How SaaS Companies Can Build Personalized SaaS Sales Funnel for Their Product Growth

If you want to survive (and succeed) in the SaaS industry today, building a product that solves your prospects’ problems is not enough. 

To attract, engage, and convert your prospects into paying customers (and eventually brand advocates), you ought to build a personalized sales funnel. 

A personalized SaaS sales funnel not only helps to realize where things are going wrong but also gives you a bird’s eye view of your prospects’ buying journey and decision-making process. 

More importantly, it helps to identify areas for improvement and ensure a steady stream of sales to grow your business.

But how do you build a personalized SaaS sales funnel that boosts your product’s growth?

In this blog, we’ll walk you through a stepwise process of building a personalized sales funnel for your SaaS company.

What is a SaaS Sales Funnel and Why Does Your Company Need One?

A SaaS sales funnel is the visual illustration of the journey from where your prospects learn about your business for the first time until they either drop out of the funnel or convert into a paying customer.

According to Invespcro, 80% of people never convert into paying customers when they hear your brand name for the first time. They either drop their decision or simply go to a popular brand offering a similar product. 

But, by building a personalized sales funnel for your SaaS company, you can identify what forces your leads to drop out of the funnel and make necessary improvements.

A personalized SaaS sales funnel is a multi-staged selling process that begins with spreading awareness about your product among your prospects and extends beyond the purchase stage.

Ideally, the goal of building a personalized sales funnel is to have your prospects move smoothly through each stage until they make the purchase.

Without a personalized SaaS sales funnel, your company will have a hard time attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. 

On the other hand, a personalized SaaS sales funnel can help you learn how to address your prospects’ needs and drive your sales numbers through the roof.

Now, before we dive into the stepwise process of building a personalized sales funnel for your SaaS company, you must learn about different types of sales funnels and what separates them from the SaaS sales funnel.

How is SaaS Sales Funnel Different from Everyday Regular Funnel?

The sales funnel for SaaS companies is different from the everyday regular sales funnel in many aspects. 

For starters, SaaS companies use a recurring revenue model to maximize their ROI, while other types of companies follow a one-and-done revenue model. 

Secondly, the SaaS sales funnel focuses equally (sometimes more) on customer retention as much as customer acquisition for generating revenue.

Because of this, SaaS companies need to formulate a marketing plan that connects with potential as well as existing customers at the same time. 

That means a SaaS company needs to analyze and address customers’ pain points at each stage of the sales funnel to sustain itself.

Let’s look at the types of sales funnels briefly to understand the difference between them more clearly.

Different Types of Sales Funnels

There are three different types of sales funnels you can consider building for your SaaS company.

1. Regular Funnel

A regular sales funnel is a journey potential customers go through on their way to making a purchase. It generally involves three broad stages: 

• Awareness Stage (Top of the Funnel)
• Consideration Stage (Middle of the Funnel)
• Decision Stage (Bottom of the Funnel)

The goal at the awareness stage is to generate as many leads as possible, while the decision stage focuses on converting as many leads as possible into paying customers. The consideration stage in the middle focuses on considering viable options and evaluating all the information required to make a decision.

2. Pirate Funnel Model

The concept of the Pirate sales funnel was first coined by Dave McClure who is the founder of 500 Startups & Practical Venture Capital. 

His idea behind inventing the Pirate sales funnel was to help SaaS companies focus on important things that make a difference rather than vanity metrics that don’t provide any long-term benefits for the company’s growth.

The Pirate sales funnel breaks a customer’s journey into the following five stages:

• Acquisition Stage
• Activation Stage
• Retention Stage
• Referrals Stage
• Revenue Stage

The Pirate sales funnel focuses on monitoring the development and growth of your SaaS product. By tracking each of the above five stages, SaaS companies can more easily identify stages that require an improvement to move as many leads as possible down the funnel.

3. Flywheel Model

The Flywheel funnel model was first introduced by HubSpot. It stresses on the momentum SaaS companies can gain when they align their product around delivering an extraordinary customer experience. 

