FOUNDER-LED
SELLING
A design pattern for iterative startup GTM development & execution.
Sister presentation to Founding Sales - The Startup Sales Handbook
Video of an abridged version of this talk at Matrix’s “Zero to 100” Academy
Video of an abridged version of this talk at Matrix’s “Zero to 100” Academy
Buy the book that the deck is based on.
The authoritative resource on startup sales for founders (and others*) in first time sales roles.
Founder of TalentBin
Acquired (‘14) by Monster
Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketer / Product Manager turned Sales Leader
(Find me on LinkedIn too.)
• First “rep” (founder turned rep)
• First “sales manager”
• First “VP of Sales”
• 20 sales reps ; 20 CS reps
• New Product Sales Leader
• 600 sales reps
Author
Founder
What did I work on?
2007 - 2009
Product Marketer / Manager
• Enterprise, Prosumer, Consumer
• Messaging
• Collateral
• PR / Analyst Relations
• Events Marketing
• Field enablement
• Enterprise selling(ish)
What did I work on?
FOUNDED
FUNDED BY
BOUGHT BY
2010 - 2014
Founder => Sales Leader
• Everything from before and...
• Individual contributor selling
• Lead Gen
• Sales Ops
• Sales hiring
• Sales management
Bought by
2014 - 2018+
Public Co Sales Leader => Layabout Thoughtleader
Wrote
2014 - 2018+
Public Co Sales Leader => Layabout Thoughtleader
Founded
2014 - 2018+
Public Co Sales Leader => Layabout Thoughtleader
Founded
2014 - 2018+
Public Co Sales Leader => Layabout Thoughtleader
Experience with selling limited to caricatures of sales from movie and TV.
Personal predilection away from selling behaviors.
Fond memories �of those dicks who went into sales…
Why the sales confusion, founders?
Oh.
That’s why.
Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns
“We just publish docs, and they�buy, right?”
“We don’t have salespeople.”
These misconceptions can lead to believing seductive antipatterns.
Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns
“We don’t have sales people…” - BULLSHIT!
Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns
sales!
sales!
sales!
sales!
sales!
“Let’s just sprinkle some sales dude on it.”
(Dead VP sales in 12 months)
“Quick! Everyone sell to your batchmates!”
(Fake traction. Churn. DOA A Round)
Why the disconnect?
Founder Led Selling - Founders & Sellers
Where do Founders come from?
Background
Skills / Attitude
Absent Skills
Founder Led Selling - Where do founders come from?
Engineering, product, business school.
Market / product opportunity. Discovering a widespread problem. Fitting a technological solution to it in a valuable way. Explaining how that works to a third party (maybe). High analysis (high paralysis?)
Engaging non-friendly parties. Scalably engaging prospects. Aggressively pushing that forward. Parallel threading many concurrent conversations.
Where is selling typically learned from?
Background
Skills / Attitude
Absent Skills
Founder Led Selling - Where do sellers come from?
Business / marketing / liberals arts degree. “Apprenticeship learning.” SDR > AE > Management > Leadership
Persuasion. Multiplexing. High Activity. Extraversion. Persistence. Persistence. Persistence.
Process engineering. Metrics / Excel / Tableau. Product Marketing Messaging.
Implications of this confusion
(and upside if you nail it!)
Founder Led Selling - Failure to launch
“We don’t want to do sales! It’s gross!”
Acquihire. Opportunity cost.
Founder Led Selling - Sloppy growth.
Why are you guys so fucking bush league? Why 20 reps? You guys got to get your heads out of your asses and start focusing on going big here.
“
”
What if we just doubled the plan?!
“
”
“50% off sale” on valuation. Fucked common shareholder.
Fired founder. Fired sales leader.
Founder Led Selling - Sloppy growth.
(Former Zenefits sales ops.)
Why are you guys so fucking bush league? Why 20 reps? You guys got to get your heads out of your asses and start focusing on going big here.
“
”
What if we just doubled the plan?!
“
”
Sales was about:
Sales is now about:
Founder Led Selling - Drop the hate. Sales has changed.
• “Good with people”
• “Always be closing”
• Charisma - Right-brain persuasion
• Proprietary information / relationships
• Selling to a “mark”
• Lone wolf / eat what you kill.
• Opinion
• Some of those previous things, and..
