A Founder's Guide to the 6 Steps of the Design Process for Revenue

When B2B founders and small agencies hear 'design process,' they often picture wireframes and color palettes. But for businesses targeting consistent revenue, the design process is about engineering a repeatable system that turns strangers into customers. It’s less about aesthetics and more about architecture. A truly effective process moves beyond visuals and focuses on building a predictable revenue engine.

This guide breaks down the real 6 steps of the design process for building that engine. Forget abstract theory; this is a practical playbook with specific tools and workflows designed to help you ship faster, convert better, and build a system that generates leads on autopilot. We'll cover how to move from guessing who your customer is to building an automated outreach and conversion machine using tools like Apollo and Leadpages.

You'll get a step-by-step framework for defining your ideal customer, creating a compelling value proposition, designing a customer journey, and building the lead generation systems to fuel it all. To gain further insight into different methodologies, consider exploring how other organizations structure their own design process for additional context. Let's dive into the six steps that will transform your approach from subjective art to strategic science.

1. Empathize - Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

The first and most critical of the 6 steps of the design process is to empathize. Before a single line of code is written or a landing page is sketched, you must deeply understand who you're building for. For B2B agencies and solo founders, this isn't about broad market research; it's about defining a razor-sharp Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This process involves interviewing real prospects, mapping their specific pain points, and documenting their decision-making journey to uncover the precise problems your solution can solve.

This initial step determines whether your entire funnel will succeed or fail. For businesses targeting a 2k-5k MRR, getting the ICP wrong means wasted effort on marketing, sales, and product development. Empathizing correctly reveals not just what buyers need but how they buy, what their budget constraints are, and who holds the real decision-making power. For example, a SaaS founder might assume the CEO is the buyer, only to discover through interviews that the Operations Manager is the one who researches, trials, and champions new software. This insight completely changes your marketing message and targeting.

Why It Matters

Skipping this stage is a common cause of failure. An agency owner might spend months targeting startups, only to discover their best, most profitable clients are actually established SaaS companies with over $500k in ARR. A consultant might build a service their target market desperately needs but can't afford, forcing a pivot to a higher-value use case. These are costly mistakes that direct customer empathy can prevent.

How to Implement It

Your goal is to get past surface-level complaints and understand the root problems and buying triggers.

• Conduct 5-8 Discovery Calls: Before drawing any conclusions, speak directly with potential customers. Use a tool like Apollo to research company structures and identify the right people to talk to.
• Ask "Why" Repeatedly: When a prospect mentions a problem, ask "why" at least three times. This pushes past generic answers to reveal the core issue driving their pain.
• Document Buying Criteria: Don't just list pain points. Ask what criteria they use to evaluate solutions. Is it price, integration capabilities, customer support, or something else?
• Identify Current Solutions: Ask, "How are you currently solving this problem?" The answer reveals your true competitors, which are often spreadsheets or manual processes, not just other software. This knowledge is crucial for learning how to generate B2B leads that see your value.

2. Define - Create Your Value Proposition and Messaging Framework

The second step in the 6 steps of the design process is to define your value. After empathizing with your audience, you must articulate exactly why they should buy from you using language that mirrors their own priorities and pain points. This isn't about creating a clever tagline; it's about crafting a clear, concise statement of the tangible outcome your solution delivers, the specific problem it solves, and what makes it distinct. For B2B agencies and founders, vague positioning kills conversion rates, so messaging must connect directly to revenue impact or cost savings.

This stage translates customer insights into compelling copy that drives action. An agency that switches its positioning from a generic "Digital marketing services" to a specific "Predictable B2B client acquisition for agencies doing 50k-200k monthly revenue" will see a dramatic improvement in lead quality and conversion. Similarly, a SaaS product changing its headline from the feature-focused "AI-powered analytics" to the benefit-driven "Get 8 more qualified leads per month with automated outreach" speaks directly to a desired business outcome, boosting sign-ups.

