Dan Martell - 4 Steps to Build a SaaS Sales Pipeline

00:00:00.080 If you don't have a process for selling your software,

00:00:02.840 then your customer is gonna introduce you

00:00:04.240 to their process for not buying.

00:00:18.880 Hey there, Dan Martell here,

00:00:19.920 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:21.760 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:23.120 how to think through the sales SaaS pipeline.

00:00:26.520 I'm gonna break it down for you,

00:00:27.920 but be sure to stay at the end,

00:00:28.880 where I'm gonna tell you how to get access

00:00:30.060 to my rocket demo builder framework.

00:00:32.360 That's exactly the nine boxes that you need to follow

00:00:35.840 the talk tracks and script to be able to reduce

00:00:39.120 your sales cycles by half and increase your win rates

00:00:41.880 by double.

00:00:42.720 So be sure to check that out, but let's get into it.

00:00:45.220 One of the privilege that I have is working

00:00:47.480 with coaching clients to help them go from

00:00:49.380 a founder led sales where they're doing all the sales demos,

00:00:52.760 they're onboarding customers, there's qualifying people,

00:00:54.980 they're managing the pipeline to one which is honestly

00:00:58.140 where everybody wants to end up to this place

00:01:00.080 where a team is leading the sales process,

00:01:02.580 where somebody else is doing the qualifying,

00:01:04.420 the demos and onboarding clients.

00:01:06.160 Because if you don't figure out how to do this,

00:01:07.740 you will always be bottlenecked

00:01:09.480 because no entrepreneur will grow into pain.

00:01:11.680 If this is pain and you're growing,

00:01:13.980 you will do things like sabotage your success,

00:01:16.340 be slow to respond to emails, et cetera,

00:01:18.520 because anything you do to grow means more pain for you.

00:01:21.320 Meaning that if you figure out a marketing hack,

00:01:23.740 then all of a sudden your calendar

00:01:25.000 gets just full of sales demos

00:01:27.400 and you're doing a bunch of sales demos

00:01:28.840 and then people don't show up and you get frustrated.

00:01:30.840 And then you open up your calendar for Saturdays

00:01:32.940 because maybe that's the problem.

00:01:33.980 And you start taking calls on Saturdays.

00:01:35.260 And guess what happens?

00:01:36.140 Half the people don't show up

00:01:37.260 and you just start getting frustrated.

00:01:38.480 If you don't learn the process I share with you today,

00:01:41.740 as an entrepreneur, you're gonna feel frustrated

00:01:43.520 not be able to move things forward.

00:01:45.080 So the ability to design this and understand what's broken,

00:01:50.240 maybe you have a sales team right now

00:01:51.620 and you just don't know how to diagnose the steps

00:01:54.200 that are broken or where to take things off

00:01:56.940 of other people and give it to a different department

00:01:59.100 to really increase what's called your sales velocity.

00:02:02.160 So let's get into it.

00:02:03.280 Number one, the sales development rep,

00:02:05.840 or what I call the SDR.

00:02:07.720 The SDR is somebody that typically deals with inbound,

00:02:11.440 meaning that if you have content marketing going on,

00:02:13.440 you have social media marketing going on,

00:02:14.780 you have anybody sending traffic to your website

00:02:17.340 and that might initiate a chat or an email,

00:02:20.020 somebody needs to qualify those inbound requests

00:02:24.020 to make sure that you don't overwhelm your sales team

00:02:26.800 with people that are not ready.

00:02:28.080 So typically, I like to do this thing called speed to lead.

00:02:31.040 So as soon as a lead comes in through a contact form

00:02:33.140 or somebody emails the general inbox,

00:02:35.860 somebody's on the phone with them right away.

00:02:37.300 Boom, form comes in, get on a call.

00:02:39.460 Doesn't answer, totally fine.

00:02:41.160 Leave them a voicemail, follow up with an email.

00:02:43.760 But having somebody take that over,

00:02:46.260 if you're doing it today as a founder

00:02:48.040 and have that SDR process defined

00:02:51.120 so that you're qualifying those people

00:02:53.640 to even get on a call.

00:02:54.880 They're confirming, hey,

00:02:56.320 even if you let them book into a call,

00:02:57.920 hey, I noticed you just booked a call

00:02:59.120 with one of our scale specialists, Rob,

00:03:01.060 just wanted to make sure that it was in your calendar.

