How do you handle your sales processes? How is your pipeline setup for keeping track of leads and their status?

[Ravens_Shadow]

I've got around 1,500 warm/hot leads from a form on my website where users are signing up for beta access for our upcoming software product. The product isn't out yet, but it will be soon.

We've got 3 categories of leads:

1. Individuals/Small studios with less than $1mil in revenue.
2. Studios Between $1mil and $100mil in revenue.
3. Enterprises above $100mil in revenue.
   

Each lead tier has a different value as we price our software based on revenue, as this is common in our industry.


When leads come in, we sort them based on their category above. Each category has it's own pipeline that looks like this:
Uncontacted > Initial Contact Made > Conversation In Progress > Follow Up > Waiting Game (They're waiting on some sort of response from higher ups) > and finally Won/Lost.

What we're thinking is contacting studios and enterprises and being as personable as possible with them. I.e no email is the same. For individuals, since there's over 1,000 of them, we'll probably send out a bulk email in hopes of starting up a smaller conversation.

We have two goals by reaching out now which is 1. Scheduling a demo for their teams and 2. Seeing if they'd be interested in pre-ordering our software based on the demo they saw. If anything, we get the conversation going and the lead goes from hot to burning up, so that once the software is publicly available, they purchase it. My wife and I are the only people who will be working through this pipeline for now. Each demo takes around 30 minutes, and we need to make the best use of our time by focusing on the biggest clients.

Is there any stage that I'm missing? What does your workflow for leads look like? How do you handle your sales processes?

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

We have two goals by reaching out now which is 1. Scheduling a demo for their teams and 2. Seeing if they'd be interested in pre-ordering our software based on the demo they saw. If anything, we get the conversation going and the lead goes from hot to burning up, so that once the software is publicly available, they purchase it.

This is where the money is made. The demo's.

You need to get people to do the demo's.

If I was you, this is how I'd play it:

1. Create an offer/incentive for the client. "Get 10% off when we launch for doing a demo in the next 2 weeks". You have to make an expiration date on it. Otherwise no one's going to prioritize the meeting, and eventually you'll lose out the demo to other priorities that they have.
2. Start scheduling out the emails to your prospects. I'd start with 5 per day. Then scale once you figure out how many demo's are actually being scheduled and what you're capable of. Quickmail.io is decent for managing a pipeline like this.
3. The next day, call every single prospect that you emailed if they didn't reply. Chances are that they didn't reply. "Hi, this is Ravens_Shadow from that badass Saas website [one of your guys] signed up on. Can I speak to [that guy]?" Once you get that guy, reintroduce yourself and say "Have you had a chance to take a look at the email we sent out?" After the reply, do the quick pitch on the incentive that you had in #1. Schedule the demo. Remember: scheduling the demo is where the money is.
4. Do the demo.
5. Create another offer so that you can close on the spot. "So after the conversation we've had, you can agree that there's a lot of value in this product, right?... And that it'd save you [hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars | per month]?... Awesome. Well how about this. Just to get your feet wet, we're running a post-demo promotion. If you sign up today, I'll give you the first month for just $1 when we launch. After that, it will go back to the discounted rate of [whatever] since you did this demo with us today. And it's 100% money back guaranteed, so I'll even refund you the $1 if you're not as satisfied as you were today."

Something like that.

Then have them give you the credit card info on the site or whatever. Charge them $1 for the first month. Have them agree to the re-bill. Then have your system automatically re-bill them a month after you launch.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Oh, to add onto that:

It won't be hard to keep track of if you start off small. You can use Google Sheets, the Quickmail CRM, something simple like Streak, etc. Doesn't have to be complicated.

It only gets tougher once you're being overwhelmed, which at the start you won't be.

In terms of doing more demo's, I'd leverage your time once you have numbers on the conversions, and enough recorded demo's so that you can train someone else.

I'd hire someone on Upwork at $25 per hour to do the demo's. Then just make sure your pipeline is packed enough to make it worth it for them.

You can also go the outsource route and pay someone in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, etc. to do the demo's for super cheap - but I wouldn't advise that if you're making any significant amount on the clients.

 

[Ravens_Shadow]

You can also go the outsource route and pay someone in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, etc. to do the demo's for super cheap - but I wouldn't advise that if you're making any significant amount on the clients.

Our software is extremely technical, and I don't think any average joe could answer the slew of hard questions that would be thrown at them during a demo. It would need to be someone familiar with our industry, or at the very least trained for a few months and has prior experience with something similar to our niche. For an enterprise, we're looking at a minimum sale of $5k, upwards of $60k+ depending on what their needs are and how many licenses they need. A sale we're waiting on for budget approval is worth $18,000, and that was the first demo I did a few days ago. I'm sure I could hire an end user of our product to help with this in the future. Once we're at the point we're overwhelmed, that's a good problem to have and I'm sure someone in our network would want to join us full-time.

What I was thinking for a pre-sale incentive is immediate access to our daily builds before everyone else gets access publicly, and a direct line of communication with our developers so that we can tailor the software closer to their needs. This is what incentive I used to get a verbal yes on the $18k deal, and they didn't think twice.

 

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