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