Questions

I have a B2B enterprise SAAS solution for the Salesforce.com ecosystem. The software is targeted at large companies. Last year (from feb to Dec), I built more features in the software and sold the software single-handedly for $350K. This year, I want to grow the revenue to $4M. Our deal size varies from $20K - $80K. It takes 3months to 6 months to close a deal. What steps do I need to take to grow to that amount?

The biggest thing you can do is spend time prospecting. If you're deal cycle is 6 months, you need to be filling up a +$10 million pipeline in order to close $4 million over the course of the next 10 months.

That means lots of prospecting, keeping prospects engaged while they make their decision and handle internal processes (typically a marketing automation system handles this) and ideally partnering with companies that can bring you leads through referral to drop down that deal cycle from 6 months.

If you look at it as a funnel, it would look something like this:

Cold call/email/traffic >> lead >> prospect >> segment >> sales process >> deal cycle >> close/re-segment

Typically this would look something like this in a well oiled company:

Cold call/email/traffic >>10%>> lead >>20%>> prospect >> segment >>15% qualified>> sales process >>20%>> deal cycle >>30%>> close/re-segment (this close could take 3 months or up to 12 months)

If you reverse calculate it, to get 1 closed deal in this funnel, you'd need 555 leads.

Assuming your average deal size is $50k, you can spend $90 to acquire a lead in that scenario or $9 per click/hit on a lead capture page.

To scale to $4 million in that funnel, you'd need to drive 44,400 leads, assuming the $50k average deal size is an annual license.

Your numbers will be different, but based on the initial scenario, the key for you will be having sales people out there prospecting and driving some serious lead volume through marketing.

So you'll need:
- A solid cold sales process (script/email/funnel)
- A REALLY good qualification process for prospect to sales process
- Some good lead gen focused marketing setup (Facebook/Linkedin/Google ads are your best bet in conjunction with software directories like Capterra)
- A good lead capture landing page to convert people into leads that you can try to prospect


Answered 8 years ago

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