I run a mobile app agency like you and we do pretty well selling GaSaaS.
I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and budget.
To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like:
"Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case doesn't add up so why bother?"
"Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you don't budget to iterate your app."
"How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost you less?"
Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.
We once landed a $mm deal because I told a CTO to his face that most of his teams were probably incapable of accurately describing the technologies they use and how/why. 90% of the time it works every time ;-)
I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and budget.
To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like:
"Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case doesn't add up so why bother?"
"Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you don't budget to iterate your app."
"How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost you less?"
Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.