DEALMAKERSFor growing tech companies
Sales consulting for B2B tech and SaaS: go-to-market, playbook, pipeline
Sales consulting for tech and SaaS is for companies whose sales still have to grow: together we build the system your team uses to win new clients predictably. We work with growing B2B software, tech, fintech and service companies whose sales often still depend on the founder. You get a go-to-market strategy (whom you approach, when and how), a sales playbook as your team’s handbook, clear stages for the pipeline of your open opportunities and an onboarding plan that lets your team keep selling without us.
Your consultant is Florian Weippert in person. Our team runs first conversations for clients every day, so only what works on the phone goes into your playbook.
Roles and projects of our founder
Companies our founder worked for in sales or looked after in projects – partly as an employee, partly as a service provider.
Where it fits
How is sales consulting for tech and SaaS different from classic sales consulting?
Sales consulting for tech and SaaS builds a sales function that still has to grow; classic sales consulting improves one that has been running for years. Mid-sized companies usually have an established team, regular clients and a customer database (CRM) with years of history. There, our general sales consulting uses a sales audit to find the point where meetings, proposals or deals are lost.
In a young software or fintech company this foundation is often still missing. The founder won the first clients largely on instinct, but nobody wrote down why they bought. Sales consulting turns that instinct into a process that new salespeople can learn quickly, too. The term often used for this is sales excellence: a sales function whose success depends not on individual talent but on an approach everyone has mastered.
Who it is for
Who is sales consulting worth it for – and who not?
Sales consulting pays off for B2B companies that have paying clients and now want to grow more predictably than before. Since 2021 we have worked with over 20 clients, mainly from SaaS, consulting and fintech.
A good fit
- The founder still sells and needs to pass that knowledge on to the first salespeople.
- The first salespeople have been hired, but each of them sells differently and nobody knows what actually works.
- You want to open up a new segment, such as mid-sized companies instead of startups, or enter the German-speaking market.
- Investors or shareholders expect a revenue forecast they can believe.
Less of a fit
- You sell to consumers. We do not advise on that.
- Your product has no paying clients yet. Then you first need clarity about your offer and your market.
- All you need is a CRM set up. A CRM service provider will do that for less.
Go-to-market
Go-to-market strategy: who do you approach, when and through which channel?
A go-to-market strategy sets out how your offer reaches its clients: which companies you approach, who makes the decision there, what trigger you get in touch on and through which channel. We work it out with you in four building blocks.
Ideal customer profile (ICP)
The ICP describes the companies where your offer delivers the most: industry, size, starting point – and who is explicitly excluded. We derive it from your best clients and the ones you lost, not from a wish list.
Segments and roles
A startup buys differently from a mid-sized company, a managing director differently from a head of IT. We decide which segment comes first and which role makes the decision there, so that your team does not approach everyone at once.
Triggers
A trigger is an event that makes a conversation worthwhile right now: a new head of sales, a new location, a funding round. We know more than 40 types of trigger; in most projects five to eight of them account for most of the meetings. More on this under Signal Based Selling.
Channels and sequence
Phone, email, LinkedIn, referrals, trade fairs: we decide which channel comes first for which segment. What matters is not the number of channels but that every message builds on the one before.
Sales playbook
Sales playbook: what goes into it?
A sales playbook is your team’s sales handbook: it records what works in sales, so that not every new person has to work it out for themselves. A good playbook is short enough to be used day to day and concrete enough to apply on the phone the next day. These seven parts belong in it:
| Part | What it contains | How you notice it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Ideal customer profile | Which companies and roles fit and which do not | The team calls whoever it happens to find |
| Triggers | Which events make a conversation worthwhile now and where to find them | Calls begin with “I just wanted to introduce myself” |
| First sentence | An opening for each trigger and role that says at once why you are calling right now | Conversations end after the first sentence |
| Discovery questions | The questions of the needs analysis: what should change, by when, and who else has a say? | Proposals go out without anyone knowing the budget and the decision-makers |
| Objections | Your clients’ most common objections, with answers that have proved themselves | Everyone reacts differently to “too expensive”, usually with a discount |
| Handover | When a meeting counts as qualified and what the next colleague needs to know beforehand | In the handover meeting the colleague starts from scratch |
| CRM fields | Which fields your team maintains, such as trigger, next step and reason for loss, and which it does not | The CRM is full, but no figure helps with a decision |
What good questions look like in a conversation and how to answer typical objections is shown in our guides on needs analysis and objection handling (both in German).
