SaaS Sales: What It Is, How It Works & Tips For Getting It Right

The SaaS business model can be suited to both B2C and B2B. Flexibility of customer use cases is one of the main reasons the SaaS market is growing at pace. And it’s some pace; Fortune Business Insights projects the SaaS market to grow from over $315 billion in 2025 to over $1.1 trillion by 2032.

With so much opportunity and money to be made, isn’t it time you took a deeper look at the SaaS sales process? Read this comprehensive guide to learn the basics about SaaS software sales.

What is SaaS sales?

SaaS sales is the process of selling a Software as a Service product. These applications are typically cloud-based and delivered over the internet to users. Unlike traditional software, SaaS is offered as a subscription with recurring monthly or annual fees. The service is hosted in the cloud, where users can access the application via a web browser, desktop, or mobile app. 

SaaS products are convenient for users because they don’t have to worry about maintenance or infrastructure to run software. The vendor updates all hardware and software required to run the app. Users only need an internet-connected device to access the capabilities of the applications. 

Web-based software subscriptions promote sales-led growth. It’s easy for customers to upgrade or add additional products. Business customers can quickly add features or new users with a few clicks.

What makes SaaS sales different to other selling?

SaaS works differently from traditional software. There is no physical product or permanence to purchasing a cloud-based application service. That, and the following other elements of the industry, make SaaS sales unique:

Subscription-based model

Unlike traditional software licences, SaaS typically defaults to a subscription basis. That has an inevitable impact on sales activities within the industry. It’s different, after all, persuading a customer to agree to a single one-off investment than getting them to sign up to a longer-term contract. 

SaaS sales reps, therefore, can’t only focus on the relevance or value of their solutions in the present moment. They must convince their prospects of the ongoing benefit a service can offer for years to come. That may mean focusing more on aspects of their product such as scalability and ease of customization.

Emphasis on customer relationships and lifetime value

In the business world, it’s often cited that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. SaaS companies live by this mantra to the extreme. What do we mean by that? 

Selling SaaS is all about acquiring customers with a long-term view. The focus shifts from closing deals to building lasting partnerships.

Industries like ecommerce may spend a small amount of money to gain new customers. SaaS companies can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per acquisition.

For instance, research from FirstPageSage found that SaaS telecommunication companies spend an average of $10,980 per acquisition. With that much money being thrown around, there has to be a hefty ROI. The SaaS subscription model pays off with loyal customers that bring in high lifetime value.

Length of the SaaS sales cycle

How long does it take to close a SaaS deal? 

It can take days, weeks, or even months. The length of customer buying cycles depends on the industry and the size of the deal. If you’re selling to a general consumer, they may decide to purchase after a few days of trialing your product. 

In contrast, a B2B buying group averages around 11 people. That’s 11 different personalities with different priorities, challenges, and pain points. While these types of deals can take several months or even a year, they represent high value for your business. 

SaaS solutions continually update and evolve

SaaS solutions are constantly adapting and improving. For customers, this is viewed as a feature and not a bug. 

As a SaaS merchant, your company updates its infrastructure for cybersecurity and compliance. You also analyze user behavior and feedback to improve your products and stay competitive. 

This ongoing evolution creates both opportunities and challenges for sales teams:

• Regular updates mean new features to promote and onboard.

• Continuous improvements provide upselling opportunities for sales and support teams.

• Product roadmaps (planned future features and new capabilities) become useful sales tools.

• Sales teams must stay current with product changes, technical developments, and customer requirements.

• Marketing needs to consistently update materials to reflect your current offerings.

As a sales or marketing manager, this means staying agile with your messaging and content strategy. It also necessitates constant collaboration with your product, engineering, and customer success teams.

Three main SaaS sales models

SaaS sales models can be flexible, adapting to the needs of your business. Factors to consider include product complexity, price points, and your target audience and market. There are, however, three general alternatives:

1. Self-service model

The self-service model is a non-invasive way to sell your service. Marketing builds awareness, while the product itself does the pitching and selling. 

A typical example—on the consumer side—would be a streaming service like Spotify. You were first made aware of a freemium or trial version of a product. After hitting some locked features, you opted to pay for the subscription tier that suited your needs and budget. You basically ran a self-driven buyer's journey before purchasing.

The SaaS self-service model is low-intervention and works best for:

• Products that are easy for customers to understand and use.

• Lower price points that appeal to B2C and B2B customers (typically under $100/month).

• Solutions that don't require complex setup or implementation.

• Products targeting individual users or small teams for high-volume subscription rates.

