Revenue generation is a process to generate income for the business through a set of strategies that involve from setting up goals to marketing to sales to customer success. Businesses can’t survive without revenue so it should be the foremost goal for the management, as well as different heads in the company.

Revenue funnel

Not everyone who is visiting your website or has signed up for your services will start paying you upfront so it’s very important to understand the revenue funnel (also known as the sales funnel) to better engage with them and eventually convert them.

The Revenue funnel involves 5 steps that companies want their prospects to go through before they finally become their customers.

• Awareness, in which prospects become aware of the product or service a business offers
• Interest, in which prospects show interest in a product or service by visiting the website or downloading any marketing material
• Evaluation, in which prospects evaluate the company’s product or services by doing some research, as well as evaluate the other solutions in the market
• Decision, in which prospects make final decisions about the product, a discussion starts to reach an agreement
• Purchase, in which prospects finally buy the product or services

Key elements responsible for SaaS revenue generation

• Define your company goals – This is the first step, define your goals clearly and avoid any confusion.
• A well-crafted plan – Without a proper plan, it’s difficult to achieve any goal, efforts will go in vain even if you try harder so having a great plan considering your goal and success ingredients necessary to have.
• Set up a high-performance team – Teamwork is very important when trying to achieve a company goal, so having a high-performance team is a blessing.
• Delegate the tasks properly – Identifying your employee’s skills & abilities will help you delegate tasks accordingly which in-results, will improve team performance.
• Team coordination (Marketing, Sales & Customer Success) – Silos, communication gaps, and conflicts affect company success, so having better coordination among the teams is necessary to achieve success.
• High-quality data – The internet is crowded, so much data is available so it’s harder to find & target the right customers. Get the right data who you want to market to.
• Revenue-focused marketing – Marketing through every channel is not a good idea so selecting channels based on your business type can be an effective strategy that can give quality leads, more sales & revenue.
• Better support – Have you ever felt sad & irritated when you don’t get support on time? Same feelings your prospects might have if they don’t get proper support which will create a bad impression, which in result you might lose that prospect.
• Negotiation – This is the most important phase as negotiation is key to converting your prospect into a customer. A bad negotiation will cause you to lose your prospect so be prepared before you get on a call or meet in person with the prospects.
• Onboarding – Onboarding is a perfect opportunity to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers, as well as to show your company culture to them.
• Nurture – Make sure your customers are nurtured properly which will help you build a long-lasting relationship with them & increase the customer LTV. Some suggestions:
  • Send automated emails for different interactions users have on the website, from welcome emails for signups to blog newsletters to help materials to company updates
  • Inviting them personally for events or webinars
  • Greet them at their festivals
  • Update them with new product’s features or updates
  • Provide them with some offers or coupons
  • Contacting them to ask if they are facing any issues
  • Providing them with the support materials
  • Quick response to their issues or queries
  • Provide many options to contact your business

Role of each department

• Marketing – The Marketing department must focus on generating high-quality leads, check for MQL, and keep track of those leads where they are in the funnel. They also need to have consistent discussions with pre-sales, sales, customer success & account executives to understand their goals, issues, requirement & other feedback.
• Pre-sales – They must be trained to explain company products or services to the prospects in a good manner
• Sales – Once a lead is qualified from the pre-sales side, now it’s the turn for sales to engage with them by having in-person calls or meetings to further qualify them in the funnel & eventually convert them
• Customer success – This part is important to maintain better relationships with the customers. From onboarding to help them whenever they need to provide them with the support materials to updating them with the latest product features or services will make them happy.

Ways to generate more revenue?

Increase the number of customers

Try to generate more leads as not everyone who visits your website going to be your customer; only 2-3% will become your customers at max depending on industry type so the rule is more leads will lead to more customers, and more customers will lead to more revenue.

Provide value to your customers

Even if you are able to generate many leads, it would be difficult for you to convert them into customers if they don’t get what was promised. A great product is loved by customers and that’s what brings in more money.
Businesses need to focus on providing a great product, a product that can solve users’ issues and can help them grow their businesses, something that helps and provides value to society. For e.g., Apple created iPhone, giving quality products along with better security that everyone loves.

Focus on repeat customers

Bring them back by giving freebies (Coupons, Festival offers, Combo offers at a lower price), can:

• Increase the average transaction size
• Increase the frequency of transactions per customer

Raise your prices

With time, companies keep improving their products or services so it costs additional expenses. Companies should charge more considering additional expenses, as well as to increase more revenue.

More engagement is key

Keep engaging with your customers even if they feel happy about your products/services, take advantage of it by encouraging them to upgrade the plan or buy other products in the inventory or to spread the word.

Role of tools in revenue generation

Data is necessary to make the right decision so with the help of different analytical tools one can analyze website & users’ data and make a better decision out of that. Some tools are:

• Web analytics tools – GA, Amplitude
• Heatmap tools – Hotjar, Luckyorange, MS Clarity
• CRM/MA tools – HubSpot, Zoho
• BI tools – Tableau, MS Power BI

Conclusion

Hope you went through all the points and understood them properly. To be good at revenue generation, you need to execute the above points properly, as well as brainstorm more ideas you can apply to that. Revenue generation is a slow process as a prospect has to go through many stages in the funnel before he/she finally converts so patiently execute that and you will get success for sure.