In today's episode, we have a special guest joining us - Devang Agrawal, representing his AI company Glyphic AI. Devang brings a wealth of experience from his time at Apple and Google Deepvine, and today he will be diving into the fascinating world of AI in sales. Glyphic AI is on a mission to help companies build and sell products that people truly want, using the power of AI. With around 10 paying customers and several pilot customers, Glyphic AI is still in the early stages of their journey. Devang believes that starting selling earlier would have been beneficial for validation purposes. In our discussion, Devang emphasizes the importance of early validation and learning from users and customers. He shares insights on the value of design partners' feedback and the necessity of market validation. We also touch on the challenges of balancing AI's capabilities with customer expectations. The evolution of AI technology has transformed the sales landscape, and Devang gives us a glimpse into the incredible potential it holds. From extracting strategic insights from sales calls to automating non-core sales activities, AI has the power to revolutionize the way sales teams operate. Devang also shares his own experiences using Glyphic Copilot, an AI tool that has significantly improved his sales team's process. He discusses the benefits of embedding a sales process into their daily work and how AI has helped guide his team towards closing deals. We'll also explore the potential risks of relying too heavily on AI and the importance of maintaining meaningful conversations with clients.

In today's episode, our host Adam Springer is joined by guest Mohamed Alkaduhimi, founder and CEO of WiseMinds. Together, they dive deep into the world of startups and sales, discussing the importance of passion, value, and efficiency in building a successful business. Mohamed shares his insights on the fascinating world of Elon Musk and his relentless pursuit of challenging the marketplace. He emphasizes the need for startups to find better solutions and be more efficient, drawing inspiration from Musk's example. While acknowledging that not everyone can be Elon Musk, Mohamed believes we can all learn from his approach. Adam, the host of the podcast, started this show to learn from others and share that knowledge with our thriving community. He and Mohamed explore the innate human desire to bring value and make a living from one's passion. They discuss the significance of helping others and how it can lead to long-term success. In their conversation, Mohamed identifies a common problem in the tech startup industry – a fixation on solutions, which often hinders understanding and growth. They also touch upon the idea of startups relying on consulting to support their software companies. Mohamed introduces his own venture, WiseMunch, a software agency that aims to be a long-term partner for startups in need of tech support. With a focus on helping startups avoid tech failures, WiseMunch provides expertise and guidance to ensure a seamless journey to success. Tune in as Adam and Mohamed delve into the connections between sales, systems, and logic in business decisions. They highlight the importance of learning from different industries and adopting a broader mindset. Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion on scaling purpose-driven startups and aligning passion with value.

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Startup Sales Podcast! In today's episode, we have a special guest, Sami Ekmark, the founder of CommuApp. CommuApp is an app that connects people and helps them find, give, and receive help. With an impressive user base of 50,000, Sami will share his journey of growing his startup, the business model behind CommuApp, and the valuable lessons he's learned along the way. Get ready to dive into the world of startup sales and gain insights from Sami's experiences.

In this episode of Startup Sales, Adam Springer is joined by Manolis Labovas, founder of Repath Solutions, to discuss the crucial role of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems in business operations and sales processes. Manolis shares his expertise as a Zoho Premier partner, highlighting the significance of organizing customer data, enhancing communication, and leveraging automation within the CRM. The conversation delves into the concept of the CRM evolving into an operating system, allowing for seamless integration of various business functionalities. Listeners gain valuable insights into the importance of disciplined data management and customization, and the episode concludes with a discussion about the implementation of CRM systems and the impact on digital transformation efforts.

In this episode, we have an insightful conversation with Peter Loving, the founder of UserActive and an expert in UI and UX design for SaaS companies. Peter shares valuable insights about the critical role of UI and UX in converting free trials into paying customers, enhancing the user experience, and optimizing pricing models. We'll also discuss the impact of design on demo presentations, sales processes, and customer retention. Whether you're a SaaS founder, a sales professional, or interested in the power of UI/UX in business, this episode has something for you. So, let's dive in and learn from Peter's wealth of experience in SaaS design!

n this episode of the Startup Sales Podcast, host Adam Springer interviews Joe Seddon, the founder and CEO of Zero Gravity. Zero Gravity works with lower-income families to help pair them with jobs at larger corporations. Joe shares the motivation behind founding the business and explains how technology is used to identify and support talent from all backgrounds to break into top universities and careers. He discusses the importance of this work for businesses, the success rates of their programs, and the valuable lessons learned in selling and onboarding with major clients like HSBC. Tune in to hear Joe's insights on sales, onboarding, and the impact of Zero Gravity in the UK and the US.

In today's episode, we have a special guest joining us, Bethany Ayers, an experienced investor and tech sales expert. Bethany shares her insights on being an angel investor versus an institutional investor, as well as her thoughts on the importance of being attached to your money in the startup world. We also dive into the conversation about the challenges and strategies of hiring a sales leader, finding the right fit for your company's stage, and the significance of product-market fit. Bethany's extensive experience in the tech industry and her role as a board member in multiple companies give us a unique perspective on go-to-market strategies and team building. So tune in and get ready to gain valuable sales insights in this engaging episode with Bethany Ayers on the Startup Sales Podcast!

Anthony Barone is an SEO specialist who made a bold move four years ago. After working as the second hire at Studio Hawk in Australia and gaining valuable knowledge and skills in marketing and SEO, he decided to relocate to the UK. Despite having no background in business or many contacts in the industry, Anthony took the opportunity to enter the fiercely competitive SEO market in the UK. Determined to succeed, he faced the challenge head-on and has been steadily growing his business even during the difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on building his team and adapting to uncertain circumstances, Anthony's journey has been a true testament to his determination and entrepreneurial spirit.

🚀 In this episode, Anton reveals the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned in his entrepreneurial journey. Here are three key takeaways: 1️⃣ Ideal Customer Profile: Anton emphasizes the importance of understanding your ideal customer and going deep into a specific audience. Building a product for everyone may seem tempting, but focusing on a specific target audience increases your chances of success. 2️⃣ Pricing Strategy: Anton shares his experience of raising prices and how it actually benefited his business. By adjusting their pricing, Space Goats managed to increase revenue, reduce operational effort per customer, and attract bigger clients. Don't be afraid to value your product or service and adapt your pricing strategy accordingly. 3️⃣ Process before Expansion: Anton admits that hiring a large team before establishing a clear process was a mistake. Having a well-defined process in place before scaling up is crucial for efficient operations and sustainable growth. Learn from his experience and ensure a solid foundation before expanding your team.

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Sales Podcast! In today's episode, we have a special guest, Gino Ferrand, the founder of Tecla. Tecla is a company that specializes in helping companies in the US and Canada expand their recruitment and hiring into Latin America. Gino shares insights on building sales teams outside of the country and the benefits of hiring internationally, such as cost savings and real-time collaboration. He also discusses the shift from outsourcing to treating remote team members as integral parts of the organization. Gino emphasizes the importance of cultural understanding and soft skills when hiring sales professionals in Latin America. Tune in to gain valuable insights on building a successful international sales team. Don't miss out on this informative episode!

Sebastian Baier is a co-founder of Buynomics, a German-based company he established in Cologne five years ago. Buynomics digitizes RGM (Revenue Growth Management) processes for large enterprises in order to assist them in making informed and data-driven decisions regarding product offerings, pricing strategies, promotions, and optimal market mix. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture, Sebastian worked as a consultant at Simon Kutcher, a prominent consultancy in the field. Through this experience, he gained extensive knowledge and expertise in the industry. Sebastian also holds an academic background in economics and obtained a PhD in physics, consistently demonstrating his affinity for data and utilizing it to enhance decision-making processes.

Welcome back to the Startup Sales Podcast! In this exciting episode, we have the privilege of speaking with a true sales and marketing expert, Jim Rembach. Jim is the founder of Peerroundtables.com, a platform that brings together senior executives to learn, network, and share their valuable insights. Joining us today, Jim emphasizes the importance of humility in startup culture, regardless of gender, and its critical role in achieving long-term success. We dive into the shifts and challenges faced in sales and marketing, especially in the ever-evolving world of startups. Jim shares his wealth of knowledge on building effective relationships, leveraging social networks, and adapting strategies in the B2B space. We discuss the impact of COVID-19, the rise of AI and social media, and the need to find the right peer group to foster creativity and innovation. So grab your headphones, buckle up, and get ready for an inspiring and insightful conversation on building a successful sales career in a VUCA world with Jim Rembach.