Why It Matters

Without a defined value proposition, your marketing feels generic and fails to capture the attention of your ideal customer. Prospects won't spend time trying to figure out what you do or how you can help them. Strong, defined messaging acts as a filter, attracting serious buyers who understand your value and repelling those who aren't a good fit. This saves you countless hours on sales calls with unqualified leads and ensures your marketing budget is spent effectively.

How to Implement It

Your goal is to create a messaging framework that can be adapted across your website, emails, and sales materials.

• Use a Simple Formula: Start with the format: "We help [ICP] achieve [specific outcome] by [unique method] instead of [the painful old way]." This forces clarity and focus.
• Mirror Your Prospect's Language: Review notes from your discovery calls. Use the exact words and phrases your potential customers used to describe their problems. Avoid internal jargon they don't use.
• Quantify Your Claim: Include a specific number in your main headline wherever possible. This could be a percentage increase, a dollar amount saved, or a timeframe for results.
• Test Messaging Variations: Before committing to a single message, test 2-3 different headlines on landing pages. A tool like Leadpages allows you to quickly A/B test variations without needing engineering resources.
• Document Your Framework: Create a central document in Notion that outlines your core value proposition, key benefits, and approved messaging for email subject lines, sales scripts, and social media posts to ensure consistency.

3. Ideate - Design Your Customer Journey and Conversion Workflow

The third of the 6 steps of the design process is to ideate, but not in the abstract sense of brainstorming random ideas. For B2B agencies and founders, this means designing a repeatable customer journey and conversion workflow. You must map out the exact path a prospect takes from becoming aware of you to becoming a paying client. This involves defining the specific touchpoints at each stage: awareness (how they find you), consideration (what they need to evaluate you), and decision (what removes their final objections).

This step translates your customer empathy into a practical, revenue-generating system. Instead of relying on hope, you build a predictable funnel. For example, a B2B consultant might design a workflow using PhantomBuster for LinkedIn outreach (awareness), followed by a three-email sequence (consideration), leading to a demo call (decision). This system isn't just a marketing plan; it's a machine designed to generate 40-60 qualified meetings per month. A strong focus on user experience is critical when designing this journey, especially for new ventures, as highlighted in effective UX design for startups.

Why It Matters

Without a defined workflow, your lead generation efforts will be chaotic and ineffective. You'll waste time on activities that don't lead to sales and have no way to measure what's working. An agency might map its journey from a LinkedIn ad (awareness) to a Leadpages landing page (consideration) and a five-email nurture sequence (decision), resulting in a predictable 12-15% conversion rate to a sales call. This clarity allows you to diagnose problems and optimize for better results instead of guessing why leads aren't converting.

How to Implement It

Your goal is to build a logical, compelling path that guides prospects from interest to purchase with minimal friction.

• Map the Journey Visually: Before touching any software, sketch the entire workflow on a whiteboard or paper. This helps you see the complete picture without getting bogged down by tool limitations.
• Identify and Address Objections: At each stage (awareness, consideration, decision), identify the top two or three objections your prospect has. Build messaging, content, or offers specifically to dismantle those barriers.
• Use Conversion-Focused Tools: For your landing pages, use a tool like Leadpages that is optimized for conversions and requires no developer input. For outreach, tools like Apollo and PhantomBuster can automate contact research and messaging sequences at scale.
• Set Clear Benchmarks: Define success for each step. What is your target response rate for outreach emails? What is the expected conversion rate on your landing page? These metrics tell you where your funnel is breaking.
• Test and Validate: Run a small batch of 20-30 prospects through your newly designed journey before scaling up. This small test will reveal critical flaws and opportunities for improvement before you invest significant time or money.

4. Prototype - Build Your First Lead Generation System

The fourth of the 6 steps of the design process is to prototype. This is where ideas move from the whiteboard to the real world. For B2B agencies and founders, prototyping isn't about complex wireframes; it's about building a minimal, functional lead generation system. This means stopping the endless planning and shipping a simple funnel: one landing page, one outreach sequence, and one conversion mechanism. The goal is to get real market feedback immediately, not to build a perfect, scalable machine on day one.