Self-service sales are also supported by DIY customer support, such as knowledge bases and FAQs.

2. Transactional sales model

What if your product is more complicated? This is where the transactional sales model proves useful. 

A transactional approach relies on collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. They come together to develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs), and tailor messaging and interactions to that target audience. 

For example, marketing qualifies leads, and sales development representatives (SDRs) then conduct outreach and score leads. After that, account executives present a tailored solution as a pitch and work toward closing the sale. 

The SaaS transactional model is suited to products with:

• Relatively short sales cycles, usually 1-3 months in duration.

• Mid-range pricing tiers ($100-1000/month).

• Customization required to build solutions tailored to prospective customers.

• Limited scope or a need for technical implementation and onboarding.

3. Enterprise sales model

Enterprise sales are for big game hunters. We're talking about large buying groups and longer buying cycles. Enterprise clients require a nuanced understanding with a concerted and calculated approach. 

Targeting high-value companies requires marketers to develop sophisticated strategies that are relevant to each prospect. Outreach and lead generation tactics include white papers, case studies, and competitor analyses.

The SaaS enterprise sales model is fit for:

• Dealing with high-value contracts ($1000+/month).

• Clients that require extensive product customization.

• Customers with complex tech stacks and robust implementation requirements.

• Large buying groups with multiple decision-makers and key stakeholders involved.

• Prospects or products with naturally long buying cycles. 

Essential stages of a SaaS sales process

Your company and its products are as unique as its customers. Every company develops a distinct sales process. However, the main stages remain consistent across successful SaaS sales strategies. Let's examine the key stages a SaaS sales manager must oversee and coordinate:

Prospecting and lead generation

The journey begins with creating awareness and finding ideal potential customers. 

SaaS prospecting often starts before a prospect even reaches out. A Wynter survey reported that 91% of SaaS consumers research your product before making contact with your team. 

You want to build touchpoints that drive that natural inclination to research your brand. SaaS marketing teams generate leads from various channels, including: 

• Content marketing and SEO

• Social media engagement

• Paid advertising campaigns

• Industry events and webinars

• Partner marketing programs

• Customer referrals

Some of these interactions leverage lead magnets with account creations or email subscriptions. However, how do you hone in on anonymous website visitors? Tools like Leadfeeder by Dealfront help identify companies visiting your website and demonstrating buying intent, and turn these prospects into qualified leads.

Lead enrichment and nurturing

Once you've identified potential customers, it's time to learn more about them. 

Lead enrichment involves gathering detailed information about prospects and their companies. What are their pain points? Who are the decision-makers? What's their current tech stack? How urgent is their need for a solution? What solutions are their competitors using?

Sales software for lead scoring helps you quantify this information. Assign points based on factors like company size, engagement level, and intent to prioritize leads. For example, a prospect who downloads a white paper might get five points, while one who requests a demo might get 20 points.

The criteria you come up with need to be based on market research and sales funnel metrics. You can adjust these over time to help you better predict the fit and readiness of future leads.

Effective SaaS lead nurturing requires:

• Targeted content delivery

• Personalized email campaigns

• Educational resources and online training sessions

• Regular touchpoints and outreach

• Score tracking and qualification

• Custom use case scenarios and relevant case studies

• Technical documentation and how-to guides

Lead enrichment and nurturing are crucial for a B2B sales strategy. With longer buying cycles and multiple buyers, your team needs to be patient. Gaining a customer is like a war of attrition. Each interaction helps drive the prospect further along the journey.

Sales outreach and product demonstrations

At this point, your marketing teams and SDRs have qualified prospects and identified their needs. Now is where most SaaS companies take either a consultative or solution-selling approach. 

• Consultative selling - Focuses on building relationships to gain a deeper customer understanding. Account executives work as consultants, helping the client find the best SaaS solution to fit their needs. The goal is to position yourself as a trusted advisor, even if a SaaS sale doesn’t happen during this buying cycle.

• Solution selling - Emphasizes how your product directly addresses the pain points of the business. Salespeople tailor a bespoke solution that helps the business achieve its objectives. Pitches and presentations are used to demonstrate a detailed understanding of the client. 

SaaS product demonstrations aren’t limited to in-person meetings. Digital forms of sales outreach include:

• Pre-recorded demo videos

• Live one-to-one demos

• Live one-to-many demos

• Interactive product tours

• Personalized demos that focus on prospect challenges

Use product demonstrations to focus on specific pain points of your ICPs, buyer personas, and/or the individual client. Be upfront about technical requirements and showcase the most relevant features and benefits.

Closing

After successful demonstrations and addressing prospect concerns, it's time to secure the deal. 

