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How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel in 9 Steps

SaaS businesses are becoming highly popular, as they provide software and services through the cloud. This makes it easy for clients to access and use them. 

However, with the increasing number of SaaS businesses on the market, it’s tough to stand out and attract new clients. This is when a well-crafted SaaS sales funnel comes in handy.

What is a SaaS sales funnel?

A SaaS sales funnel is a selling process consisting of several stages or steps that a user goes through before purchasing a product/service. 

By building a solid sales funnel, SaaS business owners can capture the attention of their target audience, build trust and loyalty, and increase their chances of making a sale.

In this blog, we’ve compiled a detailed guide on how to build a powerful SaaS sales funnel in 9 simple steps. 

Keep reading to learn how to create a SaaS sales funnel that drives conversions and boosts revenue for your business 👇

How to create a winning SaaS sales funnel in 9 steps

1. Define your ideal customer

Before building a SaaS sales funnel, it’s crucial to understand and identify your ideal customer.

Knowing your target audience will let you craft a modern sales funnel based on their needs and preferences. As a result, it will become much easier for SaaS business owners to turn them into paying customers.

To determine your target audience, analyse your existing customer base. Examine your most profitable customers and try to define some common characteristics, including demographics, occupations, and pain points of your ideal customers.

By building customer personas, you can better understand your target audience and develop marketing messages tailored to their needs.

To understand your target audience’s needs and pain points, make sure to:

  • Run surveys.
  • Gather customer feedback.
  • Analyse social media conversations and trends related to your SaaS business.

This way, you can detect your target audience’s challenges and develop solutions that address their needs.

For example:

If your SaaS product is a CRM tool, you may find that your target audience struggles with managing customer data effectively or keeping track of customer interactions across various channels. 

By revealing these pain points, you can craft a SaaS sales funnel emphasising how your product can solve these problems.

2. Create awareness

After defining your ideal customer, it’s time to come up with the best SaaS marketing strategies to create awareness.

In this step, you must ensure your target audience knows about your product and its benefits and realises how it can solve their pain points.

One effective way to spread awareness about your SaaS product is through search engine optimisation (SEO).

What you need to do is optimise your website by using relevant keywords. There are many keyword research tools that allow you to find the best keywords to target.

This way, you can positively impact your ranking on search engines and attract customers who are actively looking for solutions to their problems. This can only be achieved through on-page optimisation, including optimising page titles and meta descriptions. As part of your goal setting strategy and approach, this will ensure a more seamless process and better outcomes.

Also, don’t forget about off-page optimisation. Implement link-building strategies to get quality backlinks from authority websites pointing to your site.

Famous platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow you to target your ideal customers according to demographics, interests, needs, and behaviour. This can be particularly beneficial if your B2B marketing budget is limited, since you can control your ad spending and monitor your return on investment (ROI).

Apart from investing in SEO and paid advertising, you can also use content marketing; it’s a powerful tool to create awareness for your SaaS product. 

By creating high-quality blog posts, infographics, and videos, you can establish your brand as an expert in your niche and attract people interested in your product. 

For example:

If your SaaS product is a contract management tool, you could publish a blog post on "A Contract Management Guide for Remote Teams." 

This type of content gives value to your target audience and can boost your website traffic.

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3. Capture your leads

After generating enough awareness for your SaaS product, it’s time to think about how to capture leads.

In this step, you will need to create a landing page, leverage the power of a lead magnet, and collect information about your site visitors using a lead capture form.

A landing page is a web page used by many companies for capturing leads. It should be simple, visually appealing, and make the visitor take the desired action, such as filling out a form.

However, making people fill out a form isn’t easy. You need to make an effort when building a landing page. A perfect landing page has the following:

  • A clear headline.
  • An appealing offer.
  • A solid CTA.  

Another effective way to entice visitors to opt-in is by offering a valuable lead magnet, which can take different forms. For example, free downloadable podcasts or guides. 

Share these lead magnets in exchange for prospect email addresses or other contact information. Most importantly, make your lead magnet relevant to your target audience.

Once visitors have decided to use your lead magnet, you need to collect their information using a lead capture form. The form should be simple and only ask for the most important information, such as name and email address. Avoid asking for too much information, as this can discourage visitors from completing the form.

For example:

Let’s suppose your SaaS business provides a time management tool for small businesses. You could offer a free eBook titled “10 Time Management Hacks for Small Business Owners” to capture leads on a landing page. 

The landing page will have a clear headline, a brief description of the eBook, and a form for visitors to fill out their name and email address to download the free resource. Once the visitor fills out the form, they will receive an email with a link to download the eBook and a CTA to sign up for a free trial of your time management tool.

After capturing leads, take appropriate steps to prevent the lead leakage

In the next step, we’ll discuss how to nurture leads in a few actionable ways 👇

4. Nurture your leads

As previously mentioned, it’s important to cultivate potential customers in order to convert them into paying clients. 

Nurture campaigns can help educate customers on your product, build trust and loyalty, and make your brand memorable. 

Here are some strategies for nurturing leads:

Start an email sequence to engage with potential customers

One of the most efficient ways to nurture prospects is by setting up email campaigns. 

Create a series of automated emails that provide helpful content, like blog posts, white papers, and case studies. Make sure the content is relevant to your prospects’ needs and addresses their pain points.

Provide useful content that addresses your prospect’s pain points

In addition to email sequences, you can also create content that educates and engages your potential customers. 

Content can take different forms. It could be a webinar, video, or blog post that gives insights into your industry. By providing value to your prospects, you will build trust with them and position yourself as a thought leader in your field.

Use retargeting ads to impress your prospects

Retargeting ads can help you leave a lasting impression on those prospects who have visited your website but haven’t converted yet. 

