[scapecast]

First time founder here who came from sales at a big consulting firm, and then and then had to develop the whole marketing and sales stack for our startup.

Most of the books recommended in this thread assume that you're working for a established firm, with product / market fit, etc.

Clearly that's not the case for a start-up.

Read up on what Pete Kanzanjy publishes https://www.foundingsales.com/ - it covers the the "founder-led sales" phase.

How I did it:

- you interview as many prospects and customers as possible

- you understand what keeps them up at night, what specific pain points they have, the language they use to describe their situation

- you shape your messaging to solve those specific pain points, using their own language

- wrap your messaging into a story - the worst you can do is "problem / solution". people don't buy that way. people buy change, and you use the story to communicate that change.

I wrote a totally too long Medium post on the whole topic:

https://medium.com/@larskamp/the-5-cs-an-operating-framework...

as somebody else pointed out on this thread - be read to deal with objection! You'll likely collect 9 "No's" for each "yes!"

[ghaff]

When you get to larger firms, there's a lot of support of sales (marketing but also engineering) that involves creating awareness, building the funnel (leads etc.), supporting sales reps in various ways, building products that customers actually want, etc. But none of those things actually involve directly asking for a PO, working on customer relationships, and so forth.

[wdaher]

+1 to Founding Sales — it's great, and Pete is great as well

[baxtr]

Interesting!

> you interview as many prospects and customers as possible

Did you do that before or after completing your product / service?

[scapecast]

both.

this is 4 years ago, the market we were going after were the cloud warehouses like Redshift, BigQuery and Snowflake.

In the beginning, we just had an idea for a specific product / service. but we knew that the customer would be the lonely data engineer in charge of building the analytics stack.

I started with cold outreach via my network and linkedin. I would use pretty broad language around data warehouse usage, to cast a wide net with terms like "usage, performance, metadata, etc.", and cover all potential use cases. Engineers are always short on time, so you need to be affirmative, authoritative and present a clear ask that shows what you want and how the engineer will get value out of spending 30 min with you.

Of course I pulled the founder card, and that does help. I made it clear that we don't have a product, but working on building one. Turns out that most people are helpful, and want you to win!

The first signal that you're onto something is when they reply to your message, and are intrigued.

we built our first product around that feedback. Companies like Postmates, WeWork and Udemy bought version 0.5!

I made a point out of keeping in touch with every customer, and do a quarterly check-in. What's changed? What are your plans? For this coming week, month, quarter and year. Where do you want to be in 2 years? What problems are you trying to solve for your company? What are the expectations for you and your team? What tools are you using to solve that problem? What tools have you looked at and decided to not use them, and why? Etc., etc.

I rolled around in THEIR situation, trying to walk in their shoes. We'd talk for sometimes 90 minutes, often in person here in SF, over lunch. We'd often not cover our product until the final 5 minutes.

Of course, that's a huge chunk of time out of your calendar. Huge opportunity cost, in particular for a founder.

So here's actually something I'd do different. We hired our first sales reps after our first 10 customers. That was a mistake. Our product was very technical, it's not like selling email software. So you need a technical rep. Our first rep was a class act, but let me tell you, it was a goat rodeo for him.

Rather, I should have hired a customer success person, and have them do the quarterly check-ins. That way I could have kept selling. Then let the customer success rep also write (technical) blog post, customer stories / case studies, and documentation. You're building out (credible) marketing materials that build the top of your funnel.

[ky3]

> Rather, I should have hired a customer success person

Also called a Field Application Engineer in some circles.

> Then let the customer success rep also write (technical) blog post, customer stories / case studies, and documentation.

Also sample code, sample scripts.

[scapecast]

Spot on, that’s exactly it.

[baxtr]

Wow. Thanks a lot. That’s very specific and actionable. Any other thing you would do differently this time around? I’m in the middle of starting something new myself.

BTW: feels like you could write an entire book about your experience ;)

[scapecast]

#1 thing - I would raise less money for our seed. We raised $4.2M incl a note that converted from the angel round.

Too much money gives you a false sense of security.

[anonymouse008]

Is this how you substitute experience in an industry? As in the “we built this because we needed it, and it turns out a billion other people did, too” story?

It sounds like everyone ‘improves’ their offering based on feedback - but some folks seem to ‘just know’ what they are going through, and that somehow resonates with others.

I’ve always wondered if there’s a difference between approaches or if it’s all just window dressing.

[bigbossman]

Was about to post Pete's book too. Go read it!

[100-xyz]

Heads up. The foundingsales website took my username and password but did not give me access to the material. Instead its putting me through a "Buy the Book" or "Register to Read" cycle.

[kazanjy]

That’s odd. There’s a couple dozen people on the site right now.

What browser are you using? Sounds like maybe a Memberspace issue with a config you have?

Check to see which of these chapters you can access: https://www.foundingsales.com/table-of-contents

[kazanjy]

I just tested this with a new account and it’s working fine from mobile Chrome. It returns you to the home page on registration so perhaps access one of the chapters? Like this one to start: https://www.foundingsales.com/1-mindset-changes

[cantcopy]

I have the same isssue. I think it may be a Safari issue. Works fine for me on chrome not Safari.

[kazanjy]

That’s super annoying. Are you able to access this hyperlink while logged in in safari? https://www.foundingsales.com/10-early-sales-management

It might also be that the redirect after registration goes back to the home page, and the chapter buttons are below the fold if one doesn’t scroll down. Probably would be better to redirect to table of contents after registration. I’ll see if that can be configured through Memberspace.

[kazanjy]

Looks like it’s an issue Safari being configured to block third party cookies. Memberspace, the registration software we use, cookies you to validate registration. You just have to allow third party cookies: https://help.memberspace.com/article/115-how-to-fix-log-in-i...

[100-xyz]

Having problems with Firefox + Linux. Works ok on Chrome + Linux.

[longnguyen]

I had to allow third-party cookies for those 2 sites