Hey there, it’s Ryan from The Growth Center.

In today’s email, I’m going to be breaking down the process you can use to consistently land enterprise clients for your B2B SaaS.

If you are targeting the enterprise market for your software, what I’m going to be sharing below is for you.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve been working with several B2B SaaS companies who sell their products to decision makers at Fortune 500 / enterprise companies.

And through trial and error, we’ve developed a repeatable process to take decision makers from completely cold (not aware of your company or product at all) to sold (becoming a paying client and using the software in their department) – using outbound marketing.

We’ve found outbound marketing (email and LinkedIn combined) to be the most effective (and cost efficient) channels when targeting enterprise decision makers.

For example, one of our clients closed deals with organizations like AT&T, UKG, InfoBlox, and LogiTech from outbound marketing (with no prior connections to any of them).

Below, I will be sharing this process with you – starting with a breakdown of the strategy, then a breakdown of the step-by-step process.

Let’s dive in:

Strategy Breakdown

Essentially, there are 3 main systems that are needed to build a complete customer acquisition funnel to close enterprise SaaS clients from cold traffic:

1. A system to turn qualified leads who have the problems your product solves from Cold to Warm.

2. A system to convert the Warm Leads into Demo Appointments for you or your sales team to take a call with.

3. A system to convert the Appointments into Paying Clients – then work on retention after the initial implementation.

Lead Generation. Appointment Setting. Sales.

To consistently generate leads, appointments, and sales, you can follow this 7-step process we’ve developed (I will be breaking down each step below)

Step #1: Campaign Hypothesis

Step #2: Outbound System Setup

Step #3: Lead Generation

Step #4: Appointment Setting

Step #5: Front End Offer Creation

Step #6: Sales Process

Step #7: Sales Management

Campaign Hypothesis

The first step is creating your campaign hypothesis.

No matter what channel you are using, this is always the first step.

You must, in detail, answer the following questions:

1. Who are you targeting?

2. What are you offering?

3. How is this relevant for them?

4. Why Now?

Answering these questions is going to make building lead lists and writing scripts for your campaigns a lot easier.

Outbound System Setup

The next step is to set up your multi-channel automated outbound system.

This infrastructure is what you’ll use to contact decision makers from your target market, to convert them into warm leads.

I recently wrote a newsletter going into this in more detail (see here)

But essentially, you’re going to:

• Purchase Secondary Email Domains using Zapmail
• Set up Google & Microsoft Email Accounts using Zapmail
• Set up an account on an email sending platform (like Instantly.ai or EmailBison.com)
• Upload the Google & Microsoft Accounts into your email sending platform and start warming them up

This will give you a fully automated outbound email marketing system you can use to drive daily lead flow.

In addition to this, you can use the LinkedIn Outbound platform HeyReach.io for automated LinkedIn campaigns.

Setting both of these systems up will give you the ability to generate leads from multiple sources, fully automated.

Lead Generation

To start generating leads, you need to do two things:

1. Build a list of qualified decision makers from your target market

2. Write email and LinkedIn scripts you can use to reach out to them

Here is a high level overview of how to build the lead lists (this is what we currently do):

• Map out your Total Addressable Market
• Use Apollo.io to build segmented lists of qualified prospects
• Use LeadMagic.io to find the work emails of the prospects in the lists
• Use ListMint.io to triple verify the work emails to ensure all emails are valid
• Store each List in Clay.com and Upload them Directly into your Sending Platform​s

This will give you a list of prospects with verified email addresses and LinkedIn profiles that you can contact across email and LinkedIn.

Then once your lists are put together, the next step is to write your email and LinkedIn scripts.

The goal is to keep these scripts short, to the point, and highly relevant to the group of prospects you’re reaching out to.

Here is a simple framework for email marketing copywriting you can use:

• Line 1: Relevant personalization
• Line 2: Offer with clear value proposition
• Line 3 (optional): Social proof to back up offer
• Line 4: Soft Call-to-Action to get a direct response back

And for LinkedIn, you want to keep your outreach to 1-2 sentences maximum. Think of LinkedIn like how you send text messages.

No one likes to read long paragraphs. Keep it super short and get straight to the point about what you can do for them.

