If you're a SaaS founder who's been closing deals on instinct and relationships, this post is for you. I'm going to walk through exactly how to build a repeatable sales process — step by step, tool by tool — without hiring anyone. You can do all of this yourself, and you should, because nobody understands your product and your customers better than you do right now.
This isn't theory. Everything here comes from what I've built across my own companies and client engagements. It works for B2B SaaS in the £5K-50K ACV range. If you're selling £500/month subscriptions with a self-serve motion, some of this still applies, but you'll lean more on product-led growth than outbound.
Step 1: Study your last 10 deals
Before you build anything, you need to understand what's already working. Pull up your last 10 closed-won deals and answer these questions for each one:
- Where did they come from? (Inbound, referral, outbound, event?)
- How long did the sales cycle take from first contact to closed-won?
- Who was the decision maker? (Title, seniority, department)
- What was the trigger that made them look for a solution?
- What objections came up?
- What was the ACV?
- Are they still a customer? If they churned, why?
If you don't have 10 deals, use whatever you have. Even five is enough to spot patterns. What you're looking for is the signal in the noise. Which deals closed fastest? Which had the highest ACV? Which customers are happiest today?
I did this exercise for a client last year and discovered that 7 of their 12 best customers came from a single use case they hadn't even been targeting in their messaging. Their entire outbound was aimed at a different persona. The data was right there in the CRM — nobody had looked.
Step 2: Define your ICP from reality
Your Ideal Customer Profile should be one sentence. Not a persona document with a stock photo and a fictional name. One sentence that anyone on your team could repeat.
Here's how to write it:
Look at your deal analysis from step one. Find the pattern. It's usually a combination of company size, industry, specific problem, and buying trigger. Write it down.
Example: "Series A to Series B B2B SaaS companies with 20-100 employees who've just hired their first marketing person and realised their website isn't localised."
That's from Globalize, my own company. Notice it's specific enough to be useful (I can search for these companies) but not so specific that the market is tiny. The key details are: stage (Series A-B), size (20-100), trigger (first marketing hire), and problem (no localisation).
Write yours down. Stick it somewhere visible. Every decision you make about who to target, what to write, and where to spend time should pass through this filter.
Step 3: Build a simple qualification framework
I know BANT. I know MEDDICC. I've used both. And for an early-stage SaaS founder, they're overkill. You need something simpler. Four questions:
- Problem. Do they have the problem your product solves? Not "could they theoretically benefit" — do they have the problem right now, and do they know it?
- Budget. Can they pay? This doesn't mean they've allocated budget. It means they're a real business that can afford your price point. A two-person startup probably can't pay £2K/month. A 50-person SaaS company probably can.
- Urgency. Is there a reason this needs to happen now? A regulatory deadline, a funding round, a competitive threat, a new market launch? Without urgency, deals drift forever.
- Access. Can you reach the person who can say yes? If you're talking to an intern who "will pass it along," you don't have a deal. You have a contact.
If a prospect ticks all four, they get a demo. If they tick three, they go on the nurture list. If they tick two or fewer, they're not qualified — don't waste your time.
This sounds obvious, but most founders I work with are giving demos to everyone who asks. Last quarter, one client was doing 12 demos a week. I audited the pipeline and found that 9 of those 12 weekly demos were with prospects who failed at least two qualification criteria. That's 9 hours a week of demos that were never going to close. We cut it to 4-5 qualified demos per week, and the close rate tripled.
Step 4: Set up your pipeline
Use HubSpot. The free tier is genuinely good for this stage. If you're already on Pipedrive or Close, that's fine too. The tool matters less than the structure.
Five stages. No more:
- Lead. They've expressed interest or you've identified them. No conversation yet.
- Qualified. You've had a conversation and they pass the four qualification criteria.
- Demo. They've seen the product. They understand what it does and roughly what it costs.
- Proposal. You've sent a proposal or quote. They're evaluating.
- Closed. Won or lost. Always mark lost deals and note why.
