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Software As A Service, commonly referred to as “SaaS,” is a method of delivering applications over the internet. The user (usually a company) does not need to invest in software, and the provider manages all aspects of the service – access, security, and performance.
These services are usually sold or licensed against a monthly or annual fee.
A sales funnel is a series of actions or events that a user goes through before completing a product or service purchase. A sales funnel helps the marketer/seller track and optimize the buyer journey or sales function to maximize sales.
A sales funnel is important for every business present on the web or have a digital customer acquisition and conversion process. The sheer clutter on the internet makes it imperative for companies to have a well-designed sales funnel that attracts, engages, and converts lead into recurring customers.
The SaaS market today is over-saturated. SaaS buyers today have several options to choose from, and products and services are fighting for audiences and bigger shares of the market.
Although there is an urgency to convert leads to customers, the SaaS customer cannot be hurried or pushed into a purchase. The entire buyer journey must be managed carefully, and the customer must be constructively engaged at every stage of the process. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the entire journey from lead to conversion is managed through a formal process. Hence, the sales funnel!
There is no “standard SaaS Sales Funnel” – each company must build a customized funnel based on its position in the SaaS business. The typical stages of a SaaS business are as follows:
1st phase: The start of the business, where the company establishes a product-market fit.
2nd phase: The product-market fit has been established, and the company builds and implements a scalable system that others can use.
3rd phase: The product and market are ready; the system and process have been proved to work, and the company can focus on customer acquisition and sales.
For a SaaS sales funnel to be effective, the company must build its Funnel in the 1st phase itself so that the sales process can match the company’s growth.
The SaaS sales funnel structure depends on the sales strategy adopted by the company – is it selling directly to the end customer or is it selling through channel partners?
The following three steps, however, should be followed by all companies operating in the SaaS space to build a relevant and scalable sales funnel:
Graphically we can present these steps as follows:
Once these steps are in place, the company can start building its own SaaS sales funnel, using the AIDA process of Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action stages.
A typical SaaS sales funnel has three stages:
Let us examine each of these stages.
Graphically, a SaaS sales funnel can be visualized as under:
Image source: https://www.walnut.io/post/how-to-build-a-sales-funnel-for-b2b-saas
Once the sales funnel has been designed and implemented, the company must start evaluating and measuring success and leakage rates at each stage of the funnel. A company can use the following to drive maximum success rates at each stage:
The company should also track the following metrics to determine the success rate of its SaaS funnel:
The metrics can also be visualized as below:
Image source: https://www.pipedrive.com/en/blog/sales-funnel-templates
As we said earlier, there is no “one size fits all” type of SAAS sales funnel. Funnels can vary depending on the industry, product or service offered or the structure of the company.
There are certain industries which use SaaS more than others and their sales funnels can be considered models for use:
There could be two main templates of SAAS Sales Funnels, depending on the complexity of the product or service and the sales process followed. These are:
Graphically, this can be represented as follows:
Image source: https://www.klozers.com/saas-sales-funnel/
A company operating in the SaaS space needs a well-defined Sales Funnel Strategy to ensure it attracts, engages, converts and retains customers.
Therefore, the most important goals of a properly designed SaaS Sales funnel are:
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