Enterprise Sales | Startup School
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful talk, Pete Kuman, a partner at YC and former CTO of Optimizely, guides founders through the intricacies of closing enterprise sales. He outlines a step-by-step approach, from prospecting to implementation, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer problems and tailoring sales strategies accordingly. Kuman shares valuable tactical advice and lessons learned, debunking myths about the necessity of a business co-founder for sales and highlighting the founder's unique advantages in the sales process. His talk is a must for any founder venturing into sales, offering practical insights to navigate the sales funnel effectively.
Takeaways
- 😀 Selling is a learnable skill, and technical founders can excel in it through trial and error.
- 🔍 Prospecting involves identifying potential customers and the specific individuals within those companies who might be interested in the product.
- 📞 Outreach is about getting the attention of potential customers, with inbound marketing often being more efficient than cold calls.
- 🤝 A warm introduction is preferable to a cold email, but if necessary, personalized and concise emails can be effective.
- 🚫 Avoid the anti-pattern of talking to anyone who will take a call; focus on prospects who are likely to be good customers.
- 💡 The first sales call should focus on qualification, understanding the prospect's problem and their capacity to buy, rather than selling.
- 🎬 A product demo should tell a story that shows how the product solves the customer's specific problem, rather than just showcasing features.
- 💰 Pricing involves a lot of guesswork initially and should be informed by questions about the customer's budget and the cost of their problem.
- 📉 Don't undervalue your product; high prices can indicate a genuine need and help filter out less serious customers.
- 📝 The procurement process can be lengthy and complex; understanding it helps in setting expectations and avoiding surprises.
- 🛠 Implementation is not just the customer's job; founders should treat it as a project, ensuring a smooth transition to using the product.
Q & A
Who is Pete Kuman and what is his role at YC?
-Pete Kuman is a group partner at Y Combinator (YC) and an alumnus, having been the co-founder and CTO of Optimizely, a company from the winter 2010 batch.
What is the main focus of Pete Kuman's talk?
-The main focus of Pete Kuman's talk is to guide software startup founders step by step through the process of closing their first enterprise customers, covering various stages of the sales funnel.
Why is sales the number one concern for most founders during the YC batch?
-Sales is the number one concern because it is a critical skill for early-stage startups to acquire customers and generate revenue, and it is often a new challenge for founders with technical backgrounds.
What is the first big lesson Pete Kuman wants to impart to the audience?
-The first big lesson is that if you are the founder of an early-stage startup, you are capable of selling your product, and it's likely that you are the only person who can sell it initially.
Why does Pete Kuman suggest that technical founders have advantages in selling their products?
-Technical founders have advantages because they are experts in the problem they are solving and the product they are building, and they have conviction in the value of their product, which is important in sales.
What is the purpose of prospecting in the sales funnel?
-The purpose of prospecting is to find potential customers, resulting in a list of companies that might need the product and the specific humans within those companies who might buy it.
What is the importance of having a sales hypothesis before starting the prospecting process?
-A sales hypothesis clarifies who you should be talking to by identifying the customer type and their problem that your product can solve, making the prospecting process more efficient and targeted.
Why is it more efficient to get prospects to reach out to you rather than only relying on cold outreach?
-Getting prospects to reach out to you generates inbound demand, which is often more efficient because it indicates that the prospect is already interested in a solution, making the sales process faster.
What is the main goal of the outreach step in the sales funnel?
-The main goal of outreach is to get the attention of the prospect and ideally schedule a meeting for further discussions or a product demo.
What is the key mistake that Pete Kuman advises against when talking to potential customers?
-The key mistake is talking to anyone who will take a call without being disciplined about targeting prospects who are likely to be good customers, which can lead to wasted time and misleading feedback.
Why is it important to focus on companies that need your product and have the budget to buy it?
-Focusing on companies that need your product and can afford it ensures that your sales efforts are directed towards potential customers who are likely to convert, avoiding the trap of chasing bad leads.
What is the main purpose of the first call with a prospect?
-The main purpose of the first call is to qualify the prospect by understanding if they have the problem you solve, the budget, and the decision-making authority to purchase your product, and to schedule a follow-up call for a product demo.