00:03:03.580 If you had any questions, also qualify them.

00:03:06.420 I noticed that you have this role in your company,

00:03:09.340 is that something you're about to make a decision?

00:03:10.820 So the SDR's job is not to sell,

00:03:14.420 it's really to make sure that the opportunity

00:03:16.780 is qualified for a sales rep to engage.

00:03:19.800 Number two is BDR or a business development rep.

00:03:22.840 Now I call it a BDR and trust me,

00:03:24.840 there's just even in the three level acronym aspect

00:03:28.820 of naming stuff.

00:03:30.800 Some people call them MDRs, some people call them SDRs,

00:03:33.240 but market development rep, sales development rep,

00:03:35.620 I call it BDR, business development rep.

00:03:37.400 That's somebody that's doing outbound.

00:03:38.740 They're creating demand.

00:03:41.260 They're doing LinkedIn.

00:03:42.500 They're emailing prospects.

00:03:43.980 They're using what's called account-based marketing.

00:03:46.200 They're prospecting.

00:03:48.420 They're out there trying to drum up opportunities.

00:03:51.800 And what's interesting is they're typically doing

00:03:54.120 the exact same role as an SDR,

00:03:55.960 but from an outbound point of view.

00:03:57.700 So it's not just qualifying inbound.

00:03:59.460 They literally gotta go find people that are in market,

00:04:01.980 that have the problem, that are qualified,

00:04:04.300 that are the decision makers.

00:04:05.620 And from there, they pull them forward

00:04:07.640 to see if there's an opportunity

00:04:08.920 before they send it over to sales rep.

00:04:11.120 So in this bucket, if we think of like three phases

00:04:13.600 from qualifying, closing, and farming,

00:04:16.160 we wanna make sure that we have somebody

00:04:17.680 who's doing outbound that's qualifying,

00:04:19.960 finding the need and then queuing up the conversation

00:04:22.420 to be had with your sales rep.

00:04:24.260 Number three, the account exec, the AE,

00:04:26.960 that's the general term

00:04:28.040 that a lot of people use in the sales space.

00:04:29.700 You can call them a product specialist,

00:04:31.320 you can call them an account exec,

00:04:33.200 you can call them a sales rep, you can call them whatever.

00:04:35.860 Literally, as long as the person typically

00:04:38.160 is a quota carrying member of your sales team,

00:04:40.740 they're a sales person.

00:04:41.760 They have to close deals,

00:04:43.080 get the customer's payment, move them forward.

00:04:45.540 So typically this person is using

00:04:48.200 some kind of sales process.

00:04:50.000 Because my rule is if you don't have a process

00:04:51.960 for selling your software,

00:04:53.480 then your customer is gonna introduce you

00:04:54.920 to their process for not buying, okay?

00:04:57.120 And I got that from one of the literally

00:05:00.400 300 sales books I've read.

00:05:02.000 Maybe it was a Zig Ziglar quote or Tom Hawkins.

00:05:05.540 I don't really remember, but that's the idea.

00:05:07.840 If you don't have a systematic process for selling,

00:05:11.320 then your prospect will systematically tell you

00:05:14.780 why your product isn't a good fit for them.

00:05:17.180 Not that they won't buy, maybe they will,

00:05:18.920 but I mean, I just wanna increase

00:05:20.460 what's called the win rate.

00:05:21.420 So if you don't use a process,

00:05:23.540 be sure to check out the Rocket Demo Builder,

00:05:25.720 which I'll share with you in a second.

00:05:27.240 But one of my favorite overall sales process,

00:05:30.860 if you're trying to buy one or model one is MEDIC, okay?

00:05:33.760 M-E-D-D-I-C, you can Google it, check it out for yourself.

00:05:37.320 But the MEDIC sales process

00:05:39.060 is more of an appropriate one for software

00:05:42.300 than using what's called BANT,

00:05:43.900 Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timing,

00:05:46.140 which is an old school sales process.

00:05:47.940 Software sells completely different.

00:05:49.920 Follow the medic process

00:05:51.240 and teach your account execs to do that,

00:05:53.460 but they should be responsible for closing the deals

00:05:56.480 that the SDRs and the BDRs bring

00:05:59.520 in to the opportunity pipeline.

00:06:01.400 And number four is your customer success team.

00:06:04.520 This is a CSM, this is a manager.

