The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

6 Best Lead Generation Tactics for Software/SaaS Companies

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 82

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Are you ready to skyrocket your SaaS company's leads and scale faster than ever? 

If you're running a Software or SaaS company, generating quality leads is critical for your growth. In this episode, we break down the 6 BEST LEAD GENERATION TACTICS that work like magic for SaaS and software businesses. These strategies are designed to help you connect with decision-makers, drive more demos, and close more deals. Plus, we share a BONUS TACTIC at the end that can amplify all your lead generation efforts.

What you’ll discover: 

[00:00] – The Key to SaaS Lead Generation

[01:52] – Tactic #1

[05:30] – Tactic #2

[08:37] – Tactic #3

[11:39] – Tactic #4

[15:26] – Tactic #5

[18:37] – Bonus Tip for getting leads for your SaaS company

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

  • Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points, this Free E-book will give you the tools you need for predictability and scalability in your marketing and sales efforts. Disclaimer: Only download if you want more customers!

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

00:00
Nobody purchases a SaaS product because of how amazing it is. They purchase it because they have a need or they have a challenge and the software, the tool is the way for them to eliminate that challenge. So if you can, through the email, through the messaging, position it in such a way that through the software, you can eliminate this challenge, you position yourself for effective lead generation. Do you want to make sure you're doing a higher volume?

00:25
And just like cold email that you're not talking about how cool your software is. No one cares. They only care about their problems, their issues, their desires, their goals. So speak to those specifically and not specifically to the company specific to the person you're going after. Welcome to the takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get with it.

00:52
Welcome back to The Takeover. If you have a software or a SaaS company and you need help with lead generation, you're not gonna wanna miss today's episode because we're gonna go through the five strategies on how you can get leads and ultimately grow and scale your SaaS and software company. And we're gonna throw a bonus in for you at the end. So make sure to stay to the end because we don't want you to miss the five strategies and the secret bonus at the end. When you're looking for lead generation for a SaaS or a software company, it's...

01:19
pretty straightforward strategies to really be able to grow and scale fast, both short-term, mid-term and long-term strategies. So let's go ahead and go into the five things that software and SaaS companies can start doing right now to get more leads and clients for their business. For sure. So let's look at what are those specific channels that they can go after because there are so many different strategies, so many different avenues, but the five that we're going to look at are...

01:46
both proven to be effective, because we've done it for our clients, but are also gonna give you the most amount of impact or leads outcome for the time, effort, energy, and resources that you are going to spend in trying to get leads for your SaaS company. So the first one is called emailing. So we're looking at outbound email. Why this is so effective for SaaS companies and SaaS products is that one, you can reach your target audience directly,

02:15
For a lot of SaaS companies, you're reaching out to corporations, enterprises, mid to larger corporations. And the best way to target those people is through cold email. Always think about, and we always say this at our company, you wanna go where your ideal client lives. And in a SaaS product or, you know, software companies, very often you are reaching out to the decision makers in those kind of spaces. One thing that differentiates,

02:42
SaaS or Alpine companies that do really well with cold email and ones that do not. There's a few things, but I'd say the most important one is the messaging that you're using when you are reaching out. Are you focusing on how amazing your software is or the features or the benefits, the hows of how your software works, or are you focusing on your ideal clients pain points and desires and challenges that they're having?

03:10
Because if you can speak to the challenges that your prospect is facing versus how amazing your software is, that is how you cut through the noise and that is how you get leads consistently. Because nobody purchases software because of how amazing a software is. Let's just be real about it, right? Nobody purchases a SaaS product because of how amazing it is. They purchase it because they have a need or they have a challenge and the software, the tool, is the way for them to eliminate that challenge.

03:40
So if you can, through the email, through the messaging, position it in such a way that through the software, you can eliminate this challenge, you position yourself for effective lead generation. And cold emails works super well if you know how to execute the technology to get into the inbox. Cause it is hard to get into the inbox these days, but if you can get into the inbox with the right message, cold email just works. Because...

04:08
whether you're going after CMOs, CROs, COOs, like whoever you're going or maybe you're going after director levels, they are in their inbox. They are. And a lot of times people think even if you're going after bigger enterprise companies, oh no, the executives of bigger companies, they're not in there because they're admins. Message it. No, that's not true. We do a lot of outreach. And trust me, you can get meetings with high, high level executives, VPs, directors, presidents, and CEOs from cold email. If number one.

