Sales Training and Consulting for B2B Companies

Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?

There are normally two reasons companies invest in our Sales Training and Consulting services. Firstly, they are often in a hurry to find sales growth and are looking for a short cut, a growth hack.

Often these companies would eventually find the right strategies and tactics themselves, but they may be keen to capitalise on their first mover advantage or satisfy the needs of external investors.

For these companies we provide a shortcut, we help them avoid the pitfalls and roadblocks that every growing business experiences.

When you engage with Klozers your team has access to over 70 years experience in B2B sales and marketing.

Our sales training can help you get the best out of your team, alongside our consultancy services that will help you deploy the changes identified by our consultancy

Let’s take a closer look at why it makes so much sense to use sales training and consulting services together.

1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?

Many companies make the mistake of rushing into training as the solution to improving sales performance.

Indeed, training may be part of the solution, but it is never the whole solution. Before any training takes place it’s important to understand the root causes of the challenges within the sales department and only when we truly understand the problems can we prescribe the best possible solution.

By rushing into training we would be assuming that everything else that affects sales is 100% perfect, and that is simply never the case.

As with anything, the greater the investment upfront in terms of the diagnosis, the more effective the training will be.

This is because the training can then be customised to meet the exact needs of the business which makes it much more impactful.

2. Why is Sales Training so effective?

Sales training builds both skills and confidence, and those are simply unbeatable in front of a customer.

The best salespeople are like athletes and they are hungry to learn more and stay at the top of their game.

The reason they are so good is that they are constantly looking for an edge, an advantage, and this keeps driving them forward.

These are small but important things that make the difference and gets more deals over the line. Our training is designed to keep your team at the top of their game and help them benefit from the very latest insights and industry best practice.

Our sales trainers work hard to keep your team engaged and motivated during training sessions, using a range of mediums to maintain their attention and inspire them.

Your sales trainer will help your team sell more effectively whether that be over the phone, in-person or online.

They can help them improve their lead generation, closing and account management skills, and provide indispensable mentoring services.

3. What happens before training takes place?

Before your training sessions begin, it’s important to identify what you want to get from them. As a sales training provider we offer bespoke services that are based on your specific needs and challenges.

We can provide a full sales consultancy service in advance of any training. This would typically include an evaluation of your current sales unit in relation to sales maturity and best practice.

We can also provide full training needs analysis so you can gain a better understanding of your requirements before staring any training course.

For sales training to be effective, they need to be delivered in a way that maintains your teams’ attention, which means your sessions will include a great deal of interactivity.

Our sales training sessions include a range of demonstrations, exercises, games and roleplay.

4. What is the aim of Sales Training

Our goal as a provider is not to deliver sales training, but to deliver results.

Therefore we believe the goal of Sales training is to help you meet a range of sales goals faster than you would if you were to continue without any intervention.

Not every company’s needs are the same, but businesses often invest in sales training because they want to improve their staff’s sales skills, close more deals, create more conversions, make their staff feel more supported, improve morale and boost the average value of their sales.

However, ultimately all of these lead to one overall benefit – an improvement in results. Some companies invest in training because they have identified a particular problem that needs addressing which is being caused by a skills gaps within their businesses.

Training may also benefit your team if they seem to be lacking direction, or are feeling unmotivated. A lack of motivation can often occur because staff are unclear on what their roles are, or because the current strategies they are using are not working.

In many occasions this is why Sales consultancy is a perfect fit alongside sales training as it can also help you identify and deal with additional challenges.

5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?

A sales consultant will help your business by taking a close look at your current situation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you make positive changes to drive revenue growth.

If you are not currently meeting your sales targets, our sales consultants can help you find out why this is happening and develop strategies to address the issues.

Our experienced consultants can help with optimising your sales processes and ensuring you get the maximum conversion ratios from the leads you are generating.

With our years of experience in B2B sales our sales consultants can introduce you to specific resources that will support your business.

These can include lead generation, marketing, sales tracking, and training programmes and software that will give you a better insight into how your sales team are performing.

6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team

When you are immersed in the day-to-day running of your company, it can be hard to assess your situation objectively.

It’s often impossible to find anyone around you who is not objective as your team all have a role which in some way will make them subjective.

Our sales consultants aren’t just there to identify problems that you weren’t previously aware of, we are completely hands on and happy to work alongside your team to implement any solutions.

Where applicable we will highlight your strengths and help you make the most of the resources that you currently have. In most cases this revolves around the creation of a sales plan, which we work with you to develop and if required are happy to help with executing against the plan.

Our consultants will work with you to help you improve relationships between departments and colleagues. For instance, we are often called upon for detailed advice on aligning sales and marketing departments so you’re delivering coherent messages to your customers.

Indeed aligning sales and marketing is one of our most popular services.

7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services

We typically have two types of customers of our consulting services. The first are larger organisations who already have a Sales Plan in place.

They need help executing and delivering against the plan as they simply lack the internal resources to do this themselves.

The second group are those looking for external and objective advice. In some cases they have seen a substantial decline in sales recently or aren’t meeting their targets they need to reach and hence are reaching out for support.

These businesses hire us because we have a track record of turning companies around. Alternately you may need external support if you have experienced changes in your industry and you’re struggling to keep up with your competitors.

Companies also may hire us because they feel missed sales targets are starting to affect morale and staff retention rates.

By investing in training and consultancy services, you can show your team you’re determined to improve and start achieving more.

8. Build a Selling System

It’s also common for companies to invest in sales consultancy services because their sales processes are confused and unclear, with team members pulling in different directions.

We are a huge advocate of having a selling system. Finance has a system, operations have a system so why not sales. Building a repeatable scalable selling system is simply a must for any business.

By mapping this out we can help your salespeople to understand how and where they can influence buyers and sell to people on different parts of their journey, helping you secure more sales.

Our consultants can also help you gain a richer understanding of the data available to you, from both your marketing automation and CRM platforms.

In many cases our clients either don’t have enough data or they are overwhelmed by data, and miss out on the most important parts. Either way we can help.

In Conclusion

Sales is an ever changing environment and more and more businesses are improving their performance, staff retention rates and workplace morale.

For most of use this means competition is tough and by investing in our sales training and consultancy services we can give you that edge you need to not just compete, but win.

Sales consultants and trainers can provide invaluable mentorship, help you identify and eradicate weaknesses, and help you make the changes that you need to not only survive but prosper.

Our team can breathe new life into your organisation and inspire people throughout your company. Whether you’ve been missing your targets or are simply ready to build upon recent success and take your business to the next level, there are many great reasons for hiring sales training and consultancy professionals.

If you are ready to hire a sales trainer, sales consultant or both, come and talk with us.

Sales Coaching – For Individuals and Sales Teams

by Iain Swanston

Sales coaching and embedding

Sales Coaching

Sales coaching is how a manager keeps training in use on live deals. Coached against one agreed standard, the same sessions also produce the evidence that behaviour changed.

By Iain Swanston, Founder, Klozers

Updated 11 November 2026

13 minute read

In short

Sales coaching is regular one-to-one work between a manager and a salesperson on the salesperson’s own live deals. It keeps what was taught in training in use. It works best against a written standard, agreed before the training and assessed by the manager at day 30, 60 and 90. With certification, those same coaching sessions produce the evidence that behaviour changed.

Key takeaways

Training gives people knowledge. Coaching makes sure they use it on live deals.
Coach the salespeople who want to improve. With the others, hold a direct conversation about performance.
Coach against one agreed, written standard, not against each manager’s personal preference.
Write each requirement so a manager can see it in a live account and assess it without interpretation.
Certification turns the coaching sessions at day 30, 60 and 90 into checkpoints, and gives the manager a certification of their own.

What is sales coaching?

Sales coaching is the work a manager, or an external coach, does with a salesperson to improve how they sell. It takes place one to one, on the salesperson’s own accounts, over weeks and months rather than in a single session.

It is different from sales training. Training gives a group of people new knowledge and practice in a short time. Coaching is what happens afterwards, when the salesperson is busy again and the pressure of the quarter returns. Most of what people learn in training is used only if somebody checks that they use it. In most sales teams, that person is the sales manager.

This guide covers when to coach and when not to, which coaching model to use and how to run a coaching session. It also covers how to coach a remote team and who coaches the managers. Finally, it covers the part most coaching guides leave out: how you know the coaching worked.

Why invest in sales coaching?

Because training without coaching is rarely used for long. The clearest evidence comes from outside sales. Olivero, Bane and Kopelman (1997) studied 31 managers and supervisors in a public health agency, not salespeople. A three-day training programme increased their productivity by 22.4%. When eight weeks of one-to-one coaching followed the training, the increase was 88.0%.

The study has limits, and the authors state them. There was no randomly assigned control group, the sample was small, and the participants were managers rather than salespeople. It shows that training followed by coaching was associated with a much larger gain than training alone. It does not prove that coaching will produce the same gain in your sales team.

Cost is the most common reason companies give for not investing in coaching. Yet a team that is missing its targets usually needs coaching more than a team that is meeting them. The real question is whether the coaching can be shown to work. Klozers changed its own coaching for that reason. Every engagement now starts with KPIs agreed with the client, so the change in the pipeline can be measured against them.

What is the difference between sales training and sales coaching?