By showing them relevant ads on social media or other websites, you can remind them of your brand. For example: 

If someone visits your pricing page but doesn’t sign up, you can retarget them with ads that offer a free trial or emphasise the benefits of your product.

It’s important to note that nurturing prospects doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to see good results. It also requires patience and consistency. Not every prospect will convert immediately.

However, with the above-mentioned lead nurturing strategies, you can increase the chances that they’ll eventually become customers.

5. Convert leads into sales

If you’ve successfully utilised the above lead nurturing strategies, your audience is already familiar with your SaaS business. 

Now’s the time to convert prospects into paying customers. 

In this step, we’ll discuss the strategies you can use to turn those leads into sales 👇

Create a free trial offer that showcases your product’s value

Offering a free trial is a fantastic way for prospects to test your product and see how it can help solve their problems.

If you showcase your product’s usefulness, you’ll convince people to become loyal customers. Make it easy for your targets to sign up for your free trial. Many companies widely use this tactic and track free trial conversion rate as one of the key performance indicators. 

For example:

Grammarly offers a free trial of its writing assistant tool, which provides people with tips on improving their writing. This way, potential customers can learn the value of their tool and understand how it can benefit them.

Use testimonials and case studies to build trust

Testimonials and case studies are powerful tools to help SaaS business owners build trust with their target audience.

When people see that other customers have had a positive experience with your product, they’re more likely to trust and purchase from your company. So, make sure to have a few customer testimonials/reviews on your website, social media platforms, and in your email campaigns.

Offer pricing options and plans that meet different customer needs

Different customers have different interests and budgets. Therefore, it’s essential to offer a few pricing options that can meet their requirements. 

This way, you can cater to a wide audience and increase your customer base.

Many famous SaaS businesses, including Mailchimp, offer several pricing plans with different features and pricing options. This lets customers choose a plan they can afford.

By offering a free trial offer, using testimonials and customer success stories, and offering pricing options that meet different customer needs, you can increase your chances of getting more clients for your SaaS business.

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6. Have a smooth customer onboarding

The next step in creating a SaaS sales funnel is onboarding. 

At this stage, you need to help your customers use your product. For a successful onboarding process, it’s important to make it as easy and straightforward as possible for your customers. You should make them feel confident and excited about using your product. A messy onboarding process can quickly turn them off. 

You should also prepare onboarding materials for your customers - such as blogs, eBooks, or videos explaining how to use each product feature properly. Make sure that you equip your customers with all the necessary information they need to get the most out of your product.

In addition to these, you should also provide customers with personal support. This could be in the form of one-on-one calls or chat support. This will allow your customers to contact you whenever they face issues while using your product.

A smooth and personalised onboarding process will increase customer satisfaction and ensure your customers get the most out of your SaaS product.

7. Try upselling and cross-selling

You’re mistaken if you think that onboarding is enough to build strong relations with customers!

Have you tried upselling and cross-selling? 

  • Upselling is a sales technique that offers customers a higher-priced or more advanced version of the product they already purchased. 
  • Cross-selling is about providing customers with complementary products or services that enhance their experience.

To effectively upsell and cross-sell, it’s essential to know your customers’ interests and preferences in the first place.

Use the B2B data you’ve collected through your sales funnel to create personalised offers for each of your customers. 

For example:

If you offer social media management software, and a customer has shown interest in a specific feature during onboarding, create an upsell offer that showcases how that feature will enhance their social media marketing efforts.

Another powerful tactic is creating bundle offers with complementary features or services. 

For example:

If you offer email marketing software, create a bundle that includes a social media management tool, allowing customers to manage both their email and social media marketing in one place.

Don’t forget to keep customers’ budgets and needs in mind when creating upsell and cross-sell offers. Don’t push a pricey upgrade on a customer who doesn’t need it or can’t afford it. Instead, offer options that meet their specific needs and are budget-friendly at the same time.

8. Don’t forget to follow-up

Following up with your customers is a hugely important step in building a SaaS sales funnel. You want to ensure your customers are satisfied with your product.

One way to do this is to send a welcome email after signup. In this email, show your appreciation to customers for their purchase and provide them with any necessary information they may need to get started with your product. 

A welcome email is also an excellent opportunity for SaaS business owners to showcase any additional features or resources customers might need. 

In addition to sending a welcome email, you should also ask for customer feedback and reviews. Ask them to share their honest opinions. 

This way, SaaS businesses can understand what works well and what needs improvement. 

9. Measure and improve 

Okay, so you’ve crafted and implemented your SaaS sales funnel - but the work isn’t over yet!

Measuring and optimising the funnel regularly is vital to ensure it effectively converts prospects into customers.

To do so, make sure to use tracking and analytics tools. These tools will enable you to track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as website traffic, conversion rates, and customer behaviour. Google Analytics is a popular and free tool that allows you to track these metrics.

Analyse the data you collect from your tracking and analytics tools. They’ll help you gain insights into how well your sales funnel is performing. Look for areas of the funnel that may have a high drop-off rate, indicating that there might be an issue you need to fix.

For example:

You may need to optimise your checkout process if you notice an increased shopping cart abandonment rate.

Conversion rates are also a key metric to track. Analyse conversion rates at each stage of your sales funnel to identify areas for improvement. 

Finally, use your collected data to optimise your SaaS sales funnel. This may involve changing your landing pages, email sequences, or pricing options based on what’s most effective in converting prospects into customers. Remember to test changes to your funnel to see if they result in improved conversions.

By continuously measuring and optimising your SaaS sales funnel, you can ensure that it effectively drives conversions and grows your SaaS business.

SaaS sales funnels: the last word

In conclusion, building a successful SaaS sales funnel is crucial for your business’s growth and success.

Follow the nine steps mentioned above and you will build an effective funnel that helps you convert leads into paying customers.

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