Pipeline and forecast
Pipeline and forecast: which stages and metrics do you need?
A pipeline, the overview of all open sales opportunities, needs few stages and a clear rule for when an opportunity reaches the next one. Only then does the forecast, your revenue projection, become more than gut feeling. If everyone decides for themselves when a deal is “as good as certain”, often neither the amount nor the timing is right at the end of the quarter.
| Stage | Counts as reached when … | What we measure |
|---|---|---|
| Target client with trigger | the company fits the ideal customer profile and a current trigger is recorded | Share of contacts with a trigger |
| First conversation | the conversation has taken place with someone who has a say in the decision | Share of conversations with decision-makers |
| Qualified opportunity | need, timeframe and all decision-makers are known and a next meeting is booked | Share of first conversations that become qualified |
| Proposal and negotiation | a proposal based on the need discussed is on the table and the decision-maker has seen it | Time to proposal, discount per deal |
| Won or lost | the contract is signed or the deal is lost, always with a reason | Win rate, reasons for loss, time per stage |
Benchmarks from studies are of little help here, because your price, market and sales cycle are different; the yardstick is your own baseline. Only what meets the rule of its stage goes into the forecast; an opportunity without a next meeting slips back. Which metrics generally count in B2B sales, and how to calculate win rate, pipeline coverage and forecast accuracy, is explained in our guides on B2B sales and sales KPIs (both in German).
Pipeline and forecasting software only helps once these rules apply. Then AI in the CRM, for example in HubSpot or Salesforce, estimates how likely each opportunity is to close, conversation intelligence such as Gong or tl;dv spots risks in client conversations, and forecasting platforms such as Salesloft, which since its merger with Clari also offers Clari’s forecasting tool, flag opportunities where the client has stopped responding. Which type of tool suits which job is shown in our market overview of CRM and forecasting tools (in German).
Sales enablement
Sales enablement: how does the playbook become part of everyday work?
Sales enablement means equipping and training your team so that it actually uses the playbook day to day. A playbook nobody opens changes nothing. That is why three things are part of it.
Onboarding
A plan for the first weeks of new salespeople: what they read first, whom they listen in on, when they lead their first conversation themselves. That way a good start does not depend on who happens to have time to explain.
Training on real conversations
We practise openings, needs analysis and objections on your real target clients instead of invented role plays. Everyone who practises then makes calls themselves and gets feedback on the conversation.
Material and coaching
Call guides, a collection of objections and examples of good conversations, plus a regular review of real conversations in our sales coaching for teams. This keeps the playbook up to date.
An earlier role of our founder shows that this pays off: after training that Florian Weippert was responsible for in a DACH sales team of 25 people, closed deals rose by around 30 per cent. That is a figure from experience, not a promise for your team.
AI in sales consulting
AI in sales consulting: what does the AI agent take over?
In sales consulting, an AI agent takes over the groundwork that costs the most time in sales: finding companies where a trigger has just occurred, and preparing every call. The agent continuously monitors job ads, company news and commercial register entries, matches the hits against your ideal customer profile and prepares the trigger, the contact person and a suggested first sentence for each company.
From our own prospecting: preparing a call then takes about 5 instead of 30 to 40 minutes. And because our app shows live whether the person is currently in a meeting and when they will be reachable again, we reach up to 60 per cent more of the people we want to speak to. How these figures come about is set out under figures from our projects.
For this we use the software of PrioX, the AI agency for the entire sales process that Florian Weippert co-founded, and we tell you openly if a different tool suits you better. The order matters: first the ideal customer profile, triggers and playbook are in place, then AI is added. Without this foundation, even the best agent writes interchangeable messages. If AI is to help not only with prospecting but across all of your sales, our AI consulting for sales is the right setting.
How it works
How does sales consulting work at DEALMAKERS?
Sales consulting at DEALMAKERS runs in four steps: analysis, plan, the first weeks of implementation if you wish, and measurement. How long each step takes depends on team size and starting point; we agree this together before we start.