Welcome back to the Adam Springer podcast! In today's episode, we have a very special guest joining us - the one and only Captain Hoff. Captain Hoff, also known as Steve Hoffman, is the founder of Founder Space, an innovative hub spanning across 22 countries. He has written several books, including "The Five Forces That Change Everything" and "Make Elephants Fly." In this episode, we dive deep into the world of startup sales and marketing. Captain Hoff shares valuable insights on how to demonstrate traction and meet extreme market needs to attract venture funding. He emphasizes the importance of offering extreme value and solving customers' biggest headaches to achieve breakthrough success. We also explore the art of sales, focusing on understanding customers, listening intently, and asking the right questions. Captain Hoff reveals the keys to building successful partnerships and leveraging leads for sustainable business growth. And of course, we discuss the fascinating world of venture capitalists, their preferences, and their evaluation criteria. So, make sure to tune in as Captain Hoff takes us on a captivating journey through the world of startup sales and marketing. This episode is sponsored by Startup Sales, a growth hacking agency that guarantees meetings with prospects. Don't miss out on this episode filled with valuable insights and advice. Let's dive in!

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $5 million ARR then scale to $25 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly.

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have workshops for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the workshops we […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the bootcamp […]

Here is the video version of this episode Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with an average […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the bootcamp […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 monthly. In the bootcamp […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR then scale to $5 million. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with an average sales price over $1,000 MRR. In the bootcamp […]

In this episode we speak about the mistakes founders typically make when hiring their first sales person. We also address what you should look for and how to set a process to hire. Transcript [0:00] Hi, everybody. I wanted to talk today about hiring your first sales person.You know, working with so many founders and so […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we work with you on getting […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we build the sales process with […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we build the sales process with […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We have a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we build the sales process with […]

Startup Sales is helping early stage B2B startups get to $1 million ARR. With this podcast we help founders and early sales leaders with building a repeatable and scalable sales process. We also offer a bootcamp for early stage startups with a sales price over $500 MRR. In the bootcamp we build the sales process […]

Episode 61: Show Notes. Today we are joined by Scott Sambucci, founder and CEO of SalesQualia, to talk about how to go about building your sales team from the ground up. Scott helps B2B startups grow and has gained a vast amount of experience in the sales arena over the last three decades. In this […]

Episode 60: Show Notes. On today’s episode, we are joined by a great guest, Sean Sykes, the CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting, a company that specializes in helping organizations build high performance sales teams. Sean provides some valuable, in depth insights into the hiring process. Having climbed up the ranks from salesperson all the way […]

Episode 59: Show Notes. In this week’s episode of Startup Sales, we welcome Sabba Nazhand. Sabba is the Vice President of Sales at WorkGenius, a startup specializing in AI digital workforce solutions. Sabba is a long-time leader in the B2B tech sales space and specializes in growing and leading tech sales teams. Having been involved […]

Episode 58: Show Notes. Welcome back to Startup Sales everybody! Today on the show we are joined by Bruce Zivan, Senior Director of Global Sales Development at Graduway, to talk us about SDR and how to go about hiring a great team for your company. We also talk about the preparation stage that comes before […]

Episode 57: Show Notes. On this episode of Startup Sales we have Mark Fershteyn joining us. Mark has been in sales for a long time, going from sales to management to Director of Sales and now he is the founder of a startup called Recapped. Having been in all of these positions, he knows and […]

Episode 56: Show Notes. Today on Startup Sales we are so glad to welcome Kevin Dixon, the founder of Boxxstep! Kevin is someone with so much experience in the sales world and also a leader who remains an active seller with a committed buyer centric philosophy. He is here to explain his approach to sales, […]

Episode 51: Show Notes. In this episode of Startup Sales we welcome Armand Farrokh, Senior Manager of Sales Development at Carta. Armand is here to talk about his sales process and the ways in which you can tighten up your systems and routine for improved results and greater conversion rates. He unpacks what he sees […]

Episode 54: Show Notes. Welcome back to podcast everyone, today we are very lucky to be joined by Jeremy Levine, Senior Digital Adoption Consultant at WalkMe and part of the Sales Hacker 50! He is here to tell us about his work, explain account based selling and the best ways for building rapport with prospects. […]

Episode 53: Show Notes. In this episode of Startup Sales, we welcome David Zeff. Early on in his career, David started his own sales company and later went on to help other early-stage start-ups grow and build their sales teams. Today, David serves as Head of Sales at Exceed Technology, a leading tech sales company […]

Episode 52: Show Notes. In this episode of Startup Sales, we welcome Dylis Guyan. Dylis is an International Sales and Marketing leader, coach and speaker and owner of her own company by the same name. She also serves as Course Director for the Chartered Institute for Marketing and lectures MBA students at Oxford University’s Saïd […]

Episode 55: Show Notes. In this episode of Startup Sales, we welcome Michael Tuso. Michael is the Head of Business Development and Enablement at Chili Piper, which is a 100% remote company, including their entire sales team. In this episode, Michael shares his unique insights as a leader of a remote sales team. We hear […]

Episode Mini 50: Show Notes. Welcome back to our mini-series with John Ellis. This is the last episode in this set and we hope you have found it useful. In this episode John will be unpacking the crucial importance of mental framing. He basically breaks down the subject into four main parts and expands on […]

Episode 49: Show Notes. We left off last time taking about the hiring process of AEs and BDRs and today we’ll be discussing onboarding and compensation. Now that you’ve found the right people, the next considerations include what to pay them and how to get them to ramp up. We give you some helpful guidelines […]

Episode 48: Show Notes. Recruiting and hiring sales talent is the next important topic in our mini series with John Ellis. These tasks are some of the most challenging, especially doing it at scale. Today we discuss your sales leader’s role in approaching prospective reps, the most important information for job postings, the red flags […]

Episode 47: Show Notes. Today we are continuing our discussion from Part 3 about sales leadership and management. Specifically, we will be discussing how a company can attract the right sales leader, which leadership skills to be on the lookout for, and what kind of leadership is required at each stage. There is no such […]

Episode 46: Show Notes. On this episode of our mini series with John Ellis, we are talking about sales leadership and management. We specifically unpack what these functions are responsible for, how to get started and what kind of leadership is required at each stage. It’s important not to look for someone with an impressive […]

Episode 45: Show Notes. Today we’re going to be speaking about sales enablement and engagement! In particular, we are discussing how to approach these two functions when you have little to no resources, so this conversation is especially relevant to startups who often have to make do with the basics. We talk about the pros […]

Episode 44: Show Notes. Welcome to the first in our Startup Sales mini series with John Ellis! After our conversation on the full edition of the podcast, we received some great feedback, tons of questions and we also realized how much we could all benefit from drilling down on some of the topics we mentioned […]

Episode 43: Show Notes. Today on the show we speak with Drift CRO, Josh Allen, and VP of Sales, Armen Zildjian. In this episode, we explore a range of important topics you’ll inevitably have to face as an early-stage company. Josh and Arman see a lot of companies hurting themselves by not paying close enough […]

Episode 42: Show Notes Today on the show we welcome co-founder of Blissful Prospecting, Jason Bay. If you are an early-stage company wanting to start your outbound process, this is a terrific episode for you. Here we show you how to set up your outbound process in the most effective and human way, what tools […]

Episode 41: Show Notes. On the show today we’re sitting down with Brandon Bussey, Sales Leader and Director of Sales Ops at Lucid. Brandon has a great deal of experience in high growth tech companies and he’s going to be sharing with us about mapping out your sales process, how to structure your team and […]

Episode 40: Show Notes On this episode of Startup Sales, we are joined by Michael Field who works with early stage startups and business owners to develop their competitive strategy and improve their brand and market position as well as growing out their sales team. Today we’re covering a number of interesting topics including competitive […]

Episode 39: Show Notes. On the show today we have Hilton Burke from IncrediBuild joining us to share his wealth of experience as a sales manager. He advises listeners on the composition of an effective sales team and on recognizing when a lead is ready to be handed over to a sales executive, and then […]

Episode 38 Show Notes Key Points From This Episode: Today we’re speaking with the Senior Director of Sales at Luma Health, John Ellis, about leadership techniques and managing an effective sales team, particularly in the early stages of a startup. John shares about the educational value of doing certain things the old school way, how […]

Episode 37: Show Notes. Today on Startup Sales we are joined by Karen Rhorer who is the Customer Success & Sales Strategy Lead at Atrium. She is here to talk to us about the vital area of sales ops and how to measure KPI's the right way! We get into the creation of sales campaigns […]

On the show today we welcome Justin Welsh to talk about building strong initial sales teams, hiring the right people and maintaining and growing their impact through great sales processes and practices. We discuss Justin's exact ideas around these vital stages of any startup's lifespan and our guest generously shares his own experiences and the […]

