B2B Sales Pipeline Stages: How We Got to $6M ARR

Picture this. You went to the store to get milk. When you arrive home with the milk, you suddenly realize you could have dropped off an urgent parcel at the post office, and a check at the bank.

‘Oh gosh, I’ll have to go out again! I’ll have to make another trip!’

‘I just wasted an afternoon instead of getting everything done!’

I bet you know that frustrating feeling of inefficiency, wasted time, and effort. 

Like failing to plan for errands, It’s possible to survive without a B2B sales pipeline, but you end up making more trips and wasting hours on things that could’ve taken you ten minutes if you planned it well. Which is why a proper sales funnel is an essential part of a B2B strategy that promotes efficiency, forecasting, and increases your chance at success. 

I’m going to take you through all of our B2B sales cycle stages, checklists, metrics, and a couple of other things that we did to get to $6M ARR.

What’s a sales pipeline?

Essentially, a sales pipeline consists of the seven stages of converting someone into your customer: Prospecting, Qualification, Engagement, Proposal, Negotiation, Closing, and Loyalty. 

Each stage has a checklist of things you should be doing and certain metrics you can track to see if your sales strategies are working. This structured approach allows your sales teams to visualize their workflow and understand where each potential client stands in their buying journey.

For example, when a lead first engages with your brand—perhaps through an ad or a social media post—they enter the 'Awareness' stage.

As they learn more about your offerings and express interest, they move to the 'Consideration' stage.

Finally, after discussions and negotiations, they reach the 'Decision' stage when they’re ready to make a purchase. This clear delineation of stages helps sales teams manage their interactions more effectively.

Not convinced? Listen to Mike Weinberg, author of New Sales. Simplified: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development. According to him, “Salespeople who don’t have a clear mental picture of the ‘path to a sale’ or can’t articulate their sales process usually struggle to acquire new pieces of business.”

What’s the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?

Gonna take a brief detour here to tell you that the pipeline and the funnel aren’t exactly the same thing, even though both aim to convert people into your customers. 

A super oversimplification is that you, the B2B company, are going through the steps of the sales pipeline, while a customer is going through the steps in the sales funnel. 

The seven stages of the B2B sales pipeline

Prospecting, qualifications, engagement, proposal, negotiation, closing, and loyalty can all be summed up in this nifty little flowchart.

Shoutout to my designer who makes all these good images. 

I made an editable version of this checklist too, so have at it :)

Checklist for B2B Sales Pipeline Stages

Google Docs

Metrics for each of the B2B sales pipeline stages, in a nutshell

Alright, alright, alright. It’s not a Jo-article if I don’t stick a table or spreadsheet in here somewhere. I know you want the good stuff first so have this!

I go through it in detail, so read on!

Prospecting

This is the first step in your sales pipeline– identifying potential leads. Anyone, anybody, any company who could be interested in what you have to offer.

It’s a little like fishing, but in a very specific location, with specific bait. Don’t go casting nets over tuna expecting to get salmon, and don’t go baiting bass with mackerel bait.  

How to prospect for B2B

B2B prospecting is a little different from B2C because there’s a longer sales cycle in place and there’s a very specific, niche audience in mind. 

The first thing you need to do is to define an ideal customer profile (ICP). This gives you an idea of who’s most likely to buy your products. Are you looking for small startups? Or are you solely going after massive enterprises? 

Our sister product Proxycurl is built for developers, and thus its top users are developers. Naturally, its top ICP would be software companies. Danish, our Technical Writer, gives a tutorial on how he identified this ICP when he enriched customers’ data using Sapiengraph’s custom Google Sheets formulas. 

When you have an ICP, you can look for companies that fit. Here’s a list of things we’ve done:

• Industry events (Ahrefs Evolve Conference)
• Customer databases (we have access to Crunchbase so we’re using it, hahaha)
• Industry-specific platforms (Github for Proxycurl)
• Social media platforms (Reddit and Hackernews)
• Using our own prospecting tools (Sapiengraph’s Prospector)

By far the easiest method I’d recommend: using tools like Sapiengraph’s Prospector. We have 44+ filters to look a person up by title, location, industry, company size, company name, educational background– everything. It’ll give you lists of possible ICPs.

