Nurturing leads throughout the sales funnel is pivotal to nudging them to conversion, especially in the SaaS industry, where competition is steep.
If you’re ready to close more deals, bookmark this article and share it with your sales team.
Read on to learn how to navigate the SaaS sales funnel and boost conversions.
What does the SaaS sales funnel look like?
While the sales funnel may look slightly different depending on your tool and audience, the following stages are common in B2B SaaS:
Awareness Stage
Potential buyers become aware of your product during the first stage of the B2B SaaS funnel. They might find you through marketing campaigns, social media, blog posts, or other channels.
Goal during the awareness stage
Capture prospect interest during initial contact and provide valuable information highlighting your product’s benefits.
Interest Stage
At this stage, prospects show genuine interest in your SaaS product. They might sign up for your newsletter, download resources, or follow your social media accounts.
Goal during the interest stage
Engage leads with more detailed content and demonstrate how your product can solve their specific problems.
Consideration Stage
Prospects are now evaluating whether your product is the right fit. They might compare you to competitors, read reviews, or request product demos. Research says that 71% of B2B buyers check out multiple assets before making a final decision.
Goal during the consideration stage
Provide in-depth information, case studies, and personalized demos to address their concerns and showcase your product’s unique value. Customer reviews and customer testimonials are also helpful in providing social proof.
Intent (and Evaluation) Stage
At this point, prospects are ready to make a decision. They might ask for pricing, discuss terms, or seek approval from decision-makers within their organization.
Goal during the intent stage
Offer clear pricing structures, flexible options, and address any last-minute objections to nudge them toward a purchase.
Purchase Stage
Success! The prospect decides to buy your product. This deal is closed, and the customer has signed up for your SaaS solution.
Goal during the purchase stage
Make it easy to sign up for a trial or plan easily, provide immediate support, and automate the onboarding process.
How to nudge SaaS sales funnel leads to conversion along the customer journey
According to the latest research, the average activation rate for B2B SaaS companies is 37.5%. If your company’s onboarding is lower than that, it’s time for some updated strategies.
Let’s explore some that can improve your nurturing and conversions.
Awareness Stage strategies
Captivate your target audience’s interest using an SEO blog post, PPC social media ad, or a cold call. In your messaging, highlight your product’s top benefits.
For example, reach out to prospects who currently subscribe to a competitor tool that’s being discontinued. And offer your product as the best alternative. For instance, if you offer an employee engagement and communication tool, you can offer your solution as a Meta Workplace alternative.
Not only are you helping Meta Workplace users looking for a new digital home, but you’re also demonstrating your commitment to solving problems. B2B prospects build trust with new brands that genuinely care about their needs.
Interest Stage strategies
Create detailed content demonstrating how your tool solves pain points your customer groups are struggling with. Encourage your audience to sign up for your newsletter for future updates and industry news or grab a helpful download.
You can do so by adding calls to action (CTAs) on your website’s home page and relevant landing pages. You can also run lead magnet campaigns that use gated content or webinar invitations to encourage users to give you their contact information. Use a custom form to acquire their email address and business phone number.
To supercharge your efforts, leverage composable CDPs. These platforms sync customer data across your favorite tools, allowing you to build personalized experiences at every touchpoint. Use real-time insights to tailor follow-ups, optimize CTAs, and deliver hyper-relevant downloads based on individual behaviors.
For example, selling productivity software might invite leads to a “Top 5 Productivity Tips Your Agency Needs” webinar. When prospects sign up to attend, they’ll add their details and any firmographic data you ask for.
Consideration Stage strategies
Give prospects a deep dive into your product suite. Offer interactive product demos, create product comparison guides, and partner up with affiliate marketers who write product reviews.
When creating comparison guides, write blog posts that compare your tool against top competitors.
For instance, if you sell a project management tool, like monday.com, you might write the following articles:
- monday.com vs. ClickUp
- monday.com vs. Asana
- monday.com vs. Trello
And so on.
You can also compose longer listicles and name your tool as the best option.
In this case, your article titles might be:
- Top project management tools for construction project management
- 5 project management tools for product designers in 2024
- 10 best project management tools for agencies
For extra picky audiences or high-value customer groups (like enterprises), create case studies. Add these to your website and relevant landing pages and email them to middle-of-the-funnel leads. You can also create organic social media posts and ads that market your case studies as lead magnets.