This step is designed to generate your first 10-20 qualified leads or close your first 2-3 deals within four weeks. It's an aggressive, action-oriented approach that forces you to learn from real results rather than assumptions. For example, a new agency might launch a simple landing page using Leadpages, connect it to an email list from Apollo, and secure its first two clients in a month. This tangible data is infinitely more valuable than any hypothetical model.

Why It Matters

Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. Many founders spend months "optimizing" a funnel that has never seen a real prospect, only to launch to crickets. A prototype forces you to test your core assumptions: Does the offer resonate? Is the messaging clear? Can you actually reach your ICP? A SaaS founder who spends just $500 on LinkedIn ads to a basic landing page can learn more in a week about their market's true interest than they would in three months of internal planning.

How to Implement It

Your objective is to create a direct path from a prospect to a conversation as quickly and cheaply as possible.

• Build a Single-Purpose Landing Page: Use a tool like Leadpages to launch a page in under two hours. It should have one clear call to action, like booking a demo or downloading a resource. You can learn more about how to create an effective offer by understanding what is a lead magnet.
• Launch a Small, Targeted Outreach Campaign: Don't buy a list of 10,000 contacts. Start with 50-100 highly qualified prospects identified through Apollo. For LinkedIn, use PhantomBuster to automate connection requests and initial messages.
• Track Everything Manually (At First): Before investing in a complex CRM, use a simple spreadsheet. Track key metrics: sends, opens, clicks, replies, demos booked, and deals closed. This raw data will tell you exactly where your funnel is breaking.
• Iterate Weekly, Not Monthly: Review your metrics at the end of each week. If your email open rates are low, rewrite your subject lines. If you get replies but no demos, refine your call to action. Small, rapid adjustments are the key to finding what works.

5. Test - Measure, Validate, and Optimize Your Results

The fifth step of the design process is to test. This is where ideas move from assumption to validation. For solo founders and B2B agencies, testing isn't about running massive, complex A/B experiments; it’s about making systematic, one-variable-at-a-time changes to your assets and measuring the impact. You're running small, focused experiments to discover what truly drives conversions, whether it's a landing page headline, an email subject line, or the positioning of your core offer.

This step separates businesses that scale from those that stagnate. Many founders launch a website or a campaign and never touch it again, assuming it works as intended. In reality, a few simple, tested tweaks can dramatically multiply results. For instance, an agency testing a new landing page headline from "Done-for-you LinkedIn strategy" to "Generate 5-15 Demos a Month" might see a 22% increase in demo requests. Applied across all marketing, that small win could mean 18 additional qualified leads in just three months.

Why It Matters

Without testing, your business operates on guesswork. You might have a high-traffic landing page that barely converts or a brilliant email campaign that no one opens. Systematic testing removes the uncertainty and provides clear, data-driven directives for growth. A consultant testing email subject lines could find that "Quick question about your outreach" gets a 35% open rate compared to 12% for "LinkedIn strategy help." That single insight could lead to over 50 additional meetings per year from the same outreach volume.

How to Implement It

Your goal is to isolate variables, measure outcomes, and document every finding to create a playbook of what works for your specific audience.

• Test One Variable Per Week: To get clean data, only change one element at a time. This could be the headline, the call-to-action button, the offer, or the email cadence.
• Use Split-Testing Tools: For landing pages, use the built-in split-testing feature in a tool like Leadpages to easily create and serve variants to your audience. This is essential for effective landing page conversion rate optimization.
• Document Everything: Create a simple spreadsheet to track every test. Note your hypothesis (what you think will happen), the change you made, the result (open rate, booking rate, etc.), and your decision. This builds an invaluable internal knowledge base.
• Wait for Statistical Significance: Don't declare a winner after just a handful of responses. Wait for at least 30-50 conversions or a statistically significant sample size before making a final call.
• Share Wins and Losses: Make test results transparent with your team. This fosters a data-driven culture where everyone learns from both successful and failed experiments.

6. Iterate - Scale What Works and Build Repeatable Systems

The final stage in the 6 steps of the design process is to iterate. After testing your solution and confirming it resonates with your target market, the goal is to move from manual, one-off successes to a predictable, scalable system. This is where you document what works, automate repetitive tasks, and empower your team to execute consistently, turning your validated process into a reliable engine for growth.

