Andrius Olechnovicius on SaaS Sales
How Value Makers builds processes that are stronger than the salesperson
On episode three of Startup Sales Talks by GrowTech, Andrius Olechnovicius, Founder of Value Makers, broke down what actually makes SaaS sales work in the real world.
He has been on all sides of the table
banking, entrepreneurship, running a lead generation agency, Head of Sales in three B2B tech startups, and now a sales coach and advisor for startups across Europe and the US.
This blog pulls out his strongest quotes and adds context around them.
“You can never connect the dots looking forward”
Andrius uses the famous Steve Jobs line to describe his own career path
“Steve Jobs said that you can never connect dots looking forward, but you can connect dots looking backward.
Now when I look backward to my life, all those things I was doing and that felt no sense in the beginning, now feel like a perfect match for what I am doing right now.”
Banking
Life coaching
Psychology studies
A bicycle rental business
A lead generation agency
On paper it looks chaotic. In SaaS sales coaching it is a superpower.
“Sales coaching is a very specific field where you need very different expertise. You need sales. You need to be a founder yourself. You need guidance. And then coaching and psychology is a must, because without that you cannot understand people and inspire them to make a change.”
The message for founders and sales leaders
your zigzag background might be exactly what your current role needs, if you are willing to connect those dots consciously.
“SaaS sales is not art anymore, it is already science”
Coming into SaaS from other industries, Andrius was fascinated by how measurable everything is.
“When I first came to SaaS sales I was very much inspired. There are so many comparable metrics sales cycle, conversion, churn, MRR, CAC, LTV, net revenue retention. Sales is not art anymore, it is already science.”
You can compare two completely different SaaS products through the same lens of unit economics.
But then reality hits.
“In theory you can build a very structured, very systematic approach and get predictable results. In reality I went to one company, learned a lot, then moved to another and almost nothing applied. The same happened in the third company.”
His conclusion
every SaaS company looks comparable from the outside, but inside each one has to discover its unique sales model and metric mix.
“You need a process that is stronger than your salespeople”
This might be Andrius most important line for founders.
“All SaaS founders have a mirage. They think if they hire a salesperson, he will solve all the problems. He will figure out the process and start closing deals. In reality that almost never happens.”
Instead of hunting for a unicorn seller, he pushes founders to build a system.
“You need to build a sales process that is stronger than your salespeople. Once you have that, you can take a more or less random person with good motivation and they will perform ok. If you do not have the right process, even the best person will be average, and the average person will be a low performer.”
The hero is not the charismatic closer
the hero is a repeatable sales motion that outlives any individual rep.
“Sales skills are only half of the picture”
Most reps think they need product knowledge and sales technique.
Andrius agrees, but he adds two more dimensions that almost nobody talks about.
“Typically a salesperson thinks there are product skills. Then some realise there are sales skills too. They think if I master product and sales skills, I will be a genius. But that is only half of the picture.”
The hidden half
“There are mental and psychological things how well I am prepared, how well I am motivated, what is my attitude. And finally there is physics how does my body feel.”
He gives a painfully accurate picture of the remote rep life
“Your salesperson works from home, wakes up at twelve, rushes into the meeting, still in shorts, did not shave, did not shower, did not eat. Mentally he is not able to absorb information and make the right decisions. Then we can talk about product market fit and sales cycle, but that does not matter anymore.”
For Andrius, sleep, food, routine and physical balance are not self help details.
They are input variables in revenue.
“Sometimes sales experience is the downside”
One of his favourite case studies comes from an enterprise product that was very trust based and industry specific.
“We needed a salesperson with strong industry skills and strong sales skills. It was almost impossible to find both in one person.”
So they took a risk.
“We hired a person with very strong industry experience and zero sales experience. According to the personality profile he had potential and motivation.”
With structured coaching this person became average within four to five months and among the top performers in eight months.
“I had seen the pattern before. Industry skills were more important than sales skills, and sales experience could even be a downside because it might be the wrong one. Then you need to retrain the person, which takes longer or is even impossible because of attitude.”
The lesson
for complex SaaS and enterprise sales, it can be safer to hire industry brain and teach sales, rather than the other way around.
“We had four meetings before disclosing price… and it worked”
Most teams try to reduce meetings.
Andrius helped one client do the opposite.
“The product was very complex, a new concept, not obvious to clients. We decided to implement four meetings before we disclose the price. Discovery one, Discovery two, solution meeting, business case, sometimes even a fifth mutual success meeting.”
The chief executive was sure prospects would run away.
They did not.
“They followed the path. Next meeting discovery two. Then solution. Then business case. They just went from meeting to meeting without complaining.”
Conversion improved because the extra steps gave time to educate and align stakeholders around a non intuitive product.
The insight
if your product is genuinely complex and new, you may need more touchpoints, not fewer, as long as each one adds clear value.
“Customer success people hate selling. So we stopped forcing them.”
Another strong example came from rethinking customer success.
“Customer success usually has two parts churn prevention and upsell. Customer success people normally do not like sales. They are good at serving, helping, but not at pushing or challenging.”
Finding people who love both is rare.
So they split the role.
“We separated it. One group focused on churn prevention, another on upsell. There was a lot of fear it would not work, that clients would be irritated.”
The opposite happened.
“Everybody was happy, conversion increased. People who hated sales were happy because they did not have to sell. With a simple disclaimer customers accepted that two people would work with them.”
Designing roles around natural strengths, instead of forcing hybrid expectations, created better revenue outcomes and happier humans.
“From day zero, you should split sales roles”
Andrius uses a football metaphor to talk about role design.
“Imagine football. You have forwards, midfielders, defenders, a goalkeeper. Imagine everyone doing everything, running from one gate to another. You would lose to any structured team.”
For him, full stack reps are already outdated.
“I honestly think it is not affordable anymore. It is too expensive and super inefficient. Good forwards hate defending. Defenders are bad at scoring.”
He is blunt about the future
“10 years ago most companies were doing everything with one person. Now very few startups do that.In 5 years I think zero startups will do that. In 10 years zero companies at all.”
Even for two founder teams he recommends splitting roles early instead of growing around generalists.
“Account executives will become A level specialists”
As attention gets more expensive, Andrius expects the bar for account executives to rise dramatically.
“It is more and more difficult to get customer attention. The cost of getting a lead increases. Companies receive fewer leads and pay more for each.”
That makes the AE role critical.
“Imagine one forward scores one goal from ten attempts, another scores five from ten. That is a huge difference. One person can decide whether you have twenty, thirty or fifty percent conversion.”
His prediction
“Requirements for salespeople will increase. Competence and remuneration will increase. Companies will invest more into coaching and training, because that is what makes the big difference.”
“Do not even talk about salespeople if they do not learn in their free time”
When hiring, Andrius looks at personality, industry background and then one very simple indicator
“I always ask what books they read and what they watch. 60% to 70% are not listening or reading anything about sales. That already tells a lot.”
If someone is not curious enough to study the craft on their own time, they are unlikely to survive in modern SaaS environments.
His book picks
For SDRs
Grant Cardone The Ten X Rule for mindset and massive action
For account executives
Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson The Challenger Sale for consultative value based selling
For founders and ambitious reps
Richard Koch The Eighty Twenty Principle for focusing on the small part of effort that drives most results