04:37
You have the technology to get deliverability. You make sure you're getting past spam folders. And number two, you've got a messaging that actually makes them go, I feel like this is worth 30 minutes of my time to do a quick phone call. Yeah, so good. I mean, I just look at my inbox and think about how many emails I get about software. It's a crazy amount. So there are other SaaS companies that are using this strategy. They're getting in the inbox, they're showing up in my primary inbox, so they have that deliverability, but.

05:05
I never take action on them because they're not speaking to any challenge that I have. They're just talking about how awesome the product is. So that's an easy way to cut through the noise in cold email is focus on the challenges that your prospect is facing and not on your awesome SaaS product. Well, it's the same thing for every channel. Yes. Take that key into every other channel that we mentioned. Which leads us into number two, which is...

05:30
Outbound LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is such an effective platform if you are selling a software or SaaS product. One, your prospects are probably on LinkedIn, 95% are probably there. And it's a great way to communicate directly through messaging. You can reach out to that person very directly, which we love. We've seen it work really well for our clients that have.

05:52
HR, you know, SaaS products or I mean, analytics, SaaS products, there's so many different areas. But LinkedIn is just that platform that you have to be on if you are doing any kind of SaaS, enterprise SaaS or software product. Yeah. And I think when we're talking about the cold email, the deliverability, I think a lot of times the bottleneck for LinkedIn can just be the volume of outreach you're able to do because LinkedIn does limit you to only a hundred messages per week per account. So make sure.

06:21
when you are using LinkedIn, get your dog, get your grandpa, get your grandma, get your everybody. Every single person that has a LinkedIn account that you have access to, just be like, hey, we're trying to grow our SaaS company. Or if you're a bigger organization, get all of your sales team to put their LinkedIn accounts in there. A lot of people that outsource to us, we're able to just do that ourselves. They don't need to bring in their own accounts.

06:45
But that's a big bottleneck for LinkedIn is volume of outreach. Yes. Because just doing 400 reach outs a month, like you're, that's not even enough to test a message, to dial in a message. You want to make sure you're doing a higher volume. And just like cold email, that you're not talking about how cool your software is. No one cares. They only care about their problems, their issues, their desires, their goals. So speak to those specifically and not specifically to the company, specific to the

07:13
person you're going after, right? The COO is gonna have a lot different desires, interests, problems, challenges, struggles than the CEO's gonna have, right? Than the CFO's gonna have. So just really understanding the psychology of the person you're reaching out to, not just the company you're reaching out to, is gonna make sure you're really effective with your outreach. So good. And the great thing about LinkedIn is, aside from just the connection requests, which for sure does have limits, you can also do in-mails on LinkedIn as well. So that's another way to reach.

07:42
your target audience, as well as group messages. So if, for example, you are in that, say, HR space, as I've been using the HR software example, you can find HR related groups on LinkedIn, where people congregate around that specific topic. Maybe it's workforce development, human resources, whatever that is. And you can message the people within that group. So you can find various groups to join and use that as an additional outreach method. So you have both regular connection requests that are going out.

08:11
You have emails that are going out as well as group messages with the goal of getting people to either like demo your product But we always say try get them on a call so you can show them more about your software Yeah, I love that and number three is what number three is cold calling and you might be saying okay cold calling That's like really old-school, but it's really really effective to getting people interested, right? garnering interest

08:37
as well as getting them to discuss or demo your software or your SaaS product. The most important things when it comes to cold calling is one, having the right data. So you need people's phone numbers, of course. And of course you need the phone numbers of the prospects that you want to reach out to, right? So you're not cold calling in the dark. You have like say it's a thousand phone numbers of CEOs in a certain industry. So you have to have the target list and then the script that you use to get people on a call. So.

09:07
what I'm actually pitching or what I'm calling people about is to book another appointment to discuss my software product. So you don't wanna just call them to pitch in that first initial contact, you are calling to set up an additional appointment to talk more about that software. So the messaging or the script that you use is very important. The same rules apply as we were mentioning earlier with the messaging, which is focusing on the challenge.

09:33
keeping it very short and sweet and to the point, always with the ultimate goal of that last call to action, which is let us schedule another time, say later this week so that we can discuss this more in depth. Yeah, and with cold calling, it works. It does. What you want to make sure you're doing on the prospect list is getting the phone numbers of the decision makers. You don't want to be calling the receptionist. So good. Right, you don't want to be calling the front desk. The gatekeeper. And trying to get the gatekeeper. You can play that game, like if you're doing account-based.

