Sales is a huge focus for all B2B SaaS companies. This is justified since without customers, you don’t have a business. At the same time, your business should be just as focused on ensuring you retain customers once they’re signed on.
Even with an excellent lead generation strategy, it’s still essential to delight current customers and retain them. How do you know if you’re delighting customers or if you have a gap to close? The net promoter score (NPS) survey is the answer.
While there is truth in the phrase “your database is your most valuable asset”, your database will only ever be as powerful as you make it. Chances are you’ve spent significant time, marketing resources and money to build up your database; but if you’re not managing it properly, you’re throwing all that away.
Even when it comes to qualified leads, a study from Gleanster found that over 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy the same day they convert on your site. So how do you get these qualified leads to be sales-ready? By automating your lead nurturing process.
Lead scoring (a strategy used to rank prospects against their perceived value), in my opinion, is the best kept secret of inbound marketing. It’s brilliant. It’s the easiest and most efficient way to achieve a high number of sales, which is extremely important to small businesses.
The difference between the sales and marketing teams using lead scoring and teams that don’t, is the teams using it have leads who are ready and willing to purchase. Wouldn’t you want to be the salesperson with those prospects? Same.
Here are some tips on how you can use lead scoring to streamline sales at your small business:
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I’ve worked in both the sales and marketing fields, and can speak to the fact that while these two departments should get along, they are usually at odds. As one of my former colleagues used to say, “Marketing thinks all Sales does is procrastinate, drink and complain, and Sales thinks all Marketing does is color.” Yikes.
Why can’t we all just get along? You might be asking this if your sales and marketing teams are working against, rather than with, each other. This is a common issue that many businesses face, and that’s why a service level agreement (SLA) is necessary to align Sales and Marketing so inbound buyers are handed off and sold to successfully. Here are some of the benefits of doing so:
When you have a B2B SaaS company in the startup phase, it’s important to focus on the most important KPIs (key performance indicators). As your B2B SaaS startup grows, you’ll add additional metrics to keep measuring performance.
Many common KPIs focus on recurring revenue, acquisition costs and year-over-year growth. These are all important, but it’s essential that you also measure retention metrics. Even if you have great sales, if your churn rate is too high, then many of your new sales are simply replacing lost revenue. This scenario obviously impedes growth, so focusing on retention metrics is essential.
In this blog, we’ll look at some important B2B SaaS retention metrics that you should be measuring. Note: For purposes of this blog, some calculations are simplified to serve as general examples.