Why should founders avoid diving straight into their pitch during the first call with a prospect?
-Founders should avoid this because the first call is about understanding the customer's needs and problem, not selling. A good sales process involves listening and asking questions to deeply understand the customer's situation before presenting a solution.
What is the approach to take during a product demo?
-The approach should be to tell a story that shows exactly how the main character (the user) solves their problem using your product, focusing on personalized and impactful moments rather than a feature tour.
Why is it a mistake to think of implementation as the customer's job?
-It's a mistake because customers are buying a solution to a problem, not just a product. The work required to transition from product to solution is the responsibility of the seller, and successful implementation ensures customer satisfaction and habitual use.
What is the best way to learn sales according to Pete Kuman?
-The best way to learn sales is by going out and doing it, making mistakes, and learning from each attempt. Sales is a learnable skill that becomes more natural with practice.
What resource does Pete Kuman recommend for founders who want to learn more about sales?
-Pete Kuman recommends 'Founding Sales' by Peter Kazan, a book that is available for free online and provides a deep dive into the topic of sales for founders.
Outlines
😀 Introduction to Enterprise Sales for Software Startups
Pete Kuman, a group partner at Y Combinator (YC) and a YC alumnus, introduces his talk on closing enterprise sales for software startups. He outlines the sales funnel, which includes prospecting, outreach, qualification, pricing, closing, and implementation. Kuman emphasizes the importance of understanding the sales process and shares his experiences and lessons learned as a technical founder who learned to sell through trial and error. He argues that sales before product-market fit is entrepreneurial and requires vision, credibility, and experimentation, which is a role best suited for founders themselves.
🔎 Prospecting and Outreach: Finding and Engaging Potential Customers
The script discusses the importance of prospecting, which involves identifying potential customers and the specific individuals within those companies who might be interested in the product. Tools like Apollo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator can aid in this process. Outreach is the next step, aimed at getting the attention of these prospects, ideally by having them reach out to the seller. Kuman advises against indiscriminately talking to anyone available, as this can lead to wasted time on bad leads. Instead, he stresses the importance of targeting companies with a genuine need for the product and the authority to make purchasing decisions.
📞 Qualification and the Art of the First Call
In this section, Kuman explains the purpose of the first call with a prospect, which is to qualify them by understanding their problem, budget, and decision-making authority. He warns against the common mistake of immediately pitching the product, instead advocating for a conversational approach that involves asking questions to deeply understand the customer's needs. This approach helps in identifying whether the prospect is a good fit for the product and sets the stage for a more effective sales process.
💰 Pricing Strategy and the Importance of Valuation
Kuman addresses the challenge of pricing products, especially for startups. He suggests asking questions early in the sales process to gauge the customer's budget and the problem's cost to them. He advises against undervaluing the product and emphasizes that high prices can indicate a product's necessity and seriousness to the customer. Kuman also highlights the importance of providing materials that can help prospects justify the product's price internally within their organization.
📝 Closing the Deal and Navigating Procurement Processes
The script moves on to discuss the closing phase, which involves formal procurement processes in larger companies, including security, privacy, and legal reviews. Kuman warns founders not to be surprised by these processes and to be prepared for them by asking the right questions upfront. He stresses the importance of keeping the sales process moving quickly and leveraging the prospect, who has now become a champion for the product within their organization.
🚀 Implementation and Ensuring Customer Success
In the final paragraph, Kuman talks about the importance of implementation, cautioning against the misconception that it is solely the customer's responsibility. He shares experiences from Optimizely, where they learned to treat customer implementation as a high-priority project, managing it with detailed plans, clear ownership of tasks, and regular check-ins. Kuman emphasizes that the sales process is not complete until the customer is habitually using the product, and he encourages founders to learn from every attempt, viewing sales as a learnable skill that extends beyond customer acquisition to fundraising and hiring.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Enterprise sales
💡Sales funnel
💡Prospecting
💡Outreach
💡Qualification
💡Product demo
💡Pricing
💡Closing
💡Implementation
💡Sales hypothesis
💡Inbound demand
💡Product Market Fit (PMF)
Highlights
Pete Kuman, a YC partner and alumnus, shares a step-by-step guide on closing enterprise sales for software startups.