Our sales team uses it to dig up leads as well. Best of all, you can select the option that shows only profiles with contact information so that you can get in touch immediately. 

Looking through customer databases, industry-specific forums, social media, or using lead prospecting platforms are also ways you can find more leads. Your mileage may vary on these because they don’t suit every niche. 

Personally, aside from using our Prospector or custom search formulas, I think attending events is one of the best ways to meet people. It has the added benefit of real-time feedback and physical buying signals.

You also have the opportunity to warm up your leads, which is really good because warm calls work way better than cold calls. While not everyone you meet is an opportunity for your business now, it always pays to build relationships in the industry.

Whenever you find a lead, you should add it to a lead tracker so that you stay on top of who’s who and what’s what. This is the lead tracker we use, and we’ve shared it with the world, for free :).

Once you’ve identified prospects, it’s time to do some research. 

Get familiar with industry problems. Can your business hit product-market fit?

Researching your lead to see if they’re currently in partnership with other competitors is also a good idea. If your lead is using one of your competitors, they might have certain expectations of similar services that you may not be able to provide. Like how if an AI email generator is a must-have for one of our leads, then we're less likely to approach them. 

Segment and prioritize your prospects. If 95% of your clientele are new business owners who just started their company in the past 3 years, then you should prioritize looking for companies established less than 3 years ago.

For Sapiengraph, we prioritize and target sales teams in mid-market organizations, recruitment companies, and marketing agencies. But of course, we’re open to more opportunities. 

When it comes to outreach, you need to personalize your mail. Generic emails are often ignored, but friendly, relatable, personalized emails that offer a highly specific solution to a highly specific problem will get you a response. I think our sales team has got this down pat. 

Prospecting metrics

Lead volume: The number of leads you get from your methods. Regardless of whether you're using LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Sapiengraph Prospector or heading to events, you need to keep track of how many leads you're getting.

Too high and you'll spend ages qualifying them without landing any, too low and you won't have enough people entering the pipeline. 

Response rate: The number of people responding to your calls/emails, divided by the total calls and emails sent. People are more likely to pick up calls, but don’t be surprised if they don’t because of caller identification. Cold emails get lost very easily. Our sales team hyper-personalizes their emails and focuses on our ICP, so they usually get pretty good rates of about 40-50%.

Cost per lead: Total costs divided by leads prospected from each approach. A Sapiengraph subscription starts from $49 a month, and you can unlock around 415 profiles with that, so that’s about 11 cents per lead. If you get 100 leads from a conference that cost you $299, then each lead costs you $2.99. It’s better to get leads cheap, but they have to be quality leads. 

Common mistakes/challenges in prospecting

Not enough research: Both on your industry and your prospects. You need to know exactly what problems you’re solving. You can make things easier by using lead enrichment tools like Sapiengraph’s custom Google Sheets formulas to easily find information on your leads. 

Too many leads: The more leads the better, right? Wrong. It takes away from your focus. Don't try to approach 1000 leads in a day. Pace yourself and focus on your ICP.

Tips and tricks for better prospecting

Vary your approach. Marketing expert Neil Patel once said: "Different prospects respond better to different methods." Don’t expect one kind of approach to fit all kinds of prospects. Vary your approach to each one and don’t be afraid to continue nurturing relationships.

If you’re hoping for some secrets though, sorry. One of our sales guys, Kevin, has some serious intuition chops. He says a part of it is testing and doing a vibe check. Basically, he offers calls and emails, and people will usually pick one on the other. 

Ask for referrals. The worst they can say is no. Your lead may not want your solutions or services right now, but they might know someone else who does. This may seem like a social faux pas and I beg you guys to use your discretion, but 8 out of 10 times there’s really no harm in asking.

During the 2024 Ahrefs Evolve conference, the founder of a link-building agency approached us just to hang out and chat. Though we didn't need his services ourselves, we liked him so much that we connected him with someone who was.

Qualification

There are many solutions for the same issue and just because someone is in your ICP, doesn’t mean they want or need your company’s product and services.

But how do you know who a potential customer is? Well, you ask. 

A car salesman can’t just approach people hanging out near his car dealership and ask “Are you looking for a car?”. He has to ask follow-up and clarifying questions like “Do you have kids?” and “What kind of aesthetics do you need?” to find out if he has the cars that fit a person’s requirements. 

