
Tips for Founders Sales: Lessons from Starting Two B2B Startups - pstrazzulla
http://philstrazzulla.com/2020/04/06/tips-for-founders-sales-lessons-from-starting-two-b2b-startups/
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panorama
"Working out of one of their offices side by side is a great way to hear how
they talk, what they care about, etc."

I've heard this suggested occasionally, how does this ask usually work?
Besides the fact that our clients aren't near where we're based, it feels
socially strange asking to impose on someone's office for a day - I must be
missing something.

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pstrazzulla
Companies who are potential early customers are also usually growth stage
startups themselves (100-500 people) and want to help out other entrepreneurs.
Email the founders to tell them what you're up to, and tell them you won't be
a drag on productivity. A company like this almost certainly also has extra
office space as they rent for growth.

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alex-wallish
I just launched a bootstrapped B2B product today (also in the recruiting
space). I've never sold a thing in my life before, but have suddenly been
trying to learn how to be as effective at sales as possible.

Today I got some significant interest from a couple of fortune 500 companies
and got some serious imposter syndrome. Any advice for dealing with imposter
syndrome as a defacto sales leader with zero sales experience?

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wavesplash
Imposter syndrome or just not sure where to go? If it's the latter, there's a
structure to enterprise deals that you can usually follow.

1st uncover the buyer journey with some form of this question: "Just so I can
help plan accordingly, let's imagine your company decides to move forward,
what does the purchase process at your company look like?" Try to unearth all
the steps they need to go through (is it out of their personal budget,
department budget, VPs budget? Are there other groups we'll need approval from
and what does their process look like? (IT, Legal, etc). How long does it
usually take to close a purchase and get a vendor paid in your firm?

The goal is to uncover the end to end process that results in $$s early so you
can plan accordingly. If the process takes 18months and requires deep IT and
Legal approval - make sure you're priced high enough to absorb the pre-sales
time & labor.

And when pricing comes up - if you have a well established market, then price
within the norms (your champion isn't using their own money, they're using the
company's - they just need to justify the cost). If the product is a new
category, price the product to organizational value. If your product reduces
the number of sourcing staff or multiplies their effectiveness - a typical
strategy is to show the business impact. Perhaps Salary of HR hires saved +
number of good hires * impact factor on business (whatever works best to show
$$s of impact to the business). Then charge a fraction of that value yearly.

There are a bunch of great books on enterprise sales, but 99% of it after
showing value is uncovering the purchase plan and helping nurture your
champion (and possibly others) to accomplish the sale to their internal
stakeholders for you.

And as a previous commenter said before - don't worry about pricing it
perfectly. Fit the budget they have today and readjust next budget cycle or
during next year's renewals.

Best of luck!

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infinitone
A lot of these types of posts about B2B assume you are selling a product
>$1k... there are lots of B2B that are for less than that and so you can't
really apply most of these approaches.

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andruby
If you're selling a B2B product for <$1K, you'll probably need the customer to
come to you instead of you reaching out to them. This could be through strong
marketing and branding.

I only have experience with >$1K B2B which implied outbound sales (company
contacts potential customers).

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pixelsys
These advices are good, though the same can be seen in other articles pulling
recommendations together.

What would be good to see, are the conclusions and takeaways after applying
these. What works for real, what was the combination which lead to the first
sale, what is needed for repeatable sales.

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madaxe_again
These tips are OK, but they miss, in my view, two essential components. My
background is ten years as CTO and sales lead from founding to cashing out at
a B2B software startup.

The two key points:

1) Know your product. Know it inside out, what it can do, what it will do,
what it can’t and won’t do, and why those things are the case. You should be
able to answer any question, and you should know the metrics you’ll inevitably
be asked about like your mother’s phone number. If you’re a founder doing
sales, this is doubly important, as it not only answers the question, but
shows that you are deeply involved in the business/product, which brings me to

2) Passion. If you’re passionate and excited about your product, even the most
stone-faced pessimist will be wanting to sign a contract by the end of the
pitch. Enthusiasm is contagious. Have your story and why you set out to
provide this solution ready to go, and tell it. Narrative tells people why
you’re passionate, and allows them to share that narrative, that passion.