Sales is identified as a learnable skill and a top concern for early-stage startup founders.
Technical founders, despite their background, are capable and often successful in sales roles due to their expertise and conviction in their product.
The importance of having a sales hypothesis to guide the prospecting process is emphasized.
Tools like Builtwith can help identify potential customers using specific technologies, indicating a potential need for your product.
Generating inbound demand through early launches, technical content, and establishing expertise in forums is more efficient than cold outreach.
The value of warm introductions over cold emails for outreach, leveraging LinkedIn for shared connections.
Avoid the anti-pattern of talking to anyone available rather than focusing on qualified leads who are likely to become customers.
The first call with a prospect should focus on qualification, not selling, to understand if they have the problem, budget, and authority to purchase.
Sales is not adversarial; it's about understanding and solving the customer's problem, with great salespeople spending most of their time listening.
Delivering a product demo is about convincing the audience that you can solve their problem, not just showcasing features.
Personalizing demos with the prospect's data and context makes the demonstration more impactful and relevant.
Pricing strategies should be flexible and seen as an opportunity to learn from customer reactions; avoid undervaluing your product.
The importance of having detailed conversations about pricing early in the sales process to avoid surprises later.
Implementation is not just the customer's responsibility; founders must ensure their product is being used effectively post-sale.
Managing the implementation as a high-priority project, with a shared roadmap and regular check-ins, is crucial for customer success.
The sales funnel does not end with a signature but continues until the customer habitually uses the product, ensuring long-term success.
Peter Kazan's book 'Founding Sales' is recommended for founders looking to deepen their understanding of sales strategies.
The key takeaway is to start selling, learn from mistakes, and leverage sales skills beyond customer acquisition to fundraising and hiring.
Transcripts
[Music]
my name is Pete Kuman I'm a group
partner at YC and a YC Alum I was
co-founder and CTO of optimis Le in the
winter 2010 batch in this talk I'm going
to walk step by step through the process
of closing your first Enterprise
customers I'm going to do that by
focusing on successive steps in the
sales funnel prospecting Outreach
qualification pricing closing and
implementation I'll do my best to
include lots of tactical advice and
counterintuitive lessons I picked up
while I was learning how to sell at
optimiz Le I'm going to focus on
Enterprise sales for software startups
but this talk should still be broadly
useful to any founder getting started
with sales regardless of the size of
your customers or what you're selling
why am I giving this talk well first I
know there's demand for this sales is
the number one concern during the the
batch for most of the founders that I
work with at YC second I know from
experience that sales is a learnable
skill my co-founder Dan and I both had
technical backgrounds we knew how to
build a product but we didn't know how
to get people to use it we figured it
out through trial and error and that's
the first big lesson I want to impart
today if you're the founder of an early
stage startup and you're building a
product that you're hoping other
businesses will buy you are capable of
selling it that's the good news the bad
news is that you're probably the only
person capable of selling your product
that is if you aren't able to sell your
product yourself at first chances are
you're not going to be able to hire
somebody else to do it for you now if
you're anything like we were you're
probably thinking there are lots of
talented salespeople out there wouldn't
it be faster to hire one of them than
try to do it ourselves after all that's
what youd probably do with any other
role like designers or lawyers or
accountants the problem is that sales
before you find product Market fit is
very different from sales after you find
product Market fit sales pre pmf is
fundamentally entrepreneurial it
requires vision and credibility with
customers and lots of experimentation
and a tight feedback loop with the
people building the product this is a
role for Founders so does that mean if
you're a team of technical Founders
building a product you should go find a
business co-founder to do sales well you
probably don't need a business
co-founder to sell either I've worked
with many technical Founders who turned
out to be great at selling in some cases
very much to their surprise so why is
that well if you're a technical founder
building a product you have several
advantages that will give you a big leg
up in selling first you're an expert
both in the problem you're solving and
the product you're building and second
you have conviction you sincerely
believe that your product will solve
your customer's problem expertise and
conviction are surprisingly important in
sales this is especially surprising to