• Pain Discovery
• Business analysis
• Value argumentation - left-brain persuasion
• Targeted engagement with ideal customers
• Consultative value trade
• Systematized go to market / Collaboration
• Math
Despair not! There’s a better way!
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Smooth value creation over time: Not how it works in startups!
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Not startups.
Google Finance – Yahoo Finance – MSN Money
Google Finance – Yahoo Finance – MSN Money
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Smooth value creation over time: Not how it works in startups!
Zoom in
here!
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
How it actually works: �Value creation through de-risking the business via incremental maturity stages.
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
After each step the organization is better at converting customer value into revenue.
And thus more valuable.
Business�Motion
Inflection
points.
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Entry and exit criteria for incremental stages.
Grinding
Grinding
Grinding
Grinding
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Later stages unlock even more scalable, parallelizable activities that create more and more value.
“Can we build a mini sales team?”
“Can non-founders sell this?”
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Founder Led Selling Stages
Customer Development �“What are we solving? How?”
Existence Proof of Value Creation �“Does it actually work?”
Existence Proof of Value Exchange �“Will someone pay?”
Small Scale Repeated �Value Exchange�“Will many people pay?”
Beginning Value Exchange Specialization & Abstraction �“Can non-founders sell this?”
Proof of Cohesive Unit of �Revenue Product �“Can we make a mini sales team?”
Initial Revenue Team Maximization�“Can we max out an initial sales team?”
Revenue Team Abstraction & Scale Out �“Can we make a successful team of sales teams?”
“What problem are we solving?”
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Engage potential customers with hypothesized pain points. Interview them about pain points, current solution paths & willingness to pay. Transcribe & digest interviews, aggregate potential feature set. Survey interviewees for reactions to proposed features. Build initial feature set.
Who does them? Ideally both business & tech founders, together to drive better problem / solution space intimacy. Later can split.
Key Activities:
Exit Criteria A statistically significant count of prospects with completed interviews, a cohesive minimum viable feature list, and a built minimum viable product.
Tools used Target users / buyers, ideally of differing personas (users, buyers, managers, etc.). Customer development “deck.”
Anti-pattern Start building product and features without pain point and current solutions understanding. “XYZ is broken” / “Build it and they will come” mentality.
GOAL
Discover and validate pain points in the market that can be solved with a unique application of technology. Build that technology.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Interviewing / Documenting
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Other �resources:
Michael Sippey
First Round Review
Eric Ries
Steve Blank
Peter Kazanjy - First Round Review
“Does this shit work?”
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Elicitation of a dozen or so key beta customer targets. Onboarding and implementation of a handful of customers (likely from customer development group) . Instrumentation of their use and value outputs. Presentation of that to customers for validation.
Tools used A group of beta customers (perhaps selected from your customer development group. Early messages / sales deck to engender buy in. Implementation checklist. Value instrumentation capacity.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove your solution improves the KPIs you set out to improve.
Who does them? Founder (business).
Exit Criteria Demonstrable proof your solution positively impacts the KPIs it was designed to improve. This proof can now be used to demand money in exchange for your solution.
Anti-pattern Hiring a “sales guy” to figure it out. Throwing the product “over the wall” to someone who was not involved in customer development to execute this. “Sprinkle some sales on it.”
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Still...Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Other �resources:
Founding Sales
1
Founding Sales
2
Founding Sales
3
Founding Sales
5
Founding Sales
6
“Will someone pay?”
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Presentation of an ROI case to the potential customers, their agreement that this is likely to be attained, the project management of that agreement through the entire process of procurement, followed by successful implementation.
Tools used Pricing with ROI rationale. Sales narrative messaging, early sales deck articulating sales narrative, demo , implementation process.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Customer(s) gives you money in exchange for the value the solution provides (namely, in terms of the KPI improvements that were sought).
Who does it? Founder (business) doing appointment setting, selling, and onboarding.
Exit Criteria A customer (or set of customers) paying money in exchange for the value your solution provides, and after being implemented and using the solution, continues to believe that the solution provides the promised value (which value provision is demonstrable through KPI improvement.)
Anti-pattern Primary anti-pattern is not charging for the solution, thus not proving the actual value exchange. Secondary antipattern is selling the solution, but not investing sufficiently to prove that the customer attains the promised value (that is, you got money, but they did not get value.)
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Still...Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Other �resources:
Founding Sales
1
Founding Sales
3
Sequoia Capital
5
Founding Sales
Peter Kazanjy
6
Peter Kazanjy
“Will many people pay for this?”
