B2B businesses follow a lead qualification process where a lead is deemed marketing qualified (MQL) by the marketing department and then passed on to the sales team. The sales team then determines which leads are sales-qualified and tries to convert them. This is a standard procedure, but for SAAS companies, customer acquisition model has changed in the past few years. Surveys have found that more than 50% of B2B SAAS buyers now prefer to do their own research and complete the buying process without talking to a sales representative. Customers want to see things for themselves before they decide to commit. This is the reason why almost every software company now offers a trial of some sort. The users that sign up for the trials may not have attributes that fall under the marketing qualification criteria but may still be qualified. These leads although qualified would be ignored. For SAAS, the sales cycle is longer than other B2B industries and for companies who run the freemium model, qualifiers are more complicated as there is no set time-frame.
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Triggers and marketing automation