The 7th DO for SaaS startups – Build a repeatable, profitable sales process
The last post in my series on DOs and DON'Ts for early-stage startups was about lead generation . The next logical step is sales, and so I want to write about what you can do to convert as many of those leads into paying customers. 7th DO for SaaS startups Build a repeatable, profitable sales process Sales is a very different animal depending on the stage of your company, the market segment you're going after and on whether we're talking about inbound sales or outbound sales. For all the differences, though, the goal is always to create a scalable process which allows you to acquire customers for a small fraction of their CLTV. As a rule of thumb, you should aspire a payback time of 6-9 months, meaning that you spend 6-9 months' worth of subscription revenue to acquire a customer. It really is just a rule of thumb though, since depending on the customer lifetime and various other factors, you may want to accept a significantly longer payback period. To achieve a payback...