SaaS closing differs from traditional software sales. You're not just getting a signature for a one-time purchase. Instead, you're establishing the foundation for an ongoing partnership (and recurring revenue).

The complexity of closing depends on several factors:

• Deal size and contract value

• Number of stakeholders involved

• Technical requirements

• Security and compliance needs

• Implementation timeline

• Objections brought up after outreach and demonstrations.

At this point, your team is handing off the customer or buying group to your specialists. These are your expert closers and negotiators, empowered to maintain momentum and shoulder deals over the line. 

Your closing executives are prepared to handle objections such as:

• Pricing issues and budget constraints

• Technical barriers and limitations

• Security and trust concerns

• Stakeholder buy-in and adoption questions

• Existing contracts with competitors or redundant solutions

• Implementation and set-up obstacles

Other subject matter experts may take part in closing to help resolve specific client objections. For example, an IT engineer would be better equipped to handle questions about tech stacks or cybersecurity. 

Closing is simple when using free trials to sell to individual customers and small businesses. They use your product, and either it works for them or it doesn’t. 

However, with bigger deals on the table, closing a deal can take weeks or even months. Being prepared with product and client knowledge prevents deals from getting stuck in the mud of objections.

Onboarding and continued relationship-building

Think the sale ends when the contract is signed? Think again. 

In SaaS, closing a deal is just the beginning of the customer journey and a long-term partnership. The best way to retain a new client is to ensure they actually know how to use your product. 

Your customer success team now takes over the sales process, guiding customers through onboarding. A comprehensive onboarding strategy includes:

• Clear implementation roadmap with defined milestones

• Training resources and support documentation

• Regular check-ins and progress reviews

• Success metrics tracking

• Technical documentation and integration guides

• User adoption monitoring

• Feedback collection and response

Salespeople also play their part, following up with clients to discover if the solution is meeting expectations. 

Customer support, meanwhile, must be robust and reliable. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) or a helpdesk solution to enable your agents to quickly resolve tickets. Customers are more likely to stick with you if they don’t have to repeat themselves. They want your agents to know who they are and what they need.

Every customer-facing member of your team should be competent to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, too. They can either initiate these or get the right department involved.

Unique challenges of SaaS selling

SaaS sales works differently from selling traditional products. It’s also distinct from license-based software. It’s a unique business model with equally individual challenges in the SaaS sales process:

High levels of competition

SaaS companies face high levels of competition. In 2024, Statista listed approximately 9,100 Software as a Service companies in the US alone. Since you’re not selling a physical product, it’s easy to enter new markets—it’s also just as easy for the competition. 

The same report states there were over 30,800 SaaS companies globally in 2024. No matter how unique your product is, similar offerings are selling to your audience from all over the world. 

It's easy to drown in the sea of SaaS competition. Focus on differentiation and unique selling points (USPs) during marketing and sales touchpoints.

Maintaining momentum and consistency through long sales cycles

While not every business model is the same, the B2B SaaS sales process takes longer than most. With multiple gatekeepers and stakeholders, it can be easy to lose momentum and stall an opportunity. 

With a SaaS enterprise sales process, it's all about patiently nurturing relationships. 

Team members from marketing, sales, and customer success must collaborate and align to deliver consistent experiences. Any slip-ups can cause a client to lose interest and look at a different solution.

Complexity of both products and buying processes

SaaS represents the constant evolution of technology and the business world. You sell modern solutions that meet changing customer needs. Developing and improving such sophisticated tools creates two distinct sets of challenges:

For sales and marketing teams, challenges include:

• Keeping up with product updates and industry trends

• Understanding the technical requirements of each prospect

• Explaining new and complex features simply

• Demonstrating relevant use cases to each lead

• Maintaining product knowledge for usage and troubleshooting

For the SaaS sales funnel, challenges include:

• Multiple stakeholder involvement, each with their own priorities and concerns

• Technical evaluation requirements

• Security and compliance reviews

• Personalized proposals and customized solutions

• Integration with existing tools

• Budget limitations and approval processes

Tips for successful SaaS selling

As we can see, SaaS selling presents unique opportunities and challenges. How do you navigate those challenges and increase win rates? Follow these best practices to optimize the SaaS sales process:

Prioritize product knowledge

From your inbound sales team to your closers, product knowledge is key. 

Of course, we’re not talking about them being able to code or design open APIs. They do, however, need more than a surface-level understanding to grasp pain points and technical limitations. Marketing and sales teams should also be able to explain complex features in simple terms.