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
Sales Development Rep
Business Founder
IC
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
An alternative pattern can be the business founder continuing to do the appointment setting and selling, but then adding leverage with a CS rep who can take some of the labor of CS off the founder’s plate.
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
CS Rep
Business Founder
IC
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
Engagement of a number (30-50+) non-beta prospects who are then run through the sales process, and a proportion of whom (10-20) turn into paying customers, who are onboarded and get to value.
Tools used Ideal customer profile prospect lists - companies and target contacts. Messaging. Qualification criteria. Email outreach materials and messaging. Sales presentation (deck) and demo & preso script. Discovery questions. Pricing (that likely increases over time). Onboarding checklists. Beginning CRM for keeping track of sales activities.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Refine & document the “sales motion” - the process of prospect identification, engagement, presentation, closing, & onboarding. Discover failure modes and areas of resonance. “Product manage” and package the sales motion so someone else can do it.
Who does it? Founder (business) does selling and customer success. Can be accelerated through the addition of a “sales development rep” junior sales helper who takes over engaging inbound leads, and engaging in a proactive fashion with target prospects, setting selling appointments for business founders. This can give business founder more selling repetitions in a given time frame with which to refine the sales motion.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
Engagement of a number (30-50+) non-beta prospects who are then run through the sales process, and a proportion of whom (10-20) turn into paying customers, who are onboarded and get to value.
Exit Criteria One to two dozen customers, and a clear, repeatable, documented sales motion ready to be tested on a new, non-founder, seller. Unit sales KPIs like win rate and attainment per time period look healthy.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Refine & document the “sales motion” - the process of prospect identification, engagement, presentation, closing, & onboarding. Discover failure modes and areas of resonance. “Product manage” and package the sales motion so someone else can do it.
Anti-pattern Again the anti-pattern here would be trying to get someone else to do this for you. Hiring a “sales guy” or even worse, a VPS to prove out that this is repeatable a handful of times. Another is acquiring a bunch of customers, only a fraction of which get to success. Spraying and praying.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
Other �resources:
Founding Sales
1
Founding Sales
2
Founding Sales
3
Founding Sales
4
“Can non-founders sell this?”
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
Account Executive
Account Executive
Sales Development�Representative
Business Founder
IC
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
The hiring, training, and management to success of one or more “sellers.” Continued selling activity by founder, but with more time focused on proving someone else can also sell in a repeatable fashion. Training, management, coaching, inspection, correction, and tooling are the focuses.
Tools used All tooling from above, but now an ideal hiring profile, hiring process, and onboarding process. More mature CRM for orchestration of sales efforts and collaboration. Documented stepwise sales motion. Management and inspection harness - one-on-ones, team meetings, metrics review, etc.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove the sales motion refined & cemented previously can be learned and executed by someone other than the founder. Prove beginnings of “scale out.”
Who does them? The founder now in role of a beginning player-coach sales manager. Hire one or two AEs, founder onboards them, and manages them, as the person who was closest to selling before. The SDR continues to handle inbound and outbound prospecting (though he may be being groomed for selling).
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
The hiring, training, and management to success of one or more “sellers.” Continued selling activity by founder, but with more time focused on proving someone else can also sell in a repeatable fashion. Training, management, coaching, inspection, correction, and tooling are the focuses.
Exit Criteria One or more “sellers” are engaging, presenting to, and closing ideal customer profile customers, who are then getting to success. They are selling at least as efficiently as the founder was previously and are successful “revenue units.”
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove the sales motion refined & cemented previously can be learned and executed by someone other than the founder. Prove beginnings of “scale out.”
Anti-pattern This is a “goldilocks” scenario. You want to do it “just right.” The first anti-pattern is too much “leverage” by hiring too many, too fast. Hiring too many raises burn rates without proof of success and too many reps makes it difficult for the manager-founder to get each to critical mass. Instead, you “boil the ocean” and get none of them to success. The second anti-pattern is non-leverage. Instead of focusing on proving AE1 and AE2 can get to success, founder spends too much time still “playing” instead of “coaching.” Doing so robs the future of the company by slowing the process of “packaging” and “distribution” of the sales motion into something that can be dropped into 5, 10, n reps in the future.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION (cont.)
