How to Build a Sales Pipeline for Your SaaS Product

Do you ever feel that your sales process is much harder than it should be?

As a startup founder, you have to juggle a lot of different balls every day. You have to think about your product, customers, employees, finances and more.

You probably also spend a lot of time thinking about to grow your business and how to generate more leads and sales every month.

Maybe you've already got some early traction with your marketing and are seeing a steady stream of new leads through content marketing or email outreach.

But does your sales process still feel like it's not working well?

Perhaps it's because the information about your new leads is all over the place? Or the leads aren't being followed up with on time? Or even worse, maybe some leads are going into a black hole and being forgotten about until it's too late.

The good news is that your sales process doesn't have to be that chaotic. And it doesn't take a lot of work to fix this situation pretty quickly.

In this post, I'm going to show you how to build a sales pipeline for your SaaS product. With the right process and tools, you can start generating more predictable sales with fewer headaches.

What is a Sales Pipeline?

A sales pipeline provides a visual snapshot of your sales. And it helps you understand how likely you are to close deals in the coming week, month or quarter.

It's a way for you to quickly know where in the sales process each of your sales leads currently is and what needs to happen to move them to the next stage of the sales process and eventually to a sale.

Every company will have different stages in their sales process, but most will have at least these five stages:

1. Prospecting. At this stage you've identified someone who's interested in your product. They may have signed up for a free trial, or you may have had an initial email or phone conversation.
2. Qualification. You're verifying the prospect has a need for your product, sees value, and has budget.
3. Needs Assessment. You're making sure the qualified prospect has a business pain they are actively looking to solve and that your product will help.
4. Proposal. You're providing a proposal and getting a contract signed. Or getting someone from free trial to paid plan.
5. Deal. The prospect signs a contract or provides credit card information to upgrade to a paid plan. Deal is won.

How to Build a Sales Pipeline for Your SaaS Product

Every company's sales pipeline will look different. Follow these steps:

1. Start by thinking about the buying process from the perspective of your customers i.e. what are the main decisions your prospects need to make before they buy from you?
2. Review the buyer's journey to help you think through how buyers go from realizing they have a pain to eventually making a purchase.
3. Think about what deliverables you need to provide prospects during the buying process e.g. product demo, needs assessment meeting, proposal, contract, etc.
4. Map what you've listed to stages of your sales pipeline. Get feedback to help identify gaps or potential issues.

Your sales pipeline probably isn't going to be perfect right away. It will take some work to refine and tweak the stages as you take real prospects through the pipeline. So plan on revising the stages in the first 30 days.

Define Your Success Metrics

One important thing I've learned about building a sales pipeline is that it's all about math. And as a geek, it makes sales less scary for me.

There are few metrics that everyone on your team should understand and track:

1. Conversion Rate. How many new leads do you need to close a sale? For example, if for every ten new leads, you close one deal, then you'd have a 10% conversion rate.
2. Sales Goal. Next you need to figure out how many sales you need to meet your revenue goal each month. Let's assume that you want to get at least 100 new sales every month.
3. New Leads. Now you can calculate how many new leads you need to close 100 sales every month i.e. at a 10% conversion rate, you'll need 1000 new leads each month.

For me, this makes it a math problem and less of a sales problem.

Develop a Daily Routine for Getting New Leads

As an early stage startup founder, you might also be “the sales guy.” And from what I've learned, that's not a bad thing in the early days. It can be an advantage.

No one will evangelize the product like you can. And by getting in front of your prospective customers, you'll learn so much more about what they need and how to make your product better.

Whatever activities you decide to do, it's important that you do them regularly and consistently. They need to become a daily habit.

Set Goals to Keep the Pipeline Flowing

Regularly filling your sales pipeline is critical. But you also need to keep those leads moving through the stages and eventually to a sale.

Firstly, identify the activities you need to do regularly to keep your pipeline flowing. For example, how many new leads will you qualify every day? How many meetings will you schedule?

Secondly, you should have a clear next action for every lead and prospect in your pipeline. If a lead or prospect doesn't have a next action, then there's a risk that they will be forgotten.

Don't Put Sales and Marketing in Silos

Although this post is about building a sales pipeline, it's important to point out that sales can't be successful without marketing and vice versa.

A lot of new leads may not be ready to buy yet, and through marketing, you can keep nurturing those leads until they're ready.

So instead of treating those two areas as separate silos, think about how you can create an integrated sales and marketing pipeline.

Using a CRM to Manage Your Sales Pipeline

In the early days, you can probably track information about your sales pipeline in a spreadsheet. But it's going to get out of control very quickly.

The best way to keep track of this information is to use a CRM system designed to help you quickly build a sales pipeline.

Key Takeaways

By building a sales pipeline, you can take a methodical and data-driven approach to sales.

You know exactly how many leads you need every day, month, etc. And you know what actions you need to be taking every day to move leads to the next stage.

Most importantly with a sales pipeline, you can do a much better job at finding and qualifying the right customers for your product and closing more sales.