Sales. The lifeblood of any business — and the one thing most founders struggle to get right in the beginning. In this step-by-step guide I’ll show you how to establish your first sales process so you can find product-market fit, close customers, and grow revenue.

As a startup building the next super app, API, or platform, you’re likely focused on shipping an MVP to determine product-market fit. At the same time, you recognize that revenue (or the lack of it) can make or break everything.

Revenue helps you pay yourself a salary, hire contractors, invest in marketing, and pay for your tech stack. Moreover, each sale you make validates your app’s value and product-market fit.

So, how can you make the most of the leads you have, land your first few sales, and scale up quickly? Should you focus on inbound vs. outbound? What do you even say in an outreach message? And how can you make the sales process as efficient as possible?

In this article, we’ll touch on the importance of building a repeatable sales process and how you can benefit from having one.

Let’s get started.

What is a sales process and why do you need one?

Picture your favorite grocery store.

Imagine that every time you bought something and walked out, the store rearranged the aisles after you left.

Whenever you wanted to grab some snacks, salads, or soap the next day, you'd have to walk around for 5 minutes hunting for the right aisle before you could buy anything. And as soon as you walked out again, they’d rearrange the aisles.

This is precisely how most startups approach sales.

They land one client with a mix of dumb luck and tremendous effort, and once that deal closes, they fail to replicate their success easily — so they’re forced to start from scratch. This long, confusing process quickly becomes a time-suck and often becomes something founders dread doing.

Now picture a better reality: one where you know exactly:

Where you parked your car each night
How many steps it takes to get to your parking spot
How long it takes to drive to work, and
Where to find your parked car, every time

That’s the kind of certainty a sales process brings to a startup.

But what’s a “sales process” anyway?

In other words, it's the playbook you follow to reach the right customers, understand their problems, convince them to buy your solution, and retain them over time. The more defined your sales process is, the faster — and more profitably — you can close new deals.

There are many benefits to having a defined sales process. When you have one in place, you can:

Determine who your buyer is and what pain points they’re dealing with.
Qualify each client quickly before wasting any time on a dead-end or cold lead.
Know exactly what to say and how to increase your chances of landing the sale.
Showcase your product in the best light — emphasizing benefits over features.
Address any customer objections head-on — and even anticipate them in advance.
Upsell and cross-sell related packages for even greater profit.
Confidently move each sale along from quote to cash.
Predict your monthly revenue well ahead of time so that you can plan around your cash flow.

The keyword here is repeatability. When you can repeat your sales process down to the last task, you become more productive, efficient, and confident. This efficiency means that you’re getting more done (and making more money), getting it done with less effort, and giving each customer a predictably positive experience with your team.

When should you establish your sales process?

Preferably yesterday. Ideally, ASAP. The sooner you can establish a sales process that you and your team is well-versed in, the earlier you can figure out what works and make changes where needed. As a busy founder, having a sales process takes another load off your back so you can focus on building the best product on the market.

It’s crucial to remember that any startup’s sales process is not set in stone — it’s fluid and adapts to your needs. As such, it helps to establish a sales process early on and make all the mistakes you need to so you can iron out the kinks as you scale. In addition, once you have a clear sales process it becomes easier to train others on your winning formula.

Breakdown of a sales process for startups: a step-by-step guide

Every startup is different. The sales process you settle on will depend on several key business factors such as:

The type of client you’re targeting (SMB vs. enterprise)
The type of product you’re selling (cloud-based app vs. mobile app)
Your pricing strategy (once-off payment vs. monthly subscription)
The number of gatekeepers you have to convince (one founder vs. several line managers)
etc.

Despite these factors, the sales process of any startup follows a pretty consistent pattern. You’ll need to find your ideal customers, sell them on your product, get them to try it out, convince them to pay for it (repeatedly), and figure out a way to retain them over time.

The essential elements of your sales process will include:

Prospects
Qualification
Discovery
Demo
Evaluation
Conversion
Nurture

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

#1 Prospects

Your prospects (or leads) are your potential customers. These are the people who have a specific problem that your product solves. To get better leads, it helps to deeply understand your buyer persona: the characteristics and goals of the prospect you are targeting.

The type of prospect you attract will depend on the critical business factors listed earlier. Where do they hang out, and what kind of tasks do they work on? Do they have a junior or senior role in their company? Do they need their problem solved once or repeatedly? What does success look like for them — and how can your product make that happen?

Check out our Jobs to Be Done article to learn more about how to suss out what job your customer is hiring your product to do.

The more you know about your prospects, the easier it is to find more of them and make contact. Your prospects might hang out on social media, in community groups, at conferences and seminars, and in other relevant places. This knowledge informs your marketing strategy and lets you decide how best to reach them, how much to spend on acquiring them, and how much you can charge them.

After you’ve identified your prospects or gained some leads, it’s time to qualify them.

#2 Qualification

Potential prospects are not necessarily ideal prospects. Being aware of this crucial distinction will save you lots of time and effort. Qualifying each lead early on helps you determine if you’d be a good fit for them.

For example, you might come across solo business owners who need a project management app to help them track their processes. However, maybe you built your app with enterprises in mind — headcounts of 100 people or more. You quickly discover that not only would your solution be overkill for these solo business owners, but that your pricing would also be out of their reach. Having this information helps you focus on more appropriate people for your product and price range.

You can add a simple qualification form on your website for users to fill out, which helps you segment them more accurately. Or if your lead volume is still low, you can set up live chat on your website and chat with website visitors yourself to qualify them.

Once you’ve qualified your prospect, it’s time for discovery.

