Playbook / Lessons / Sales and advertising

Improve the top of the sales funnel

Tunguz describes a four-stage startup funnel in which a Sales Development Rep qualifies a prospect into a lead and an Account Executive qualifies it further into an opportunity and closes it. He argues that improving the early stages, especially prospect and lead qualification, saves go-to-market time and improves unit economics such as customer acquisition cost and payback period.

“Most startups employ a four stage funnel: prospect, lead, opportunity, customer.”— Tomasz Tunguz, Sales Funnel Optimization for SaaS Startups, Mar 2015

Do this

Count how many prospects reached each funnel stage last month and how many hours each stage took you.

More in this pack

• Give every follow-up a reason
• Follow up on every non-reply
• Price is based on value, not cost
• Test one acquisition channel at a time

Get your plan

All steps · Trust · Pricing