How switching from Zero-Touch Funnel to Minimal-Touch Sales boosted Conversion Rates by 89%

We tried to create a machine that sells our SaaS product without human intervention. That was the goal from the very start. We don’t want to deal with sales, hiring people, talking to customers, nothing — just funnels.

It begins with a free trial, and customers can upgrade if they choose. On this foundation, we started to streamline and enhance our marketing and product offerings and operations.

The dream

It’s everyone’s dream (well, not everyone, but I’m pretty convinced most would agree) to sell software or a product online while you sleep, without having to speak to anyone along the way. How great is that, money coming in while I sleep. And most importantly, it’s possible. Plenty of companies do this. There’s an endless number of products sold without a single conversation with a salesperson; I myself make most of my purchases through no-touch funnels.

For a long time, our main go-to-market strategy was SEO. We built a solid infrastructure to funnel paying customers into the system, improving the funnel daily. Later, we added paid advertising on various platforms, which also brought in significant traffic with a genuine intent to purchase the product.

Then, something incredible happened. No matter what we did, the sales conversion rate from people starting the free trial barely changed. This rate was directly linked to their intent, but there wasn’t much variation. Ideally, the sales percentage could increase a lot in companies with a strong product team or deep investment in their conversion funnels.

Suddenly, I started to question the foundation upon which the entire company was built. Was it really the right approach to sell a product without speaking to the end customer? I had to explore this.

What is MTS (Minimal-Touch Sales)

Minimal touch sales is a quick sales method where businesses use short calls or video chats to sell products fast, often during the first conversation. This approach speeds up the process compared to traditional, longer sales cycles.

The reality

Given our very low price point, achieving a good ROI seemed unlikely and wasn’t sustainable. But we didn’t have the resources to make crazy funnel optimizations on a daily basis that really made a difference fast enough, and customer calls (demos) were essentially a shortcut in this process, So I had to go ahead with this research to see if direct interactions with customers through calls (demos) could really boost these numbers.

I didn’t have a plan for what to do if it worked or how we would create a reasonable ROI (time & money), but I knew we were more in a POC phase than scaling. It was time to just go ahead and do it.

I spent an entire month talking to customers. I reached out to every customer who signed up, mainly through phone but also via WhatsApp and email. And the results… were astounding. It was a game-changer, perhaps the most impactful move since the company started.

Attach above a real graph of how the conversion rate from free to paid looked, starting from a constant number, X for the sake of this discussion (I can’t disclose the exact number), but it’s marked on the chart as 100% just to illustrate the subsequent increase.

It was a wow moment. A drastic improvement in conversion, which led us to quickly hire a salesperson for low-touch sales.

3 notes to conclude

• Talking to customers wasn’t easy for me. Beyond the considerable time it took, which prevented me from performing other tasks within the company, it was challenging in terms of execution. I really dislike selling myself to customers, and it drained a lot of energy, but I insist it was worth it.
• As a direct result of the conversion increase, there was a significant rise in the company’s immediate revenues and, of course, in added ARR.
• Another outcome of this move was a significant increase in ACV. The chance of selling a more expensive plan in a call was much higher than the chance of selling such a plan in a no-touch scenario.

That’s it for now. I could post all the additional graphs related to this one that influenced other metrics, but it’s starting to get a bit long, so I’ll keep it short (is it short? Not sure).

I hope to write here soon about more cool things I’ve learned and am still learning from the challenging journey of the startup.

I hope you enjoyed this, and if so, share it with a friend or colleague; they might find it interesting too.