When adding CTAs to content assets designed for the consideration stage, focus on booking demos. You want to fill as many seats as possible with potential customers who have a high intent to buy so you can reduce your customer acquisition cost.
Additionally, heat maps can complement the strategy by providing visual insights into how users interact with your website and landing pages. You can analyze which areas of your case study pages or CTAs get the most attention and optimize the placement of demos as well as other key elements to better engage high-value customer groups.
Intent Stage strategies
Speaking of intent.
Your qualified leads are ready to make a decision. During product demos and on your pricing page, be clear about your terms and pricing structures.
Go the extra mile by creating a “Why work with us” decision-making guide for the prospect’s stakeholders. This can help fellow decision-makers quickly get up to speed with why your tool is the best solution to their pain points.
In your guide, address the most common objections by creating an FAQ section. (This is also a great tool to use during cold sales strategies to warm up leads.)
For instance, if they’re price sensitive, you might include the following Q and A in your FAQ section:
Q: “I’d like to sign up for an enterprise plan, but the monthly cost is over budget. Do you have lower-cost plans for enterprise customers?”
A: “Yes, we do! We offer enterprise customers 20% off on any plan with a 12-month paid-in-full subscription agreement.”
If they’re worried about transferring their data to your platform, you might include the following Q and A in your FAQ section:
Q: “I’d like to transfer to your platform, but we have years of data from [competitor tool example]. What’s the process, and how long does it take?”
A: “We handle the entire transfer and onboarding process in exchange for a small fee. The charge depends on how much data you have but is never more than [insert top amount]. You can also use our free self-service portal for a complete walk-through. By following our steps, you should be up and running again in 48 hours, max.”
Purchase Stage strategies
Exciting news — your prospect is signing up and is on their way to becoming a loyal customer.
Your goal? Make the experience as seamless as possible with product-led onboarding during the conversion funnel. This automates the onboarding process and takes users through each step to get started with your tool.
Traditional password-based authentication methods create friction for users and pose security risks — think phishing attacks and credential stuffing. Forward-thinking companies are adopting passwordless solutions like passkeys, which leverage cryptographic key pairs and biometrics. This improves the user experience and mitigates security concerns.
By eliminating the need for passwords, passkeys enhance customer security, improve the user experience, and ultimately foster greater trust and loyalty – all of which can contribute to more successful conversions and lower churn rates throughout the sales cycle.
It’s also important to give bottom-of-the-funnel leads plenty of self-service and contact options.
For self-service, offer a knowledge base with help center articles, tutorials, and interactive videos. For contact options, consider offering a chatbot, 24/7 email support, and using call centers to help customers connect with a sales rep.
SaaS call centers help efficiently route incoming calls to the right call center agents based on their skills, availability, or other predefined criteria. Customers connect with the most suitable agent to handle their inquiries.
The right call center software can become a pillar of your sales strategy, and it’s hard to rip and replace it, so finding the right platform the first time around is critical.
Even the highest-performing agents need the right tools to drive sales, maintain productivity, and guarantee customer satisfaction.
To protect your conversion rates and the customer experience, it’s pivotal to offer these touchpoints. Even sales funnel leads that are about to hit “buy” can decide to walk away if they get frustrated and can’t get help.
To improve the onboarding experience, consider surveying your satisfied customers and asking them about specific growth areas.
For instance, you might ask:
- On a scale of one to five — five being excellent and one being poor — how would you describe your onboarding experience?
- How would you improve the onboarding experience if you could have anything you want?
- Which of the following options helped you have a streamlined and satisfying customer experience during onboarding?
- The Knowledge Base
- Your video tutorials
- Your chatbot
- The step-by-step onboarding prompts
- Your customer support team
Wrap up
Your sales pipeline is only as strong as your nurturing process throughout the SaaS sales funnel.
If you want to fill your CRM with qualified leads who are excited to buy throughout the sales cycle, it’s pivotal to nurture them during each funnel stage.
With a strategic approach, you can understand more about what your customers need — and give it to them exactly how they want it.
Don’t forget to share this article with your sales and marketing teams.
Here’s to your success in streamlining your sales process!
Why is FinancesOnline free?
Leave a comment!