In B2B sales, this process is called lead qualification. You have to first ask people if they’re interested in your product. Then you have to figure out if you’re a good fit for them and vice versa. 

How to qualify leads

Get in there real deep.

Like really get into it with your leads list. You need to understand their priorities, concerns, and circumstances. There are a lot of frameworks out there that you can use to determine if a lead is a good fit for you. 

We have BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline), SPIN (Situation, Pain, Implication, Need), and CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization). I’m pretty sure as time goes on, there will be more frameworks popping up. Pick one and stick to it. 

Let me boil it down to four “wh” questions for you.

You need to prepare to ask important questions during discovery calls. What do they need? When do they need it? How much can they afford? And who is making the decision?

While an intern may think that using Sapiengraph is better than spending hours copypasting information from LinkedIn profiles, there’s not much we can do if we can’t convince their manager to get a subscription. In the words of Zig Ziglar, “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”

When you’re doing the discovery call, assess the fit of your product and how well it can solve your prospect’s problems. We like to ask our prospects what their challenges are and what they want to do with it.

Do they want to track applicants? Are they more interested in finding leads? Do they need an API?

Our sales team figures out what they want to achieve and advises them on how our solutions can help them bridge the gap. i.e. If a customer wants software to go between their product and their customer, then Sapiengraph isn’t a good fit, but Proxycurl is. 

Sometimes, you know your product can add so much value for this company, but your lead is a junior executive with no buying power. This is when you need to identify the decision-makers.

Unlike in B2C companies, where the decision-making process is pretty straightforward, B2B has a complicated sales cycle filled with formal processes and boring corporate policies. A full B2B sales cycle could take months.

We made a custom formula for Google Sheets to look up the person in the role. Using =SG_Person(SG_LOOKUP_ROLE(“CTO”, “Microsoft”), “full_name”), I can find the CTO of Microsoft.

The formula looks up public information on the company and the person who’s currently holding the role. Convenient.

And once you’ve found all this information you should add it to your lead tracker. Don’t have a lead tracker yet? We do. It’s completely free. :)

Metrics for lead qualification

Lead Quality: How many of the leads you got from prospecting are leads you can proceed to engage with? If you're getting high-quality leads from your prospecting efforts, most of them should convert into engagement and eventually be eligible for the proposal stage.

If you're only qualifying 1 out of 500 leads, then you need to take a step back and take a look at your prospecting process. Overall, you should aim to qualify 20-30% of your leads into your engagement process.

Conversion Rate: The number of leads who eventually become customers, divided by the total amount of leads you had. For SaaS companies, try hitting around 10%. The higher, the better.

These are prospects who make it through all your sales cycle stages and then become a customer. If no one is buying, even though they fit your ICP or respond to your engagement, there’s probably an issue with your ICP or your product–market fit and it’s time to re-examine those.

Common mistakes/challenges in lead qualification

Over-reliance on firmographics: A company’s overall firmographics can be a great starting point, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you look at when qualifying a lead.

While we know that Proxycurl and Sapiengraph are used by a lot of mid-market recruiting and B2B marketing companies, our sales team also goes after smaller companies.

Lack of lead nurturing: Even if a lead isn’t currently in the market to buy, it still pays to develop a relationship with them. This is where lead trackers like our free Ultimate Lead Tracker Template for Sales Teams come in handy. Don’t disqualify leads too early. Change their status to ‘nurture’ and develop a relationship with them over time, so that your business will be the first to come to mind when they consider solutions.

“To Build A Long-Term, Successful Enterprise, When You Don’t Close A Sale, Open A Relationship.” — Patricia Fripp

Garnishing your product: Be honest and upfront with your potential leads about the capabilities of your products. Don’t overpromise on features that your team cannot deliver on. GitLab does this in a very radical manner. They have a public handbook and an open-core product, which is partly why they have an $11 billion IPO and high customer loyalty. 

Tips & tricks for qualifying leads

Buying signals: We have a whole article on buying signals. Body language aside, our sales team looks at things like past champions, new product activation, job changes, and new funding events.

