Sales process
Your B2B SaaS Sales Process Is Probably Leaking Revenue
Most sales processes don't fail loudly. They leak. Deals stay in pipeline, conversations feel positive, the forecast slips one month at a time, and nobody can point at the moment it went wrong.
The leaks are predictable. Below are the six that show up most often in B2B SaaS companies under €2M ARR, and what has to be defined to close each one.
Written by Merel Roest, Founder & GTM Consultant at Blackbird GTM.
The six leaks
Leak 1 - Poor qualification
Every lead becomes an opportunity. Interest gets treated as intent, and the pipeline fills with companies that were curious rather than buying. The cost isn't the bad deal, it's the time it takes from the good ones.
Leak 2 - Discovery without progression
Good conversations, no meaningful next step. The buyer described a problem, everyone enjoyed the call, and nothing was agreed that requires the buyer to do something. Discovery that doesn't produce commitment is research, not sales.
Leak 3 - Undefined stages
Opportunities move stages because an administrative action happened, not because the buyer progressed. "Proposal sent" is something you did. It says nothing about whether the buyer intends to act.
Leak 4 - No clear exit criteria
Deals stay in pipeline indefinitely because nothing defines when a deal is dead. A pipeline that only grows is not a pipeline, it's an archive.
Leak 5 - Founder dependency
Deals only move when the founder joins the call. That's not a closing skill, it's a missing process. It also caps how many deals can run in parallel.
Leak 6 - Volume mistaken for quality
A large pipeline does not mean predictable future revenue. Three well-qualified deals with a named decision process forecast better than thirty conversations.
What makes a sales process repeatable?
A repeatable process defines what has to be true before a deal moves forward. The frame is simple: ICP, qualification, discovery, decision process, next step, close.
- ICP: which companies are worth pursuing, and which are explicitly not
- Qualification: the criteria that turn interest into an opportunity, applied the same way by everyone
- Discovery: the problem in the buyer's own words, its cost, and what happens if they do nothing
- Decision process: who decides, who signs, what has to be checked internally, and by when
- Next step: a specific action with an owner and a date, agreed with the buyer
- Close: what's already been confirmed, so the final step is a formality rather than a surprise
How do I know which leak is costing me most?
Take your last twenty deals and mark where each one stopped. Leaks cluster. If most died after a good first conversation, you have a discovery and progression problem. If most died late, your decision process was never mapped. If deals never entered the pipeline properly at all, qualification is the leak.
The point isn't to fix all six. It's to find the one that costs you the most and fix that first.
Sales process check
Ask these about your current pipeline, not your ideal one.
- 01What has to be true for a lead to become an opportunity?
- 02What does each stage require the buyer to have done?
- 03When is a deal officially dead?
- 04Which deals moved forward in the last two weeks, and what moved them?
- 05Can someone other than the founder describe the buyer's decision process?
- 06How much of your pipeline has no dated next step?
The Blackbird GTM view
A pipeline full of opportunities is useless if you can't explain which ones are actually likely to close.
Sales process work has a bad reputation because it's usually delivered as documentation nobody uses. Done properly, it's the opposite: fewer stages, sharper criteria, and a shared definition of what progress means.
Merel Roest has led B2B SaaS sales as Head of Sales, built and ran a €1.7M direct sales pipeline, grew ARR by 40% and increased average contract duration by 66%. She works with founders and commercial leaders on ICP, messaging, sales process, qualification and commercial organisation.
Where to look next
- Once the leaks are closed, the next question is what actually makes a pipeline predictable.
- Qualification only works on top of an ICP that helps sales decide who not to pursue.
- A documented process is also the precondition for whether your process is ready for a sales hire.
Deals stalling after good conversations?
We map your process against your last twenty deals and find the leak that's costing you the most revenue.