Notes SDR is compensated on a booked meeting that gets qualified from the sales person. The sales people are able to hold onto an account as long as there is up-sell potential. Whereas typically a company will take the account away from the sales person right after they are closed or up to 3 months after. This allows for a better relationship with the client and company and also allows the salesperson not to be stressed to get as big of a deal as possible which may ruin the deal. Every time you hand off a prospect/client to a new person in the company, it leaves room for breakage. In order to minimize this, it is important that the two people communicate fully on every aspect of the client before the hand off takes place. There are many good ways to make a handoff from SDR to AE. A good one would be to set the meeting and have the AE come on the meeting (without saying anything). Introduce the AE and have the SDR start the conversation and let it naturally transfer over to the AE. Outsourcing your any part of your sales as an early stage company can be very bad for your company. Especially while finding product market fit. If your sales cycle relies heavily on the relationship, it is better to have a full cycle sales person rather than having SDR and AE. To begin your outbound process, you need to start with building your ICP (Ideal client profile). To define your ICP you should start with the company (Geographical location, company size, industry, etc) then move to the persona (role, seniority, etc). They found that a good outbound campaign will have 15 touch points over a period of 16 business days. The touch points generally consist of the following: 5 calls with no voicemail, 2 calls with voicemail, 5 emails and 2 social touches. When writing your sales email content, it is best to write as if you were speaking to a friend (professionally). Also use neutral language, not positive or negative, this will increase your response rate. Keep your grammar levels to an elementary level. They found that the higher the level, the lower the response rate. Your first outbound email should be between 50-100 words. In the second, follow up email, use the phrase “please advise” to increase your response rate. It is extremely important to respond to a contact request within the first five minutes. Average response rate for an individual email is 3-7%. With a whole outbound cadence put into place you will probable engage with about 10% of the people you are targeting. To increase your success rate with your outbound, make more activity. This means more emails, calls and touch points. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? (WE LOST AUDIO) Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Chris Orlob, John Barrows, Keenan, Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Available from 8am to 11pm What is your favorite tool used for sales? Linkedin Sales Navigator What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? (Radical Candor - Book) Care deeply and challenge directly. Links Jeremey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremeydonovan/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

 Show Notes His first hire was an SDR as they had so many inbound leads coming in. Eventually he had the SDR also take control of the sales cycle for any lead with less than twenty seats. From the start, Amit wanted to ask for money from the prospects as opposed to giving it away for free for a short time to gain traction. He did this because he wanted to be able to understand why a prospect would or would not want to pay for a product such as theirs. After gaining their initial clients from their network, they began going outbound to prove that they could sell to companies that do not know you already. Founders should be doing their own sales initially, even if really bad at sales. If you must hire someone to make the initial sales, you have to get the best there is as the initial sales are extremely hard. Once you have obtained 10+ out of network customers, you can begin to hire a sales person to help take over that function. As the founder, it is important to figure out the product market fit as you can not expect a sales person, even a good one, to figure it out on their own. When hiring, hire the best. Startups are risky, there are a lot of failure points, why would you want to add more potential points of failure? The best first hire, if you are able to afford it, is a VP sales who is willing to pick up the phone and start selling in order to figure out the sales process and develop the playbook. Each salesperson is different and have a different way to “pitch.” One is not better than the other, it just has to fit for that salesperson’s personality and style. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The New Solution Selling Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Ray Dalio Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Always available for emergencies. What is your favorite tool used for sales? LinkedIn What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Do the market validation early on. Links Amit’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitbendov/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

Notes At the beginning, he boot strapped his company which gave him more room to learn and make mistakes. He recommends this route to new entrepreneurs as when you do go to get investment down the road, you will get a better valuation as you will know your numbers and know your cycles. B2B companies have a tendency to really take off in years 5-7. In Europe there is less VC money and smaller amount of exits for VC’s. This means that it is harder to get funding and you will get a smaller amount as well when compared to the US. Two things that are important to know for a new company. The first is knowing the cost to acquire a new customer and the second is knowing how to upsell/cross-sell to existing customers. Many times companies are only focused on acquiring new customers when you can obtain more revenue by upselling your existing customer base. When creating marketing material, do not only create it for the new clients. Also create content for your customers on how to better use what is available to them, this will help with upsells. When creating new content, you need to keep in mind what the goal of the content is as well as who the persona is that you are writing it for. The biggest challenge TJ finds most founders have is focus. As a founder, everywhere you look is an opportunity and everything is possible. But to be really successful, you should focus on one thing and bring it home. Feature selling is the worst methodology to sell. To be a great enterprise sales executive, you need to be a great team player. To assess this, they give the interviewee the task to sell to a few people from the company. The candidate is given several days to prepare and they look to see if they use all the resources available (call/email and speak with the company, asking for help/insight) before the presentation. Time kills all deals, keep on the pressure. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The Challenger Sale Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Aaron Ross Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Works all around the world, 24/7 What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce and insightsquared.com What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Keep the energy going! Links TJ's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjeerdbrenninkmeijer/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

 Notes Your go to market strategy comes in 3 stages; 1) People are paying for your product 2)You hire sales people and they are able to get people to buy your product 3) You start to scale and put systems in place while still selling your product. A common failure that happens for early stage companies is a failure to start selling due to a lack of know how on sales. Another for the next stage would be scaling too quickly or scaling prematurely. To scale your sales team, you should do so in incremental steps and make sure they are unit economic positive. This means that you should not go and hire 10 sales reps at once, hire one or two, get them to produce and be fully loaded, then hire another two. To compensate your reps, you want them to be able to produce about 5 times the OTE of the sales rep. This means that if the sales rep is only able to produce 3x what they are costing, you need to look for ways to lower the sales reps costs (ie. moving to another city with lower salaries) or to increase the value and therefore the price of your product. You can not just come up with an idea and start developing it. You need to start with market research. Ask the potential clients about the idea and how they feel about it. A common problem founders typically make is to not do a go to market strategy. It is very important to measure all aspects of the sales cycle. You may have a sales team that are conducting a lot of meetings but if you look at untouched opportunities or time between touches, the numbers can be very poor. If you do not properly define a good ideal customer profile, you will start to onboard clients that will not find the value in your product and will churn. Not only will they churn but they will speak negatively of your company as they never found utility. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Cracking the sales management code by Jason Jordan Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Jeremey Donovan Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Always on, has an email SLA to have a 30 minute response time What is your favorite tool used for sales? Sendoso.com What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there?  Embrace go to market, don't be afraid of it. Links Pete's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazanjy/ Pete's Company: https://www.atriumhq.com/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/ Pete's Material: Founding Sales (Book): https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1ZHCSm5yUAGhdpDH9VFTPS271LZ-RgF3YHkvZQePxGnM/edit Founder-led sales: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pcSy-zV-776abGmZ8WJ7bGeXcHQAxscdypGdrUz28_c Modern Sales group: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Rou6eujVG0Q4bPValEO7311yC07hkp_UaZ3g4mRlpiY  

Notes Sales is an art form. There are many aspects to it and the buying/selling “dance” is amazing. The best way to train/coach sales people is to use real phone calls, not role playing. One of things you should be doing from the start is to record all your calls and video meetings so that you can go back and take better notes as well as to learn from the recordings. At the early stage, you should have a brief before the meeting, have the meeting then have a debrief afterwards so that you can get the best results. For SDR, he is looking for candidates that are hungry, driven and open to coaching. Account executive - Same as above but someone that has experience with the price point and sales cycle. Someone who has the ability to understand all the different software systems being used in their daily tasks. People with little to no experience can sometimes be better hires as they are more foldable and less stuck in their ways. Do reference checks on sales people, they interview well. Call mutual connections, not just the references provided. Interview success is the lowest indicator of potential high performance. During the interview, have a role play and after ask them to change one thing. Then do the role play again and see if they implemented the one thing you asked them to change. If they did not, it may not be a good candidate. You should document the top behaviours that a sales person should exhibit to be a top performer. Then when providing feedback, refer back to those behaviours. Get you customers personal email and cell phone number. When they live their company, you can still contact them as they go to a new company. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Jill Konrath, Tom Snyder Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Very strict time boundaries What is your favorite tool used for sales? Truepeoplesearch.com What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Go try things that are out of your comfort zone, study what the best people do differently and approach sales more like a science. Mentioned Books Steve’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saleskickoffspeaker/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

Notes Making the move from a highly structured environment and being able to have a big name to back you up is a huge difference from the life of a startup. Avi made this transition very well when he moved to Israel and joined his first early stage company. Having credibility is inherent when working for a big company. Startups can gain this credibility by explaining who their investors are as they have done their due diligence on you or by speaking about what other companies you are currently working with; especially if they are the prospects competitors. A great salesperson should have a level of business understanding. This will allow you to relate to the prospects and their business problems that you are looking to solve. You have three kind of sales; Transactional is more of an order taker. Maybe the buyer needs help with the credit card or wants a discount. Selling the solution you have made to fix the buyers problem. Consultative is built on the solution but with a much deeper understanding of the problem so that you can show how your solution will help the prospects company moving forward. Going from being an independent contributor to a manager can be difficult when the company wants you to be a player/coach. The best way to manage this scenario is to sell with your team. Something many early stage founders do that is hurting their sales (and younger sales people as well) is telling the prospect what your company does. Rather, share with them why it is interesting for them. Not the industry, but the person in front of you or on the phone.   Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? To sell is human by Daniel Pink Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Jason Lemkin (Saastr) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? 24/6, keeps Shabbat. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Lusha.co What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Don't be afraid of sales people.   Links Avi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awiesenberg/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