We’ve successfully secured new deals by approaching people who just switched companies because they’re open to trying out new solutions. When it comes to sales, you can also look out for things like if someone has trialed your product, if they’ve used a paid version of your product or something similar, and if they have questions about how to implement your product. 

Wait: A useful psychology tip that I use all the time. If you nod and wait just 5 seconds, most people will keep talking to fill the silence. You can subtly prompt your prospects to tell you more by just waiting a few more seconds, looking thoughtful, and nodding. 

Open-ended questions: Instead of “Would you like to buy this” or “Are you facing this particular problem?” try asking “What kind of challenges are your team facing now?” Instead of “Are you facing a problem?"

Engagement

Building relationships with prospects is crucial for several reasons.

First, it establishes trust and credibility. When you take the time to get to know your prospects on a personal level, they’re more likely to view you as a trusted advisor rather than just another salesperson trying to make a quick sale. This trust is essential for long-term partnerships and can lead to repeat business down the line.

Sometimes, it’s better for you to just tell a person, “Hey you don’t actually need this product" because that shows that you're not some unscrupulous businessperson out to make a buck - you have the integrity to tell someone that your product or certain features aren't a good fit. We've done this before.

Engaged prospects are more likely to convert into customers. A study shows that 81% of individuals would be inclined to repurchase from a company if they trust the salesperson representing it.

How to do customer engagement

I personally find it interesting when companies release free white papers and research articles cause I’m a fan of not gatekeeping knowledge. I think it's the number one to engage with your audience and gain trust.

Free papers, research, ideas, tips and tricks, are all ways to establish your authority in an industry. In a way, you build social capital and establish yourself as an expert. Jill Konrath wrote in her book, “Keep developing your expertise; it sets you apart.” 

At this stage in your B2B sales pipeline, you should have emailed or called your lead several times. Send them content that is tailored to their interests and ask for their feedback. Especially if you have relevant white papers. Offer it to them for free, and then give them a link to your website to download.

This will help you track engagement activity and see how many people are opening links. It'll also help you estimate how interested your potential customers are. 

People are more likely to purchase from a company they’ve engaged in the past, and they’re more likely to want to engage if they know for sure that your content is valuable. 

Our sales team uses this as a way of following up with prospects that have gone silent. They’ll reach out and say “Hey, you mentioned being interested in this. We released an article on the same topic. Would you like to read?” Most of the time, it reopens the conversation.

The public may be suspicious of salespeople, thinking that they’re only out to make money, but they’re oftentimes great sources of information. Most salespeople have case studies on hand to make their pitch and these case studies can show how other people are approaching the same challenges. They’re basically mini industry consultants too!

Mike Weinberg, certified sales trainer and author, says this:” People buy from people they like.” So keep the relationship open and fruitful for your prospect.

Metrics for customer engagement

Lead Response time: How fast you’re responding to leads during this process. The faster, the better. If someone texts you back, you need to text them back faster. Ideally within 5 minutes, but no more than 24 hours.

Quick responses leave lasting impressions which helps to build a person’s confidence in your company. You can find our CEO Steven replying to messages in the middle of the night because he doesn’t want you to feel left out.

Engagement rates: The amount of times your content is viewed/clicked divided by the amount of content you’re offering. If someone says they’re interested but they’re not clicking on your emails or opening your links, then there’s probably something wrong with your email copy or timing. 

Meetings scheduled: The number of times the lead responds and schedules a meeting to learn more about your product. This one’s a little iffy. Some people say you need more meetings, but then it really depends on the nature of your industry and your client.  

Companies with multiple decision-makers have longer sales cycles and may request multiple meetings. If there’s only one (1) decision-maker, you will probably need fewer meetings.

Hence, fewer meetings don’t necessarily mean they’re not interested and more meetings don’t really mean they’re going to buy. That said, if a client is scheduling meetings every week, that’s usually a good sign that they’re giving you some serious consideration. 

Common mistakes/challenges in engagement

Over-communication: If your lead isn’t responding, it’s not a good idea to send twenty emails asking why. Try drip engagement instead, where you send an email every couple of days to see where they are on things. They might not have had a chance to catch up just yet.

Untailored content: Sending them content that doesn’t add value or address their needs. I'm not about to send my Sapiengraph users a link on "How to use Python" because one of the main selling points of Sapiengraph is that it doesn't require any coding expertise.