The goal of the Flywheel model is to produce happy customers who then drive referrals & repeat purchases. 

The Flywheel model breaks the sales funnel into the following three stages:

• Attract Stage
• Engage Stage
• Delight Stage

The idea behind the Flywheel model is that once you acquire & delight enough initial customers, they’ll become a force for your flywheel, making repeat purchases and bringing in new customers.

Stepwise Process to Build a Personalized SaaS Sales Funnel For Your SaaS Product’s Growth

Now that we’re done with the theoretical part, let’s get to the step-by-step process of how to create a personalized sales funnel for your SaaS company.

1. Selecting the Best Suitable Funnel Model

The first step of the process is to determine the best suitable SaaS sales funnel model for your product. 

For this, you need to identify and define goals to set the path to achieving your goals in a timely and effective manner.

We recommend starting with gathering data about your potential customers and choosing a sales funnel that aligns best with their needs.

2. Defining Stages of the Funnel Based on the Customer Journey Maps

After you’ve decided on a funnel model for your SaaS product, the next thing you need to do is define the stages of your SaaS sales funnel and lay out a clear path to conversion for your prospective customers.

At this point, creating a customer journey map can help to lay out the steps your prospects will need to take throughout their journey to become customers and repeat customers.

The traditional customer journey map usually includes the following six steps:

• Lead acquisition
• Sales conversion
• Customer onboarding
• Implementation
• Support
• Retention

However, the steps in your customer journey map will vary depending on your target market and customer profiles. This brings us to the next step of the process.

3. Understand Your Target Market & Their Pains as They Move Ahead in Funnel

The next step OF building a personalized SaaS sales funnel requires you to understand your target market and the primary pain points of your potential customers.

The success of this step depends largely on your marketing strategy’s effectiveness. 

An ideal marketing strategy depends on various key components. For example, you need to figure out who your target market is, what the majority of them want, and how your SaaS product can deliver what your target market wants. 

In addition, you also need to figure out the primary pain points of your target market and create content that helps them resolve them.

4. Nurture Your Audience in Each Stage With Targeted & Precise Content

If you want to nurture your audience, you need to produce targeted and precise content. This means creating content that is relevant to each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

For example, if someone is in the awareness stage, they will be looking for information about your product or service. If they are in the consideration stage, they will be comparing your offering to others. And finally, if they are in the decision stage, they will be ready to buy. 

By creating content that meets the needs of each stage, you can nurture your audience and move them closer to becoming customers.

5. Define Metrics and KPIs to Measure

Defining metrics and KPIs is critical to evaluate how successful your business is. By determining the right metrics and KPIs, you can find out how your current customers feel about your product. 

For example, to measure your SaaS product’s success, a metric could be the number of demo signups and a KPI could be the conversion rate.

By tracking these numbers, you can effectively measure how effective your SaaS sales funnel is at generating leads and converting them into paying customers. 

6. Track Goals and Funnel Success

At last, you need to start tracking your business goals and overall funnel success to find out how well your personalized SaaS funnel model is performing.

Using this information, you’ll be able to understand better how to set up more efficient sales funnel goals and attain them.

For example, if you’re not hitting your target numbers in terms of demo signups, sales, etc., you need to change some things. 

In short, with clear goals and an efficient strategy, you can create a process that makes it easy for your potential customers to progress through your SaaS sales funnel.

Conclusion

If you’re a SaaS company looking for ways to accelerate your product growth, building a personalized sales funnel should be your number one priority. 

By segmenting your leads and tailoring your sales pitch to their specific needs, you can more effectively close deals and drive revenue. 

That said, if you’re still confused about how to build a personalized sales funnel for your SaaS company, we can help! At Growfusely, we specialize in helping SaaS companies in expanding their organic search visibility and customer acquisition through SaaS SEO, Content Marketing, and Digital PR services.

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.