Pipeline Formula

Something that doesn’t get enough attention these days is this idea of H2H.

As in “human-to-human.”

Not B2B

Thing is, every buying cycle starts with a person. Not a company, but a person.

A person who decided to engage with you and your message.

And that person has hopes, fears and expectations.

The first rule of getting sales traction is to have the right marketing message and sales tools in place to get the attention of that person.

And it’s critical here to be crystal clear on who that person is and what success looks like to them.

I call this a “buyer persona” and it’s the one thing most early stage companies miss in their go-to-market strategy.

Because when you can “see” that person, it’s so much easier to do everything else.

Messaging. Funnel design. Sales tools. Follow-up cadences.

Everything.

Also, your business is more “humanized” because it’s about people, not numbers.

Prospects can tell the difference.

H2H not B2B.

More client results. Consistent growth.

If Your SaaS Business Isn't Growing At Least 20% Per Month, Ignore This Post At Your Peril

People in SaaS are totally confused today. This confusion is everywhere.

If you’re in SaaS, you need growth. NOW.

Here's how to scale your revenue… fast…

But first let's get clear on ONE thing: The ONLY thing that triggers growth is awareness.

aka “ATTENTION”.

To scale revenue, you just have to get good at trading attention for profit.

But if you can’t get any attention in your market, you’ll be out of business in 6 months.

Here’s the thing...

-> If your lifetime value isn’t AT LEAST 3x the cost to acquire a customer (and that’s INCLUSIVE of sales commissions, ads, pizza, etc)...

-> If your sales reps aren’t closing AT LEAST 15% of their demos…

-> If it takes MORE than 6 months for your revenue to catch up to expenses...

-> If at LEAST 50% of your deals aren’t cash-positive on DAY ONE of their subscription…

-> If your sales reps spend most of their time scrolling Insta…

-> If you’re hoping for another investor round to buy your sad self more time…

-> If you think adding that snazzy feature your competition has will turn things around...

-> If you can’t put a dollar into ads and pull at least two or three out…

THEN. YOUR. BUSINESS. IS. BROKEN.

BUSTED.

The *only* way to turn this around is to OWN attention in your market.

From the TOP to BOTTOM of your funnel.

Attention is the new currency. Attention is CASH.

To solve your scaling problem, you need to hit people over the head with messaging that STRIKES A NERVE and then YANKS them into your marketing.

BE CLEAR. BE BOLD. STAND OUT.

Fact is… it’s NOT that hard to scale a SaaS business if you get a few things nailed.

You just need to follow the steps of a PROVEN strategy.

The Wrong Way To Build A SaaS Business:

The most common mistake I see new SaaS companies make is thinking that hiring sales reps equals growth. But in fact, this is totally backward.

And this is actually a very common mistake.

Consider a SaaS company that quickly got to $100k in ARR through organic methods. Maybe they recently raised a Series A round that’s based on that initial growth rate and now want to spend some of that money hiring a bunch of sales people to keep the growth rate up.

But this is a fundamental mistake.

The mistake is that their math is based on a direct correlation of SDR’s being the key input to revenue growth.

The issue here is the model is based on growth as a function of sales people, not on demand.

Instead, it should be based on the ability to generate demand and build pipeline.

SaaS companies do not drive growth just by hiring more sales people. Sales people are the vehicle to convert channelled demand into new customers and revenue growth.

Growth is created by a great SaaS product with good product-market fit and experienced marketers who know how to predictably channel and scale demand.

Too few SaaS companies are building their growth model with a clear understanding of marketing unit economics.

Instead, they’re trying to build their companies and revenue plan by simply hiring more sales people and hoping they’ll keep bringing in the business.

The right way to do it, is to first get good at attracting high value leads at the awareness stage. THEN hire the sales people to engage those leads and move them from consideration to decision.

In too many SaaS companies, what happens is new reps are hired based on an artificial and unrealistic quota and sales plan. Because there are no new leads, these new reps have no one to sell to and therefore can’t achieve the sales plan.

Morale tanks, the business misses projections, investors lose faith and the culture becomes toxic.

The situation is one where something was working before, but now it’s not because more sales people are basically trying to sell to the same amount of leads. In other words, there are more mouths to feed with the same amount of food.

The answer to this problem is actually very straightforward.

Instead of hiring more sales people and hoping they will drive your revenue plan, build a marketing funnel that will bring in more leads than your existing sales capacity can handle.

The solution here is to exceed capacity with demand.

Once your existing capacity is tapped out (whether it’s a single founder doing the selling, or a team doing the selling), work backward from your capacity data point to figure out how much demand each person can handle.

Then... increase demand to the point where it makes sense to bring on another sales person.

For example, if the calendars are empty and you, or your sales team aren’t doing at least 3-5 demos a day, then DO NOT HIRE ANY MORE SALES PEOPLE. Understanding the utilization rate of a fully ramped sales rep is critical here.

Before hiring any more sales people, you have to develop the ability to get more leads.

Let’s say you want to do 4 deals per month, per sales person. If the closing rate benchmark from a qualified demo to a booked customer is 15%, that means each reps needs to do about 27 demos month to hit quota, or roughly demo 1-2 per day (assuming a bit of margin for error and ramp time).

This means marketing needs to first create the ability to get 27 demos on the calendar.

Now, you’ve got an easy way to eyeball when it’s time to hire a new rep - and that’s when they’re doing more than 3-4 demos per day (double their normal capacity).

So if your SaaS business doesn’t know how to get more leads...
..PLEASE DO NOT HIRE MORE SALES PEOPLE.

You must first learn how to find and channel demand.

Only once you’ve got that problem solved can you then hire more sales people, not before.