1. Analysis
We talk to the founder or management and to the people who sell, listen in on conversations and look at won and lost opportunities and at your CRM. The guiding question: why did your best clients buy, and where do opportunities get stuck?
2. Plan
This produces the go-to-market strategy, playbook and pipeline rules, plus a list of priorities. Each item gets an owner, a first test and a date on which we check whether it works.
3. Implementation, if you wish
On request we stay on board for the first weeks: we onboard new salespeople, train the team and make calls ourselves, so that the playbook is tested in the real market. When our team makes calls alongside yours, the first meetings typically come after two to four weeks.
4. Measurement
We put your metrics next to the baseline from the analysis and adjust the playbook where practice shows otherwise. After that your team carries on alone, or we support it with fixed review dates.
The right service
SaaS or general sales consulting, training or outsourcing?
Which service fits depends on what your sales are missing: a system, a diagnosis, skill in the conversation or simply time.
| Your starting point | What is missing | The right service |
|---|---|---|
| Sales is to pass from the founder to a team, or to open up a new segment | a system of target clients, playbook and pipeline | Sales consulting for tech & SaaS (this page) |
| An established sales team loses meetings, proposals or deals, and nobody knows exactly where | a diagnosis | Sales consulting with a sales audit |
| Target clients and process are in place, but conversations break off | skill in the conversation | B2B sales training |
| There is no time for research, outreach and follow-up | capacity | Sales outsourcing |
| The team is there, but nobody leads it | a head of sales | Interim head of sales |
Your consultant
Florian Weippert
Florian Weippert has sold in B2B for around 20 years and has worked his way from Sales Manager through Head of Sales to Director Sales & Business Development. He has experienced building a sales function from several angles: he ran his own software company, helped build the Inside Sales Academy at PayPal and was external Director Business Development of a Berlin fintech.
He is a former startup mentor at several startup hubs; VCs referred him to their portfolio companies to get their sales moving. He has run over 300 coaching sessions with salespeople. In 2025 he completed the master’s degree “Business with AI” at Hochschule Fresenius, in addition to his MSc in Business Management earned in Oxford.
Costs
What does sales consulting cost?
We bill sales consulting fairly by the hour, by day rate or as a fixed fee for a clearly defined project; you receive the price as a proposal after the first call. The amount depends mainly on three things: how many building blocks we set up together, how many people are involved in analysis and training, and whether we support the first weeks of implementation. Many clients start with the analysis and decide afterwards how to continue.
Frequently asked questions
Questions about sales consulting for tech & SaaS
What is sales consulting for tech and SaaS?
It is sales consulting for growing tech and software companies: defining target clients, writing a playbook, organising the pipeline and onboarding the team so that revenue becomes predictable.
What does a sales consultant do?
A sales consultant looks at how a company sells today and builds what is missing together with the team: ideal customer profile, call guide, pipeline rules and onboarding. Good sales consultants have done the selling themselves and test their recommendations in the real market.
What is the difference between sales consulting for tech and SaaS and classic sales consulting?
Both are sales consulting; the difference lies in the starting point. Sales consulting for tech and SaaS usually means building a sales function in a growing tech company, classic sales consulting means improving an established sales operation in a mid-sized company. DEALMAKERS has a separate offer for each case.
What is a go-to-market strategy?
The plan for how an offer reaches its clients: which companies and people are approached, on what trigger, through which channels and with which message. It is the basis for the playbook and for sales planning.
What goes into a sales playbook?
Everything a new salesperson needs for good conversations: ideal customer profile, triggers, first sentence, questions for the needs analysis, answers to objections, rules for the handover and the mandatory fields in the CRM.
What is sales enablement?
Everything that enables a sales team to sell well: onboarding, training, conversation material and coaching. The aim is for the team to work by the playbook instead of everyone finding their own way.
What does sales consulting cost?
That depends on the scope, which is why we only quote amounts after the first call. You then receive a proposal for exactly the building blocks your sales team needs.
In 30 minutes you will know where your sales should start
Tell us how you win clients today and where you want to grow. We will tell you whether go-to-market, playbook, pipeline or onboarding is the first lever – and also if you need something entirely different. No form, just phone, email or calendar.