Tips & tricks for engaging leads

Drip-feed content: Instead of giving your lead an entire encyclopedia of everything your company has ever produced or made, it’s better to feed them information bit by bit as needed to address their problems. If someone just wants to use our Prospector tool, we don’t send them user guides on our other features, because that’s not relevant to them at the moment. 

Be sincere: Clients want to know that you’ve got their best interests at heart. There’s nothing worse than feeling you’re someone’s cash cow. Small personal touches here and there help keep the conversation going and reassure your prospects that you’re also considering their bottom line. It may seem like menial small talk, but our sales team makes sure to ask about the prospect’s day-to-day life from little details they've mentioned on calls. 

Proposal

After warming up your client and feeling them out, you can submit a proper business proposal. Sometimes, your client will be the one to say “Hey, you know what? I am interested. Give me the deets.” and sometimes you have to be the one to say “Why don’t I just lay my cards on the table and give you the specifics of how we can help you?”. Either way, creating an official proposal moves you a little bit closer to the next stage. 

“You know what buyers pick as the differentiator in their decisions? The sales experience* itself—what it’s like working with you during the course of all your interactions. They think this experience as a whole is more important than all the other factors combined.” ― Jill Konrath, Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today's Ever-Changing Sales World

How to propose

First, get down on one knee -

Nah, I’m just kidding.

I’ve said this several times already but this is too important to leave out. You have to personalize your proposal. This is why having lead tracker templates is super important. If you don’t have one, you can try out our free Ultimate Google Sheets Template. It’s got a column where you can jot down things like their values and priorities so that you can include how your company can address those things. 

Another pretty important to have is a clear value proposition. With clear stats, the customer can envision a future with your company’s detailed solutions and is more likely to purchase from you.

Ours is “Get started in 5 minutes”. It’s really that easy to start using our growth tools.

Metrics for proposals

Time to submit: The time between the lead entering the pipeline and the time you submit the proposal. It’s important to ensure that you don’t spend too much time warming up your prospects.

If you get the sense that a particular lead isn’t quite ready to buy, don’t be afraid to reclassify them as a ‘lead to nurture’ for future conversions instead of going for the close. They’ll likely churn if they don’t fit the bill anyway.

Proposal acceptance rate: The number of leads in the pipeline who accept your business proposals, divided by the number of proposals sent. 

No one is going to get a 100% acceptance rate, because companies will pull out for any reason at all. But if you’re getting only 1 acceptance out of 100, then you need to revisit what’s your value proposition.

Common mistakes/challenges in proposing

Not having a ring and a speech. Seriously. Regardless of who’s proposing, someone has to have a ring and a spe- wait, wrong article.

Too many/few details: Too much detail, their eyes will glaze over. Too little detail, they’re gonna leave your offer on the table. Whatever details you put in your proposal should be well and relevant to their needs and wants. Sapiengraph’s proposals are pretty short and sweet most of the time since we’re a credit-based system. 

Generic templates: Your company should definitely have your own template and guidelines as to what you put in your proposal. Don’t just download something off the internet and call it a day. The more details you slip in about your client's specific needs, the better. 

Tips & tricks for negotiating

Case studies/ testimonials: Up to 80-90% of customers will decide to buy based on your reputation and how your business has helped others who are looking for similar solutions. 

This can be tricky for new business owners and startups with fewer testimonials or case studies. It’s not uncommon for smaller or newer companies to offer money-back guarantees to persuade leads to accept their proposals. 

If you do have existing customers, you should do a case study on them (Like we did with Coffeespace) and get their testimonials. If you don’t, you can try providing an estimate based on what your competitors can provide.

Reduce jargon: This is a little more nuanced than a simple ‘don’t use niche words’ because some industries prefer to have a little jargon. However, there’s a high chance that there’s going to be more than one person reading your proposal, and it’s impossible to say for sure how much they know about the topic matter. 

It’s always better to explain things in a manner that’s accessible to laypeople, just in case one of the decision-makers is not a subject matter expert. 

Negotiation

Everyone wants more bang for their buck. Don’t be surprised if your client comes back to negotiate on your proposal. You want a recurring customer, they want lots of value added. But you can’t work for free and expect the sun on a platter. The trick is to be absolutely clear on your company’s priorities.