Show Notes Even as a small company (of about 10) they have weekly meetings with everyone to discuss what the prospects are saying so that they can all learn, provide feedback to each other and improve. Had a monthly churn of around 12% and MRR around $30k when they decided to hire their first sales person. That person needed to effectively pay for herself so after running the numbers they saw that a salesperson would cost between 8-12% of what they should bring in and they hired someone. When looking to hire his first sales manager, he looked for a great salesperson that showed interest in management or had a little experience before. He did not want someone who has been in management a long time as they needed to sell at the beginning as well and needed to be able to train the team on sales. He has about a 50% success rate with hiring. This means that he has to fire (or they leave) 50% of the people he hires. This can be because of work ethics, skills, getting along with the others, etc. They moved more towards selling to enterprise after meeting a consultant that was selling what they sold for 10’s of thousands a year vs. their thousands of dollars a year. For their first enterprise sales person, they were looking for someone with experience in closing 100k USD deals and up. To create the comp plan, they looked at two factors; 1) How much they wanted to pay the sales person competitively and 2) How much revenue could the person potentially bring. They then looked to see if the margins are there (typically employee cost should be around 10% of what they can bring). Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Spin Selling Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? People locally. Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? 24/7 if its an emergency What is your favorite tool used for sales? Monday.com - not really for sales but enjoys working with it. Used to be Salesforce What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Put in place hiring processes to bring in great employees.   Links Sharon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonmagen/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

 Summary One of the biggest mistakes he sees in new startups is that they get to the sales too late. This means that they take too long before asking for money. Feedback from non-paying customers can not be taken seriously, so you need to get them to take out their wallet. Another big problem he sees is founders not being part of the sales process at the beginning. Even if you are a horrible sales person, hire someone but still be part of the process. As a founder, you need to understand your sales process and numbers completely, if not, you will not be successful. When putting your go to market strategy together, you need to start with the assumption you already have the product. Then you define who your customer is, enterprise or SMB. How are you going to get them? Are you going to land and expand or start with a full size account, or freemium? When developing your GTM and looking at your pipeline, you need to focus on three main things; How much time does it take to go down each step? How much am I converting from each step? How much is it costing me to bring in the lead from different sources? What is more important at the beginning is not bringing in more money, rather to get your funnel correct. This will allow you to see your numbers and to see where the issues are so that you can fix them. Your first salesperson should be someone that has more of a founder mindset. Someone who is ready to roll in the mud and make it work, not sit and wait for the leads to come in. Israeli founders are too nice and too much a family. They tend to take too long to fire someone that needs to be fired quickly, losing a lot of time that is precious for early stage startups. When opening a new go to market, it is preferable  to have all the people sitting in the same office so that the learning curve is shortened as much as possible. In the early stages, all the company should be listening to recorded calls with the clients/prospects from different parts of their life cycle. This way you can quickly learn and make the changes needed.   Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Likes to speak to people face to face to learn rather than read. Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Glenn Fogel - CEO of booking.com Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes, he takes one day completely off a week and regularly goes on family outings. What is your favorite tool used for sales? His tongue, Gong.IO and sitting with his sales team. What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Think very well before coming a founder and make sure it is something you really want to do. Build a team around you. Links Ariel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielfin/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/

Summary Jason is a repeat entrepreneur on his fourth startup. One of the biggest mistakes he has made is a typical one made by many founders; Talking the whole time, “Throwing up” all the reasons why his product is so great. It is important to be curious about the prospect and their business. This will allow you to ask them deep questions to find out how you as a business can help them. He also learned early on that persistence is very important. It takes time to grab the prospects attention. Observational skills (listening skills) are also extremely important. Being able to see the prospect and read their body language or hear their tonality will allow you to know if you lost them or not. It will also enable you to know if they are interested in your product. Knowing when to say no is very important. If you promise something you can not deliver on, the client will not be happy and you will lose them. Everyone is a sales person today. If you know it or not, its true. Founders are selling to investors all the time. When you think you are 80% done, you are typically only 20% done. So make sure to plan and have the resources you need. Many early stage startups want to outsource their SDR/Sales work at the start. This can be dangerous as you do not get the feel for the market and the understanding of what the client wants and needs as well as their thoughts on your product. Your first 20 customers are your apostles, do everything to get them. But also do everything to delight them. Its very important to get your ICP done correctly. Do not be vague and name a company. Define the stage they are in, the budget they have (or dont have). The more detailed and precises the better. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Principles by Ray Dalio Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Reid Hoffman, Pete Kazanjy Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? No, he has realized it's a war and not an individual battle. It's important to recharge. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Zoom What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? If you think you are 80% of the way done, you are only 20%. Plan accordingly. Links Jason's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onemoresmith/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/ Adam’s email: Adam@StartupSales.io

 Summary Jim speaks about the importance of working with the right clients from the start and how to direct your product road map. We will also be speaking about the different kind of sales people and knowing which type is right for your business. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Hope is not a strategy by Rick Page Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Generally, but balance is important not just for your own well being but for your work performance. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Engage with your network to verify that your idea has some legs and that it has legs now. Links Jim's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimblaschke/ Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Mastermind Group: https://startupsales.io/mastermind/ Adam's email: Adam@StartupSales.io  

 Summery Daniel is a social selling expert. He is going to share how a early stage startup can utilize social media to build a relationship with potential customers. Sharing strategies and action items that can be implemented now, you will find terrific value in this episode. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The extremely successful salesman's club by Chris Murray Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Simon Sinek Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Generally, if necessary, he is available. What is your favorite tool used for sales? The CRM What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Be genuine! Links Daniel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldisney/ Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Mastermind Group: https://startupsales.io/mastermind/ Adam's email: Adam@StartupSales.io      

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Team of Rivals By Doris Kearns Goodwin Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Rob Jeppsen, Noah Goldman Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Has personal boundaries. What is your favorite tool used for sales? The phone! What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? 15 minutes with a customer is worth 15 weeks on the whiteboard. You need to go speak to actual people.   Show notes To determine if an inside sales team is right for you, you need to look at a few things; Total addressable market, what you can sell the product for, what kind of LTV you can expect for 24-36 months. Things you must have to in order to have an inside sales department; A viable way to contact your addressable market and the margin to do so. The second thing you need is a way to keep your customers warm and nourished between the “yes” and receiving the product. Thirdly, you need the capital for the infrastructure (office, computers, phones, salaries, ets). As a sales leader, if you are joining a new company, something you should want to see before signing is proof of budget and a commitment into what the company is willing to invest in getting the sales team up and running. First thing you should do as a founder is not to hire sales, it would be to make some sells yourself. For investors, it is important to understand where the sales of a startup came from. If they were made only from the founders network and they have not shown that they can create a new lead and close that lead, it becomes a completely different investment. This is because your network is more likely to try you out. Not having SDR creating appointments for the salesperson allows the salesperson to develop much stronger sales skills. SDR teams are not as efficient as a full cycle salesperson, it weakens the account executive, and it bothers the customer. If the SDR has put in the time and was able to get the prospect booked for a meeting, that SDR has the relationship, they should close the deal. If they don't have the skills to do so, train them. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markasmithjr/

