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.
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(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.
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(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)
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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...
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... 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."
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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.
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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.
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End of conversation
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