I converted almost every pitch I made, to the tune of £100M or so over the
years - early days, sales of £10k each, a dozen a year. When I left, I was
selling as many £5M three year contracts each year with the same core two
points. I don’t say this to brag, just to underscore that these aren’t scale-
limited factors, and that as a founder, this is a pretty solid strategy -
particularly if you’re selling to other founders.

The hardest hurdle was filling in the RFPs - always different, always asking
the wrong questions. All that worked there was putting in the hours.

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thomasrognon
I just started a B2B software startup and my cofounder and I are looking for
all the sales advice/mentorship we can get. Is there any chance we could talk
to you sometime? My contact info is in my profile.

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krupan
I convinced myself to start a B2B business[1] by telling myself that I
wouldn't need to do this. I'm pretty sure I was wrong.

[https://millenniumsoftwaredesign.com/](https://millenniumsoftwaredesign.com/)

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HeyLaughingBoy
See this? "BRINGING LOW COST, FLEXIBILITY, AND FREEDOM TO EDA"

Put it in the location and font size of the Millenium Software Design above
it.

I had to read the whole page before I could figure out what you sold. And I
knew what EDA was beforehand. Still had to figure out if what I understood as
EDA was the same thing you sold.

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krupan
Thank you for the feedback!

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AndrewKemendo
I've always cast a wide net when thinking conceptually about what "sales" is,
especially when I was a founder and de-facto lead salesman for years. For the
longest I considered sales to be just another flavor of persuasion, and at
it's very best it's almost pedagogical.

However now, I think I'd rather just not be in business than do sales. That's
really just a recognition that sales is an absolutely necessary part of all
businesses, and how terrible I personally find it.

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pstrazzulla
What made you change your mind to view it as so horrible?

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AndrewKemendo
I haven't sat and gotten deeply introspective about it, but when I think about
all the trips and dinners and conferences etc I went to in order to build
relationships to get a same, it feels deeply icky that the root of those
relationships was a desire for a financial transaction.

I think we actually did as well as we did, in part because being rooted in a
transaction felt so wrong that I actually tried to build relationships with
the people I was trying to sell to, in a way that wasn't purely transactional.
I'm actually still friendly with some of those people who bought from us
today.

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conductr
Did you believe the cost/benefit was in the purchasers favor? Or were you
cynical about the solution/value of solution?

I’m a purchaser of enterprise software. This is something I try to gauge from
the sales rep. There’s a lot of risk in buying software that doesn’t actually
solve the problems you face and you typically don’t find this out until well
into integration.

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AndrewKemendo
Yes, we had an amazing product and we could stand on firm
conversion/engagement numbers - fundamentally it was a marketing/experience
product for retailers. For reference I was the Founder/CEO and we were a
computer vision company with mobile AR products for retailers.

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rabidrat
This was published in April 2020, but I'm guessing it wasn't written in the
last month:

> Spend as much time in person with your prospects as possible. That means
> demos, as well as conferences, dinners, coffee, whatever you can. This will
> allow you to build trust, and learn a lot faster about your customer than
> doing calls or even video calls. Working out of one of their offices side by
> side is a great way to hear how they talk, what they care about, etc.

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Ozzie_osman
Or it was written assuming that people may read it in the future when this
whole situation we are in (I hope) has blown over.

Also, Phil (original author), if you're reading these comments, hi!

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pstrazzulla
Hey man!

Ya it was written to be more evergreen content...hoping that the world reverts
to normal at some point.

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_curious_
Starting two B2B startups is easy and while there's lessons to be learned in
failing, before reading your advice...one must ask/know if you financially
succeeded in either via profit/exit? Sorry, the title isn't clear.

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preommr
> Sorry, the title isn't clear.

If only the there was more to the title - like a link to an article that
answers your question in literally the first paragraph.

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_curious_
We all evaluate if the click trough is worth it based on the title, and in
this case looking for tips on success, not starting (the easiest part).