Other �resources:
1
3
Founding Sales
Founding Sales
Founding Sales
“So, WTF is ‘scaling’ anyway?”
First, a digression
Founder Led Selling - “Ramping a Rep” - Monthly
time
Period of monthly net cash consumption.
$15k
$45k
Monthly net cash flow
Monthly net cash contribution three months in! “Covering your nut.” Yay!!
Steady state monthly cash contribution.
A properly ramping single rep that costs $150k / yr. ($13k a month), who should book $60k a month, with a 45 day deal cycle, $15k ACV.
Founder Led Selling - “Ramping a Rep” - Aggregate
time
Aggregate net cash flow
$50k
Ramp period of net cash consumption.
Aggregate net cash contribution! Rep has now paid back.
Rep unit profitability.
A properly ramping single rep that costs $150k / yr. ($13k a month), who should book $60k a month, with a 45 day deal cycle, $15k ACV.
Founder Led Selling - “Ramping 4 Reps”
time
Period of monthly net cash consumption.
$60k
Monthly net cash flow
A properly ramping single rep that costs $150k / yr. ($13k a month), who should book $60k a month, with a 45 day deal cycle, $15k ACV.
$180k
Now with 4 reps!
Founder Led Selling - Adding another cohort
time
Monthly net cash flow
$360k contribution margin / mo / $4.3m recurring contribution margin after 8 months.
Add second AE cohort.
$60k
$180k
$60k
Awesome right?!
Founder Led Selling - Adding MOAR COHORTS
time
Monthly net cash flow
$1.62m/mo contribution margin ($19m recurring contribution margin)
Nine cohorts of reps successfully onboarded every four months gets us to $1.6m in monthly contribution margin 36 months in.
Founder Led Selling - Why this can be powerful.
Vitals:
$15k ACV, 20% win rate, 3 month ramp, 10 new opps a week, 90% renewal rate.�
9 classes of 3 AEs, every 3 months. (1:2 SDR:AE ratio)
Ends at 27 ramped AEs (12 SDRs) after 24 months doing $4.5m in monthly bookings ($54m in forward ARR).
Founder Led Selling - Why this can be powerful.
Vitals:
$15k ACV, 20% win rate, 3 month ramp, 10 new opps a week, 90% renewal rate.
9 classes of 3 AEs, every 3 months. (1:2 SDR:AE ratio)
Ends at 27 ramped AEs (12 SDRs) after 24 months doing $4.5m in monthly bookings ($54m in forward ARR).
Founder Led Selling - The Costs of Poorly Ramping Reps
time
Elongated period of net cash consumption.
Monthly net cash flow
The same rep slowly ramping takes more time to cover his own cost, get to efficient contribution ratios. Eats $75k in cash before becoming contribution positive.
$180k
$15k
$45k
Rep covers their own cost two months later than in prior example, and get to full productivity eight months in. Gnarly opportunity cost.
Founder Led Selling - Poorly Ramping Rep Cohort
time
Monthly net cash flow
Four slowly ramping reps now cost ~$300k before they start covering their own costs five months in (vs. $150k before). That’s expensive and a lot of capital!
$180k
$60k
Now with 4 reps!
Founder Led Selling - Adding another slow cohort
time
Monthly net cash flow
$360k contribution margin / mo / $4.3m recurring contribution margin 16 months in.
$60k
$180k
$60k
Add second AE cohort.
Because of slow ramps, ramping two cohorts now takes 16 months (vs. 8 months).
Founder Led Selling - Adding more slow cohorts
time
Monthly net cash flow
36 months only gets you 4.5 cohorts of 8-month ramping reps. �After 54 months you’re only at $810k in monthly contribution margin.
4 mo. ramping cohorts.
8 mo. ramping cohorts.
$1.62m / mo contribution margin ($19m annualized contribution margin)
$810k / mo contribution margin ($9.7m annualized contribution margin)
“Can we make a mini sales team?”
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION & RETENTION
Founder-Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
Business Founder
Account Executive
Account Executive
Sales Development�Representative
Customer Success Manager
Unit of Revenue Production
“Revenue mitochondria”
IC
MGT.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION & RETENTION
Continued orchestration refinement and management. Continued sales tooling creation. Hiring of a dedicated customer success staffer. Founder is spending nearly all time hiring, onboarding, training, and managing.