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Spin Selling Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Gong.IO Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? He worked long days but he would be with his family twice a week in the afternoons. On the weekends, he would not be working while his family was awake. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Gong.io What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Learn to fail, then get up again. Learn from it.   Show Notes When looking to hire a salesperson, to many founders will put too much weight on looking for someone with experience with a similar product to a similar client type. Rather they should be focusing more on the level of salesmanship. So much of the early stage sale cycle is to ask insightful questions and build rapport. This can only be done effectively with someone who is naturally curious. Your first hire and tenth hire are completely different. Your first should be more of a project manager. Someone who is able to maintain a lot of different information at once and knows how to pull resources together. The tenth is someone who comes in once the system is set and starts to take action. Early stage companies should have daily reviews. This is here the whole company will meet for an hour to listen to a recorded call with a prospect. This allows the whole company to learn how the prospect understands the product and how to better market, change or sell it. How to hire salespeople? How to increase price? These are the kind of questions most early stage companies are asking that however they are not ready for it. They should instead be focused on product market fit. Product market fit should be where you are on-boarding new clients regularly and after X number of months they are still using the product and finding value in it. To tell if they are finding value, look at what you promised them during the sales process then look for signs of that happening. Go to market fit is where you are able to generate customer success profitably. Once you have this, then you are ready to begin scaling. Scaling does not mean hire a lot of reps all at once, it means to hire 1 rep a month for the next 6 months. While doing that, watch your economics and customer success. If able to maintain, keep going; if not, slow down and fix it. To become a thought leader on social media, you should be reposting other thought leaders content more than your own. You can have someone else manage your social media profiles to comment and be involved in the community on your behalf. You should be online yourself for about two hours a week managing the social profiles. This way you keep your fingers on the pulse of what is going on in your industry. Buyer journey; Awareness, consideration, decision, success. Your emails and communication show speak to the prospect as they move through the four stages. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? John Barrows, Reid Hoffman, Ben Horowitz Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? No strict boundaries What is your favorite tool used for sales? Outreach.io What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? You can not change the cards you're dealt, just how you play the hand. Show Notes Tukan learned the hard way that you have to clearly articulate your value proposition to the client, not just your features. Early on he found that it is important to ask the right follow up questions. Even if you feel like you connected it is a must to really understand if they understand what you are selling. Selling is not you, the sales person, talking and the client listening. It is the other way around. The clients should be talking while the sales person listens and asks engaging questions. Let the client tell you what their problem is. They do not care how your product works and how pretty it is, only that it solves their problem. The founder needs to be the first sales person and close some deals at the start before brining on a salesperson because you need to be able to know that the product is saleable and how the sales cycle looks. Also, in the early days as the product is not mature, no one has more passion than the founder to be able to sell a “work in progress”. By doing the sales himself at first, he was able to point the salesperson in the right direction by telling him who the right buyer persona is that is most likely to buy, here are the typical objections, this is the price point, etc. When hiring, you want someone who is entrepreneurial and knows the risks with joining an early stage startup because you do not know what will be tomorrow and you do not know what changes will have to be made. In the interview he explains that he is not looking for someone that will put in a lot of extra hours, in fact if they can get the job done in 30 hours a week that is okay. However he does ask that if in the evening a client comes through the chat and you are the only person available and it is not work hours, will you help this person. You can not expect the people you hire to have the same passion as you (the founder) right away. You need to cultivate it so that they pass it on. Communication is key for the culture of a company. If the founder takes a decision on behalf of the company, even with the best intentions, it can hurt the team as they do not feel involved. The most important thing when adding people to your team is that there is no room for ego. You do not want brilliant jerks on your team. If you are trying to land a large company, do not develop special features for them until you get a commitment from them, otherwise you are hurting the culture of your dev teams.

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount -- Sell or be sold by Grant Cardone Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Dan Martell Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? He has strict time boundaries What is your favorite tool used for sales? Zapier, Mailer Lite, Many Chat What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Turn on video, face it towards you and start helping people   Podcast Show Notes He found that adding video to connect with the top of his sales funnel, it was building rapport and relationships with people he never met. They came and were ready to buy without price negotiations or fully understanding the product, only the value it brings because they felt like they know him and trust him. He was going to quora to find what problems and questions his buyers were asking and then create content around those topics. This has reduced his churn and allowed him to charge a premium on his product. He also has a three part on boarding video series to help strengthen the relationship and lower churn by making sure they are successful. Started putting video content out every day but found that it was getting too difficult. So he found 2-3 times a week is more do-able. The key thing is to be consistent. If he put a time in his schedule to make the content, he found it made it easier for him to get it done. He started with a group of beta testers to test his product and he would send out weekly surveys and one of the questions would be around pricing.   Links Free 30 Day (no set-up) https://automationlinks.com/startupsales Messenger Link: https://automationlinks.com/messenger-chat

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Sales Management Simplified by Mike Weinberg Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Sales Hackers, Open View Venture Partners, Jack Kosakowski  Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? The weekends are his. He using them for himself and to learn. What is your favorite tool used for sales? LeadIQ What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Have the CEO and Sales leader be a SDR for a day to understand how much work it is to generate a meeting. Mike's Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/mikecoscina Show transcript [0:40] Well thanks for being with us that he had things around me adam. [0:45] Why don't we start with give me me a quick overview of the man your ass yeah sure so I've been with the man drive for five years and currently series B funding, when you say help bro vs and scale the ask dr kim's what do you mean so as far as you know about helping them even with. And obviously training the SDR on their product generating revenue and closed business for for our clients and from there as the program's progress of our clients adding wraps because. The revenue goals are growing year-over-year right, started with an outbound program and doing great. [2:04] Or have an outbound an inbound 10 to the program. Objectives with their clients sales development leadership and the man drive but over all we will become a real true extension of their team that really what separates the men drive is and like. When you feel like a part of your clients sales team. Okay great so now tourist SDR team on demand. Jacqueline well traffic so you have lot experience in there and so. [2:51] Why don't we start digging into that let's go with the ongoing debate SDR does a report to marketing or sales in the best ummat of debate when there's like higher volume of of movie jan rae ann and you need to go through like all, there's two different ways I think it's more effective up to sales when there's a lot of. A lot of leaves that need to be followed up on but then again when you're taking mormon account based strategy, you should really be and you really want those SDR focus on Prospect. Ending releasing top of marketing and so really whenever the and goal is of the program whether it's too, follow up on weed. [4:18] Strategic outbound and things like that. I'm from like a cold cold perspective three the sales is is usually a better spot roll up under. [4:34] Okay and why why is that for both of them. Also with the marketing obviously, core of the account yeah what message in the messaging is very important and when it comes to enter tell rolling up under marketing and and for sales is say they want and like, by the end of the year. Very clear ky we know what we want our objective is there that's what how of how he's being measured and yo were there to submit support him and x q on their behalf. So tell me would what kind of company should start looking into. [5:39] When is your team more precious what stage should company be an asshole other really good question and like over over the years we started working wes. Younger younger companies like eastridge. [5:59] That can be a little tricky just in the sense that. First i need to establish product market fit and not usually like they got an an...

Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The 10 Day MBA by Steven Silbiger Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Andy Paul, Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Not available, the evening and the weekend he is working on disconnecting. Doesn't think sales managers should be available either. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Go for diversity in thinking.

Podcast Show Notes A big problem he has come across while advising other startups has been that the founder does not have a sales background and will read a sales book and try to implement the ideas without fully understanding the sales process itself. The kind of first hire you should have for sales really depends on the type of personality the CEO and founder has. Are they wanting a gunslinging cowboy or someone that is more thoughtful of the process and methodical. So the fit with the leadership is important as well as relevant experience with the product which is being sold. Having list builders to compile a list of contacts to the SDR team has made great improvements in the efficiency of the SDR as well as a more even/predictable pipeline for the account executives. It also makes is so that the SDR can not pick and choose who they call based on their strength and weaknesses (ie. a particular industry), as well as they now have to call the correct person, not someone lower level causing the account executive to have to take more time to work up the ladder. To be more efficient they are using Outreach, Salesforce, Linkedin Sales Navigator, DiscoverOrg and Zoom Info. Looking for humility and coachability when interviewing for a new sales person to join his team. He will give the potential candidate a situational assessment and tell them beforehand that he will critique them and give them another opportunity to improve their response. This will allow him to see if they are coachable and to see if the way he coaches and explains fits their personality type. His assessment is to give the candidate a small list of potential companies for them to use linkedin to find the right contact person in the company and draft the first few emails and voicemails. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethlist/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? HBR Management tip of the day and Seth Godin Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? No he is not available. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce and OutreachIO What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Dont be afraid to ask for help. Ask early and ask often.

Podcast Show Notes Think of trade shows and events as revenue drivers. It is a place to start building brand equity rather than closing immediate deals. Also, use the time to have the sales people meet their prospects in the pipeline face to face to build the rapport further. Small, better targeted events can be a lot better for bringing in potential business (as opposed to the larger events). She has found that these types of events bring in much higher ROI. As a sales person its great to attend events that are around 60-80 people that focus around a thought leader or a panel. Its good to have some of your existing clients at these events as well as a few members of your team. When trying to schedule meetings with prospects at events, people will tend to only know their schedule a couple of days before the event so dont try to fix it weeks in advance. Even better is to get their cell phone number and text them to figure out a time during the event. Once you get the meeting with a prospect, its better to meet away from the booth as they may be easily distracted there. She has a “Draft and develop” program. She takes new hires with no previous sales experience and starts them as an account development rep. They will help in researching and preparing lists for the BDR/SDR teams to reach out to. This gives them the basic foundation of knowing who to target when prospecting and how prospecting works, they then can go onto BDR/SDR to start engaging with the clients and setting meetings for the account executives. Having this new account development rep allows the SDR team to spend more time reaching out to the prospects and setting appointments. She like to hire new reps that are willing to learn, want to succeed and coachable. Experienced reps tend to have habits in place already and depending on the habits, they might not be good for their sales cycle. During the interview process, to see if the candidate has the above three attributes, she will ask them to tell a story around the hunger and coachability components. She looks to see if they send a thank you email afterward. Also does the candidate look/ask for next steps in the process. These are not automatic no go’s however it will go a long way in helping you move forward. They are having a person joining the company who is going to be in charge of ongoing sales training and enablement. This way it is someone that is specialized in helping the sales reps and has the time to plan and build lessons rather than have a sales manager do it that has a lot of other responsibilities on their plate. They split their account executives into two teams; first is 1-100 employees than 101-2,000 employees. They have gone through all their leads to flag the prospects that “look” like their current clients. Data Fox is the company that they are using to help with these processes. One of her challenges in growing her team has been from going to a series B to series C company where you start to notice more processes in place. As a manager, you start to rely on these processes and the data to make decisions as you try to prove greater repeatability across the team. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piaheilmann/ Final Five 1)What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Grit By Angela Duckworth 2)Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Trish Bertuzzi & Jill Konrath 3)Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? She is up at 4:30 and is available 24/7