How to negotiate

Before you even start to negotiate, define your negotiables and limits so that you don’t get caught off guard. 

Common negotiation points are things like:

• Pricing
• Product features
• Service level agreements
• Timeline
• Contract duration
• Volume discounts
• Training and support
• Warranties and guarantees
• Exclusivity, payment terms
• Add-ons, extras
• Intellectual properties
• Sustainability
• Future upgrades

Make sure you know exactly where you stand on each aspect.

Understand your priorities and your client’s priorities to see if you can meet in the middle. Are you laser-focused on getting new customers to give you those testimonials? Are you set on landing that big fish client - the one whose name alone could put your brand on the map? Or are you sticking to your brand policies because you know that's what builds trust over time?

That said, you need to set limits for every priority. Even if you want customers to sign on for a 5-year plan, you can’t reduce a $5,999 yearly plan to an annual rate of $999 just to keep them. You’ll wind up lowering the value of your product.

“If most of your customers are grinding you on price, then your level of service is not obvious to them. Otherwise, they wouldn't grind you on just price because they would value the service you're giving them.” ― Grant Cardone, Sell or Be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life

Our CEO Steven doesn’t like to negotiate on price. Calling our product "cheaper than others" implies the product's value isn't worth its salt. But he’ll make exceptions for users who are looking for long-term contracts. 

Always remember that you and your potential client should be working towards the same goal of growth. This is a "you-help-me-I-help-you” situation where both of you are getting something out of the exchange. 

In the wise words of Brian Tracy, sales guru, “Approach Each Customer With The Idea Of Helping Him Or Her To Solve A Problem Or Achieve A Goal, Not Of Selling A Product Or Service.” 

Metrics for negotiations

Length of negotiations: The duration between the time you first submit a proposal to the time the client signs on the dotted line. While the B2B sales cycle is different for each industry and each company type, you shouldn’t be spending too long negotiating terms. 

Generally, the fewer decision-makers involved, the faster the negotiations should be. Government agencies and educational institutions may take up to a year to come back with a definitive answer because they have to be accountable to a board or the public. 

Occasionally, you might have to consult with your boss or partners on whether you want to accept certain terms. But if you find yourself in frequent negotiations with your own team on what concessions are permissible, you need to reassess your company’s priorities and values.

Either way, having a lengthy negotiation means you need to review your understanding of your client and your own company.

Rate of discounts: Number of discounts offered divided by the number of proposals. If you find yourself offering discounts every single time, that means people don’t think your product is that valuable.

Don’t lock yourself into being the ‘budget’ option, but rather try to become the product that provides the best value. 

Common mistakes/challenges in negotiating

Conceding too quickly. You want sales, of course, but there’s an art to negotiation and most of the time, your client is prepared for a little bit of back and forth.

Trust me, I’ve bargained at a night market in Southeast Asia. Even if you know you can offer a 50% discount, start with 20%. 

Getting emotional. Especially if the lead tries to get something too far out of range. It’s hard not to get invested when you’ve spent some time building a relationship, and then they throw you for a loop by asking for something way out of left field. Keep calm and stick to your agreed-upon limits. 

Tips & tricks for negotiating

Prepare a list of concessions. You need to be absolutely. Crystal. Clear. On what you can concede and what you cannot. Things that are no-no concessions include safety certifications, safety equipment, employee rights, and illegal dealings. 

Some sales teams get leeway to offer extra discounts. Things like 20% discounts for educational companies, but we make it 25% if they add another 2 years. Or offering an extra 2 years of customer support if they take this package at this price point. 

Know when to walk away. It always hurts to have to let someone go but sometimes it’s for the better. It’s the same for customers. Even if someone is willing to meet your price point, they might not be a good fit for your company.

It’s easy to get caught up in that ‘Oh but I’m so close, maybe if I just…’ line of thinking when you’re negotiating with a customer, but if there are red flags, or if they’re request things that are hard limits for your company, it’s really not worth pursuing the deal. It might be lost revenue at the moment, but it can preserve your sanity. 

Closing

Closing a sale is like crossing the finish line after a long race—exciting, rewarding, and sometimes a bit nerve-wracking. 

