Ask Me Anything: Sales
Today, I’m doing a deep dive on some questions you all asked about sales as an early stage founder.
Q: What is the one thing that is most crucial to your sales process when growing your GTM process?
A: An iterative tracking and learning process is what is most crucial to sales. Without tracking sales activities, it’s hard to know what to improve or how conversations are going. There is a lot of “selling” done by early-stage founders that is simply guesswork. The team should track lead sources, types, objections, next steps, and any other relevant information that helps you know who your prospects are and how to improve your sales conversations. Record and playback the conversations, see where the conversations falter, and keep improving. Sales is a game of data and improvement, much like professional sports.
1. Record your sales calls and improve
2. Systematically capture prospect responses, and objections
3. Track happy path to closed deals
4. Practice flowing through the different sales stages from revalidation through close.
Q: What are some successful strategies to get the demos booked? Or increase top of funnel? / Tips on getting people on a demo? It’s hard to cut through the noise.
A: I’ll be going more in-depth on this topic in a future webinar, but the top level is this: choose one channel, focus on that channel, and try to get people there. Be intentional and iterate quickly on your hook, story, and offer. There’s more than enough work for you to focus on one channel – don’t split your effort across multiple channels. If it doesn’t work, then you can move on. But don’t say it doesn’t work when you haven’t focused all your effort on it.
Find influencers in your space. Follow them. Add value to them, engage with them, and at the appropriate time, leverage them to access their audience through partnerships, sponsorships, and paid engagements.
Q: Is there a good blend of team resources for sales calls? We started with a one to many approach. Founder and whoever attended from the potential customer. We have transitioned to Account Executive, Founder, and Direct of Ops – which addresses customer service, product, and execution.
A: This seems like a problem with siloed information or additional clarity and training on the buying process. A clearly defined selling process will provide answers to your sales team about how you deliver value to the prospective customer. A sales call is not typically the ideal place to resolve customer service, product, and execution questions in detail. Any question related to these areas should be answerable by the salesperson or founder; otherwise, there is inadequate knowledge sharing and a clear buying process. If you’re selling large deals that require cross-collaboration, I can see the need for a large team doing the selling, but someone still needs to own it.
Q: What was your biggest selling fumble?
A: You can see my biggest selling fumble in the themes of my writing and speaking on sales. I didn’t know how to conduct sales conversations effectively – I didn’t know my answers to objections, I didn’t think about starting with a problem… I jumped straight into talking about my product without thinking about the problem I was solving for the customer. I didn’t realize that no one cared about my product – they cared about how I could take away pain for them.
Q: How have you increased your confidence in “selling?” Do you have any tips for that?
A: Believing in your product is the number one way to increase your confidence in selling. Believe in the problem you’re solving for people. And if you’re not solving a real problem, find something else to do. Whether the problem is big or small, you must believe it’s worth solving and your approach.
Get customer testimonials. Remind yourself and your team of the positive things people have said about your product.
You increase your confidence in selling by selling. Treat your sales like it’s a game and you’re an athlete. Like in sports, record everything, play it back, learn, and improve.
Q: Do you typically use a script to start out until you feel comfortable and find your groove?
A: Yes, you should use a script, but how you build it is important. Please do not build paragraphs and paragraphs of content as a script. It’s not an epistle, and you’ll get lost. Your salespeople will get lost. Use questions to drive the conversation. Ask questions, restate the customer’s response, answer their objections, and specify your differentiators. Your questions should help the customer make a decision.
Q: Many times after a demo, the prospect loves it, but it turns into “let me check with my team, please send over collateral.” In industries with traditionally longer sales cycles, what is a good strategy to eliminate losing these warm prospects in the cracks due to our products not being top priority (but still a need) or meeting internally with team, etc?
A: This seems like an issue with your buying process. If you get this often, send something ahead of time. Part of the work you should be doing before selling is designing a buying process that fits your customer. You must be able to sell your buying process before selling the product. One of the first things you’re actually trying to sell is: “This is how we sell. Are you on board?” If the first answer to that question is no, your long sales cycle is about to be even longer. You only have a certain number of hours in the day, so you need to give your time to the people who are actually going to buy.
Q: What’s an ideal number of sales team to hire as part of a go to market strategy if planning to launch?
A: Usually zero. When you’re planning to launch, your sales team should be you. You have to get comfortable selling and hearing the voice of your customer. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but those are the exceptions. Default to the assumption that you should be the one to sell your product in the early days.
You can always ask me more questions here or on Twitter. If you need personalized answers for your business, visit my website to learn more about my coaching and advisory services.