Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without Losing Control

by Dan Martell

“The money is in the list.”—Jeff Walker (New York Times bestselling author and founder of Product Launch Formula) “If you’re not building a list, you’re making a HUGE mistake.”—Derek Halpern (co-founder of Truvani) “It’s not how many people are on your list, but what you do with them.”—Joel Gascoigne (CEO of Buffer)

Your funnel’s job is to help your prospects realize they have a problem that your product can solve—and to be there for them when they’re ready for the solution.

Funnel proposito

The key to nailing the Awareness stage of the funnel lies in high-value, free content.

If you can describe your customers’ problems better than they can…you win.

Example of Hot-Button Issues In Matt’s first company, his perfect-fit customer was a small, independent gym owner. The hot-button issues that these gym owners had were: Not having enough members in the gym Not having time to market the gym to find new members Not knowing how to keep members engaged and activated Not having time to learn new software tools and marketing strategies Not making enough money to earn a sustainable living Based on these issues, most of his content was based around client acquisition strategies, social media marketing (even though they didn’t offer that as a service), and client retention.

The best content in the Awareness stage will get your customer to think, OK—I need to solve this—but what should I do next? And just like that, you’ll move them into the next stage of the funnel.

For each funnel stage, we’re going to give you a secret weapon called an accelerant. It’s one specific tactic that you should employ to help move people down to the next stage of the funnel faster.

For getting people from Awareness to Consideration, retargeting ads are your best friend.

Retargeting ads work by placing a “pixel” from an ad platform (Meta, Google, etc.) on your content—which essentially “tags” users who visit that content, adds them to an advertising audience, and allows you to place ads in front of them on social media or in their search results. Retargeting ads will keep your company top of mind, lead the prospects back to your content and resources, and are incredibly efficient to run from a financial standpoint because you’re only serving them to people who have already interacted with you.

Retargeting campaigns can often be run for a few dollars per day and still be effective.

In SaaS, roughly 97 percent of your initial website traffic is going to leave and never come back on their own. Retargeting ads are the best way to take that 97 percent of traffic and turn it back into trials and demos.

At the Consideration stage, your prospects are starting to develop a mental model for how to think about the problem—and in turn, how to think about the solution. If you’re smart, you’re going to want to be the person who builds the model.

Your job is not to convince these prospects to buy. Your job is to teach them how to think.

A lead magnet is a gated piece of content—something that’s more valuable, actionable, and useful than your free content—that a prospect would be willing to enter their email address (and sometimes their phone number) in order to receive it for free.

Lead magnet

lead magnets should be S.A.G.E.—Short, Actionable, Goal-oriented, and Easy to implement.

world-class lead magnet not only teaches your customer how to think about their problem…it teaches them to think about it in such a way that it positions your platform as the only viable solution.

When someone consumes your content and leaves, serve them a retargeting ad with a lead magnet—like clockwork.

Don’t deliver your lead magnet directly in the browser after an opt-in. The prospect should put their email address in, and you should then email them a link to the lead magnet.

A subset of people who download the lead magnet are ready for a sales conversation right now, and your thank you page should give them an opportunity to schedule one directly.

But delivering the lead magnet itself is just the tip of the iceberg. This delivery email should kick off a sequence of outreach where you can continue to offer additional help—in context of what they downloaded.

Once someone downloads a lead magnet, you should view it as the beginning of a conversation.

And if you run the conversation from a place of service (instead of from a place of selling), you’ll build additional goodwill with your prospects—and get a whole bunch of them to keep moving down the funnel without pissing them off.

The Decision stage is where your potential customer starts to get serious about buying something. They’re comparing the available solutions, looking at features, looking at pricing, and deter...

When a prospect reads your website, they’re deciding whether or not what you’ve built is “for them.”