10:03
marketing where you're really trying to reach specific companies, Fortune 500s, and you're working your way into getting those meetings. But if you're just trying to get the most amount of meetings with mid-market enterprise and you're not going after specific companies, make sure you're getting a list where you have the numbers directly to the CEO, to the CMO, to whoever so that you're cold calling that person, number one. And now when you're doing that call, yeah, like you said, make it very short.

10:30
We may or may not have a script and a training yet on how to do that. I know we have one, but we're going to be creating one if we don't already have a content on how to do B2B appointment setting with cold calling. The script is very, very simple. It's not long. And the goal of that is to get interest in doing a call with you and setting up a demo that is not to try to sell any of your stuff at all. It's not to try to talk about how cool you are. You want to be able to get in and get out in 90 seconds, maybe two minutes. And I'd say cold calling.

11:00
Just the lowest barrier of entry to start getting meetings. Yes, and highly underutilized for sure. If you do 150, 200 calls a day and you've got the right script, you're going to get meetings every single day. And if you're getting the right meetings, you're going to start getting the right clients. That's going to bring up the revenue. So cold calling is a very underused, but people that use it and know how to just smile and dial 150 calls, 200 calls a day, it works. So what's number four, Cindy? Hey there, make sure that you are staying on top of your game by following the show.

11:30
hit that subscribe button for the Takeover with Tim and Cindy wherever you are listening. Let's get winning together!

11:39
Number four is thought leadership. So think about thought leadership as positioning your company as the authority or the experts around the topic that your SaaS company is about. So I'm gonna take it back to that HR example. So if I have an HR software, I want to create content, whether it's YouTube videos or blogs or free resources, organic content around HR. And more specifically, I want to answer

12:08
questions that my prospect is asking around that topic. So great resources that you all can have a look at are things like Answer the Public, or Google Trends, or Keywords Everywhere. Those tools let you know what people are searching for online as it relates to certain topics. So what I'm gonna do is, if it's HR, for example, I can grab, say the topic is around how to keep my workforce engaged, okay? And I see that there's...

12:35
1500 search results of that every single month. I know that that's something my ideal client is searching for. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create content around that topic, and I'm gonna position myself as the authority in that space, but only answering that question, but providing value as well. And the more that you can show up as the authority in a certain space, whether it's in your SaaS or in the software company, you position yourself as the go-to people for that topic. And what's even better is,

13:03
through your content, like your YouTube videos or your blogs, you can link people to free resources and lead magnets where you can capture their information and then move them through your funnel through things like free demos and calls and things like that. It is a long-term strategy. It is a long-term strategy, but the way that you can use it because cold calling, LinkedIn, cold email, those are just going to be right. You can turn that thing on and have clients and meetings and stuff very, very quickly.

13:33
The way that we're thinking about thought leadership is it is a long-term play that in the short term is really good for warming up and nurturing the meetings that you are getting from cold calling, LinkedIn, cold email from all of your sources, your referrals. You can use those pieces of content in your email warmup, in your content, in your sales presentations. So it's not that you just have to wait to get results from that. You can start using that to increase your show rates, your close rates.

14:02
from your current lead flow, but it definitely is not, you're not going to put out five pieces of content and all of a sudden be a thought leader. Yes. But the perception is if I send a YouTube video versus a landing page, like here's a video on my landing page, the YouTube video is going to have more authority. It could be the exact same video, but if I send you this piece of content on my website, they're not going to trust my website as much as they're going to trust YouTube.

14:28
or even a podcast. Like if I'm running a YouTube channel and I convert that into a podcast as well, if I send them a podcast on Apple and they've got a link to my Apple podcast, that's gonna build a lot more authority than just putting it on my website. So you can do the blogging and all of that, put that on your website, embed the YouTube video on your website, share the YouTube video, share the podcast versus just uploading a video to your website for sure. Then that's gonna be more of the short term.

14:57
building authority to help you close more deals from your current lead flow. So good. Yeah, I think the biggest key is always remember that you need a call to action or a way to capture people's information. So once they've learned from you, so they've watched the video, they've gotten great information, make sure you have a clear call to action to download a free resource or to take the next steps in your funnel because you want that person's contact information. You want a lead capture page so you can capture their name, their email, and then nurture them so that they can become.