Prioritizing product knowledge helps your team:

• Generate trust and credibility

• Personalize SaaS solutions for each customer

• Focus on your USP and rise above competitors

Use training materials and product onboarding to keep your team informed on your products. Get more technical departments involved during the learning process to improve accuracy.

Use demos to exemplify the benefits of your product

SaaS is unique in that often the best way to demonstrate your product is to show and not tell prospects about the benefits. 

While you want your team to be knowledgeable, you also want your product to sell itself. Use demonstrations to exemplify the most relevant features and benefits of your platform.

SaaS sales demos should:

• Focus on solving business challenges specific to each client or ICP

• Show clear ROI potential and tie benefits to relevant case studies

• Highlight relevant use cases and flexible applications

• Include interactive elements that enable participants to have some control over the demo

• Demonstrate the ease of scalability, such as adding new user accounts or privileges

Implement transparent pricing tiers and free trials

If SaaS is about flexible and personalized solutions, then your pricing should reflect that concept. 

Gather marketing and sales data to put together transparent pricing tiers. It’s common in SaaS marketing to present three pricing tiers for your product. How many packages you offer depends on your solution and target audience segments, however. 

For example, in enterprise SaaS sales, you may need to include a basic enterprise package with several add-ons or the option to pay per use. What’s most important is that there are no hidden fees or overage charges—those are fast routes to losing customers!

Use free trials to give customers a low-risk option for testing your product. Keep the duration limited in time and scope so you don't lengthen buying cycles.

Focus on customer success to maintain long-term relationships

Your SaaS sales funnel pays off the most when you focus on building and maintaining long-term relationships. How do you do this? By aligning the efforts of your team to promote customer success. 

Give clients the information and knowledge they need to understand the value and benefits of your service. Use free trials and demos to show how your product works for them.

Basic methods to strengthen relationships and retain customers include:

• Creating a structured and comprehensive onboarding process

• Establishing clear customer success metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) and adoption rates

• Maintaining regular check-ins from sales and customer success teams

• Monitoring product usage data and user behavior

• Identifying potential issues and opportunities early so you can reach out before customers do

SaaS sales metrics to track your success

If SaaS is always evolving, what’s dictating the path to progress? More often than not, it’s all in the numbers. Monitoring crucial SaaS sales metrics will help you stay on the road to success.

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

Monthly recurring revenue is the metric that tells you how much money you expect to generate each month. It’s a key metric to monitor the health of any SaaS business. MRR is the sum of recurring subscription revenue that accounts for new acquisitions and customer churn.

Using historical and real-time data, MRR improves over time for better financial forecasting. It also informs better decisions, such as resource allocation and pricing strategies.

Customer churn rate

Customer churn rate is the percentage of customers who leave your business over a given period. Losses can be from cancellations or non-renewals. You want to keep this number as low as possible. It’s more expensive to acquire new clients than to keep existing ones.

 What’s a “good” churn rate? 

That depends on your product or niche. For instance, Customer Gauge reports that the median churn rate for computer software companies is 14%. Compare your rate against industry benchmarks to assess performance.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

In many ways, customer lifetime value is the keystone of any SaaS business model. 

You’re focused on long-term, monthly recurring revenue from every new customer. In SaaS, high CLV often justifies higher customer acquisition costs. The higher the CLV, the greater ROI you get for your marketing, sales, and customer success efforts.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost is the total amount of money you spend to acquire a new customer. CAC impacts how you view other metrics, such as churn and lifetime value. If you spend a relatively low amount to acquire customers, then you can tolerate higher churn rates and lower CLV. 

If your spending is significant, as you’d expect in B2B SaaS sales, you need the ROI to justify the cost. That means you need to increase customer retention and CLV or lower acquisition costs.

Dealfront solutions can help at every stage of the SaaS sales process

The SaaS sales funnel focuses on long-term partnerships not one-off deals. Potential customers are looking for a solution that meets their unique needs. 

Staying on top of each lead’s pain points and challenges makes it difficult to be consistent during each stage of the sales process. In B2B, you must maintain momentum over longer periods and with many different buyers.

Gain a deeper customer understanding and align the SaaS sales funnel by using Dealfront solutions. Leadfeeder helps you find those firms visiting your website with the intent to buy. Find unique customers, not just the usual!

Connect by Dealfront keeps your CRM data up to date and compliant. Break down silos so your marketing, sales, and customer success teams deliver more personalized and consistent experiences. Use our Target solution, meanwhile, to generate more warm leads and increase free trial adoption by up to 20%.

Try Dealfront today for free and find out how it helps improve every stage of the SaaS sales process.