One surefire way to win clients for your SaaS business is to use a proven SaaS sales process template.
An effective SaaS sales process template takes the guesswork out of client acquisition and retention. It allows your sales team members to work in sync like a well-oiled machine. This makes finding the right prospects and converting them into long-term customers predictable and repeatable.
Over 50% of high-performing sales teams use a formal structured sales process to close deals and grow their revenues consistently.
Below, we explain how to create the best SaaS sales process template and provide a ready-made framework you can use to get started.
How To Create the Best SaaS Sales Process Template
There’s no one-size-fits-all sales process for SaaS companies. However, there are several steps you can take to map out the best sales process for your company.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create a unique SaaS sales process that closes the right deals repeatedly and sets you up for ongoing success.
Step 1: Analyze and Document Your Current Sales Approach
Start where you are. The most effective sales processes come naturally from how your business already works.
What does your sales department do to get customers, and how effective are their sales activities?
Analyzing your sales team’s current activities, even if they’re winging it and have no formal sales plan, provides insight into what’s already working. You’ll include what’s working in the sales process template you’re trying to create.
Understanding your existing sales approach also helps you identify the gaps you’ll have to fill to build a solid sales process template that works like a charm.
Step 2: Map the Buyer’s Journey
Create your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and outline the path potential customers take to become your client. Then, align your current sales activities to match their buying journey. Doing this increases the effectiveness of your sales process.
It enables you to build your sales process template in a way that meets the needs of your prospects at every point of their buying journey. You’ll know how to position your SaaS product as a top solution for potential customers, making it easy for them to choose you.
Remember, if your business serves more than one type of audience, you’ll have to map out the buyer’s journey for each target audience.
Step 3: Identify the Steps to Include in Your Sales Process Template
Next, build some structure around your sales process by identifying and defining various steps of your existing sales approach. This involves organizing and reorganizing the information you’ve gathered to fit into different phases of a formal sales process. You’ll notice your template begin to take shape.
Ideally, you’re looking to create five high-level stages of a formal sales process, including:
- Prospecting and Lead Qualification
Define how your sales team seeks out potential customers. What does your sales team do to identify prospects they can engage with and turn into loyal customers? How do they ensure the leads they find match your ideal customer profiles?
Maybe your team looks for potential clients on relevant social media sites, creates lead-generation campaigns, or relies on referrals from third-party sources. Document everything your team does to identify potential clients and the criteria used to qualify them.
- Pitching
Pitching involves initiating contact with qualified leads and digging deeper into their situation. Does your sales team connect with qualified leads via phone, social media, or email? How do you or your team introduce your SaaS product as a solution for your prospect?
- Negotiations
The negotiation phase is the backbone of your sales process. This is where you demonstrate how well your SaaS product alleviates the prospect’s pain points. How does your sales team handle negotiations so they can close deals?
You want to make it clear how your team should:
- Present your product demos and who they should present them to – ensure the right stakeholders, i.e., those who need to use your SaaS product, see the demo.
- Handle any objections or concerns prospects may have during negotiations.
- Draw up and issue a proposal with the required information about your offer. The proposal must have all the details needed to formalize the offer, including payment info, licenses purchased, expected support, and renewal terms.
- Closing
Outline how your sales team should handle closing the deal after successful negotiations. Apart from drafting the contract, do they have to create some sense of urgency to get prospects to sign sooner, thus closing the deal faster? If yes, how? This may include offering incentives like discounts.
- Nurturing
Clarify how your team should follow up with new customers to create long-lasting relationships and convert them into loyal fans. Include various cross or upselling techniques to expand your new customers’ product usage or offer additional helpful services they may require. The aim is to increase customer satisfaction and get repeat business.
Step 4: Outline Activities And Set Goals For Each Stage
Once you’ve defined the sales process phases above, it’s time to refine the activities and goals for each stage. This makes your sales process template come together because you’ll specify what your sales team has to do to move the prospect from point A through E effortlessly. It’s advisable to include precise goals and SaaS sales tools you might need at each stage.
Step 5: Allocate Responsibility To Different Team Members
Different SaaS companies handle their sales process differently. For some, closing a sale goes beyond the company’s sales department and might include the account management or customer success teams. If this is the case for you, ensure all parties involved understand their role and contribution to the success of the sales process.
Best SaaS Sales Process Template
Once you have an idea of your current sales approach and mapped out your ICPs, use the SaaS sales process template example below to create your own without a hassle.
Phase 1: Prospecting & Lead Qualification
Summary
Identifying prospects and ensuring they match your ICP. Say you’re in the food industry and have a food tracking or healthy eating recipe recommendation SaaS product. Your prospects may be:
- Food and nutrition experts with their practice
- Gym or yoga instructors running their studio
Anchor Activities
What you’ll do to find professional nutritionists and gym or yoga instructors who’ll benefit from your product. It may include:
- Searching on social media platforms
- Attending health networking events, where possible
- Creating online campaigns
- Organic lead generation through content
- Cold outreach
Main Goals
- Create a list of several qualified leads you can work with
Tools
- Lead generation platforms
- SEO and email marketing automation platforms
Party Responsible
- Sales Team
Phase 2: Pitching
Summary
Connect with the nutrition experts and lifestyle instructors identified under step 1 to introduce them to your company or product.
(Tips: Try to build rapport to understand their specific pain points while introducing your product as a perfect solution for their needs.
Be keen to focus on how your leads will benefit from your product. Avoid direct selling as you may seem insincere and put off your potential customer).
Main Goals
- Building a relationship with the client, i.e., warming up the lead
- Scheduling a product demo (depending on how the conversation goes and the channel used, some sales leaders prefer carrying out product demos at this stage.)
Tools
- Pen and paper to capture your prospect’s replies
- Your go-to app for scheduling meetings
Party Responsible
- Sales team
Phase 3: Negotiations
Summary
Offering proof of concept to capture your prospect’s interest and lock them in. Usually, this includes conducting a product demo and handling any objections arising from the process. How you carry out your product demos matters a lot here. It will determine whether you’ll close the deal during the next step.
Main Goals
- Win customers and get them to accept the proposal
Tools
- App for scheduling meetings
- Sales demos automation platform. There are several options to help with this, but we recommend working with Saleo. The platform is designed to help SaaS companies like yours conduct personalized sales demos that win the prospect’s trust. Check out these resources to learn more
Phase 4: Closing Deal
Summary
Signing the contract and starting the onboarding process.
Activities
- Get approval from the prospect
- Secure purchase order
- Start onboarding customer
Main Goal
- Signed contract
Responsible Party
- Sales team
Phase 5: Nurturing
Summary
Following up with customers to get feedback and gauge satisfaction levels.
Responsible Party
- Customer success team
Conclusion
When creating your sales process template, try to be more detailed in each section to ensure everyone is on the same page. Be as clear and specific as possible, especially when describing the activities section under each phase. All relevant team members should understand what they need to do to achieve the desired results.
Don’t forget to include key metrics to monitor the performance of your sales process and make adjustments as needed to improve it.
Another thing you should focus on to increase the efficiency of your sales process template is optimizing your sales demo. A well-optimized sales demo does half of the selling for you.
You can use a sales demo optimization platform, like Saleo, to personalize and automate your demos. Saleo makes your demos more engaging, so closing deals becomes a breeze. Book a demo today to see how the platform works. It’s free!