Sales training transfers knowledge and skills. Sales coaching makes sure they are applied. Each fails without the other. Training without coaching is forgotten. Coaching without training has no shared content to coach against, so each manager coaches what they personally believe.

	Sales training	Sales coaching
Purpose	New knowledge and skills	Applying them on live deals
Who leads it	A trainer, internal or external	Usually the salesperson’s own manager
Format	A group, in one or more sessions	One to one, repeated over weeks
Material	Concepts, practice and examples	The salesperson’s own accounts
Evidence that it worked	Assessment at the end of the session	Behaviour observed in live accounts over time

The two work best as one programme. In a Klozers workshop, every topic is applied to the team’s own live deals during the session. Each participant writes their own 90 Day Action Plan before they leave. That plan is what the manager coaches against afterwards. For more on what happens when nobody coaches after training, read why sales training fails.

When should you coach, and when should you not?

Not every salesperson can be coached. Coaching needs a person who wants to improve and accepts that they have something to learn. Some salespeople resist. Some believe they already know more than the coach. Others are comfortable with their current results and see no reason to change.

Top performers often resist for a fair reason. They are being asked to change something that already works for them. Klozers interviews a team’s top performers one to one before designing a programme, and builds the programme from what they already do. Coaching then reinforces their approach instead of replacing it.

For a salesperson who does not want to improve, coaching is usually a poor use of a manager’s time. Unless there is a specific reason to continue, the manager has two choices. They can accept the effect that person has on the team’s results, or hold a direct conversation about performance. That conversation is a management task, not a coaching task, and it should be treated as one.

Coaching is most useful in four situations:

After training, when the team needs to apply something new on live deals.
When a salesperson is new to the role, the product or the market.
When one stage of the sales process is weak across the whole team.
When a large deal is at risk and the salesperson needs help to plan the next step.

One and two day sales workshops

Bespoke, measured, and built to last.

Every workshop is built from a blank page around your team’s own live deals. No slides. Every topic carries a KPI you agree up front, then track and prove afterwards.

Pre and post assessment, so you see the change

Worked on your real deals, in the room

Manager Embed Plan and calls at 30, 60 and 90 days

Delivered in person by a practitioner, not a presenter

Trusted by teams at Microsoft, Panasonic, TikTok, Bizerba, Marangoni and Lathams.

Which sales coaching model should you use?

Many sales managers use GROW, which stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will. It is a general coaching model, not one written for sales, and Klozers coaches use it too. The coach asks the salesperson to state the goal and describe the current situation. The salesperson then lists the options and commits to what they will do.

Sales coaching differs from executive coaching in one important way. In executive coaching, the coach asks questions and the person finds their own answer. In sales, a deal has a value and a date, and both matter to the business. A good sales coach starts with questions. When a deal is at risk and the salesperson cannot see the problem, the coach becomes more directive and says what they would do.

Coaching one deal with GROW

Here is how a short GROW session on one deal might run. The goal: the salesperson wants a decision on the proposal this month. The reality: they have spoken to one contact, who says the budget is approved. Nobody else in the customer’s business has confirmed it.

The options: ask the contact to introduce the person who owns the problem, ask for a meeting with finance, or wait. The will: the salesperson writes that they will ask for the introduction on Thursday’s call and record the answer. At the next session, the manager asks what happened.

If the salesperson cannot see why one contact is a risk, the manager says so directly. Information counts when it came from the buyer, not when one contact passed it on. This is the point where sales coaching becomes more directive than executive coaching.

The model matters less than what the coaching is measured against. Two managers can use GROW well and still coach a salesperson towards two different results. Each has a different idea of what good looks like. The section on certification below explains how to remove that difference.

What can a manager coach?

Activity. What the salesperson does each week, and whether it is the right work.
Accountability. Whether they did what they committed to in the last session.
Finding new customers. Which accounts they choose, and the reason they contact each one.
Pipeline and qualification. Whether each deal meets the team’s definition of qualified.
Deal coaching. Planning the next step on one important opportunity.
Field coaching. Observing a live call or meeting, then reviewing it together.
Call planning. Agreeing the purpose of a call and the outcome the salesperson wants from it.
Call review. Comparing what happened with the plan, soon after the call.
Customer stories. Explaining another customer’s result in terms the buyer can relate to their own business.

What should a sales coaching session look like?

A coaching session is short, regular and specific. It works on one live deal or one behaviour, not on the salesperson’s whole job. The salesperson should do most of the talking.

Coach one to one

Team meetings are useful for shared information. Coaching works best one to one, because the salesperson can talk about their weaknesses without an audience. A fixed time each week or each fortnight is better than coaching only when a problem appears.

Work on a live deal

Role play has a place in training. In coaching, the salesperson’s own open opportunities are better material, because any improvement affects a real result. Ask the salesperson to bring one deal and the question they need answered.

Agree one action, written by the salesperson

End each session with one action, a date and a measure. The salesperson writes it, not the manager. A plan someone wrote themselves is a plan they will defend. At the next session, the manager holds them accountable to their own words. That is a different conversation from accountability to a course, and it removes the argument about whether the standard is fair.

Give specific praise and specific criticism

Feedback is useful only when it describes what the salesperson did. “Good call” teaches nothing. “You asked what the delay is costing them, and they gave you a number” tells the salesperson what to repeat. Criticism works the same way. Describe the moment in the call and what to do differently next time.

Coach after product training

New products and services create a specific coaching need. Salespeople learn the product, then return to describing its features. After product training, coach how the salesperson connects the product to a problem the customer has stated, in the customer’s own words.

Use your CRM to choose what to coach

Pipeline data shows where a deal stands. It does not show how the salesperson ran the last conversation. Use the CRM to choose which deal to coach, then coach the conversation. For more practical guidance on running sessions, read about structured coaching after training.

How does certification change sales coaching?

Most sales coaching has no agreed end point. The manager coaches, the salesperson improves or does not, and nobody can say with evidence what changed. Klozers runs coaching and certification as one process, the Sales Certification Programme. The coaching sessions at day 30, 60 and 90 are also where the evidence for certification is assessed.

One definition of good

Ask six managers to review the same deal and you may hear six different questions. One asks how many calls were made. Another asks whether the salesperson has met the person who signs. A third asks when the deal will close. Others ask about the proposal, whether the buyer likes the salesperson, and whether the deal is in the forecast. Each question reflects what that manager believes matters.

The salesperson then learns to satisfy each manager, instead of learning to sell better. Certification removes that problem. Managers stop coaching to personal preference and start coaching to an agreed standard.

The standard is not generic. Every Klozers programme is built around four execution topics your leadership selects, because your market, your deal sizes and your buyers are your own. The certification is written in the same way. It has two requirements for each of the four topics, plus two requirements common to every Klozers certification. That gives ten requirements, and every manager coaches against the same ten.

Requirements a manager can assess

A requirement is useful for coaching only if a manager can see it. Each Klozers requirement must be observable, tied to a checkpoint, evidenced on a live account and assessable by a manager without interpretation.

Compare two ways of writing the same requirement. “Built senior relationships” cannot be assessed. A relationship is an opinion, there is nothing in the account to point to, and two managers could reach two different answers. “Engaged the Economic Owner and recorded the outcome they are measured on” can be assessed. The Economic Owner is the person who owns the problem and the outcome, not the Economic Buyer who releases the money. Either the salesperson engaged that person and recorded the outcome in the account, or they did not.

A requirement written this way also improves the coaching conversation. The manager does not need to argue about whether the salesperson is good at senior relationships. They look at the account together and agree what is missing.

Coaching sessions at day 30, 60 and 90

After a Klozers programme, each manager receives a Manager Embed Plan. It sets out how to reinforce the behaviour, with follow-up calls at 30, 60 and 90 days. On a certification programme, those calls are also the checkpoints. At each one, the manager reviews the evidence in the salesperson’s live accounts and assesses each requirement.

Klozers designs the standard and issues the certification, but never marks a requirement as evidenced. Your manager assesses. We issue. The person with direct visibility signs, so no one assesses their own performance.

The checkpoints also help the manager. If a salesperson has stopped using what they learned, it shows at day 30 rather than in the quarterly forecast. The standard carries the difficult conversation instead of the manager. The manager also holds dated evidence for reviews and promotion decisions.

A certificate that expires

There are two certification statuses. Candidate is awarded at day 2. It confirms that the participant completed the programme and built an account plan to full depth. It lapses at day 90.

Certified is awarded at day 90, on ten requirements evidenced on live accounts and signed by the participant’s own manager. It is valid for twelve months and is renewed on evidence, not on another programme. Behaviour deteriorates under pressure, which is the reason coaching exists. A certificate that never expired would contradict that argument.

Each certificate carries a QR code linking to its own verification page, which shows the holder, status, scope and validity.

Certified Coach: a certification for the manager

In Certified Coach, “coach” means the manager who coaches. It is different from the Coach in a buying group, who is the person in a customer’s business who gives a salesperson access.

Klozers issues three certifications. Certified Practitioner is for the salesperson. Certified Organisation is awarded when certified coverage across a sales team passes and holds a defined threshold. Certified Coach is for the manager.

A manager earns Certified Coach by running a full cohort properly. That means checkpoints held, evidence assessed, honest assessment and a sample audit passed. It makes the manager’s coaching visible, not only their team’s results. For an HR or L&D leader, it answers a question that is usually hard to answer: which of our managers coach well?

