Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/ama-steli-efti …
Thoughts:
-
-
Simply getting oneself to be comfortable with sales (or at least present as being comfortable for a phone call or two) unlocks a crazy amount of success for founders, because founders have a few advantages over every other sales rep.
Show this thread -
One is that they present as being almost irrationally obsessed with the market. Founders tend to live and breath the product for a few years, and it often shows, mostly in positive ways. Unlike most sales reps, founders can credibly promise tight feedback loops for product.
Show this thread -
Stealing a line from
@asmartbear which has paid for at least a year or two of my kids' education: "If you go with BigCo, you can call them at 3 AM. Someone will listen to you politely, explain they have no solution, and open a ticket. If you call at 3 PM, same answer."Show this thread -
"You can't get a useless answer from me at 3 AM in the morning. But when I'm up, your business *really is* important to me. I am the engineering team. I will push fixes so fast you will be amazed. I *will* get this right because it *actually matters* to my business that I do."
Show this thread -
Founders have to sell. Many, many technical founders of my acquaintance want to offload this to someone ASAP. I've never seen this work: you need to have a deep understanding of your market and customers to arm that first non-founder salesperson. It is gained by doing.
Show this thread -
(And even if you don't do sales day-to-day anymore, you still have to sell candidates, investors, and partners on the desirability of using your company. Though most B2B SaaS CEOs that I know still very much have an account in their CRM and talk to "opportunities" frequently.)
Show this thread -
The transition from founder-driven sales to founder-assisted sales generally starts with hiring a "maverick" sort of salesperson; someone who is comfortable extracting what you know about the market, iterating rapidly on scripts, and doing "things that don't scale" to win.
Show this thread -
This may often be a necessary step, but it generally doesn't last for growing companies, partly because there is a crushing market undersupply of very effective mavericks. These folks are capable of writing their own ticket and then, by construction, getting folks to buy it.
Show this thread -
So eventually one tends to hire a VP of Sales who has done this before. They'll immediately start hiring reps under them, and start systematizing what you've learned about sales into scripts and playbooks.
Show this thread -
You'll see this maturity model start to creep into all parts of the funnel, too, which will probably actually be written down for the first time somewhere around this stage. Sophisticated, mature processes for marketing to pass leads over to sales for qualification.
Show this thread -
Sophisticated, maturing processes for sales to actually physically close deals. ("What, you mean we don't just edit a few things in Word and then ask them to print, sign, scan, and send back?") Defined, scheduled startup calls, onboarding, and handover to AMs / CS aftewards.
Show this thread -
(Sales, like many professions, benefits from specialization of labor. One that happens early is splitting the team into "account executives" (AEs) focused on getting new accounts and "account managers" (AMs), focused on keeping existing customers happy and expansion revenue.
Show this thread -
(Some companies even split their AM teams into dedicated subteams for doing true expansion, for cross-selling products, for winning renewals, and for the generic "I want the direct contact information for someone at your company because our business must be important enough" job)
Show this thread -
If you're at all interested in these topics, the people to read a heck out of are Steli and
@jasonlk (who writes https://www.saastr.com/blog/ ). Steli is so effective at sales he has closed deals he wasn't even a party to. My favorite anecdote about this:Show this thread -
At a previous company I had invited myself out to lunch with a software CEO, with intent to get them to sign up, but was not really sure where we were at end of lunch. "Hey apropos of nothing: do you know Steli?" "Oh yeah he's great." "He is. Steli wouldn't let me leave lunch...
Show this thread -
... until you explicitly tell me you're going to use our product." "He wouldn't, would he." "He wouldn't." "OK then; we will." "Great! Email me and we'll figure out logistics."
Show this thread -
That is called "asking for the sale" and, while that is a very unconventional way to ask for the sale, a *ridiculous* portion of all energy expended in the art of sales is to get conversations to the point where someone has to actually say yes or no.
Show this thread -
Relatedly: in the highly likely event that you get an answer which is not a yes or no, effective salespeople follow up until the sun goes nova waiting for either a yes or no.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.