Podcast Show Notes Time to first contact is very important and you should build a system in place to enable you to get to the lead within the first 5 minutes before the client does. If you catch the prospect that quick, it allows you to have to conversation with them and set the standard for when they go speak with the competition. Where as if you speak to them after they spoke with your competitors, you have to explain how you compare against them. When expanding the team, empower the existing members to help with the coaching and training of the new hires. Create a tiers system of SDR’s where they can move up the latter and have more responsibilities and learn. Don't just hire someone because you have the seat to fill. Make sure you are hiring the people that have the personality traits you want on the team. Learn from your clients. Ask them open ended questions about why they chose you or why they did not. Why they did something a certain way. This will allow you to hear from the prospects themselves and get direct feedback, rather than just trying to sell them. He takes his team off the floor for a couple hours a day to sit with other departments. This makes it so they do not feel that it is just the same call call call every day and that they feel part of the bigger picture. Empower your reps to think outside of the box and find solutions that their prospects are having. Questions to ask during the interview: What do you do in your spare time? You are looking to see if they are keeping up to date in the tech (business) community, are they interested in entrepreneurship. What type of books are you reading? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonah-mandel-654290a2/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The sales acceleration formula Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Mark Roberge Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? No, he is all business, all the time. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Hubspot What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Lead by example.

Show Notes First question you should be asking in a startup environment; When are you ready for a business development vs just sales? To answer that you need to answer other questions; do you have a sales process? Usually sales and business development will be done by the same person in the earlier stages. Are your partners respected and well thought of in their domain? If yes, you need to look at how to influence them in your methodology to enable them to sell your product. When working with a new partner/re-seller it's important to bring them your experience of your particular sales process in order to work with them on combining it with their own. Your biggest partner is going to be the first few customers. As these are the people that will help you find the process and product market fit. They will also be your biggest cheerleaders by saying that they trusted you and that they are glad they did. Create a mind altering experience for your customer and everything else will follow. This should be first priority over business models or product models, they will fall into place after you make a great experience for them. Startups have a great advantage over larger companies as you have a vision. Startups are able to move quicker and make changes faster. So if you can share your journey with them that fundamentally changes problem that is in the market, they will be excited for that vision and want to be part of it. When prospecting, add value to the message. Not just send marketing material and follow up with “did you receive my email?”. Assume everyone is twice as busy as you think they are. When prospecting, use social media to provide value. Follow the prospect and see what material they like and share. Engage with them by liking and commenting as well then share with them similar articles. This will be a lot more effective in building the relationship than sending out spam emails. When outbound prospecting, trust the process. Make those calls, emails and touchpoints. It can take a long time before you start seeing results. Before starting to scale, make sure that the full process is complete. If you sign a new customer but fail to onboard them or the product does not meet their expectations, first fix that. Step 1) Get your first clients to be raving fans. Step 2) Figure out the process needed to obtain more raving fans. Step 3) Grow and scale the business It is important to choose your first few clients. If one persona needs certain technical aspects and another persona needs another set, it's hard to focus and give priority. Also, when selling, you want to be able to name drop from the same industry. A good salesperson will help facilitate the conversation and provide value to the prospect. The information can be found from the prospect online without you. Look for someone that is more well rounded person, not just someone who has been a sales person their entire career. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/padmanabhan/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The Challenger Sale Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Sudheesh Nair Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Does not believe in compartmentalizing work and personal life. But he does have family boundaries. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce

Show Notes When starting with your first salesperson you need to set the mechanisms in place to track the data points before you start selling. Then begin to build your outbound script or story. To approach outbound prospects, it is important to use all forms of communication you can. From LinkedIn to emails. They allowed Gmail signups as some major companies have restrictions against signing up for cloud technologies. They put a low entry point to get access to their product by only asking for an email to sign up. This allowed them to grow quicker by having more people sign up and use the system. Which they then took that information and had a daily review for the whole company to be able to see and digest the data in order to improve the product. Always go with a consultative conversation where you are really listening to a conversation, not just running through a script. Spin Selling is a great book to read to help set up your scripts. There is a due diligence large companies do to ensure that you (your company) will be around in several years before making a purchase. Taking pricing off the page allows you to price to the value you provide the customer. When buyers see the pricing on the page they already have a number in their mind and they are already calculating how they can beat it and how to hide information about themselves so that you can not influence that number. If you are going to go to an event, prepare first. Get the list of attendees and see who they are and how you can help them. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/redrussak/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Spin Selling Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Tim Ferris, Matt Heinz Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Has boundaries however if it is a very large deal, he will speak with the family to see if it is okay What is your favorite tool used for sales? Outreach.IO What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Founders - Don't hire the smartest sales person for your first hire. Hire someone that is a cheerleader, that is devoted to sticking through it.

Show Notes His sales team is more of a consultative sales team. He has a technical product that requires a lot of different people to be involved on the team. He finds though that if you show up to a meeting with a lot of people the prospect can feel that they are just paying for your large overhead while at the same time if you do not have the right people to answer all the questions you may miss an opportunity. As such he hires very knowledgeable pre-sales engineers and will try to limit his team size to 5 in meetings with prospects. Account executive manages the qualification, deal flow, procurement cycle and building the overall relationship. Sales engineer leading technical diligence and adoption. Product team sets expectations with custom development. They found that they had too many products and made the decision to cut down on the products and focus only on their most profitable products. This allowed the sales team to more easily speak about the product and convey the message of experts on that type of product. The decisions leaders make have a direct impact on his/her teams life and family. He would give his new sales executives (hires) prospects already with an opportunity so that they would have something to work on right away. As the sole independent contributor, he began to build out his team by first building the support around him so that it would free up some of his time to still do deals and build the team. If you are sitting with someone during the interview and you can see yourself having a conversation with them 6 months down the road that it is not working out, don't hire them. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmeucci/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Accidental sales manager Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? John Barrows Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes but only for emergencies otherwise the mornings are his What is your favorite tool used for sales? Yesware and Pandadoc What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Sales doesn't just happen, you need to plan and you need to account for the natural cadence of the sales process.  

Show Notes To begin any prospecting, you have to ask yourself two questions; 1) What is the outcome I can help the prospects receive and 2) Who is the right type of customer that this would appeal to. If you do not demonstrate (quickly) how and why the customer should pay attention to you, there is little reason for them to listen to you. You have to match the sales cycle to the buy cycle, then start your prospecting before that time. In one phone call you can exchange more information than you can going back and forth in emails. Tools to use while prospecting; phone, email, texting, direct mail, social media. Use whatever tools you have available. Clear consistent messaging is critical, regardless of which form of communication you are using. There are three levels of sales people out there: 1) The customer service person (the farmer) 2) Those that close deals because the company has a great funnel and product (order takers) 3) The one that goes out and creates the business, the one that knows how to lead the prospect and create the flow (the prospector). You can build rapport with a prospect when approaching them outbound by first figuring out what your key message points are. This is to educate the market which can be done very well with social media. The biggest mistake a company can make when prospecting is not to follow up with what they start. It can take 6 or more attempts to reach out to someone before you start receiving feedback. Another mistake is to not challenge the prospect fast enough which causes you to be having conversations with unqualified leads. A narrow sales funnel is better, it will allow you to work on qualifying better and faster which will allow you to have more time to work with the qualified prospects. Price discounting - when you have to discount the price of your product, it is because you have not done a good enough job at uncovering and explaining value. If you find the needs that are of value to the prospect from an early stage, you can be much stronger in the negotiation. For example if the client needs the item by tomorrow, you know that that the timing is much more important to them than the pricing. Sales reps should have no flexibility with pricing. This will cause them to become better at delivering value. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? How To Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Mike Weinberg, Jeb Blount, Anthony Iannarino Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Available 23.99/7 What is your favorite tool used for sales? Evernote What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Be open to other people and other ideas. Never think that your idea is the perfect idea.