How do you coach a remote sales team?

Remote selling changed what salespeople do each day, and the coaching has to change with it. The principles stay the same: one to one, on live deals, against an agreed standard. Four things differ.

Cameras on for the whole session. A manager cannot coach what they cannot see, and coaching relies on seeing how the salesperson responds.
Shorter, more frequent sessions. One topic a week has the least effect on a salesperson’s normal selling time, and it gives them time to practise between sessions.
Field coaching on video calls. With the buyer’s agreement, the manager joins a video call and reviews it with the salesperson afterwards.
A shared sales language. When people rarely meet, a written standard keeps everyone working to the same definition of good. Without one, each person develops their own.

Klozers delivers training live online as well as in person. Online, the standard one-day workshop of four 90-minute modules is split into separate sessions, delivered one or two a week. The coaching between sessions follows the same pattern.

Who coaches the sales managers?

Sales managers are the people most often left out of coaching programmes, yet they are usually the team’s coach. Most were promoted because they sold well. Few have been trained to manage a sales team, and fewer have been trained to coach.

A manager who has not been coached will coach the way they sell. That works for salespeople who sell the same way, and fails for everyone else. Before managers coach a team against a new standard, they need to understand the standard themselves and practise assessing it on real accounts.

On a Klozers programme, each manager has their own Manager Embed Plan. The Certified Coach assessment checks whether they held the checkpoints and assessed honestly. Some teams need coaching without a workshop. Sales Performance Coaching can be bought on its own and runs for a minimum of three months. The format depends on what your team needs. KPIs are agreed with you before coaching starts, and each salesperson’s manager is involved.

If your managers need a full programme built around your own team, see bespoke sales training.

What should HR and L&D leaders ask before buying sales coaching?

Sales coaching is often bought by HR or L&D on behalf of a sales team. Five questions separate coaching that can be evidenced from coaching that cannot.

What standard will the coaching be measured against, and who agrees it?
Will the coaching work on the team’s own live deals, or on case studies?
Who assesses whether the behaviour changed: the coach, or the salesperson’s own manager?
Which KPIs will be agreed before coaching starts, and how will they be tracked?
Are the managers coached as well, and is their own coaching assessed?

The third question matters most. A provider who assesses its own coaching is asking you to accept its own view of its own work. The salesperson’s manager sees the accounts every week and should be the person who assesses.

How do you measure sales coaching?

Measure behaviour first and results second. Results take longer to show, and they depend on the market and the length of your sales cycle. Behaviour shows within weeks.

Agree one KPI for each topic before the coaching starts, and make sure each KPI is something the salesperson can influence. Satisfaction scores are not evidence. Depending on what the coaching covers, the KPIs might include:

Activity on the accounts the team agreed to work on.
Conversion from one pipeline stage to the next.
Average deal value, where the coaching covers value and price.
New customers won, where the coaching covers finding new business.
Forecast accuracy, where the coaching covers qualification.
Time for a new hire to reach the expected level.

Coaching cannot guarantee any of these results. What it can do is make sure the salesperson uses what they learned, so you can see whether the training made a difference. Morale and confidence also tend to improve when salespeople know what is expected of them. They are harder to measure, so do not use them as the main evidence.

Do this on Monday

Write one requirement your managers can assess.

You need one behaviour your team is working on and twenty minutes with two managers.

Choose one behaviour you want to see more often in live deals.
Write it as one sentence that describes what a salesperson does and records in an account.
Give both managers the same three live accounts and ask each to assess the requirement separately.
If they reach different answers, rewrite the sentence until they agree. That sentence is the start of your coaching standard.

Common questions about sales coaching

What is the difference between sales coaching and sales mentoring?

Mentoring is guidance from a more experienced person about a career or a role, often from someone outside the reporting line. Sales coaching works on specific behaviours in live deals. It is usually done by the salesperson’s own manager, against an agreed standard.

How often should a sales manager coach each salesperson?

There is no single right number. A fixed session each week or each fortnight suits most teams, with extra time on large deals. On a Klozers certification programme, the checkpoints at day 30, 60 and 90 are fixed, and the manager coaches between them.

Should sales coaching be done by managers or by external coaches?

Both have a place. An external coach brings experience the team may not have. The manager sees the salesperson’s accounts every week, so the manager should assess them. That is why the manager signs each certification requirement, and Klozers does not.

Can sales coaching be done online?

Yes. Keep cameras on for the whole session and keep sessions short and frequent. Coach against a written standard, so remote salespeople and managers work to the same definition of good.

What does sales coaching certification prove?

A Klozers certification proves that a salesperson met ten agreed requirements on live accounts, assessed by their own manager at day 30, 60 and 90. Certified Coach proves that the manager held the checkpoints and assessed the evidence honestly.

10 Essential Benefits of Teamwork that Drive Growth

by Iain Swanston

How to Manage Sales Activity

by Iain Swanston

How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel

by Iain Swanston

1. What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a sequence of actions, events or stages that a user goes through before purchasing a product or service. Sales funnels are designed to allow marketers to track, record and optimise the sales process to improve results.

You can learn more about our SaaS sales training here.

2. How to build a SaaS Sales Funnel

Your SaaS sales funnel is an essential part of your Apps success. If you’re offering SaaS apps then creating a repeatable, scalable and trackable sales funnel is one of the important steps that you need to take.

Sounds easy? Then think again. The sales funnel is where many start-ups transitioning into revenue generation struggle, and in many cases fail.

Before starting to build your funnel it’s worth first considering where you are in your app journey.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

3. The three main stage of SaaS development

Unfortunately, in sales there is never a one size fits all solution, and the starting point for how to build a SaaS sales funnel is dependent on where you are, in the terms of the three main stages of a SaaS business?

Are you at:
Phase 1: the start of the journey whereby the Founder and primary team are still trying to establish product/market fit.

Phase 2: where the founder and primary team members have proven product/market fit and are proving they can implement systems and processes that others can use to sell.

Phase 3, the final hurdle where you have a proven product market fit, you’ve identified and proven the right systems and processes for scaling and you are now ready to scale your sales, focus on client acquisition and build up your MRR.

The strategies you use for building a SaaS sales funnel will vary depending on exactly what you learned in Step 1 above.

So for the purposes of this exercise, I will assume you are at Step 1. If you are still struggling to build a sales funnel at steps 2 and 3 then either you missed something at step 1, or something has changed that has made everything you learned at step 1 stop working.

4. Build a marketing funnel before your sales funnel

With any business it’s important that you provide the optimal conditions for your sales team to be successful. In the SaaS world it’s not enough to have a great website, you need a website that:

a) can be found by your products and services in the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo & YouTube
b) can be found by the problems you solve in the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo & YouTube
c) can convert web traffic to marketing qualified leads

Many companies ignore this and rush to build an outbound sales team. The fact is that every potential prospect that your outbound Team gets interested will then go to your website to do further research.

Unless the web experience is equal to or greater than the prospects experience with your outbound team they will immediately switch off.

To build a marketing funnel you must create “compelling user first content”. This is content that the user is actively searching for not the content that your sales and marketing team want to push.

You SaaS marketing funnel is an essential part of your Inbound sales strategy. To do this successfully you will need to create high quality content at each stage of the buyer journey as shown below.

The content should subtly tell your brand story and the success you have brought to other users. Turn your early adopters into the Heroes not you.

TOFU – Top of funnel
The first part of your sales funnel otherwise known as TOFU is the awareness stage of the funnel. The prospect is aware of the problems they have and is investigating solutions.

Your website must have content that speaks to these problems and position your company as the Subject Matter Experts. The most popular content here would be:

How to guides
Explainer videos
Blog posts
Lead Magnets

At this stage, the prospect is in research mode, not buying mode and is simply gathering information.

Your prospect may not even be interested in solutions at this stage as they are still trying to accurately self-diagnose their own problems. It’s unlikely that your prospect will want to talk to sales at this stage.

We recommend you use marketing automation to track which articles/pages your prospects enter the site on as this is the problem that is top of mind for them. Knowing this can make it easier for sales to have a relevant conversation with them.

You may also have some success engaging the prospect with chatbots on your site, however many will want to remain anonymous at this stage.

Middle of Funnel
The middle of your sales funnel is when prospects start to evaluate specific solutions based on what they learned in stage 1. Middle of funnel content would include:

Presentations
Demonstrations
Case Studies

In practical terms they will have created some form of shortlist of potential suppliers, and they will then dig deeper into the details of each potential solution.

At this stage the prospect may still not engage with you as they are often simply researching on behalf of other people within their own organisation and their priority is still information gathering.

Bottom of Funnel
By the time your prospect has reached the bottom of your marketing funnel in many cases they have already “bought into” one particular supplier or solution.

They have made their decision largely on their web experience of the brand, your sales messaging and your ability to position yourself not only as a though leader but as a thought leader in that understands their problems.

Bottom of Funnel content would included things like:

Pricing
Comparison tables
Testimonials
Reviews

For simpler lower priced solutions you will find they are now ready to take a trial if you offer a strong Call to Action (CTA), whilst for the more expensive and complex solutions they will now engage with sales.

The image below shows where a simple marketing funnel transitions into a shopping cart and the more complex B2B sale transitions into a lead for sales.

Success lies not in choosing the right model, but building your own model based on data and trial and error.

