Offering payments—and getting people to use your services—encourages users to utilize your software more frequently. This enables them to get more value out of your product, which ultimately reduces churn.
Plus, payments add a new revenue stream for your company, resulting in a stronger bottom line.
That being said, the best way to increase payments-related activity and revenue is to get your users (i.e., merchants) to actually process payments through your platform.
To help you accomplish that, we’ve put together 6 tips to upsell payments to your users. Have a look below and see which ones are applicable to your business.
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Talk Up Your Payments and Billing Capabilities on Your Website
Users won’t sign up for your payment offerings if they don’t know they exist in the first place. That’s why you need to ensure you’ve set up marketing and advertising assets that can inform your current and existing software users about your payment services.
Not only will this educate them about what you have to offer, but it will also make it easier for your team to upsell payments. Having the right assets gives them collateral to share with users and move them towards the path to purchase.
BigTime, a provider of time tracking and expense software, does an excellent job here. In addition to mentioning payments on its homepage, BigTime has a section on its website dedicated to its payment processing product called Wallet.
This page has everything people need to know about BigTime Wallet—including how it works, the key benefits, and social proof from other users.
Train and Encourage Your Sales Team to Upsell Payments
Your sales team will likely be doing a lot of the legwork to get merchants sold on payments. As such, you need to make sure they have the support and resources they need to succeed. Consider the following tips.
Give your team some talking points
Educate your sales staff on the features and benefits of payments, and provide them with talking points to bring up when interfacing with software users to effectively upsell payments.
ProfitSolv, a company that provides billing, payments, and software solutions for professional services, does this well. Jason Goldfinger, the company’s VP of sales, says that ProfitSolv’s salespeople are trained to create value and get to know each user’s process.
“You build value by asking questions and digging into their current processes,” he says.
Examples of those questions are:
- “Tell me how you guys get paid today” and
- “OK, walk me through the process of how that works.”
From there, the salesperson would help the user see the inefficiencies with their payment systems, which then paves the way for a productive conversation.
For example, if a company is manually entering payment information into its system through an unintegrated processor, ProfitSolv’s team could direct the conversation to its payment initiatives.
That could look something like this:
Salesperson: How many payments do you do per month?
User: Probably around 50
Salesperson: Ok, you’re doing this manual process 50 times per month? (said with a concerned/surprised tone).
This, says Jason, sets the stage for the sales rep to show the value of integrated payments—ultimately helping to increase conversions. Make sure your team knows your competitors
It may also help to teach them about the competitive landscape so they know how your solution measures up against similar providers. This allows them to improve their sales pitch. Competitor battle cards with side-by-side comparisons would be a good tool here.
Incentivize sales
Finally, try to come up with incentives or programs that would further encourage your staff to sell or upsell payments. Reward your best salespeople and recognize the individuals for the deals they’ve closed.
It’s also beneficial to make your sales targets more visible. Having a dashboard indicating how much has been sold and how close the team is to their monthly targets may keep payments top of mind so your sales staff can actively sell and upsell payments services.
Be Targeted with Your Upsells
If you’re looking to upsell payments to your existing users, strive to be more targeted with your efforts. Go through your SaaS payment metrics and userbase to identify accounts that would benefit most from your payment offerings. These could be customers that are using certain features, businesses of a certain size, or those that deal with high credit card volumes.
Whatever the case, figure out your “best fit” users for payments and prioritize them in your sales efforts. For best results and to upsell payments, tailor your pitch to each user. Have your sales team utilize their history and data so they can customize their customer interactions.
Let’s say you’ve noticed businesses that deal with more than $10,000 in credit card transactions would be a great fit for your payment services. You can use that info to generate a list of users to contact, and then personalize the pitch based on their account activity.
You could say something along the lines of:
“We’ve noticed that your invoiced amounts have hit $10,000 last month. Congratulations on your growth! Given your history, we think you’d be a great fit for our payment services. Here’s why…”
Starting a conversation that’s centered around the users’s needs and activities will make your spiel much more relevant, ultimately improving the chances of conversion.
Bring Up Payments at the Right Time and Place
When it comes to sales, timing and location matter a great deal. When and where you bring up the payments conversation can make or break your sales. This is why it’s important to pay attention to your typical user journey and identify the points at which to encourage them to use payments.
Let’s suppose you’re selling a client management solution that allows users to keep track of their client engagements and projects. Your software comes with billing and payments capabilities and you’d like to get more of your customers using those features.
With that in mind, you should introduce payments when it makes the most sense for your users. This could be when they already added clients and projects to the software and are ready to bill them.
In this situation, you could prompt people to use your billing and payments services when they’re about to conclude a project.