00:06:06.360 They're usually accountable for certain amount of volume,

00:06:09.180 sometimes one to 2 million in ARR,

00:06:10.920 depending on the kind of the go to market that you employ.

00:06:13.540 But the CSM is the person

00:06:15.040 that once the account exec gets the deal,

00:06:17.240 they hand it over and a beautiful CS process

00:06:20.980 is where there's kind of a soft handoff with the clients.

00:06:24.040 Like, hey, now I'm gonna hand you over to Mark.

00:06:26.440 He's on our CS team.

00:06:27.380 He's gonna get your account activated.

00:06:28.780 He's gonna figure out,

00:06:29.900 I've shared all my notes with them.

00:06:31.800 And typically that person is really responsible

00:06:35.720 for activating onboarding

00:06:38.280 and then overall success with the product,

00:06:40.440 depending on if you sell SMB mid-market or enterprise,

00:06:43.280 You may have a CS component, regardless if you're SMB,

00:06:46.840 it just might be done through automation a little bit more.

00:06:49.440 And an account person might have, you know,

00:06:52.240 thousands of accounts that they manage

00:06:53.740 as a block of accounts to make sure

00:06:55.460 that they're being successful and they monitor, et cetera,

00:06:58.000 for churn and for opportunities to upgrade.

00:06:59.900 So I always look at them as the farmers.

00:07:02.260 So you have the qualifiers, you have the closers,

00:07:04.360 and then you have the farmers.

00:07:05.280 The customer success person is the person

00:07:07.900 that's going to find opportunities

00:07:09.280 amongst the customer base to upsell, cross-sell, support,

00:07:12.840 make sure the use cases from your products

00:07:15.080 are being deployed amongst your customer base.

00:07:17.940 And if you're the founder and you're trying to figure out,

00:07:21.380 well, what do I do first?

00:07:23.040 Do I hire somebody to sell?

00:07:24.760 Do I hire somebody to do this?

00:07:26.060 I typically always go handoff first.

00:07:29.180 So get somebody to take over

00:07:30.600 the activation onboarding and success part,

00:07:32.900 because that's a little bit more

00:07:34.260 kind of usually systematized or well thought out.

00:07:36.560 Then I'll go qualifying.

00:07:38.680 And really the goal is to leave yourself

00:07:40.540 only getting on calls as a founder

00:07:43.080 with qualified confirmed sales appointments

00:07:46.420 in your calendar.

00:07:47.300 And then you manage those plus follow-up.

00:07:49.680 And then over time you'll hire,

00:07:51.420 you'll take somebody that's an SDR sales development rep

00:07:53.740 or BDR and then train them up to be an account exec,

00:07:56.900 replace them with ideally two.

00:07:59.000 Maybe you'll hire two salespeople, 0.90

00:08:00.440 but that's usually the path that seems to work best

00:08:03.060 for myself and for my coaching clients

00:08:04.860 that you can now, now that you understand

00:08:06.900 those three different stages

00:08:09.100 of the kind of the sales pipeline.

00:08:11.440 Overall, that's how you generate revenue.

00:08:13.100 That's the revenue engine that you need to develop

00:08:15.120 for your SaaS company.

00:08:16.340 So quick recap, number one is the sales development rep

00:08:19.740 and number two is the business development rep.

00:08:22.040 Number three is the account exec

00:08:23.640 and number four is a customer success person.

00:08:26.980 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:08:28.800 I wanna share with you one of the most powerful frameworks

00:08:31.040 that I give away to my community,

00:08:33.240 which is the Rocket Demo Builder.

00:08:34.840 It will literally help you double your win rates

00:08:38.000 and reduce the time to close or get a deal by half.

00:08:41.220 Just follow the nine specific sequences,

00:08:44.120 the talk tracks, I give you the questions,

00:08:45.900 I tell you how to go for the close,

00:08:47.060 how to deal with objections.

00:08:48.280 Just click the link below to download your copy

00:08:50.620 of my Rocket Demo Builder

00:08:52.060 to help improve your software demos today.

00:08:55.300 And be sure to, if you like this video,

00:08:57.780 share it with somebody that you think it could serve,

00:08:59.780 somebody you care about, smash that subscribe button

00:09:02.780 and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway.

00:09:05.440 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:09:07.420 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:09:09.380 and I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - September 20, 2021

4 Steps to Build a SaaS Sales Pipeline

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