Most marketing software now tracks user behaviour on your website and may use lead scoring to alert salespeople when the best time to pro-actively reach out to prospects.

From our own experience the timing is nearly always to early and a well-defined lead nurturing programme is equally effective.

In order to do this you should build into your marketing an at least three different lead magnets that will help you turn your web visitors into a subscriber so you can keep in touch.

5. Advertising to fill your Sales Funnel

Many companies successfully fill their sales funnel via advertising. Digital advertising has matured to a level that allows significant tracking and reporting allowing you to within a matter of weeks understand what your Conversion Ratio and CAC will be.

In the first instance we would advocate “Re-targeting Campaigns”. This is simply the process of placing adds in front of people who have already visited your website.

Studies show retargeting is seven times more effective than new campaigns which is why we advocate this as a starting point.

This strategy works extremely well with a strong content marketing campaign. The most popular add channel for B2B would be LinkedIn, however, many companies have also done well with Facebook and Instagram.

Needless to say this would be defined by your audience. Advertising can be used in simple funnels to drive sales and more complex ones to drive new enquiries for sales reps.

More complex sales may need a defined sequence whereby users click on and advert to receive a lead magnet with each lead costing $3.

If you subsequently manage to convert 5% of these new leads you can then attribute $60 per sale from advertising to your CAC.

You can build a trackable sequence or model from any activity not just advertising. For example, events, webinars and telesales allowing you to understand which activities are the most cost effective not only at filling your funnel, but actually converting into orders.

6. How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel

Your sales funnel will vary depending on your sales strategy. Are you selling your App direct or are you selling through partners? Which channels have you decided to focus on initially?

1. Identify your Perfect Prospect Profile. This is the sales reps version of a marketing persona. It includes everything that a marketing persona would include, plus some additional information that helps sales understand and communicate at a deeper level with the prospect.

2. Build your sales messaging. Part of the product/market fit is understanding what business and or personal problem your product solves.

In our experience the most successful SaaS services are business solutions that solve business problems.

Once you understand how this relates to your own product/service at a deep level you can start to build your sales messaging.

This is the words and nuanced language you have proven that prospects connect with. It’s not enough to know about your own business and solutions, you should know about your customers.

You should know exactly how your solution helps your customer save money, make money and make their life easier.

3. Lead Generation Campaign.

Once you have identified your target prospects and built your sales messaging you will need to start work on a Lead Generation campaign.

There are two main approaches to Lead Generation as follows:

a) Inbound Lead Generation. Inbound lead generation campaigns are where the prospect contacts you first. The may fill out a form on your web page, telephone you or email you. In order to generate inbound sales leads you will need to do some form of content creation, ad campaigns, webinars, referral programmes or SEO.

b) Outbound lead generation. Outbound lead generation campaigns are where you reach out to prospects via telephone, email, direct mail, events or account based marketing. Outbound campaigns invariably means you will have to build an outbound says team which can be expensive.

The majority of SaaS companies use a combination of inbound and outbound, however, they nearly always have an emphasis on one more than the other.

As a very rough guide, SaaS services that are lower cost and targeting SMEs, are marketing led and have a predominantly Inbound focus.

SaaS services that are more expensing and targeting Mid-Market to Enterprise organisations will have a more sales led approach via Account Based Marketing.

7. What are the Stages of a SaaS Sales Funnel?

The stages of your sales funnel are simply a series of steps that your prospects move through to place an order.

These stages can vary greatly and there is no one funnel that you can apply to every app. Even if the stages are the same the method by which you move prospects through the funnel may vary.

Your sales funnel is a great place to start collecting data in order to measure performance and make improvements over time.

In general, prospects should move through the sales funnel as quickly as possible – this is called the sales cycle or pipe speed.

Measuring the speed that prospects move through the cycle allows you to identify blockages in your funnel and areas where prospects slow down.

These “sticking” points are where you should look to make improvements.

8. When do I demo my SaaS product to customers?

The timing of SaaS app demos within the sales process has been the subject of discussion for many companies.

The answer unfortunately to the question is “it depends”. Many companies successfully demo their app at the start of the sales process, however, there are equally many who demo at the start and then have their prospects disappear into the black hole of voice mail and unanswered emails.

In short the cheaper and simpler the solution, then the earlier in the process you can demo and the more expensive and complex the solution the demo should be pushed as far back in the selling process as possible.

The reality is that there is a tendency for Entrepreneurs and salespeople to rush to demo their app, hoping the demo will convince the prospect to sign up.

Even if the prospect is qualified and a good fit, a demo without any form of diagnosis of the prospects pain is in danger of losing the prospect.

Your prospect needs to know that you know and that you understand their world. This can only be achieved via intelligent and targeted questioning. If you want to speed the sale up, slow the sale down.

The demo is usually the salespersons greatest point of leverage and if you give it away to soon you will lose the leverage and in all likelihood the prospect.

As a general rule of thumb – push the app demo as far back in your sales process as possible.

Demos cost time and money especially for complex sales where more often than not a bespoke demo is required.

Any bespoke demo must only be delivered to the senior decision makers on the prospects buying team. If appropriate you can even have two demos within the sales process – there are no rules other than if it works do it.

Most sales reps make the mistake of using this part of the sales process to explain the benefits of the product in more detail.

When you’re telling you’re not selling. Use intelligent probing questions to get the prospect to tell you how the solution will solve their business pain.

You should avoid talking about features that you believe to be relevant to them. If you didn’t uncover this in the discovery stage of the sales process it’s inherently risky to introduce anything new further down the process.

For simpler lower priced solutions you will find they are now ready to take a trial, whilst for the more expensive and complex solutions they will now engage with a sales rep.

In order to demonstrate they have undertaken due diligence they will always speak to two or three potential suppliers.

This isn’t necessarily to beat a supplier down on price, but sometimes they need to validate to the wider purchasing group within their organisation why they have a preference.

App trials are also a good way to get users to sign up, however, the conversion ratio of trials to close is usually poor in most SaaS cases.

Depending on the pricing you could offer a managed trial, so they can evaluate your software while you manage them further down the sales process.

During a trial, the prospect can see how the product will work for them in practice. It’s important to time the trial wisely and ensure you have agreed in advance what happens if the trial is successful.

We’ve created the graphic above to try to explain visually how this might work for your organisation.

It’s worth noting in the example, the majority of your CAC will be marketing, whereas in the more complex funnel your costs will include marketing, sales + customer onboarding.

9. SaaS Sales Funnel examples

The sales funnels below are examples. You should NOT replicate these unless they fit with your sales process.

They are designed to be a starting point for those looking to develop a sales funnel.

As you can see from the graphic, there are many alternatives to the stages that go to make up your sales funnel depending on the type of funnel you are creating.

For purely digital funnels you could have:

Lead Magnet Landing page – where prospects arrive after clicking on your advert
Confirmation Page – confirming your free offer, trial or purchase
Upsell page – where prospects have an opportunity to add additional services or upgrade
Checkout page – where prospects pay for the service
Congrats or Thank You page – where you can sign post prospects with the appropriate next steps.

10. SaaS sales funnel metrics

When it comes to metrics we believe these are the common sales operations metrics and KPIs that most people are familiar with. Needless to say these metrics are important and you should be recording and reporting on them.

LTT – Lead to trial conversion
This is the number of leads who have converted to a trial.

DCR – Demo conversion ratio
The number of demos that successfully convert to the next stage in the sales process.

TTS – Trial to sale conversion
This is the number of prospects on the free trial who have converted to paying customers.

LTV – Lifetime Value of the customer
This is the average total value a customer will spend before leaving the service. Ironically this can be more difficult to measure the better your product is because, without customers leaving you will not know how long they stay and their total value to the business.

Churn – Number of customers leaving
Customers will leave and that’s not always a bad thing. If the customers who leave fit your ICP (Ideal Client Profile) then you have a problem. Customers who leave that don’t fit your ICP may be freeing up valuable resource that can be spent on your ICP.

MRR – Monthly recurring revenue
The monthly recurring revenue gives you an overview of your success, however, it’s only an overview and you need to look at the details within the data to gain a more accurate picture.

ARR – Annual recurring revenue
The annual recurring revenue gives a good overview of the business, but like the MRR you should study all the data to obtain a more accurate picture on the health of your venture.

Sales Cycle – The time from initial contact through to a closed order
This is typically short for lower value simpler solutions and longer for complex Enterprise sales. For example a sales to a Tier 1 bank may take 18 months from initial contact to close.

CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
It’s important to understand how much it costs you to acquire a single customer. In an ideal world you would discover this in the initial phases of the business when you are proving the value proposition. Without this figure it’s impossible to put in the systems and processes to scale the business as you won’t know how much you can spend on the front end marketing and sales.

Negative Churn –
Negative churn is a powerful growth metric which indicates that the revenue from upselling and cross selling existing customers out strips the revenue lost when customers leave.

11. SaaS Proposal submissions

After the final demo, you should never offer to send a proposal.

Proposals cost time and money and if your prospect is interested they will ask you for a proposal.

If your prospect doesn’t ask you for a proposal then it tells you that they aren’t interested in working with you and you need to move back up the sales process to understand where you have gone wrong.

When the sales process stalls it’s rarely because of something you have done wrong at that moment – more often, it’s something you missed earlier on in the sales process.

Make sure you’re confident all the benefits of the software have been clearly explained to them and mapped out against their stated needs.