Consider displaying a software prompt or message that says something like:
“You’ve just marked this project as complete. Have you tried our billing features? XYZ Software makes it easy for you to manage your clients and get paid all in one place.”
By using this approach, your payment features will come up at just the right time, thus piquing user interest. It’s worth emphasizing the fact that using digital or integrated payments would help your users get paid faster. Highlighting these things will not only improve the likelihood that they’ll explore your payment options, it’ll open up more opportunities for you to re-invest in your business.
Showcase Your Success Stories
Do you have existing users that are benefiting from your payment services? Make it a point to spotlight their stories. Produce case studies that outline the problems you’ve helped them solve and the results they’ve seen from using your payment services.
Once you have those case studies, put them up on your website and get your sales team to share them with prospects. Customer success stories are yet another excellent resource that your staff can leverage to market and sell your payment offerings.
Remember that social proof goes a long way. When potential users see businesses like them using your services, they’re more likely to sign up—or at least have a conversation with your team.
BigTime really shines in this aspect. The company’s feature page for BigTime Wallet contains a number of testimonials from users benefiting from the product. BigTime even produced a compelling video showcasing customer quotes.
Offer Promotions to Users Who Get On Board
Sometimes, you may need to sweeten the deal to get users on board your payment offerings. If it makes sense for your business, offer a discount on your software subscriptions if users process payments through your platform.
Take a look at what CHIROSPRING, a chiropractic software provider, is doing. According to Brian Albery, CEO of CHIROSPRING, the company recently launched a campaign designed to encourage users to implement integrated payments.
The campaign included an offer of a $200 credit to the user’s account when they sign up for payment processing.
To promote this, CHIROSPRING launched an email sequence that:
- Highlighted the promotion
- Communicated the benefits of integrated payments
- Promoted a sense of urgency by giving people a deadline for signing up
Consider doing something similar in your business. Just remember to analyze how your payments revenue translates to MRR or ARR. This will help you determine what sort of discount to offer.
Pro tip: A quality processing partner will assist the ISV in this analysis.
Need More Help Upselling Payments to Your Software Users?
If you’re struggling to upsell payments (even with the tips above), reach out to your SaaS payment processing provider. The right partner can help you fine-tune your payment sales efforts to ensure that your team can effectively sell and upsell your offerings.
At Stax Connect, we strive to have a mutually beneficial relationship with all our SaaS partners. We work closely with each partner and empower them to develop powerful strategies for increasing payment adoption.
Get in touch with us to learn how we help SaaS companies and ISVs with their payment monetization efforts.
FAQs about SaaS Payments
Q: What is the importance of payment monetization in SaaS companies?
Payment monetization escalates the use of software and allows users to derive more value from the product, which in return lowers churn. Besides, it opens a new revenue stream, thus strengthening the company’s bottom line.
Q: How can I increase payments-related activity and revenue on my platform?
It’s crucial to convince users (merchants) to process payments through your platform; you can achieve this by upselling your payment services.
Q: What are some effective tips to upsell payment services to users?
Some key strategies include promoting your payments and billing capabilities on your website, training your sales team to upsell payments, targeting your upselling efforts, introducing payments at an appropriate time, showcasing your success stories, and offering promotions to users who sign up.
Q: Why is it essential to promote payments and billing capabilities on my website?
Users need to be aware of your payment offerings in order to sign up. Marketing and advertising assets on your webpage will help educate your current and prospective users about your payment services, making it easier to upsell these services.
Q: How can I train my sales team to upsell payments effectively?
Equip your sales team with talking points on the features and benefits of payments. Also, familiarizing them with the competitive landscape and incentivizing their sales efforts will enhance their ability to sell or upsell payments.
Q: Why is targeting upsells important?
Studying your SaaS payment metrics and user base to identify accounts that could benefit from your payment offerings, then tailoring your pitch to those users, will make your pitch more relevant and increase the chances of conversion.
Q: How can I bring up the topic of payments at the right time and place?
You should consider the typical user’s journey and identify points where encouraging them to use payments makes the most sense. This could greatly impact your sales results.
Q: What is the significance of showcasing success stories?
Showcasing success stories functions as social proof. When potential users see businesses like them benefitting from your services, they’re more likely to sign up or at least have a conversation with your team.
Q: What kind of promotions can I offer to encourage users to sign up for my payment services?
You could offer discounts on your software subscriptions if users process payments through your platform. However, it’s necessary to analyze how your payment revenue translates to MRR or ARR before deciding what sort of discount to offer.
Q: What can I do if I’m struggling to upsell payments to my software users?
If you’re finding it challenging to upsell payments, you can reach out to your payment processing provider for support. The right partner can help you refine your payment sales strategies to ensure that your team can effectively sell and upsell your offerings.