15:26
a paying client down the line. That takes us into number five, which is SEO or search engine optimization. Just like thought leadership, this is a longer term strategy. And so you essentially are allowing people to visit your website through SEO. And I'll let you take this time, which is your expertise. I used to be super good at this because I used to run an SEO company, but this is like back in the day. And I mean.

15:51
we could get people ranking really quick. It was like 30 days, whatever your keyword was, we could get you on the top, like top three of Google. That is a lot more challenging these days. SEO is a really good way to get ongoing traffic. It is a long-term strategy. There was a guy at an event I was at recently, and he was one of the attendees, and he had been doing YouTube for eight years and just creating the same content over and over and over again. And...

16:20
That actually shows up in Google search results. And at this point, he's getting 1,000 leads a day from that. It took him eight years, and he was pumping out content all around the same and similar keywords. So when you think of SEO, it's not just getting your website to rank. You can start thinking about, hey, if I'm putting out content on YouTube, let me make sure that by the YouTube content that I'm putting out, it's also keyword relevant for the Google searches that I'm trying to rank for. If you've done a Google search,

16:48
You can see a lot of times there might be three suggested videos, one, two, three suggested videos. And that's also a really kind of fast way to bypass having to do all of the SEO on your own website is sometimes just creating a lot of video content can put you in the Google search results. So there is a couple ways to look at SEO. It's using third party websites that already have authority in Google to create content that then that content can rate on Google. And then there's the long term, very expensive.

17:16
doing the SEO on your website, building the backlinks and doing all that. Both fantastic strategies. One is going to be like doing the third party, like the YouTubes and the different platforms that are going to rank in Google. That's going to get you there faster and for less effort. But when it is ranking your own website, that's like your real estate. You kind of own that, but that is going to take more money, time and energy to get your own website to work. But worth it kind of in the long run, right? If you're

17:43
If somebody is searching for HR software and yours is the first one that pops up, it is definitely worth it. It's prime real estate. You're getting essentially free traffic. But as Tim is mentioning, it's a longer term strategy and will cost a lot of time and money upfront. And there's two ways to really strategically to look at it, right? You can answer questions that your prospect has. So you're giving value content, which is sometimes easier to rank for. And then there's buyer intent searches, right?

18:11
where I'm trying to rank for, let's just say, you know, Miami car washes. Like that's very buyer intent. They're looking for a service right now. They're HR software, right? That's very buyer intent. Whereas answering questions around HR, it's gonna be much easier to rank for, but it's not gonna be as buyer intent. So you're gonna be able to get people in your funnel, but it's not gonna be this quick immediate conversion. And what is the...

18:37
Bonus and number six. So since it's a bonus, I'm gonna take it I'm gonna lead it is retargeting and again This is kind of like just a great way to take the current lead flow you have and make sure you're staying in front of Them we talk a lot about the rule of seven Making sure you show up at least seven times in front of your prospect The seven touches creates like a subconscious familiarity with you. They trust you more even though they don't know why they just are more familiar with you

19:01
And so retargeting is a great way and it's, it's not expensive. I mean, you could do something like an ad role, which does like the, the Google and the Facebook retargeting set up. I think I, you know, we set one campaign up three years ago and it's like 20 bucks a month and it still runs. I still see my retargeting ads on every website to this day. Great way just to stay in front of people and more kind of supercharge your current lead generation efforts.

19:24
So that is the five strategies we have cold email, we have LinkedIn, we have cold calling, we have thought leadership, and we have SEO. If you're looking to get really quick results, use those top three. And then the other ones where we're doing the thought leadership or doing the SEO, they're great channels to use, but just realize you're going to have to take a lot of time energy. And it's going to take a long time before you see a return on those. And then as a bonus, make sure.

19:49
You can turn on just a quick ad roll. Like, you know, I'm not getting any kind of affiliate on those guys, but they're super easy. Ad roll can set up your retargeting for Facebook or for Meta and for Google, and just make sure that you're staying in front of the prospects that you're getting meetings with. If you are a SaaS company and you need B2B leads, Pima is the place we definitely want to meet you, learn more about you, and see if we can help so that we can take over doing the B2B lead generation and appointment setting for you.

20:19
and you walk in focus on delivering for your clients. Click the link in the show notes, book a call with our team and we'll take it from there. Again, this is Tim and Cindy with The Takeover. Remember, domination is not a destination, it's a way of life. Stay winning.