Where possible, always get your White Knight to help you co-create the proposal and sense check a draft version with them in advance of sending the official copy.

Before sending your proposal you must have a clear understanding of what the next steps are if you win or lose.

Without this you are most likely to spend the next three months chasing ghosts in voice mail.

12. Pricing your SaaS contracts

Many companies provide limited or no pricing at all on their website because they don’t want their competitors to see their pricing, or they think it will scare away potential customers.

You should be proud of your price and the value you bring. Let the competition undercut you and tie up all their resources on unprofitable deals.

People rarely buy the cheapest solution, so allow your prospects to undercut you.

If you’re still anxious about having your pricing on your website then think about how you feel when you are researching a solution you are interested in only to find the pricing page is littered with POA.

If you’re like most people you find this really annoying and quickly move on to the next potential supplier.

Lastly, another advantage of proudly displaying your pricing is that it qualifies out anyone who is not prepared to invest at that level.

This can save you lots of time and resources with prospects who simply have a different budget level.

There are numerous pricing strategies available to you, however, from our experience the only thing that is guaranteed, is that you will change your pricing.

As a basic rule of thumb if your prices are set too high for a short-term contract or paid trial, the prospect may fail to experience the full benefits of the software before the contract comes to an end, and they may decide not to renew.

Where possible you should reward prospects during the trial period for adding information and using the service.

For example, offer a shorter trial and incentivise users if they complete their profile/account set up.

Offer a further free period encourage them to use the product for example if they upload data into the system.

The idea is to “onboard” your new users step by step and make your product as sticky as possible.
If the prospect does want to go ahead you should use contracts with digital signature to speed up the sales process.

Never send contracts in emails or links to digital contracts as these can be easily ignored.

Arrange to get the prospect on the phone and talk through the contract with them. Once they have agreed to everything in the contract simply ask them to sign while you have them on the phone.

This way you retain control of the sales process.

13. Why the sales funnel is so important for SaaS providers

Many businesses have failed after struggling to implement a sales funnel. Marketing and selling SaaS products can be incredibly challenging, and chances are your target customers are already overwhelmed with offers from competing software vendors.

Think about which part of the buyers existing budget you are going to win revenue from. What direct or indirect competitors will you take budget away from?

You may be competing with some of the biggest and most powerful brands in the world that are providing generic solutions to the same problems you solve.

This means you need to offer something distinctive that your customers actually require.

A CB Insights study said 42% of SaaS start-ups fail because they’re offering products their target customers don’t need.

Convincing potential customers your software offers genuine value is essential.

14. Managing prospects expectations

Creating a sales funnel is all about building a journey all the way from web visitor, to subscriber and through demos and trails and ending with the contract being signed.

Your sales funnel should emphasise each of the key stages your prospects will travel through on their way to an agreement being made.

Be open, upfront and share the stages of the process in advance with your prospects.
You should pay close attention to any points of friction that might occur as your prospects travel through your sales pipeline.

This will give you the opportunity to make improvements to your funnel moving forward.
What’s most important is that you record all the data points in your sales funnel.

This will help you make decisions on facts rather than your gut feelings. It can take time for your sales funnel to become fully effective, and you may need to make several refinements before you have a truly optimised sales funnel.

Many customers don’t have a rich understanding of what they need when they first encounter you. Provide solutions not just products by helping prospects make the connection between the two.

What’s also true is users often buy what they want not what they need.

This is why it’s so important to ask targeted questions in order that you can accurately determine what their needs are so you can position your software in the most favourable way.

These questions will also tell you how near or far away they are to making a decision.

15. The Rise of SaaS solutions

It seems like everything in the world is now powered online by SaaS Applications. From Netflix and Amazon Prime to LinkedIn and Microsoft M365 we are now surrounded by SaaS solutions of one description or another.

Financially SaaS makes sense as it avoids heavy capital expenditure up front and de-risks the solution.

After all if it doesn’t work you are typically only ever locked in to a maximum of 12 months. Other advantages of SaaS include the way that it is normally quick to deploy and requires no maintenance on the part of the client.

Upgrades are normally delivered automatically, with clients generally being offered guaranteed levels of service.

Backups and data recovery are usually carried out on behalf of the client, so they can focus on what they do best, safe in the knowledge that everything’s being handled by the software developers themselves.

Lockdown has turbo charged SaaS
Remote working was on the rise even before the pandemic, so the fact that SaaS products allow individuals to work and collaborate from anywhere has only served to embed SaaS even deeper in our every day lives.

There are thousands of new products SaaS products being developed in every country around the world so competition is fierce, however, there is no apparent end to the appetite of consumers and business to SaaS solutions.

A coherent sales funnel could be the difference between your product being a viral success and being forced to return to the drawing board.

SaaS Sales Training Course Find out more & book

The Complete Guide to Channel Planning in Sales Management

by Iain Swanston

Pipeline and route to market

Channel Planning in Sales Management: Choosing the Right Route to Market

Channel planning is deciding how your product or service reaches the customer and which routes deserve your people, time and investment. The important question is not simply who takes the order. It is where customers buy, where the decision is influenced and what each route contributes.

By Iain Swanston, Founder, Klozers

Updated 15 September 2026

6 minute read

What is channel planning in sales management?

Channel planning is the process of deciding which routes you will use to reach and sell to customers. Those routes can include direct sales, distributors, resellers, agents, partners, inbound and outbound activity, or a combination. Good channel planning starts with how customers actually buy and where the buying decision can be influenced, then decides where the business should invest.

Key takeaways

Do not choose a channel simply because competitors use it or because it appears cheaper.
The route that books the revenue is not necessarily the route that created demand or influenced the decision.
Direct and indirect channels can work together. Decide what job each route performs.
When you sell through partners, you need a commercial case for the end customer and a separate reason for the partner to sell and prioritise you.
Measure demand origin, influence, opportunity progression, revenue and the resources required to support each route.

How should you choose a sales channel?

Start with evidence from your own customers and revenue. Which markets, customer types and routes already produce sales? Where do enquiries originate? Who influences the buying decision? Which routes can your people influence and support?

Do not start by deciding that you need distributors, more direct salespeople or a new outbound channel and then search for evidence to justify the choice. A channel only makes sense when it fits how customers buy and the commercial role you need it to perform.

Where do customers actually buy?
Map the routes that produce revenue today, including routes that may not be obvious from the CRM.
Where is the decision influenced?
Identify the people and organisations that create preference, specify the solution or control access to the purchase.
What does the customer need from the route?
This may include expertise, local support, availability, integration, procurement convenience or an existing supplier relationship.
What should you keep direct?
Decide which customer interactions, knowledge or relationships are too important to delegate.
What capacity do you have?
Partners still require recruitment, enablement, support and management. A new route creates work as well as reach.
How will you judge it?
Agree what you will measure before shifting people, margin or budget into the route.

Channel is one decision inside the wider go-to-market strategy. If you need to decide which markets, customers and routes deserve investment together, see our Sales Strategy Workshop.

Where is the buying decision actually influenced?

The organisation taking the order may not be the organisation that created the demand or influenced the choice.

A manufacturer might invoice through a distributor while an end user requests the brand, a consultant writes the specification, procurement controls the approved supplier list and the manufacturer creates the original demand. Looking only at booked revenue can make the distributor appear responsible for a sale that was created elsewhere.

Ask where preference was created, where the decision was influenced and where the order was booked.

Should you use direct or indirect sales channels?

This does not need to be an either-or decision. Many B2B companies use different routes for different jobs.

Direct sales

Can suit strategic accounts, complex opportunities and situations where the supplier needs close control of discovery, solution design or the customer relationship.

Distributors and resellers

Can provide local relationships, logistics, technical support, procurement access or market coverage the supplier does not have internally.

Inbound

Can create demand that is then fulfilled directly or through a partner. The source of the enquiry and the route that invoices the order may be different.

Outbound

Can identify and develop opportunities that are later transacted through a distributor or reseller.

The useful question is not “Which single channel is best?” It is “What job does each route perform, and is that job commercially worth the resources required?”

Why does a partner channel need two commercial cases?

Appointing a distributor or reseller does not remove the need to sell. You first need a reason for the partner to work with you. Then the partner needs a reason the end customer should buy.

If the partner represents several suppliers, margin alone may not make your offer a priority. They may also consider demand, ease of selling, support, differentiation, availability and the commercial opportunity compared with other products they could spend time on.

This is not theoretical for Klozers. In one approved Sales Strategy Workshop example, an international technology business selling through partners had a European territory producing one third of the revenue of an equivalent UK territory for seven years. The work produced a ranked country list, a partner-facing case separate from the end-user case, and an enquiry plan for partners.

How do you avoid channel conflict?

Conflict often appears when direct and indirect routes overlap but nobody has agreed the rules.

A supplier may generate the enquiry directly, the customer may ask its normal distributor for a price, and the distributor may then book the order. If the business credits only the invoiced revenue, it can draw the wrong conclusion about which activity created the sale.

Define which accounts and opportunities belong to each route, how company-generated and partner-generated enquiries are handled, who owns the customer relationship, and what happens when more than one route contributes to the same sale. Pricing and commercial rules also need to be clear enough that direct teams and partners are not competing under different assumptions.

The objective is not to remove every overlap. It is to make the rules explicit enough that the business can use the right route without encouraging internal competition for credit.