#3 Discovery

The discovery stage is where you dive deeper to understand the exact pains your prospect is dealing with and what a solution might look like — tied to your product, of course.

Discovery is vital because your prospect’s problem(s) might be more complicated than initially thought. This phase helps you to align your solution to their problems better.

For example, let’s say you’ve qualified an enterprise project manager for your workflow management app. You then jump on a discovery call with them — and over the next 45 minutes, you find out that they have a problem specifically with employee onboarding — a pain point your app solves.

Furthermore, you discover that the previous app they used had a poor user onboarding experience, and the client was left hanging after purchasing a license. This insight lets you know what to focus on and what mistakes to avoid to help you close the sale.

Of course, there’s a balance to strike between not asking any questions and asking too many questions. The former nets you lots of junk leads — but the latter might result in fewer responses. Find a happy medium that works for you.

Once you’ve established a good fit between your product and your prospect, it’s time for a demo.

#4 Demo

Aptly named, the demo phase is where you showcase your app to the world. This phase can involve walkthrough videos, tutorials, or a guided demonstration of your app.

Your goal is to give the prospect an idea of what they can expect from your product: everything from functionality and ease-of-use to the range of tasks it can perform. Done correctly, the demo phase can stoke your prospect’s desire to continue trying out and eventually to buy your product.

Video demo example: mmhmm is one of the best demos I’ve ever seen

mmhmm

#5 Evaluation

The evaluation phase is where your prospects use your app with limited functionality or for a limited period. This phase is usually initiated by free trials and can be a powerful way to convert prospects on the fence.

The evaluation goes both ways. On the one hand, your prospect is deciding whether your app is a good fit for their needs and whether its value is worth its price. On the other hand, you are evaluating how much and how well they’re using the product to determine usage trends, pain points, and areas of improvement.

Depending on the type of customer you’re working with, you might also be negotiating pricing packages at this point to align your solution with their budget better.

#6 Conversion

After evaluating your product, your prospect will now have a pretty good idea about how it works, how they will benefit, and whether its value justifies the price. Afterward, they will either sign up for one of your packages (conversion) or cancel their free trial (churn).

Conversion kicks off a new relationship based on the value you both bring to each other: you’re solving the user’s problem, and they’re bringing you revenue. It also allows you to tailor your contract or agreement to their specific needs: the ones uncovered during the discovery phase plus the ones spotted during the evaluation period (especially for B2B customers).

If they churn, it provides an opportunity to learn what could be missing that could help you improve your product. It could also mean that you simply aren’t a good fit for them at this time — so keep them in your records and reach out again at a later date. However, the qualification step should help prevent this issue, so if this comes up often, work on qualifying your leads better.

#7 Nurture

If you’ve gotten to this stage, congrats! Your customer was happy enough to pay for your product, and you’ve just improved your cash flow. Your goal is to retain them at this stage, keeping them satisfied to justify subsequent payments.

Your customer service plays a key role here. From a service delivery perspective, do you handle customer complaints promptly? Have you built out a robust FAQ section that they can turn to for self-service? Do your customers feel like they have a direct line to you? These key factors go a long way towards reducing churn.

One other significant benefit of successful retention is the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your other products. What other features, add-ons, or expansions can you provide to enhance their experience (and increase their payments)? It's 92% cheaper — and thus easier — to make money from an existing customer than to acquire a new one. A retained customer can be a significant source of income for years to come.

The nurture stage is also when you ask your customers for ratings and referrals. You can do this via in-app customer satisfaction surveys or app store rating prompts.

Net Promoter Score survey template. (Source)

Get started now

The sales process is a complex series of tasks that can make or break your startup’s future. If you’ve read this far, you’re most likely looking to formalize your sales process into predictable, repeatable steps. This article is a great starting point — but there’s more you can do to define and refine a winning sales formula for your business.

At The Founder’s Marketing Playbook, we’ve created an ‘Intro to Sales’ sprint for founders just like you. This practical sprint walks you through:

How to determine the right kind of customer for your business and where to find them — plus the best channels to use to reach them quickly.
The best qualification methods you can use to move the sales process along — plus the critical types of information to gather during your research.
How to structure a discovery call, email conversation, or online form to unearth your customer’s deepest pain points — plus a live call with one of your customers to practice what you’ve learned.
The most effective way to demo your product to your customer in a way that is directly relevant to their needs.
How to keep your prospect engaged while they’re evaluating your product — all while advancing the sale forward. (Bonus: How to handle customer objections early on.)
The best negotiation tactics to help you reach a mutually beneficial goal for you and your customer — including the top types of contract agreements to draft.
How to nurture your customers after the sale through the most effective channels that work for other startups in your niche — plus the best time to introduce cross-sells and upsells to increase your share of wallet.
Top tips on how to shorten your sales cycle so you can close new customers faster.
Etc.

And beyond best practices for sales, this sprint also includes process and messaging templates, help during office hours, and 1:1 consulting sessions with the FMP team.

Start the sales sprint

Why go through the ‘Intro to Sales’ sprint?

If sales success is your goal, the ‘Intro to Sales’ sprint is the first step for you and your team. It comes packed with examples, activities, and worksheets to help you set up your sales process for maximum efficiency, effectiveness, and ROI.

You’ll get to define the structure and format of each stage of the sales process for your company. This structure keeps everybody aligned from sales and marketing to product and customer service — taking away any guesswork no matter the size of those teams (even if it’s just you right now!).

By keeping your customers’ needs top of mind throughout the sprint, your sales process will eventually mirror their buying process, and you’ll become a trusted advisor to them. Click below to get started today.

GET STARTED WITH THE PLAYBOOK

7 crucial steps to start your SaaS sales process