How to Prevent Lead Wastage for SaaS Businesses

Learn how to prevent lead wastage for SaaS businesses to avoid inbound or outbound sales prospects that are simply forgotten about or lost

By Claudio Pires
Updated on June 1, 2023
How to Prevent Lead Wastage for SaaS Businesses

While many of us think of plastic polluting the ocean, food being thrown out, or overconsumption of material items when it comes to unsustainability, there are many different kinds of “waste.” Digital waste is, unfortunately, common and comes in different forms. Learn how to prevent lead wastage for SaaS businesses.

For example, “e-waste” refers to unwanted or broken mobile devices, televisions, laptops, and more. “Programmatic waste” is another concept in which advertisers’ media spend is lost in the convoluted digital supply chain. Additionally, “lead waste” refers to inbound or outbound sales prospects that are simply forgotten about, lost, or inappropriately qualified.

Why is Lead Generation in SaaS Important?

Lead generation is the beating heart of software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses for tech companies like Hubspot, Drift, and Mailchimp. While bringing more leads into the sales funnel is always important, activating and engaging those leads is just as important.

SaaS platforms are also often subscription-based, meaning a steady stream of qualified prospects must constantly be entering the sales funnel. Also, at a minimum, 10-14% of SaaS users are churning, and that figure is even higher in industries like finance (25%) and online retail (22%).

For B2B SaaS marketers, 30% say generating quality leads was their biggest challenge, even more so than sourcing the number of leads. Without sales funnel efficiency, demand generation teams are simply paying for qualified prospects to enter the sales funnel, only to drop off further along the journey.

There are a few different ways SaaS businesses can waste leads.

How SaaS Businesses Waste Leads

1. Poor qualification

When marketing sends poorly qualified prospects into the sales funnel, it wastes everyone’s time. Maybe these leads don’t have the necessary budget for your SaaS tool, or they just entered a two-year contract with a competitor.

Maybe the prospect isn’t the right target market, and your SaaS product won’t solve their problem very well. For whatever reason, a poorly qualified lead enters the cycle, and sales executives will spend time trying to sell to a customer that is unlikely to buy.

This not only wastes time and resources from the sales team, but it also takes away time from highly qualified customers.

2. Poor communication: Prevent Lead Wastage in SaaS Businesses

Imagine a prospect calling for sales package information, and no one picks up. Picture a highly qualified prospect emailing over and over for a contract, and no one sends over an agreement. Nothing is more frustrating to a potential customer than trying to pay a business for its products or services, and they can’t get in touch.

3. Poor nurturing

Without a strong sales funnel that brings the customer from awareness to consideration to purchase, it’s unlikely a SaaS business will make the sale.

Sales teams should be armed with the right training, product information, use cases, and enablement materials to properly answer questions and address prospect pain points.

Without an automated nurture sequence, sales teams will need to manually perform outreach, leading to dropped opportunities. Sales automation tools like Groove help reduces manual work, increase productivity, and improve the buying experience.

How to Prevent Lead Wastage for SaaS Businesses

1. Utilize call forwarding

Call forwarding solves the problem of sales executives stepping away from their desks or being out of the office and also provides more options for interested prospects to get in touch.

Call forwarding can also help manage multiple numbers and provide vanity numbers for team members who don’t want to give out their personal numbers.

2. Embrace sales automation tools: Prevent Lead Wastage in SaaS Businesses

Across a multi-touch sales process, automation tools help streamline communication, automate tasks, and, ultimately, close more deals. For example, a sales automation tool might automatically log a prospect’s name, title, and email address into the company CRM.

A workflow tool might send automated emails to a prospect or reminders to the sales executive to call or text. Sales automation tools can provide real-time updating meeting links to reduce email back-and-forth for scheduling demos. As well as analytics on link clicks, time spent viewing materials, and more.

3. Stringent lead qualification

Strong lead qualification helps B2B sales professionals properly prioritize leads, reducing wasted time and energy. It also helps create more efficient marketing spend. As demand generation and media buying teams are closely aligned on what criteria a qualified needs to meet.

They can closely analyze advertising opportunities and quickly disqualify channels that don’t attract their target market. For example, media buying teams at a finance SaaS platform can quickly learn their target market is not spending time on Instagram. But maybe they are often engaged on TikTok.

Reduce Wasted Sales Leads

It’s a team effort to reduce lead wastage in SaaS businesses. From the marketing department to sales to customer success. All teams should stringently qualify prospects and properly nurture relationships to see them over the finish line.

SaaS teams can also embrace innovative technology like call forwarding and automation tools. To reduce manual work, leaving them more time to hone sales skills and actually communicate with prospects.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.