How should you measure channel performance?

Revenue matters, but revenue alone can hide how the sale was created. Measure the route that booked the order alongside the source of demand and the resources used to create and support it.

Useful measures will vary by business, but may include enquiry source, qualified opportunities, progression, revenue, margin, time to revenue, partner activity and the internal time required to support the route. We do not recommend a universal threshold because channel economics vary by market, product and commercial model.

Where a route appears weak, investigate before replacing it. The issue may be the market, proposition, partner case, enablement, capacity, enquiry handling or the route itself. Different causes require different decisions.

Channel planning FAQs

What is a sales channel?

A sales channel is a route through which a business reaches and sells to customers. It can be direct, such as an internal sales team, or indirect, such as a distributor, reseller, agent or partner.

What is the difference between direct and indirect sales channels?

Direct channels involve the supplier selling to the customer itself. Indirect channels involve another organisation in the route to market. Many B2B companies use both.

How do you choose the right sales channel?

Start with how customers buy, where decisions are influenced, the commercial role the route needs to perform, the resources required to support it and evidence from current revenue and enquiries.

Do distributors generate demand?

Some do, but it should not be assumed. A distributor may create demand, influence the choice, fulfil demand created elsewhere, or perform several of those roles. Measure the contribution rather than inferring it from invoiced revenue alone.

What causes channel conflict?

Common causes include overlapping account ownership, unclear enquiry rules, inconsistent pricing, competition between direct and partner teams, and disagreement over who created or owns an opportunity.

Choose the route from the evidence. Then give each route a clear commercial job.

Need help deciding which markets, customers and routes deserve investment?

We will start with what already works, define the gaps and build the workshop around your live opportunities.

How to Sell to BIG Companies

by Iain Swanston

Enterprise selling

How to Sell to Big Companies: Navigate the Buying Process

Selling to a large organisation means helping several people reach a defensible buying decision, not simply securing a meeting with a senior contact.

By Iain Swanston, Founder, Klozers · Updated 14 October 2026

Quick answer

To sell to big companies, select accounts with a credible business need, understand who owns the outcome and the budget, establish the customer’s current buying decision, develop a buyer-validated value case and agree evidence-based next commitments. Do not confuse seller activity with buying progress.

Key takeaways

Account fit matters more than company size alone.
Economic Owner, Economic Buyer and Champion are different roles.
Buyer gates are not a universal sequence.
The customer should validate the business case.
Track customer decisions, not just seller actions.

What makes selling to big companies different?

Large organisations rarely make significant purchases through one conversation or one individual. Requirements may be shaped by operational teams, technical specialists, finance, procurement, legal and senior leadership. Each may be solving a different problem.

A large opportunity is therefore not qualified simply because a contact is interested, a meeting has taken place or a proposal has been requested. The seller must understand how the organisation will decide, what each stakeholder needs to establish and whether the proposed change is commercially justified.

This does not mean every large company follows the same process. A repeat purchase from an established supplier can differ substantially from a new, strategically important purchase. The practical task is to discover the actual process rather than assume one.

How do you choose which large companies to target?

Start with an ideal customer profile rather than a list of famous company names. Consider the business problem you can address, the organisation’s operating model, whether there is a plausible route to access and whether the commercial value justifies the effort required.

Research relevant divisions, geographic responsibilities, existing suppliers, public priorities and changes that may create a reason to review the current approach. Distinguish an observable trigger from a guess about the company’s needs.

Prioritise accounts where you can describe a credible problem hypothesis and identify how to test it. A prestigious logo with no relevant need, access route or likely decision is not necessarily a strong prospect.

How do you approach a large company without relying on a generic pitch?

Use research to make an informed opening, but invite the buyer to correct your assumptions. A relevant observation about their business is more useful than a lengthy introduction to your own company.

At the start of a meeting, ask what the buyer needs to accomplish in that conversation. This establishes whether the buyer is exploring the problem, defining requirements, testing risk, examining funding or resolving another issue. Adapt the discussion accordingly.

Bring an intellectual contribution: a useful way to examine a problem, compare options or test an assumption. It should have value even if the customer does not select your organisation. Avoid unsupported promises and generic claims about results.

Who actually influences and approves the purchase?

Separate authority from influence. Someone may strongly influence technical requirements without having the authority to approve spending. Equally, a senior executive may control the budget but depend on other people to validate implementation risk.

The Economic Owner is accountable for the business outcome. The Economic Buyer has authority to commit or release funding. These roles can be held by one person or different people; verify them rather than infer them from job titles.

A Coach can help you understand the account. A Champion actively advocates for your proposal internally, including when you are absent. Neither label should be awarded merely because a contact is friendly. Identify Blockers and understand their concerns rather than treating all objections as resistance.

Map each relevant person by the decision they contribute to, their influence, their authority, their interests and the evidence they need. Update that map as you learn more.

What are buyer gates, and do they happen in a fixed order?

A buyer gate is a decision or uncertainty the customer needs to resolve before making a commitment. Examples include whether the solution fits the problem, how it will work operationally, whether the business case is sufficient and whether risks or approvals have been addressed.

The Panasonic training material describes six buyer gates and explicitly says they do not occur in a fixed order. The useful lesson is not to impose a new sales-stage sequence on the buyer. It is to identify the gate the customer is working through now and help them resolve it.

Ask: What decision is still open? Who owns it? What evidence is required? What would happen after it is resolved? A seller who understands these questions can support the buyer more effectively than one who simply tries to advance the CRM stage.

Original six Buyer Gates illustration from the supplied Panasonic participant workbook. The routes illustrate that buyers can address the same decisions in different orders.

How do you build a business case the customer can defend?

Begin with the customer’s own definition of the problem and its consequences. Discuss the cost, time, operational risk or missed opportunity involved, while making clear which assumptions still require validation.

Present a value hypothesis as something the customer can challenge and correct. For example, ask which costs are material, what baseline data exists and who would validate the estimate. A range based on explicit assumptions can be more useful than a precise figure without evidence.

The aim is a value case owned by the buyer, not a vendor spreadsheet that nobody internally accepts. The business case must also account for implementation, disruption, alternative options and the possibility of doing nothing.

When the buyer confirms the relevant numbers and decision criteria, document that agreement. Never treat a seller-generated estimate as an established customer outcome.

How do you work with procurement, legal and risk teams?

Do not treat procurement and governance as obstacles to be bypassed. Their involvement can be essential to a sound decision, particularly where data, security, regulatory, contractual or operational risks matter.

Ask early whether there is a formal tender, approved supplier process, security assessment, legal review or budget cycle. Establish who owns each requirement and what evidence they need. The timing may differ across departments.

Where requirements are still being defined, contribute useful information transparently and fairly. Do not assume that helping shape requirements guarantees selection or that an existing relationship overrides governance.

How do you recognise genuine progress in a long sales cycle?

Seller activity and buyer progress are different measures. Completing a demonstration or sending a proposal proves that the seller acted. It does not, by itself, prove that the customer moved towards a decision.

Look for customer-confirmed evidence: agreement on the problem, access to the people responsible for a decision, validated evaluation criteria, a buyer-owned business case or a specific internal review with a named owner.

After each meeting, agree what the customer will do next, why it matters, who is responsible and when it is expected. A reciprocal commitment is stronger than an open-ended promise to stay in touch. If the customer cannot identify a next decision, reconsider whether the opportunity is genuinely active.

What mistakes prevent sellers from winning enterprise accounts?

Common mistakes include concentrating on one friendly contact, confusing seniority with buying authority, presenting too early, assuming a universal procurement process and building a business case without buyer validation.

Another mistake is continuing to invest in an opportunity despite no credible access, no agreed business problem and no customer-side commitment. Qualification is an ongoing judgement about whether the deal deserves further investment.

The opposite mistake is overcomplicating a straightforward purchase. Match the depth of account planning to the commercial value, risk and actual buying complexity.

How can sales leaders develop these capabilities?

Enterprise selling requires more than product knowledge. Salespeople need to practise account research, stakeholder conversations, discovery, commercial justification, risk discussions and customer-confirmed progression.

Managers can coach against live opportunities by asking what the customer has decided, which decision remains open, who owns the outcome and funding, and what evidence supports the forecast. Review the quality of the customer-side evidence, not simply the number of activities completed.

For teams selling complex solutions, a structured approach to complex sales and selling to large manufacturers can support more consistent execution.

How can sales simulation software support enterprise deal reviews?

The supplied Klozers sales simulation software illustrates a structured way for salespeople and managers to examine an enterprise opportunity. The Rep Console shows the buying group, including the Economic Buyer and Economic Owner, with access ratings and a coverage assessment. It also identifies qualification and movement as distinct areas to review, rather than relying on a single subjective assessment of deal confidence.

Used in coaching, this type of exercise can prompt more precise questions: Which buying roles are represented? Where is access missing? Is there customer-confirmed evidence of progress? What assumption needs testing next? The software supports discussion and practice; its scores are not proof that an opportunity will close.

Extract from the supplied sales simulation interface. The example deal shows the Economic Buyer and Economic Owner, stakeholder access ratings and an exposed coverage assessment. The illustrative score is not a prediction of sales results.

What should you do on Monday?