Leaders always need to keep their fingers on the pulse of the people.  If you have a people centered leadership style (not a product or financial) you are ahead of the game and know how to get the best of team. Give responsibility to the top sales people by having them lead a special project. When looking to join a new company, make sure to meet with all the leadership and board members that have an influence. Make sure they are reasonable, have a realistic understanding of the situation and realistic understanding of what it will take to get to the next step. Do not verticalize too soon, Keep commission structures easy and keep the organizational structure simple. It is a mistake to put a cap on commissions or put bluebird clauses in. You need an environment of energy, excitement and success.   Having a cowboy or gunslinger as a salesperson in an early stage is important. You do not want that person that is risk averse. Criteria for hiring sales people: Intellectual curiosity and emotional intelligence. To measure for EQ, you have to just spend time with the person and trust your instincts. The kind of books a person reads is also important. It is expected to always be learning about sales if you are in sales. However the non domain specific subjects are also important. This allows you to be more interesting (more relatable) and able to connect and have conversations with people about different subjects. Now a days companies are doing their own education so before the salesperson is connected, they are already half way through the process. They like to go to smaller, more targeted events. They find that some of the larger events can be great one year than not the next. While the smaller events are not sales events but if you can go deliver value you can have real conversations with people. He tries to get more technical people to the events to have the conversations and not the sales people. Hire someone with ability over experience. Someone with ability will know how to leverage resources and management is a resource with experience. Newer sales reps also tend to be hungrier and more accepting to feedback.   Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The hero with 1000 faces. Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Simon Sinek Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? No What is your favorite tool used for sales? LinkedIn What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? People, process than product.

In a new hire he is looking for a natural sense of curiosity and the basic understanding of how a business operates. For Gary, if you come to an interview and have no questions for the manager, it is not going to be a good fit. A common problem with pipeline forecasting is over qualification of the prospect. Either to company is not a fit or the person speaking with you is not a fit. Momentum is either started or ends at the discovery stage. You need to identify the business reason (the need) for why they are wanting to purchase. You then also need to identify your competitive landscape and yes, there is always a competitor. The third thing you need to find during the discovery stage is the decision making landscape; how are the decisions made in that company, what processes are involved. Some of the best salespeople he has known are the direct type of person. The kind of person that would ask the tough questions head on (eg: Who else [competition] are you speaking with?) A great role play situation to practice negotiation is to set one person as the landlord and the other as a tenant and the landlord is raising the rent. Negotiation is all about knowledge. You need to have the knowledge about your competitors and their offering/pricing. You need to know the ins and outs of your product as well as knowing the prospects needs and requirements. Listening is key to being a good salesperson. This will enable you to better understand the prospects side/position. If you have done your job properly throughout the sales process, you do not need closing techniques. LinkedIn: Gary Johnson Final Five: What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Good to Great by Jim Collins Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Jack Welch, Jeffrey Gidimor (Little red book) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesforce What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Hire the right people and train them properly

Most sales problems come down to one thing… Prospecting. This causes you to have smaller funnel which then makes you discount and make concessions you do not want to make. If you have long sales cycles, qualifying becomes more important as you could waste a lot of time until you find out they are not going to purchase. People are afraid of picking up the phone because you have been raised to not talk to strangers or to always be able to have an answer for someone of authority. For those that say the phone is dead, he always tells them to prove it, he has yet to have anyone show him a better system. He feels most salespeople are order takers and not sales people. A salesperson does not have to beg for the meeting or for the prospects time. Sales people will ask the tough questions that order takers are to afraid to ask because the answer may be no. A good salesperson will know that the prospect has the problem that you can solve, so you can call the shots moving forward. A sales person is in control of the process. He does not qualify his prospects, he disqualifies. He looks for all the reasons to you are not going to move forward. If he can not get around the no’s with the prospect than he does not move forward. Sales people with less experience or knowledge of the product will tend to do one thing much better than the experienced sales person, which is they will ask better questions as they are trying to understand. Discounting is 100% profit because you can not discount your costs. The easiest way to build report is “disarming honesty” or giving permission to reject. The only thing a sales person can control is their behavior. The 3 key things that drive success in sales is; Behavior attitude and technique If a salesperson can stop focusing on the end game (closing the deal) it will change the way you conduct yourself with the questions you ask and the answers you provide. This will make you better at selling and getting to the truth. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sales-training-southeast-uk/   Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? David Sandler - You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? - Marcus Cauchy Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Strict personal time boundries What is your favorite tool used for sales? LinkedIn What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? No one cares, they want to know what problem does it fix for me, how can it fix it and if it does fix it, will it make my life better.

His team is working mostly (about 95%) outbound. His outbound leads have a 10 day cadence of 5 emails and 5-6 calls to try to get the conversation going. He is using outreach to manage these cadences. It takes them about 150 calls before having a good conversation with a potential client. Eric believes that each salesperson has their own style and they should play to their strengths. When thinking about scalability, he says that as long as they are hitting their targets, it is okay and if someone is not than you have your coaching meetings to work with that salesperson on their weakness. A new salesperson in the company should follow the company guidelines for the first three months before trying their own methodology. Looking for keywords in LinkedIn profiles as well as titles when looking for prospects to reach out to for outbound. They have an SDR to account executive of 2:1. When hiring SDR he is looking for someone with a strong desire to get into sales as well as someone who is likeable and charismatic. They need to have a proven level of discipline, this can be someone with sports background or someone that had to work throughout school. They have two weeks of formal classroom training. This consists of a lot of role playing. It is better for a new salesperson to internalize the information and make the pitch their own instead of following a script.. During training, a lot of time is also spent on listening to phone calls to understand how others are pitching the product. This and recording the role playing and re-listening to it Eric has found is very helpful. He ends the role playing with a question; What do you think you could have done better? It is important for the team to know that these role playing sessions are a no judgment area so that they can feel comfortable in giving each other feedback. They assign a few hundred accounts to each SDR and let them select the right contacts using discover.org and LinkedIn sales navigator. Build and keep a good sales culture by having company outings and keeping the team involved with the company. Marketing should come in once a week to give an update on what they are working on as well as other departments so that the sales team feels part of the company and they can see the roadmap. Eric’s biggest mistake he has made as a sales leader has been hiring the wrong person. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericgnadeau/   FINAL FIVE What is your favorite sales or leadership book? David Sandler - You can not teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Brian Johnson - optimize.me Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Believes its important to work hard but also to be with your family. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Hoopla.net What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Constantly keep improving

Show Notes John was the first sales person at the company. They launched the product on product hunt without actually having a product. In his first 6 months he spent his time calling the leads and selling the vision. This allowed him insight to see what was required to purchase as far as features went. He calls this stage not sales but customer development. John found a way to make targets that the whole company can feel. By preselling a feature in development and setting a deadline for product launch, the whole company was engaged and felt the win. They found early on that they were great and bringing on new clients but forgot to help these clients become successful. This caused them to start focusing on building customer success. They hired two BDR’s to work outbound however they found that the conversion rate was very low so they decided to only focus on the inbound leads. Every new hire’s second week at the company is spent only on support. This allows them to understand the client pain points and their product much better. With a freemium model, the issue for sales people becomes “why should the prospect talk to you?” This is because they are getting everything through the trial, so the sales person needs to be able to add value. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Sales acceleration formula by Mark Roberge Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? SaaStr Blog Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Pretty available as he is always with his phone. What is your favorite tool used for sales? Hull.io What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Solve for customer value, not volume

SHOW NOTES The average tenure for a VP sales is about 19 months. What is important to prolong that is for the VP to be adaptive to the future steps of the organization. Kirk implemented something he learned from another sales leader, put time every morning to look at what is needed long term vs where things are currently standing. Kirk finds that generally a new VP sales will bring with him people he or she has worked with before that they trust to get the job done. For the current employees he says that it is a great opportunity for them to step up and learn new skills. When Kirk steps into a new company, he prefers to have a mix of existing sales executives with new ones that he has brought on. This helps to maintain company culture. As the new sales leader in an organization, you need to first know what you are going to ask of the sales people. Is what the company did in the past going to work moving forward? With after 26 years of experience Kirk says that he wishes he knew at the beginning of his career to look at people as individuals. Meaning each salesperson has his or her own personality and skill set that works better with different types of clients. Building trust is key especially as the transaction size gets larger. Questions he goes through when starting at a new company to start selling: 1- Understand what problem you are solving 2- Who has this kind of problem 3- What is the competitive differentiation. 4- Do we have the right personal (To sell, on board and support it) When hiring a new sales person, he is looking at the DISC profile to help make a hiring decision. Looking for extroverts with high sense of urgency. Liked creative people with high sense of integrity. You should have the training program ready before hiring new members so that you can quickly ramp them up and get them selling. Even have a bonus plan set where they will get a bonus for getting up to speed quickly. He always applies fairness. He tries to fairly get a new agent a win before the expected time would be. So if its a 9 month sales cycle, he would try to help them close a deal before the first 9 months of the persons time at the company. LinkedIn: Kirk Tharp Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Customer Centric Selling by Mike Bosworth Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? David Skok (founder of hubspot) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Only while sleeping What is your favorite tool used for sales? DISC testing What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Build a sales culture.