The goal with both email and LinkedIn lead generation is simple:

Elicit a direct response from the prospects you’re reaching out to indicating they’re interested in learning more.

That’s it. The goal is not to sell them on your entire product. The goal isn’t even to sell them on taking a meeting with you (yet).

The goal is just to see if they’re interested in learning more, given what you have to offer might be relevant for them.

Appointment Setting

Once you’ve launched campaigns and successfully begun to generate interest from qualified decision makers in your target market, the next step is to get them onto a meeting.

It’s important to note that the prospect responded back to your initial outreach message interested in learning more.

However, that doesn’t mean they are willing to set aside 30-60 minutes of their time to take a meeting with you yet.

Just like you “sold” them on responding back to your initial outreach, you also have to “sell” them on taking a meeting with you and your team.

The way we do that is by giving the prospects the information they requested to see, along with a compelling reason to set up a call with you to walk through the information in more detail.

So when you’re responding back, clearly explain how a call is going to benefit them (relating to their pain points and desires).

What we have our appointment setters do for our clients is send 3-5 bullet points on what we will be covering in a call. 

All of the bullet points are directly related to things we know the prospect would be interested in, because it’s relevant to their pain points and desires.

Also, make sure you respond back to leads within 5 minutes or less. This is imperative. 

Respond back fast. Give the prospect the information they requested. Propose the idea of setting up a meeting to discuss further. And clearly explain what’s in it for them to take a meeting.

Then, once the prospect gets back to you and agrees to have a meeting, coordinate a time with them and use a scheduling tool like Calendly to send them a calendar invitation for the call.

Once you send the calendar invite, make sure the prospect confirms they received the invitation on their end, and that they accepted the invitation and added it to their calendar.

Then send them a few reminders prior to the call to ensure they show up on time.

This is the process we’ve developed to maximize our lead to booked call conversion rate.

The goal is to aim for a 40-50% conversion rate. Meaning for every 10 leads you generate, you book at least 4-5 of them onto a call.

Front End Offer Creation

Now that you’re successfully booking meetings with decision makers from cold traffic outbound marketing, the next step is to take them through your sales process.

But before I break down the sales process we’ve found to maximize demo to close conversion rates, I first want to cover how to create a great “Front End Offer” for your SaaS product.

A front end offer is an offer you initially sell to prospects to convert them into a customer before upselling and/or retaining them on the backend.

Having a desirable front end offer for your monthly or annually recurring SaaS product is a great way to increase your close rates with enterprise companies, shorten your sales cycles, and ultimately improve your client LTV over the long run.

Above almost everything else, when we started helping our SaaS clients create a front end offer for their SaaS product, we saw a huge increase in the results we were getting.

The goal when selling to completely cold prospects is to get them in the door (land the deal), build trust and over-deliver value, and then expand (ascension and retention) on the backend.

Land and expand.

It is 5-10x more difficult and takes 5-10x longer to sell a prospect an annual SaaS subscription when they just found out about your company and your product.

Versus selling a prospect a 60 or 90 day package that has a one-time fee – where they can see immediate value without having to lock in to a long-term contract upfront.

Then once they see the value in what you do, getting them locked into an annual contract after the initial implementation period is over is 5-10x easier.

So if your goal is to increase your Annual Recurring Revenue, contrary to what most people might think, the most efficient way to do that is not always to offer it upfront.

Get prospects in the door with a great front end offer (Pilots and POCs are great examples).

Then, because of the effectiveness of your product and your client experience, move them into a recurring monthly or annual subscription.

It reduces risk for the buyer (likely the most important part of B2B sales), it helps you shorten your sales cycle, and it ultimately makes it easier for you to upsell and retain on the backend.

Sales Process

Now that you have your front end offer optimized, it’s time to take the prospects you booked onto calls through your sales process.

Every sales process is going to be slightly different.

However, from a high-level overview, this is the flow we’ve found to be very effective when selling high-ticket software solutions:

Step 1: Discovery

Use the first call you have with a new prospect to discover more about their current struggles and desires.

And simultaneously, warm the prospect up by giving them some more context about what your company does (the problems you solve and the desires you fulfill).