Choose one active large-account opportunity. Write down the decision the customer is currently trying to make, the person responsible, the evidence they need and the next customer-owned action. Identify one important assumption you have not verified. Use your next conversation to test it rather than deliver another generic presentation.

Where the account is already a customer, consider how managing key accounts differs from acquiring a new enterprise buyer.

Frequently asked questions

Is selling to big companies the same as enterprise sales?

The terms often overlap. Both can involve complex stakeholder groups, formal governance and longer decision processes, but size alone does not determine buying complexity.

How do I find the decision-maker in a large company?

Identify who owns the business outcome, who can approve funding and who shapes the decision. These may be different people. Validate each role through discovery.

What if my contact cannot introduce me to the Economic Buyer?

Understand why. Ask which internal decision your contact can influence, what evidence they need and whether there is a legitimate route to wider stakeholder involvement. Reassess qualification if access remains limited.

Do all enterprise buyers follow the same buying stages?

No. Buying decisions and approvals differ by organisation, category, risk and circumstances. Buyer gates need not be sequential.

How do I shorten an enterprise sales cycle?

You cannot control the customer’s governance timetable. You can reduce avoidable delay by clarifying decision requirements, participants and evidence early, and agreeing meaningful next actions.

Develop stronger enterprise sales capability

For sales leaders who want their teams to improve qualification, stakeholder engagement and deal progression, Klozers can help assess current practice and identify development priorities.

The Best SaaS Sales Training & Coaching for SDR’s & AE’s

by Iain Swanston

1. SaaS Sales Training: Before you Start

How do you grow SaaS sales? How do you grow sales in your software or technology business?

Sadly most companies are doing the same generic marketing and getting the same generic results.

Growing monthly and annual recurring revenues isn’t easy for any organisation.

Behind every overnight success there is nearly always years of hardwork and maybe even some failures from which they learn and move forward.

B2B sales training can differ depending on the stage of the startup. The strategy and skills required in stage 1 Product/market fit, will vary from stage 3 Scaling.

Many companies make the mistake of jumping to stage 3 immediately and this can kill their growth. If you try and ramp up sales before you have a firm grip on the systems and processes that drive profitability, every customer you add will drive you further away from your profits.

How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel

Why B2B Marketing is Broken & How to Fix it

How to Scale a Business Super FAST

HOW TO TAKE THE GUESS WORK OUT OF GROWING YOUR ARR

Before starting any SaaS or software sales training here are a few boxes we suggest you tick so that you get the most from your investment in sales training. Sales Training can differ hugely depending on the stage of the startup.

The sales strategy and skills required in stage 1 Product/market fit will vary from stage 3 Scaling. Many companies make the mistake of jumping to stage 3 immediately and this can kill their growth.

Stage 1 – Ensure you have a proven product/market fit.

Many start-ups rush to employ sales reps and try to scale up before they have proven their product/markit fit.

Product/market fit is simply the process have taking your value proposition and proving you can sell it to someone. As you would expec,t one sale doesn’t mean you have a viable business model,but it’s a starting point.

Many B2B start ups aren’t sure how to prove their product market fit so here are some questions you should ask your team:

1a. Do we have repeat business? Although they have value one off sales don’t actually prove much becasue they won’t help you grow recurring revenues. Locking clients into an annual contract of 12 monthly payments doesn’t equal 12 sets of repeat business.

It’s not until the annual contract renews that you can get a feel for how valuable they see your product.

1b. Are your customers in the same verticals? It’s usually a good sign if you are having repeat success within the same vertical.

That’s not to say that selling across different industries is a bad thing far from it, but in the early days it’s easier when you can be hyperfocussed and branch out as part of your growth strategy.

1c. Is you product solving the same problem? Again it’s not a bad thing if your product solves multiple problems, it’s just in the early stages this can lead to generic marketing and confused sales messaging.

1d. Are you receiving a regular flow of referrals? Most people will happily recommend a product or service if they feel it will of benefit. Whilst a lack of referrals may simply be because you haven’t asked – in this case what is your Net Promoter Score? Improving both of these before you start to scale your business will only make selling easier.

Product/market fit is a journey, not one single event and takes time, customer feedback and usually many iterations from the initial concept. Each iteration should be defined, measured and tested by the user base before being accepted.

1e. Lastly, you should never under estimated the feedback loop from your early adopters. This isn’t just about changing your MVP, it’s about listening and understanding the problems from the prospects perspective.

Seemingly small changes in the sales messaging and sales process based on feedback can have a huge impact in the results you will achieve.

The same feedback loop is invaluable for tech based businesses as they can use this to develop the product roadmap post MVP.

Stage 2 – Systemise Sales

Once Product/market fit is achieved the next stage for Startups is to systemise sales. This can vary greatly, however, the general rules of thumb are, higher prices will mean more man hours are required to sell, and the larger the target customer the less automated the sales process.

Lower priced solutions targeting SME’s is more likely to be a marketing led sale and higher priced solutions to Enterprise organisations are predominantly sales led.

Systemising your B2B sales includes six main areas as follows:

creating a measurable and repeatable sales process
using automation technology where appropriate
segmenting markets and accounts
turning proven sales plays into repeatable sales process
Volume on-boarding process for new hires
gathering relevant KPI’s and metrics – closing ratios, pipeline coverage, average deal size, cost of customer acquisition, customer lifetime value and Sales Rep scorecards

Without these metrics you should not move to the next stage. The metrics should form a solid business case to investors and if they don’t you simply need to make some changes before moving forward.

Having one loss making sales rep and then adding 10 more as you scale, all the time hoping you will turn the corner of profitability isn’t recommended. Sales performance is therefore an important part of stage 2, both in terms of how you will measure it and how you will manage it.

Stage 3 – Scaling Sales

The last and final stage is scaling sales. In many cases start-ups rush to this stage due to pressure from investors or they are running out of cash. The reality is that the more time and effort you put into stages 1 and 2, makes stage 3 so much easier.

When you are ready we recommend you read “How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel”.

Stage 3 creates huge changes in the business as you move from a small, mostly development based team, to hiring multiple sales, marketing, operations and HR staff.

Costs are huge however it shouldn’t be a concern because you have a proven product/market fit (stage 1) and the right systems & processes in place that are following proven KPI’s (stage 2).

Another challenge here is the mindset of the leadership team. In most cases they have gone for years focussing on saving money, and now they need to start spending money on more sales and marketing hires.

Often this rapid growth can decrease profitability even further as new customers are onboarded.

Moving from a mindset of survival to one of growth shouldn’t be underestimated.

2. Going Outbound

Starting any Outbound sales campaign is a dangerous thing, because when Outbound is done badly it leaves a scorched earth behind.

A scorched earth approach will not only limit future growth, it will dramatically increase the churn in your sales team.

Sales Reps like winning and when they aren’t winning and earning commission, they will quickly look elsewhere.

This will add cost to your recruitment, management and training budgets, in addition to the missed market opportunities.

Going Outbound is difficult and most businesses make the mistake of simply sending a generic email (including a first name and the company name is no longer classed as personalising) and following up with a nuisance cold call.

This approach will get you some sales, but you will be leaving thousands on the table. The best outbound strategies are one to few, not one to many and they are highly coordinated campaigns that deliver higher opportunity creation rates.

This involves sales and marketing working together to come up with the right target audience, the right sales messaging, the right initial approach and the right sales plays. All of which needs to be supported by content, collateral and campaign material.

There are two primary drivers for B2B success as follows that you should be aware of:

1. The initial approach from the sales development reps need to provide a “gift”. No one likes receiving cold calls and most sales people don’t like making them. What gift can you provide that delivers value to the user that will encourage the salespeople to pick up the phone?

What is of high value to the user, but low value/cost for you to deliver?

2. The faster the user receives value from the product/service, then the more likely they are to use the service, stay engaged and complete the on boarding process.

Instant gratification motivates users so use this to your advantage. Invest heavily in your on boarding and customer success programmes, because this will reduce your churn down the line.

3. Understanding Sales Training: The Basics

To train your B2B sales team to be the best that they can and bring in the most sales that they can, you have to use the science of learning. Just like students in a classroom, your sales team is going to study and work hard to try to bring about the best results.

For any student, whether they’re in a traditional classroom or not, there is a general 70:20:10 rule of learning. This is a widely-adopted rule that applies to nearly all scenarios of teaching and learning.

To train your sales team to their maximum level of efficiency, follow this:

70% on-the-job training

20% coaching based on performance

10% in-classroom learning

If you follow this basic guideline, you’ll see that your team will respond better to training and be able to do more with what they’ve learned from their time in training.

Another rule that you should pay attention to in regards to training your team is the idea of repetition. You can’t expect that every member of your team remember every rule, procedure, and policy that you’ve told them for the rest of their lives.

In fact, most people can only retain about 20% of what they’ve learned over a month. To reduce the amount of information forgotten (and ensure that your team is up to speed), you have to train everyone on your team continually.

In terms of sales training content, whilst every business is different we would advise you include topics like how to engage buyers, selling skills, building a sales pipeline, consultative selling skills, reducing sales cycles and account growth.

This means that you need to train even the most senior employees of your team continuously.

TREATING YOUR SALES TEAM AS STUDENTS

Whether you’re training a new group of salespeople, or repeating an old lesson to a group of executives, you should keep a classroom-like state in mind. All of your sales representatives are students when they’re in training. Therefore, you have to act like a teacher to perform effective sales coaching.

