How to Nail Sales Growth in 2024: SaaS Prospecting and Emails That Get Solid Traction 

B2B sales leaders are reporting increased revenues in 2024, yet SaaS sales prospecting is getting harder than ever. 

What gives?

Industry research shows that successful sales teams are working smarter, not harder. They know what their challenges are, and they’re using automation and AI to meet them head-on.

Here’s a closer look at how you can nail annual sales growth rates for the rest of 2024.

The good and the bad of SaaS sales motions

Want the good news in numbers?

Even if sales growth is slowing, the software-as-a-service industry is going strong with overall sales revenue expected to reach $339.10 billion in 2024. Projections show that revenue should grow 19.28% annually, reaching $818.80 billion by 2029.

But the challenges of SaaS sales performance remain:

• Customer scrutiny: Software buyers rigorously screen their options before making a purchase, with 82% taking one to six months to evaluate software, and this number isn’t expected to go down given the current market conditions. 98% of buyers take the time to pore through customer reviews and ratings before choosing a provider. 
• Long sales cycles: 58% of B2B companies are seeing longer sales cycles as potential customers try to make their budget go further and include more stakeholders in purchasing decisions. An average of five people make up the software buying committee. And the market trends suggest that the finance team is usually roped in. With customers pushing to maximize the value they get from every purchase, 69% of sales professionals say they find it increasingly difficult to sell. 
• Competitive market: 33% of customers who are ditching their software providers claim they’re doing so because they found a more attractive competitor. 

Key problems in SaaS sales

Teams also face challenges within the sales process and lifecycle. Just acknowledging where you may be cutting corners or working ineffectively can go a long way to helping improve your sales approaches.

Difficulty in prospecting and lead generation

Sales managers in B2B software companies sometimes try to boost short-term sales figures by abandoning their buyer persona and ideal customer profile, or even the target market, in favor of a shotgun approach (i.e. send emails to anyone and everyone). 

Alternatively, they score leads improperly, overlook actual customer pains, or create personas using assumptions rather than data. As a result, they end up losing sight of their ideal customers, leading to wasted time and resources as they try to nurture prospects that will never move down the sales funnel. 

Low email open and response rates

Cold outreach requires mailboxes with email protocols properly set up. Without them, your mailbox is an easy target to get blocked.

Even messages that manage to land in an inbox might never be opened if the subject line is weak. And those that do get opened may never get a response if the content and CTA are subpar. 

If you bought your lead list from an unreliable third-party provider, your SaaS emails may be reaching unqualified leads.

High customer churn

20% of customers plan to downgrade/cancel their software or purchase from another vendor. 

Here are the top three reasons businesses replace their software provider:

• The software costs too much
• Their budget was slashed
• They found a better solution

Poor or no follow-ups

Many sales representatives never send a follow-up. This means a lot of potential revenue is left on the table.

You could be missing out on leads that may need just a bit of nurturing to warm up. And when follow-ups happen, SDR might mistime the cadence or forget to do them on time.

Recipes for successful SaaS sales

Here’s the bright side: With AI tools for B2B sales at your disposal, you can tackle the common challenges of SaaS sales operations. 

Here are the ingredients for a successful campaign.

Prospecting

42% of sales managers say selling has become more difficult because of low-quality leads. 

Cloud-based content creation platform Ceros described this situation as volume over value: Reps were so bogged down by workload that they were unable to build meaningful connections with prospects. Ceros found a solution in HubSpot’s Sales Hub, a platform that allowed them to streamline prospecting and pursue high-quality leads in a shared dashboard. 

AI-powered tools and virtual sales reps streamline the sales process with a targeted approach to prospecting. They help you filter out highly qualified leads, meaning your sales team can get the most out of their outreach efforts and showcase consistent sales growth. One way to do this is with intent signals that provide valuable insights into a prospective customer’s timely buying appetite. 

AiSDR comes with access to a database of 700+ million professionals and intent filtering that lets you find companies who’ve recently completed a round of funding, opened a new job position for software developers, released company news that hints at client potential, and more. You can even refine your search in other languages or search for specific positions such as Geschäftsführer — the German equivalent of CEO.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, and Apollo can also help teams prioritize the right accounts by providing data and insights on prospects more likely to convert. 

High-converting sales emails

86% of B2B customers are more likely to purchase from businesses that personalize their messaging, but over half say sales professionals fail to grasp their unique goals. 

AiSDR provides a virtual SDR for ongoing selling that personalizes messages on autopilot using lead data from your database. It can also take information from a prospect’s three most recent LinkedIn posts to craft a message that will resonate at a personal level. 

High-converting emails also depend on subject lines to increase open rates and CTAs to get readers to the next stage. 

A good subject will highlight how the email will benefit its recipient, pique interest, and create a sense of urgency. A CTA will clearly state what it wants the reader to do — instead of asking, “Would you like to receive our newsletters?”, it will tell them, “Join our newsletter.”

HubSpot’s ChatSpot lets you draft email templates with different tones, sales strategies, and sales tactics. You can also use its A/B testing feature to find which subject lines and CTAs work best. Mailchimp is a good bet if you’d like to use real-time behavior data to send out high-converting sales emails. 

Email follow-ups

Prevent your prospective customers from backing out of deals because of long sales cycles by keeping your brand top-of-mind with timely follow-ups. 

How often and how far apart should your follow-up sales emails be sent? The answer depends on your aim. Do you want to generate leads or raise brand awareness? Maybe you’re finally trying to schedule a meeting with your reps?

AI tools like AiSDR consider goals like this when automating nurturing sequences and tracking results, taking the guesswork out of the process. You can also use HubSpot’s marketing tools to automate your email workflows. Instantly is another useful tool for automating outreach email campaigns.

Success stories 

AiSDR is easily configured to tackle most sales outreach tasks. From automated prospecting and outreach to personalized nurturing emails and responding to leads within 10 minutes, AiSDR has helped many companies automate and scale their outreach.

Here are some success stories from AiSDR customers.

Castellum.AI

Castellum.AI, a compliance and risk management platform, was having difficulty personalizing its inbound responses fast enough, which hampered their organic sales growth. The team was so strapped for time that they found themselves choosing between lengthy personalization and sending out ineffective generic templates. 

To hit their sales goals, Castellum wanted an email automation tool capable of extracting data from LinkedIn and HubSpot lead lists to quickly add personal information to its messages.

AiSDR offered a solution. It combined LinkedIn and HubSpot data with prospects’ online activities and interactions with Castellum.AI to craft more than ten nurturing sequences that delivered unique messages. 

Results: ~70% open rate | 9-17% reply rate | 3.7% conversion rate

The Partner Sales

AiSDR also improved sales prospecting and processes for The Partner Sales (TPS), an international team of business developers, CRM and ERP specialists, and sales professionals. 

TPS wanted to scale their outreach activities without compromising on email quality or personalization, but their small team could not tailor all emails and send consistent follow-ups, resulting in missed opportunities.

AiSDR created detailed personas and wrote and sent unique emails that reflected the brand’s overall messaging. In seven days, TPS was already sending ~60 personalized emails each day. 

Results: 61.56% open rate | 7.49% response rate | 4.68% conversion rate | 18 meet-ups booked in the week before a key event