This doesn’t mean go straight into a demo – but instead just have a conversation to explain what you do, while you understand more about what they need.

Discovery is all about asking the right relevant questions so you can get the answers you’re looking for.

Step 2: Demonstration

Once discovery is complete, you then move into the demonstration process.

This could be done either on the first call or on a second call with the prospect.

This depends on how much time you think you need to walk the prospect through the solution.

The important thing to note with the demonstration process is that you only want to show the prospect the parts of your product that are relevant to them.

No one wants to sit through a call listening to you talking about how great your product is and how many features you have.

They simply don’t care and don’t have time either.

When you demo, you should only walk through what the prospect cares about.

And you will know what they care about if you did a proper discovery.

Step 3: Proposal

Once the demo is complete, you will transition into the proposal phase.

This is where you present your offer to the prospect.

Again, this could all be done in 1 call, but in most situations, you will set up another meeting to propose the offer to the prospect.

This is where you get into the details of how it would actually work if they moved forward with your solution.

• Pricing

• Implementation timeline

• All the specifics about the offer

• A clear plan to get the prospect results

You might have to create this custom for each prospect.

Or, because of your product-market-fit, you might be able to use 1 standard proposal every time to sell each prospect in the same way every time (this is ideal for scale).

Present your offer to the prospect and make sure everything is crystal clear for them.

Step 4: Closing & Onboarding

The last step is to close the deal and begin the onboarding process.

Once you get a verbal confirmation from the prospect, that will initiate the closing process.

This is when you can send over some form of a SOW (statement of work) or MSA (service agreement).

Once they sign it, that should immediately trigger the onboarding process, and the transition from the sales team to the account management team.

Then the implementation process begins.

Sales Management

Now you’ve got your sales process down.

But what you’ll find is that only 5-10% of prospects who you take through your full sales process will close with little to no friction.

For the rest, you need great systems in place to manage the active deals you have in your pipeline.

This is where sales management comes into play.

More specifically, religiously using your CRM to stay on top of every active deal in your pipeline, to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

This starts with adding all of the leads you generate from your email and LinkedIn campaigns into your pipeline.

This can be done using a tool like Make.com to build an integration between the email sending platform you’re using, the LinkedIn outreach platform you’re using, and your CRM.

That way, every time you mark a prospect as “Interested” – they will automatically be added into your CRM as a contact and as a deal in your pipeline.

From there, you can also set up an automation in Make that auto-updates your pipeline once you book a call with the prospect using Calendly.

You can move them from “Marketing Qualified Lead” to “Meeting Booked” in your pipeline automatically.

This will give you clear data on how many of the leads you’re generating are converting into booked calls (remember we want to aim for 40-50%).

Then from there, once you start taking the prospects through your sales process… After every call you or your sales reps have, you should be immediately moving that prospect to the appropriate deal stage (based on the outcome of the call).

Your CRM should be tracking every conversation you have, and you and your team should be setting task reminders to ensure you’re staying on top of every active deal.

I would also recommend setting up an AI call recording software (like Fireflies.ai) to record, summarize, and transcribe all of your calls.

Then store those recordings and summaries in your CRM.

These are just a few sales management best practices. This will help you maximize the opportunities you have in your pipeline – so you can convert more prospects into customers. 

Final Thoughts

This repeatable 7-step process is what you can use to take enterprise decision makers from completely cold to sold.

This process is what we’ve installed for many B2B SaaS companies who sell a high-ticket software solution to enterprise-sized companies.

(And it works even if you sell to SMBs and MidMarket sized companies too)

Tool of the Day

Use Fireflies.ai to record all of your sales calls, summarize them with AI, and use the insights from the call to improve your sales process and marketing messaging.

Quote of the Day

“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together." — James Cash Penney

If you have any specific questions about any of the 7 steps, please feel free to reply back to this email or message me on LinkedIn.

Stay tuned for more coming your way from myself and our team at The Growth Center.

Cheers,

Ryan

PS - If you’re a CEO, Founder, or Sales Leader at a B2B SaaS company and you want a free consultation on how you and your team can leverage this 7-step process to generate more leads, appointments, and closed deals, then book a call with us here