Show Notes Starting his career in EMC as a reseller and grew into sales from there. After noticing his clients ordering less and having less activity, he spoke with them and got a demo of a new product they were using (Turbonomic) and he was so impressed that within 2 months he was knocking on their door to come sell for them. The biggest lesson he learned from moving to a leadership role from a individual contributor is that what made him successful (as an individual contributor) may not be what makes others on his team successful as a startup sales person. When hiring, look for someone who has the uncoachable traits; been through adversity, competitive, being passionate about something, natural curiosity and the ability to be liked. His team is split between enterprise and SMB companies then broken down by territories. They have a training program to get their sales reps up to speed on cloud infrastructure. Has a two to one sales rep to sales engineer ratio as the product is more technical. Had about 100 SDR’s to help drive the growth however having newer, less knowledgeable SDR’s closed some doors which they are trying to repair now. He prefers this as he would rather call someone and have them say they heard of you because you called me for a year straight instead of never hearing of your company. Started with their resellers opening the door for them and his sales team would do the heavy lifting. Would sell to partners by selling the idea that his service would allow the partner to a unique ability to open new doors with a product no one else had. This would allow the partner to onboard new clients to sell other solutions to as well. Make sure you incentivize your sales team to work with partners the same as if not with the partner, if not more. This is to reduce conflict down the road. Standardizing the sales process has been very difficult because he is hiring experienced sales reps. LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrbutler/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Extreme ownership - Jocko Willink Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Tim Ferriss Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes, is available 24/7. What is your favorite tool used for sales? LinkedIn What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? You have to know your why and have fun!

Show Notes: Startup Sales teams problems generally come down to three things; Platforms - Processes - People They either don't have the tools required or they have but are not using them properly. There is a fundamental way in which sales should be conducted. Having the right people for the right positions. When having these three things in line, you should have great performance from the sales team. Having the right people for the sales position is key. Making sure they have the right demeanor to represent the company and product. You need to know what excites them and what drives them. It's not just about throwing a bunch of money at them. A key factor to look for in a sales person is hunger. And the key difference between a good and great salesperson is their ability to look at everything as a team. We VS me mentality. Taking a potential candidate for a beer, lunch or anything outside the office is a good way to see how they interact with others in order to see if they will be a good addition to the team. Only when a process is put in place can you find failure points. With the process in place, you can also tell when it's a poor salesperson or the process by seeing if others are able to achieve their targets with the same process. If you don't know how to build the process or know what facts and figures to look at, there are a lot of online resources to take advantage of. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you are selling, there is a process to sell from start to finish. Sales people are generally not detailed orientated so being so sets you apart from the rest. Full Funnel has an extremely unique off boarding process. They will work with you for 30-90 days to help you find another job while being employed. They will be references for you and allow you to work part time. This is all because they stand behind not burning your bridges. LinkedIn: Gwen Wiscount Noted tools: Calendly Hubspot Sales Pro Sales Loft Yesware Call Rail Zoom Conference Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Fanatical Prospecting - Jeb Blount Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? A lot of sales groups and professionals from LinkedIn. Drift is the top of mind with Hubspot. Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? She is available 24/7 however she had a work/life blend because if you have work/life balance, there will always be a time where one will be unbalanced. What is your favorite tool used for sales? The Sandler Sales Methodology What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? When you are going to market, be mindful of all the channels that you are using in order to get product market fit and gain traction. Be sure to have a very diverse channel strategy.

SHOW NOTES In charge of the business development and channel startup sales team, he grew the team from 5 BDR’s to 15 and channel sales from 1 to 2. Focused on segmenting the market to ensure his BDR’s were approaching the right leads and also put together the right process to target these leads. This means finding the right amount of touch points (14-16 for outbound) and how often in order to obtain the attention of the lead. Using webinars and white papers to help educate the market as he believes that you should not just cold call the market to sell them but rather to educate and deliver value to them. They have it set up to be a 1:1 ratio between BDR and account executives, split into territories. He coaches his team to understand who you are talking to so that you can sell them a product that will either help the prospect grow or work more efficiently, not just try to sell for the sake of selling. Kory is looking for someone who is coach-able and wants to learn to join his startup sales team. Also, he wants to see someone that is hungry and wants to succeed. Kory also likes to see people that are in the industry by finding out if they are reading books/blogs about sales, if they listen to podcasts or spend time with other sales people. During the interview process, it's important to have other people from the company come sit in to interpret the answers and get a second opinion so that you are not relying on your own. Kory’s training process is to get the new hire as fully immersed as they can. Starting with a high level overview of the company than start drilling down to the specifics. Using call recordings and webinars to learn however the most important is for them to fall on their face as many times as they can by hitting the phone and speaking to actual potential clients. Has weekly team meetings where they listen to a couple of phone calls together to learn from each other. Channel sales, the benefit is more than just them bringing in clients, it is information about the market and industry. Where the market is going and who the new players are. Having great mentors is a very large part of growing in your career and surround yourself with like minded people. Find the best in your office and learn from them and network with them to continue to grow your sphere of influence. Find Kory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/korywagner/ Final Five 1) What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Fanatical Prospecting - Jeb Blount AND Linchpin by Seth Godin 2) Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? John Murdock - CFO from company 3) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes has time boundaries as he spends time with his family. 4) What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesloft 5) What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? It's all about the people. The people you work with, for, everyone. You want to make sure that everyone on your team is happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. It's not just you running the company.

SHOW NOTES Targeting consumers, SMB’s and enterprises. Using Content Marketing to gain attention Small startup sales team going to conferences and meeting clients face to face in order to gain traction. Founder sales at the start who leveraged their investors contacts to help gain their first sales and break into new markets. Started selling while the product was in very early stages and not market ready. During a demo, the prospective client wanted to see a live demonstration and received a green light when it shouldn't have been. Taking this, the prospect became one of their first clients and helped to develop their product with real feedback. He started building his overseas team by an introduction from his investors. After building the relationship and trust was formed, they brought on another two startup sales people to drive the company forward. Covering how to work with an overseas sales team. Communication is the key, over communication is best. Not just with the management but also between the tech and sales teams. Michael can be reached at Michael@retruster.com Final Five 1) What is your favorite sales or leadership book? 2) Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Used to be Tim Ferris & Reid Hoffman 3) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Tries but unsuccessful 4) What is your favorite tool used for sales? Rain King 5) What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Constantly keep your long term plan in the front of your mind!

  Show Notes: Michael started his startup sales leadership career by being creative and finding initiatives he could lead within the company, not by asking for the next level. He finds that this is an important trait in a leader, the ability to take initiative even if it is out of the scope of your job definition. Keeping your clients with you by engaging with them properly from the beginning, not trying to stop them while they are on their way out. A tool he is using to accomplish this is called Churn Zero. Another key point is the hand off from the sales team to the implementation team, keeping this fluid and ensuring the customer enjoys the journey. Using about 150 page startup sales playbook to get his new team members up and running. He uses a method of more self learning followed by conversation to teach his sales executives. Also including roleplaying into the mix as Michael feels this is a must, not only for new recruits but also for veteran sales gurus. Not so much teaching what to do, rather why to do it so that they can make their own judgment and decisions moving forward. With robots/AI taking more and more jobs, sales executives need to take a deep look to see where you are going to add value. When working with a new Salesperson, it is important to see progression. Knowing that they are understanding and internalizing what is being taught. Even if there are a lot of changes to be made and a lot of skills to work on, as long as they are making those changes, they should be okay moving forward. If you are finding that you are having to review the same things constantly and there is no real good reason, this is a big indicator to the possibility they may not be a good fit. This can also go hand in hand with how much the person cares, are they trying to be number one or are they happy to be in the middle. Trying to find people that are hungry, humble and smart. Hungry This is something you can not teach. They need to want to succeed, want to close the deals and do the best they can. Humble They need to be open and coachable. Not be defensive when receiving feedback. Smart Someone who is able to look internally and self identify the things they are doing in order to fix or improve them. They take the initiative to seek help with something they found is not their strong suit. Everyone will say they are hungry. You need to ask situational questions like “give me a scenario where you have recently been the hardest working person”. Final Five 1) What is your favorite sales or leadership book? 2) Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Danial Pink - Dan Ariely (Author of above book) Heath Brothers - Michael Lewis (Undoing project - book) 3) Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes, if there is a deal to be had he is available. 4) What is your favorite tool used for sales? Salesloft 5) What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Understand where you are at in the business life cycle and set your expectations on the results and of the people correctly.