Think about some of the best strategies that teachers in traditional classrooms use. For example: “See. Do. Teach.” This is a phrase that’s widely adopted by teachers who are looking to make effective students.

What this means is that if you want your salespeople to be as effective as possible, you have to show them what to do, ask them to do it, and then require that they teach someone else how to do it. Not only is this repetitive. It also requires your team to show their skills in three different ways.

After a student (or salesperson) achieves this line of practice, they are said to have mastered the material. However, we all know that one listen-in and two practice calls aren’t enough to make effective salespeople.

REACTING TO PROGRESS MADE AS A COACH

When you’re teaching a new or old group of salespeople, you should see the act more as a way of coaching them, rather than training them. We’re sure you know, your role as a coach for the sales team is to give individuals feedback based on what they do.

Rather than dictating how they should conduct sales calls, you should give the salesperson feedback based on what they could improve on. Don’t forget to highlight things they’ve done correctly as this will enforce them to do those things correctly again.

As you’re acting as a coach, it’s also essential to focus on one performance indicator at a time. Think about the one quality that you think would send this salesperson above and beyond as they’re conducting sales calls and conferences.

Don’t overwhelm your sales team by picking too many areas of focus at once. Let them ease their way into making sales by fixing one attribute at a time. You’ll also find that coaching and teaching them this way is more manageable as their focus remains on one thing rather than several things.

SALES MANAGERS

Often the most neglected but important role in sales is that of sales managers and sales leaders. These are the people who set the bar for sales performance and what is acceptable or not. In many cases sales managers were either the top sales rep or simply a manager with little or no sales experience.

Whether you buy in experienced sales managers or develop your own sales leaders this investment in talent will repay itself many times over.

SALES PERFORMANCE

It’s worthwhile noting that Sales Coaching and Sales Management are very different skills but both play an important part in building and increasing sales performance. Where possible you should separate the roles as a coach cannot make a coachee do anything where as Sales Managers can.

SELLING RESOURCES

Your SaaS team will inevitably need resources to help them make sales. These resources will range from research tools, to prospecting tools, through to klozing tools like online presentation and digital sign off tools.

Other than mentioning Microsoft which everybody has anyway, we deliberately don’t provide a list of resources in order that this blog can remain vendor neutral, however, we’re more than happy to talk through the resources that we have found to work best.

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING

When you’re training salespeople most companies default to the traditional model whereby they hire a trainer for a day or two days in house training. This may work for some but from experience we have found that at least one member of your team will leave. It then becomes financially impossible to have a trainer return to train the one new hire.

We recommend documenting all the training in an electronic B2B Sales Playbook which is living, working document that can be updated and refined as your team matures.

Our Playbooks provide a single point of reference and storage for everything a sales person would need in order to be successful selling tech based solutions.

The Playbooks are built in Microsoft OneNote and work across both Windows and Mac devices.

WORKING TOWARDS LONG-TERM SUCCESS

Don’t assume that your sales force can be taught in just a week or even a couple of weeks. The coaching process should be viewed as a multi-year process that is made to bring salespeople from amateurs to coaches themselves.

As you’re conducting your sales coaching program, you should never assume that someone doesn’t need training. No matter how much previous training and experience they have, you should be prepared to put them through a sales program. Even with these ‘experts,’ you should work to build their strengths.

While your sales representatives are succeeding and learning more about their role in the sales process, you should note how they could fill higher positions in the future. For example, you may have a sales representative who is showing great promise for a leadership role. Take note of this and encourage the representative to work towards a higher position like this.

Working towards long-term success means that you should consistently be working to better your sales representatives so that they can bring more business to your company.

ONLINE SALES COACHING

Traditional tech based sales training focuses on what we call the tactical part of sales training. Whilst this is hugely important, there is an inevitable ceiling that is created once you have optimised this part of your sales.

Klozers will work with your management team and ensure we deliver a holistic solution that maximises the market opportunity.

If you’re looking for a program to complement your on-the-job sales training, look no further than our online sales coaching. Our sales experts will coach your sales team to be the best they can be by highlighting strengths and building upon any perceived weak points.

We know that you’re looking for a strong sales force. The only way to get this is to invest in quality tech focused sales coaching like ours.

Klozers provides training for SaaS companies via our offices in United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the USA.

Back to Table of Contents

Tailoring Our SaaS Training to Meet Your Teams Needs

Every sales team is unique, with its own strengths, weaknesses, and goals. To achieve improved sales results it’s essential to tailor the sales training to meet their specific needs. This approach not only improves sales results but also aligns with the individual skills and career paths of your team members, from new salespeople to seasoned directors.

Understanding Your Team’s Composition and Goals

Before you begin any training session, it’s crucial to review your team’s current performance, sales processes and sales skills to identify areas where they need the most help. Are your sales reps struggling with closing deals or qualifying leads? Do they need better tools to convince prospects or to articulate the value proposition of your product? Understanding these challenges will help you design a curriculum that addresses these pain points directly, ensuring the training is applicable and relevant.

Creating a Customized Training Program

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always work in sales program. Your team might benefit from a combination of consultative selling techniques, practical exercises, and real-life scenarios that mirror their day-to-day challenges. Incorporating blended learning, including both virtual and live training sessions, allows you to cater to different learning styles and ensures that every team member, regardless of their role, can engage fully with the material.

For instance, new salespeople might need more focus on the basics of SaaS sales, such as understanding the sales funnel and mastering CRM usage. In contrast, experienced sales reps may benefit more from advanced tactics, like improving their ability to handle objections or refining their approach to securing renewals.

Continuous Improvement and Support

Sales training is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. After the initial training is completed, it’s essential to continue supporting your team with regular coaching sessions, review meetings, and feedback loops. This continuous education ensures that your team members are not just trained but are also evolving with the ever-changing demands of the SaaS industry.

By focusing on the specific needs of your team, you can build a strong foundation for long-term sales success. Remember, the goal is to enable your team to not only meet but exceed expectations, creating a sales culture where every team member feels confident and capable of driving the company’s success.

Realizing the Benefits of a Tailored Approach

When your sales program is customized to your team’s needs, the results speak for themselves. Your team will not only be better equipped to handle sales calls and demos but also more capable of developing lasting relationships with customers and decision-makers. This approach fosters a personal brand for each salesperson, making them more effective in the eyes of prospects and clients alike.

Finally, a tailored training program helps your organization stay ahead of the competition by continually refining and adapting your sales strategy to meet the evolving needs of the market. This commitment to excellence is what separates the good from the great in SaaS sales, ensuring your team not only reaches but surpasses its sales goals.

By focusing on the specific needs of your team, you can transform your sales training from a generic program into a powerful tool that drives measurable results and sets your organization on the path to long-term success.

Bespoke Sales Training

Sales Simulation

Not sure which fits?

Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?

1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?

2. Why is Sales Training so effective?

3. What happens before training takes place?

4. What is the aim of Sales Training

5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?

6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team

7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services

8. Build a Selling System

In Conclusion

Sales Coaching

Key takeaways

What is sales coaching?

Why invest in sales coaching?

What is the difference between sales training and sales coaching?

When should you coach, and when should you not?

Which sales coaching model should you use?

Coaching one deal with GROW

What can a manager coach?

What should a sales coaching session look like?

Coach one to one

Work on a live deal

Agree one action, written by the salesperson

Give specific praise and specific criticism

Coach after product training

Use your CRM to choose what to coach

How does certification change sales coaching?

One definition of good

Requirements a manager can assess

Coaching sessions at day 30, 60 and 90

A certificate that expires

Certified Coach: a certification for the manager

How do you coach a remote sales team?

Who coaches the sales managers?

What should HR and L&D leaders ask before buying sales coaching?

How do you measure sales coaching?

Common questions about sales coaching

1. What is a Sales Funnel?

2. How to build a SaaS Sales Funnel

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

3. The three main stage of SaaS development

4. Build a marketing funnel before your sales funnel

5. Advertising to fill your Sales Funnel

6. How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel

7. What are the Stages of a SaaS Sales Funnel?

8. When do I demo my SaaS product to customers?

9. SaaS Sales Funnel examples

10. SaaS sales funnel metrics

11. SaaS Proposal submissions

12. Pricing your SaaS contracts

13. Why the sales funnel is so important for SaaS providers

14. Managing prospects expectations

15. The Rise of SaaS solutions

Channel Planning in Sales Management: Choosing the Right Route to Market

How should you choose a sales channel?

Where is the buying decision actually influenced?

Should you use direct or indirect sales channels?

Why does a partner channel need two commercial cases?

How do you avoid channel conflict?

How should you measure channel performance?

Channel planning FAQs

How to Sell to Big Companies: Navigate the Buying Process

What makes selling to big companies different?

How do you choose which large companies to target?

How do you approach a large company without relying on a generic pitch?

Who actually influences and approves the purchase?

What are buyer gates, and do they happen in a fixed order?

How do you build a business case the customer can defend?

How do you work with procurement, legal and risk teams?

How do you recognise genuine progress in a long sales cycle?

What mistakes prevent sellers from winning enterprise accounts?

How can sales leaders develop these capabilities?

How can sales simulation software support enterprise deal reviews?

What should you do on Monday?

Frequently asked questions

Develop stronger enterprise sales capability

1. SaaS Sales Training: Before you Start