This step is about building a machine. For a solo founder or small B2B agency, this is the transition from "founder does everything" to a system that generates leads and closes deals while you sleep. You've found a winning formula in the testing phase; now you must codify it into a repeatable playbook. An agency might document its exact "LinkedIn outreach + email follow-up + demo" process, train two sales reps to execute it, and scale from a handful of leads to 40-60 qualified opportunities per month. This transforms an idea into a predictable revenue stream.

Why It Matters

Without iteration and systemization, your business cannot scale beyond your personal efforts. A consultant might find success with manual outreach but will hit a ceiling on their time and energy. By building a system, they can leverage tools to generate leads with minimal weekly effort, freeing them up for high-value client work. A SaaS company that fails to iterate will keep using a single, generic landing page, leaving massive conversion opportunities on the table. Iteration is what builds sustainable, long-term business assets instead of relying on momentary wins.

How to Implement It

Your objective is to create a clear, documented, and partially automated workflow that anyone on your team can follow to achieve consistent results.

• Document Every Step: Write down your entire validated sales and marketing process, from sourcing contacts to closing a deal. Assume nothing is too obvious. This document becomes your team's single source of truth.
• Create Reusable Templates: Develop standardized templates for emails, landing pages, social media posts, and demo call scripts. This ensures brand consistency and speeds up execution significantly.
• Systematize Lead Sourcing and Outreach: Use a tool like Apollo to create a systematic process for finding and contacting ideal prospects. For automating social outreach at a higher volume, a tool like PhantomBuster can handle hundreds of connection requests per week.
• Scale High-ROI Channels: Analyze your data to identify which channels deliver the best cost per lead and highest customer lifetime value. Cut underperforming channels and systematically increase your budget and activity on the winners by 25-50% each month.
• Build Landing Page Variations: Don't use a one-size-fits-all landing page. Use a tool like Leadpages to quickly create and test variations tailored to different audience segments, each with a unique value proposition and call to action.

6-Step Design Process Comparison

Do This Next: Ship Your Prototype

You've just walked through the complete blueprint for a repeatable, revenue-focused design process. We've dissected everything from understanding your ideal customer in the Empathize stage to scaling your wins in the Iterate stage. The path from a vague idea to a predictable growth engine is no longer a mystery. It's a clear, actionable sequence of steps.

But knowledge without action is just trivia. The real value of mastering these 6 steps of the design process comes not from reading about them, but from executing them. The biggest mistake solo founders and small B2B agencies make is getting stuck in analysis paralysis, trying to perfect each stage before moving on. The goal isn't a flawless system from day one; it’s building a functional system that generates real-world feedback.

Your 30-Day Action Plan: From Zero to First Results

Your immediate task is not to master all six steps. It's to build your first working prototype by focusing intensely on the first four. Stop theorizing and start building.

• Week 1: Empathize & Define. Get on the phone with five current or potential customers this week. Don't sell, just listen. Use those conversations to write one clear, concise value proposition. What is the single biggest problem you solve for them?
• Week 2: Ideate. Map out a single, simple customer journey. This could be a cold email sequence, a LinkedIn outreach flow, or a basic ad funnel. Document the exact touchpoints, from initial contact to a booked call. Use a tool like Notion to outline the steps.
• Weeks 3 & 4: Prototype & Test. Now, build it. Use a no-code builder like Leadpages or Webflow to launch a simple landing page that reflects your value proposition. Then, use a tool like Apollo to find your first 50 prospects and launch your outreach workflow.

Key Takeaway: Momentum is more valuable than perfection. A "good enough" prototype in the market will teach you more in one week than a "perfect" plan will in six months. Your goal is to get to the Test phase as quickly as possible.

This structured process is your competitive advantage. While others are endlessly tweaking their logos or debating font choices, you will be building a system that directly engages customers and generates data. This framework transforms design from a subjective art form into a strategic business function. It’s the engine that powers client acquisition, user engagement, and sustainable growth. Don't just learn the process, live it. Start today, and let the results speak for themselves.