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- 🔥 Try these sales pipeline plays
🔥 Try these sales pipeline plays
The tactics and the tech stack to help you hit your pipeline targets this year
Ian Ito
September 06, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Issue #245
Pipeline, pipeline, pipeline.
It’s always top-of-mind. Heck, I even dream about it (🌊…🏄🏻‍♂️).
Filling the sales pipeline is a never-ending battle. The targets get larger, and it can feel like each quarter there is something new to try…or something new to buy.
But here's the deal, there are GTM plays to run and then there are tools that support them.
Both are crucial, but the strategy needs to come first. The tools then enabled the execution.
In today's email, we’re going deep on pipeline creation, with a focus on sales-led growth:
The big picture: The plays to build pipeline in 2024 (sourced by GTM gurus)
The tech stack: The sales stack to support your outbound plays
The tactics: How this one company is scaling outreach with an AI SDR
Let's dive in!
Ian at SaaS Weekly
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This week in SaaS
• Acquisition | Paylocity, an HR and payroll software company, is acquiring corporate spend startup Airbase for $325 million, aiming to expand into the office of the CFO (Link)
• Product launch | Salesforce introduces xGen-Sales and xLAM, two advanced AI models designed to automate complex sales tasks and trigger actions within the CRM, doubling down as an AI-agent-hub (Link)
• Tech moves | Anthropic launches Claude Enterprise, a subscription plan featuring a 500,000 token context window, GitHub integration, and enhanced admin controls, positioning it to compete with OpenAI (Link)
• Talent wars | Silicon Valley and Seattle dominate U.S. AI talent, housing 58% of the country's AI engineers, but Seattle trails in early-stage funding, ranking 6th behind other tech hubs (Link)
Bookmarks & timeless classics
• Paul Graham | Founder mode (Link)
• Jellyfish | Founder-led sales with Bryce Roberts (Link)
• SaaStr | 7 things the best sales reps get right and 8 ways the rest make things worse (Link)
• GTM Now | The ultimate cold calling playbook for sales leaders and teams (Link)
Sales-led growth plays
GTM gurus have spoken. Across 350+ CROs and CMOs of software brands, four themes emerged to drive pipeline growth in 2024.
👉Events aren't dead. Virtual conferences and intimate dinners are producing 28x returns and 40% conversion rates to opportunities.
👉Prioritize cross-team collaboration. Aligning product, marketing, and sales teams around target accounts using a common propensity score.
👉Personalization at scale. Creative outbound tactics, like SDR personal pages, are generating a significant pipeline ($340,000 from 80 meetings).
👉Experiment with entry-level pricing. Consider removing legacy pricing floors in self-serve offerings while tightening freemium paywalls to accelerate conversions.
Kyle Poyar @ Growth Unhinged
As the sales tech landscape consolidates and evolves, AI is reshaping how SaaS companies execute their go-to-market strategies. Here are the layers of the stack you need to know about.
👉AI-powered prospecting. Tools like Clay and Unify are enabling hyper-personalized outreach at scale, dramatically improving conversion rates.
👉Autonomous SDRs. AI agents are augmenting or replacing traditional SDR functions, working 24/7 to generate and qualify leads more efficiently.
👉Data-driven sales coaching. Real-time AI coaching tools, like Rilla, are improving rep performance for both inside and outside sales teams.
Sabrina Wu @ Aspiring for Intelligence
Double-clicking into the AI SDRs point. There is a growing wave of using GenAI to write copy for multi-touchpoint sequences.
But regardless of whether you purchase a single vendor or use your own LLM orchestrator to generate content, here are a few things to try.
👉Experiment with AI-powered sequence execution. Use AI tools to automate your entire outreach process, from initial research to personalized follow-ups.
👉Test AI-generated creative content. Implement AI-crafted unconventional strategies like memes or GIFs in follow-up emails to boost response rates.
👉Build an AI-enhanced growth flywheel. Use AI to continuously improve your sales process based on real-world data and customer interactions.
Zachary DeWitt @ Notorious PLG
SaaS Weekly resources
1) The SaaS Weekly Database: Search Thousands of the Best SaaS Articles and Resources
2) Generative AI Tracker: B2B SaaS Companies Adding GenAI Capabilities
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