By this stage of the sales cycle, your lead has probably verbally expressed that they’re satisfied with your negotiations and they’re prepared to sign on the dotted line. It’s time to get things squared away.

How to close the deal

Sometimes, it’s as easy as just sending them a card payment link so they can make a payment. Other times, there’s a lot of paperwork. Either way, good documentation is crucial at this point. 

Regardless of the extent of your negotiations, you should recap all the changes in an email and send an official document outlining exactly what’s expected of either party. This includes total payment, the payment method, terms of the contract, the extent of customer service, fees involved for maintenance, taxes, and all that jazz. 

It might seem like overkill, but if anything ever happens, you’ll be glad to have this in court. Get extra eyes on it if needed. Get your boss to read it. Get your secretary to read it. Get their bosses and their secretaries to read it and then get them to sign it.

Once everyone agrees, it’s time to secure the signature and payment. A digital signature should be fine for convenience’s sake. If not, please make sure all physical documents are sent by express mail. Don’t let an important contract get stuck in the Suez Canal. 

Metrics for closing

Close rate: The number of people who sign that dotted line divided by the number of qualified leads. For B2B sales pipelines, you’re aiming to get above 10-20%.

If the number drops below this, then you need to take another look at your lead qualification process and determine if you’ve achieved product-market fit. 

Time to close: The time from you sending that contract, to the time they send back a signed contract. Once your lead has asked for a proper contract to be drawn up, things should progress pretty quickly. 

Even if multiple stakeholders are in place, it shouldn’t need more than two weeks. It shouldn’t even need more than five business days. If someone is dragging their feet about putting their John Hancock on paper, then they may still have some reservations and you should figure out what they are.

Common mistakes/challenges in closing

Rushing the close: While you don’t want people to drag their feet about signing, you also don’t want to email and call a person 100 times asking if they’ve seen the contract and are about to send it back. 

Business arrangements can be pretty high stakes for small business owners, startups, or agencies who need to ensure their budgets of millions get used appropriately. 

If there are multiple decision-makers who need to have their eyes on the final version of your proposal slash contract, give them some grace and let them read it in peace. Rushing generates a sense of suspicion. For us, we always follow up within a week.

Lack of urgency: While you shouldn’t be blowing up your potential client’s phone with texts and emails, you shouldn’t leave them for too long. As long as their signature is not on the dotted line, there’s a chance they might switch to your competitors at the last minute. Assert yourself and talk about celebrating only when money's in the bank. 

Tips & tricks for establishing loyalty

Ask for the close: Some people are just naturally iffy about big decisions. Nudge them in the right direction by stating your values and then saying you look forward to helping them reach their goals. 

Use language that implies that they’ve already signed and that you’re already in a partnership. For a SaaS company, that might sound like “I’ll see you next week for onboarding.” 

Mark Hunter, Sales Trainer and Author, once said, "Don't be afraid to ask for the business. A closed mouth gathers no feet."

Loyalty

This is only the beginning of a long relationship. And like all relationships, it takes work. Otherwise, they’ll switch companies, and you’ll have lost another customer.

But how do you get people to be loyal to your company? They don’t owe you anything, right?

It’s true, of course, that no company is required to use the same service forever. However, it’s better to retain a paying customer than to expend the effort to get a new one. 

“Value The Relationship More Than The Quota.” — Jeffrey Gitomer, Business Trainer and Motivational Speaker

How to maintain loyalty

You may or may not be directly in charge of customer service, but it’s always nice to have a familiar name when things go wrong. Make sure that your client feels like you’re on the same page. 

When Kevin was subbing in for Shawn (our other sales guy), our client got a little worried that Shawn had left because they had a great working relationship.

A valued customer is a staying customer.

This is where you need a customer relationship management system. It helps you stay on top of who's doing what. I suggest our Ultimate CRM Template for Google Sheets if you’re just starting out. 

Having a CRM helps you keep track of the latest updates on your clients. You can put all your notes and remarks in one easily accessible place so that you have a bird's eye view of each client and what they need.

That said, ensure your lead has a great onboarding experience and check in regularly to show that you care about their experience. At Sapiengraph, our team checks in with customers a day after they sign up and then a week later to see if they can help solve any problems.

Because of their commitment to customer support, their clients feel reassured that the team will be available should any problems arise, and are more likely to continue subscribing or recommend them to friends. 