Tools used All previous, plus refined managerial playbook. A set of meetings for operational cadence. Sales process, handoffs, and CRM.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove successful performance of a “complete unit” of revenue production, including lead gen, selling & closing, & onboarding.
Who does them? Founder is now out of day to day selling. A single unit of “revenue production” - whatever that is for your organization. A common example is one SDR, two AEs, a one CSM. This is where you might hire a sales manager / leader, as the next step is to clone this unit a handful of times.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION & RETENTION
Continued orchestration refinement and management. Continued sales tooling creation. Hiring of a dedicated customer success staffer. Founder is spending nearly all time hiring, onboarding, training, and managing.
Exit Criteria The unit is producing revenue at a predictable rate, all members are hitting their goal KPIs, with smooth handoffs & proper backchecks to prevent dropped balls. You are confident you can now clone this.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove successful performance of a “complete unit” of revenue production & retention, including lead gen, selling & closing, & onboarding.
Anti-pattern In that this pattern is more flexible, it’s harder to concretely define an anti pattern. Probably the worst would be scale out of one function, out of line with the others. That is, five AEs, but only one SDR, and one CSM. Or no CSMs. Balance is the key.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION (cont.)
Other �resources:
1
Founding Sales
“Can we max out an initial sales team?”
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
Sales Operations
SDR
AE
AE
CSM
Biz Founder / Early VP Sales
SDR
AE
AE
CSM
SDR
AE
AE
CSM
IC
MGT.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION
Same as previous step, but with more managerial complexity.
Tools used Same as before, but with more focus on orchestration and managerial tooling & process. Particularly investment in analytics.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Demonstration of the successful performance of full team of teams. Full complement of AE team, SDR team, CS team, working under one manager.
Who does them? If you haven’t yet hired a sales manager, this is where you might. Alternatively, you might wait until you understand the playbook, and then bring in someone.
Exit Criteria The complete unit is producing revenue at a predictable rate, all members are hitting their goal KPIs, and you are confident you can now hand a unit like this to a manager to manage, and start to clone this unit.
Anti-pattern Unclear. Potentially handing the beginnings of this unit off to a manager before fully baking it yourself. Or by racing through this stage to the next one before proving that this stage was successfully achieved.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION (cont.)
Other �resources:
1
Matrix Partners VC
Founding Sales
Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler
“Can we make a successful team�of sales teams?”
PROOF OF REVENUE TEAM ABSTRACTION
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
SDR
SDR
SDR
SDR
SDR
SDR
CSM
CSM
CSM
CSM
CSM
CSM
SDR Manager
2x AE Managers
CSM Manager
VP Sales & Success
Sales Operations
Lead Gen
Selling
Success
IC
MGT.
Leadership
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF REVENUE TEAM ABSTRACTION
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Tools used Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis.
Key Activities:
GOAL
You now want to prove that you can clone that prior unit and get another “platoon” up to speed, typically involving another managerial layer.
Who does them? Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis.
Exit Criteria Proven rep unit productivity, utilization
Anti-pattern Premature scale. Uncontrolled growth. Insufficient opportunities to fee rep calendars. Sloppy / upside down unit economics. Process doesn’t scale with team complexity.
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF REVENUE TEAM ABSTRACTION (cont.)
Other �resources:
1
3
Founding Sales
Founding Sales
Founding Sales
Founder Led Selling
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
Some stages prepare you for serious enterprise value creation.
Prove you can create multiple units of revenue production.
Founder Led Selling - Failure to launch
Box’s market cap is Dropbox’s opportunity cost..
Refactor slide to focus on the breadth of file sharing use case, and how it’s one of the few places this can work with very low order values - but still need sales eventually. Self-service isn’t typically a full business. It’s a source of compelling lead gen eventually requiring upsell. Consider Slack vs. HipChat case study as another example. Also DBX has now fully focused on PQL products driving to sales org.
Founder Led Selling - What’s the upside?
2m in. Massive ARR.
500k raised. 1.2m ARR. Cashflow pos.
Founder Led Selling - What’s the upside?
$5m in. $1B out. �Kinda nice.
Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
enterprise value
time
Ok. Now you’re probably not a startup anymore...
You can zoom out now!
Killer rep performance analytics @ atriumhq.com
“B2B sales for dummies” for founders (other first time sellers).
Amazing sales operations / sales leadership peer education community.
Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketer / Product Manager turned Sales Leader
(Find me on LinkedIn too.)