Although many associate unsustainability with plastic pollution in the ocean, food waste, or excessive material consumption, various forms of “waste” exist. Digital waste is a prevalent issue that manifests in different ways. Let’s explore how to minimize lead wastage for SaaS companies.
For instance, “e-waste” encompasses discarded or malfunctioning electronic devices such as mobile phones, televisions, and laptops. “Programmatic waste” occurs when advertisers lose their media investments within the intricate digital advertising ecosystem. Additionally, “lead waste” refers to inbound or outbound sales leads that are overlooked, misplaced, or incorrectly categorized.
Why is Lead Generation Crucial for SaaS?
Lead generation is the lifeblood of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, including tech giants like Hubspot, Drift, and Mailchimp. While attracting new leads is vital, activating and engaging them is equally critical.
SaaS platforms often operate on a subscription model, necessitating a constant influx of qualified prospects into the sales pipeline. Moreover, a minimum of 10-14% of SaaS users churn, with even higher rates in sectors like finance (25%) and online retail (22%).
For B2B SaaS marketers, generating high-quality leads presents the biggest hurdle, surpassing even the challenge of lead quantity. Inefficient sales funnels lead to demand generation teams essentially paying for qualified prospects to enter the sales funnel only to abandon their journey later.
Let’s examine various ways SaaS companies lose leads.
How SaaS Businesses Mismanage Leads
1. Inadequate Qualification
Directing poorly qualified prospects into the sales funnel wastes everyone’s time. These leads might lack the budget for your SaaS solution, or they may have recently committed to a two-year contract with a competitor.
Perhaps the prospect doesn’t align with your target market, making your SaaS product a poor fit for their needs. Whatever the reason, poorly qualified leads consume the sales team’s valuable time, diverting attention from promising opportunities.
This not only wastes time and resources within the sales department but also steals time from highly qualified potential customers.
2. Ineffective Communication: Minimizing Lead Loss in SaaS
Imagine a prospect calling seeking sales package details going unanswered, or a highly qualified prospect sending repeated emails requesting a contract that never arrives. Nothing frustrates a potential customer more than encountering roadblocks when attempting to purchase products or services.
3. Insufficient Nurturing
Without a robust sales funnel guiding customers through awareness, consideration, and purchase stages, SaaS businesses struggle to close deals.
Sales teams require adequate training, product knowledge, use cases, and enabling resources to effectively address prospect inquiries and pain points.
Absence of an automated nurture sequence burdens sales teams with manual outreach, leading to missed opportunities. Sales automation tools like Groove assist in reduces manual work, boosting productivity, and enhancing the customer journey.
Strategies for Preventing Lead Wastage in SaaS
1. Implement Call Forwarding
Call forwarding addresses the issue of sales representatives being unavailable due to meetings or out-of-office situations, offering more avenues for interested prospects to connect.
Call forwarding also helps manage multiple numbers and provides vanity numbers for team members who prefer not to share personal contact information.
2. Embrace Sales Automation: Curbing Lead Loss in SaaS
Throughout the multi-touch sales process, automation tools streamline communication, automate tasks, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. For instance, a sales automation tool might automatically capture prospect details like name, title, and email address in the company’s CRM system.
A workflow tool might send automated automated emails to prospects or reminders to sales representatives for calls or texts. Sales automation tools can provide real-time updates for meeting links, minimizing email exchanges for scheduling demos, and offer analytics on link clicks, material viewing time, and more.
3. Rigorous Lead Qualification
Robust lead qualification empowers B2B sales professionals to prioritize leads effectively, optimizing time and effort allocation. It also improves marketing ROI. By aligning demand generation and media buying teams on qualified lead criteria,
They can thoroughly assess advertising channels and swiftly eliminate those that fail to attract their target audience. For example, media buying teams for a finance SaaS platform might discover their target market’s limited engagement on Instagram, while observing significant activity on TikTok.
Minimizing Lost Sales Leads
Reducing lead wastage in SaaS demands a collective effort spanning marketing, sales, and customer success departments. All teams should stringently qualify prospects and diligently nurture relationships to guide them towards conversion.
SaaS teams can leverage innovative technologies such as call forwarding and automation tools to minimize manual tasks. This frees up valuable time, enabling them to refine their sales skills and engage in meaningful interactions with prospects.