Gathering feedback and following up is also a great way to ensure customers feel heard. It’s also a way of troubleshooting your sales pipeline. During our own sales calls, we usually ask about their first impressions, how they found out about us, how they felt about our customer engagement, the proposal, negotiations, or the onboarding process. 

When relationships are maintained properly, your customers are less likely to jump ship in favor of competitors because they can never be sure that they’ll get the same benefits or service elsewhere. 

Humans in general prefer to fall back on familiar things, including products and services. Once your customer trusts you for a certain solution, they’re more likely to accept other solutions or services that you propose. This is a good time for upselling or cross-selling. 

We recently offered a few Proxycurl users a taste of our Sapiengraph Prospector for free so they could recommend it to others and some of them gladly took up the offer.

Metrics for loyalty

Retention rate: The number of people who renew their contracts or repeat business with you. Getting customers is one thing. Getting customers to stay is another. 

Depending on your industry, it can be customers who renew their standing orders, users who maintain their subscriptions, or people who repeat purchases over a certain amount of time.

Getting 50 customers who subscribe once, and only for a month is less sustainable compared to getting 10 customers who stay for 4 years.

Up/cross-selling rate: The number of clients who add on products and services, divided by the total number of clients you have. 

Well, you can ignore this if you have a single product or service. But if you have more, you should definitely be feeling out your customers to see if they’re interested in other solutions. 

Don’t be afraid to straight out ask your clients to recommend your services to others, or ask them if they know anyone else who needs your services. They may very well have friends, colleagues, and industry contacts who are looking for similar solutions. 

Common mistakes/challenges in maintaining loyalty

Not up/cross-selling: This can be a tetchy subject, but it’s always worth offering your loyal customers the first look at a new product. We did this when we first launched the Sapiengraph Prospector for beta testing (which you can now try for yourself too). 

It’s inevitable that some customers may think you’re just hard-selling, but 80% of the time, they appreciate being kept in the loop and informed about the latest developments. 

If you have new products, consider letting your loyal customers have them at a discounted price so they can help spread the word. 

Untimely responses: Remember the little stat about how people are more likely to buy from companies who respond faster? The same applies here.

Of course, don’t force yourself to reply in the middle of the night. But do aim to respond as soon as possible and if you are on vacation, make sure that your clients know you’re out of the office and won’t be available so they don’t think you’re ignoring them. 

Even a short “Hey, I got your message and I’m looking into this right now!” will help ease your customer’s mind. The personal touch makes people more amenable to look kindly upon your (and your company’s) shortcomings.

If you’re on leave, make sure that you’re leaving someone in charge of these messages! You can also automate replies. Just make sure that you really do follow-up afterwards!

Failure to add value: Ultimately, whatever solution you’re providing should be adding value to your customer’s business, whether it’s financially, ethically, or socially. Ideally, all three.

It doesn’t have to be a LOT of value, but you have to look like the more attractive option, even if it’s by a small margin. Loyalty will not keep a customer if you’re not helping them grow.

While we are not at HubSpot's scale yet, our niche of easily onboarded tools makes us a favorite for medium businesses. People can sign up and start growing their businesses with our job tracking monitors and Google Chrome extension. At Sapiengraph, we want to keep adding value for our users, which is why we recently added a Prospector and built more Google Sheet templates!

Tips & tricks in maintaining loyalty

Ask for feedback. Instead of “Do you have any questions?”, try asking “What’s the most confusing thing about the process?” and “What are the hurdles you’re facing right now?”. 

By framing the question in a way that implies that you know there’s room for improvement and you’re eager to help, your clients will be more likely to give you feedback. It’s a great way to identify the weak spots in your company. 

Final thoughts

There you have it - a behind-the-scenes look at how we've made our each stage of the B2B sales pipeline work. Hopefully, they'll help you level up your sales game!

If you made it this far, then let’s recap. The B2B sales cycle stages can be a long process. If you don’t manage it by using lead trackers and understanding what’s necessary at each stage, you risk losing prospects. 

If you want to grow your customer base and business, then start building each stage of your B2B sales pipeline right now. We’ve got all the 5-minute growth tools you need right here!

Comments, questions? Email us at [email protected]