For each deal, track these properties: company name, contact name, deal value, expected close date, next step (one sentence), and source (where they came from). That's it. Don't add 15 custom fields you'll never fill in.
The critical habit: update your pipeline every day. Not weekly, not when you remember. Every day, spend 10 minutes moving deals between stages, updating next steps, and marking dead deals as lost. A clean pipeline is worth more than any sales tool you'll ever buy.
Step 5: Write outbound messages that work
Most outbound is terrible. "I noticed your company is growing fast and thought you might benefit from..." — delete. Everyone sends this. It says nothing.
What works for founder-to-founder outreach is specificity. You're not an SDR at a big company. You're the person who built the product. Use that.
Here are three templates that actually get replies:
Template 1: The observation. Reference something specific about their business that connects to the problem you solve.
"Hi [name], I was looking at [their product] and noticed your docs are only in English, but you've got pricing in EUR and a .de domain. Are you getting pull from German-speaking markets? I built Globalize specifically for this — continuous localisation for SaaS. Happy to show you how [similar company] handled it if useful."
Template 2: The mutual connection. If you share investors, customers, or a community, lead with that.
"Hi [name], saw you in the [community/accelerator]. I work with a few companies from [community] on their go-to-market — specifically building the sales process so founders can stop being the only person who sells. Worth a quick chat, or bad timing?"
Template 3: The value-first. Give something useful before you ask for anything.
"Hi [name], I pulled together some data on how [their category] companies are pricing in DACH markets — thought it might be relevant given your expansion. Happy to share if useful. No pitch attached."
Notice what all three have in common: they're short, they reference something specific, and they make it easy to say yes or no. No paragraphs of preamble. No "I hope this email finds you well."
Step 6: Follow up (this is where the money is)
I'm going to tell you something that will sound wrong: 80% of deals close after the 3rd to 5th follow-up. Most founders send one email, get no reply, and assume it's a no.
It's not a no. It's "I'm busy and your email got buried."
Here's the follow-up cadence I use:
- Day 0: Initial outreach.
- Day 3: Short follow-up. "Just bumping this up — worth a quick call?"
- Day 7: Add value. Share a relevant article, a case study, or a data point.
- Day 14: Direct ask. "I'll assume this isn't a priority right now. If things change, I'm here. Shall I check back in a month?"
- Day 30: Final touch. "Following up from last month. Still relevant, or shall I close this out?"
Five touches over 30 days. Not aggressive, not desperate. Just persistent. Set this up as a sequence in HubSpot so it runs automatically. You write the emails once, and the system sends them on schedule.
A client I worked with had 47 "dead" leads in their CRM — all prospects who'd had one interaction and never replied to a follow-up. We ran a re-engagement sequence on all 47. Eight responded. Three became customers. That was £36K in ARR that was just sitting there.
Step 7: Measure and iterate
Once the process is running, you need three numbers. Just three:
- Pipeline coverage ratio. Total pipeline value divided by your revenue target. You want 3-4x coverage. If your target is £50K this quarter, you need £150-200K in pipeline.
- Conversion rate by stage. What percentage of leads become qualified? What percentage of demos become proposals? What percentage of proposals close? This tells you where the process is leaking.
- Average sales cycle. How many days from first contact to closed-won? This tells you how far ahead you need to fill the pipeline.
Review these weekly. Not monthly — weekly. Sales cycles in SaaS are short enough that monthly reviews mean you're always looking at stale data.
You can do this yourself
Nothing in this post requires hiring anyone. It requires time, discipline, and honesty about what's working and what's not. If you spend two focused weekends setting up the foundation (steps 1-4) and then commit to 30 minutes a day on execution (steps 5-7), you'll have a functioning sales process within a month.
Is it perfect? No. Will you need to iterate? Constantly. But it's a system, and a system beats improvisation every time.
And if you'd rather have someone build it alongside you in real-time — that's exactly what I do. But you don't need to. The information is all here.