And the most common mistake that we see founders make? Having weak positioning on the website, specifically around who you serve and how you serve them. When a buyer is ready to make a decision, they’re trying to confirm that your software is “for them”—, and your website should clearly and explicitly explain whether or not that’s true. Don’t leave it up to your prospects…you’ve got to control the narrative. Other key elements include super-dialed product and feature pages, some solid case studies that map back to your ideal customer profile, and of course a one-click path to your free trial or demo booking page.

As a founder, you are a salesperson. You sell a product. You sell a vision. You sell a place to work. You sell a point of view in the market. Every single one of us is “in sales.”

Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page here. We’ve walked through four key funnel stages: Awareness Consideration Decision Conversion And for each stage, there’s a key tactic that’s been identified: Awareness: Content Consideration: Lead Magnets Decision: Marketing Website Conversion: Trial or Demo Process

Awareness → Consideration: Retargeting Ads Consideration → Decision: Email and Phone Nurture Decision → Conversion: All of The Above

All things being equal—you should start fixing your funnel at the bottom and work your way up.

Meet them where they’re at: In most markets, less than 10 percent of people are actively looking to purchase a solution at any given moment in time. The other 90 percent are either in the Consideration or Awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. To maximize your ROI, you must have content in your funnel that engages the 90 percent and helps guide them to a solution.

Teach them about their problems: Awareness-level content is free and ungated content designed to educate your market about the problems they face in their business. This content should focus on the five hot-button issues that are keeping your ideal customer awake at night.

Teach them how to think: Once your customer is “problem aware,” Consideration-level content should promise them a first step towards a solution. Whether it’s a template, model, training video, or guide, the best lead magnets teach your customer how to think about solving the problem in a way that positions your product as the bes...

Teach them who you are: The final step in the buyer’s journey is the Decision phase. At this point, they’re actively looking to solve their problem—and your job is to help them make a decision. This is where a stro...

Remind them what to do next: Use retargeting ads to get back in front of your website traffic and leads, even if they’re not on your website—and point them to the next step in the buyer’s journey. Use email marketing and phone calls to offer more help to leads tha...

“Salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today’s empowered buyers.”14 MARK ROBERGE, author of The Sales Acceleration Formula

Sales is about understanding the mindset of your buyer.

“I was always value stacking, value stacking, value stacking.” said Alex. In other words, he was showing every prospect…every feature…every time. And that was the problem. Alex knew every single dark corner of restoration and had built a platform to solve everything. But restorers weren’t getting on sales calls to find out how powerful Alex’s software is. They were getting on the call to fix a specific pain point about their business.

Which three features? Glad you asked—because this is where the beauty lies. He lets the customer decide. At the beginning of the call, he spends time figuring out exactly what their pain points are, and then shows them exactly how Albiware can solve them. And then he stops showing them features and closes the deal instead.

Alex’s close rate nearly tripled –from 15% to almost 40%. By doing less.

Customers don’t care about your product. They care about their pain.

Nothing matters if you can’t make a sale. Period.

Nobody cares about what you’ve built. They just care about getting their problem solved.

“A great sales pitch isn’t just about the product; it’s about the customer’s problem and how you uniquely solve it.”

This is how you should interact with your customers on sales calls. They should feel like you’ve been there before. They should have confidence that you know how to solve the problem. And you should prove it—fast.

“Successful people ask a lot more questions during sales calls than do their less successful colleagues.”

you’re learning about your prospect’s pain points, doubling down, and pushing on them until they’re unignorable—at which point you can show them how your software is the only thing that can solve the tension. The quality of your questions demonstrates your expertise in your market.

we spend a lot of time on the promise (and not nearly enough on the pain). Why? Because it’s comfortable. It’s not emotionally challenging to talk about how cool your software is. But it’s wildly uncomfortable to ask probing questions about something that’s already unpleasant for your prospect.

Every sale happens in the space between the pain and the promise.

And if you stretch the gap wide enough, your prospect will be selling you—because the thought of not using your software will feel crazy.