people who mistakenly think that selling
is a dark art full of psychological
tricks sales isn't about tricking people
it's fundamentally about helping people
solve their problems and Engineers are
great at doing that anyway now that I've
hopefully convinced you that you're
capable of selling your product let's
talk about how to do that like I said
we're going to go through the step in a
typical sales funnel together let's
start with prospecting prospecting means
finding potential customers the output
of this step is a list of companies you
think might need your product and the
specific humans at those companies you
think might buy it there are lots of
tools you can use for prospecting but
before you start you need a hypothesis a
sales hypothesis goes something like
this customer X has problem Y and our
product will help them solve it a good
hypothesis makes prospecting Easy by
clarifying who you should be talking to
for example at optimizely our initial
hypothesis was something like this
marketers at small and medium Tech media
and e-commerce companies want to run AB
tests on their websites but they can't
because off-the-shelf experimentation
tools require users to write code
optimizely will enable them to run AB
tests without writing code and once you
have a clear hypothesis like that you
can get to work on prospecting start by
identif identifying companies that are
likely to suffer from the problem you're
solving one way to do this is to buy
industry lists of all of the companies
in a given sector and then use some
filtering criteria to qualify those
companies and narrow your target list
for example at optimizely we used a tool
called builtwith to figure out whether
prospects were using analytics tools and
JavaScript Frameworks because those were
signals that a company was relatively
sophisticated and cared about their
website once you have list of companies
you'll need to find the right humans at
those companies and their contact
information there are tools that make
this easier this video was recorded
during the winter 24 batch and many
Founders in the current batch are using
Apollo and Linkedin sales navigator for
that now that you have a list of leads
that is specific humans that are likely
to buy at the companies you're selling
to you'll need to get their attention
this step is called Outreach the goal of
Outreach is usually to schedule a
meeting with your prospect most Founders
think of cold Outreach as the primary
mechanism for doing this but the easiest
way to get a meeting with a prospect is
to get them to reach out to you even if
you're planning on using a sales Le
approach you should still do everything
you can to generate inbound demand
launch early and often create technical
content like videos and blog posts that
prospects can find while searching for a
solution to their problem build
self-served demos that people can share
find online forums where your customers
hang out and establish yourself as an
expert by answering questions there's no
one way to do this but the better you
get at grabbing your customers attention
and getting them to reach out to you the
more efficient your sales process will
be on that note if your customers all
hang out and Industry conferences you
should be there too find a way to get a
list of attendees ahead of time and set
up lots of meetings in advance once
you've identified a specific Prospect
you want to talk to start by trying to
find a warm introduction if you can look
on LinkedIn for shared connections and
ask for an intro sending cold emails is
usually the least efficient way of
getting prospects attention but it can
still be effective if you approach it
the right way start by writing each
email by hand make your emails short and
to the point and make the ask clear you
should also make it clear why you're
reaching out to each recipient
specifically humans have built-in spam
filters and if your email looks like it
was sent to thousands of people it's
going to get deleted on this last Point
there's a handy rule of thumb to keep in
mind for cold emails only send emails
that you yourself would be excited to
read if you wouldn't be excited to get
the email you're about to send your
prospect probably won't either before we
move on I want to spend some time
talking about a particular anti-pattern
I see with a lot of YC Founders many
Founders start by talking to anyone who
will take their call and the problem
with this approach is that it selects
for the people who are easiest to talk
to not the people who will be be great
customers so if you're not disciplined
about it you'll end up wasting all your
time chasing bad customers that are easy
to talk to I see YC Founders make this
mistake all the time and I get it when
you're starting a company it's hard to
get people to pay attention to you cold
emailing is a demoralizing grind so it's
tempting to go after the people who will
talk to you even if they won't ever buy
your product and the reason this mistake
is so dangerous is because talking to
bad customers gives you the illusion
that you're making progress when you're
not you'll get lotss of great product
feedback from people who think they're
doing you a favor but because you're not
actually talking to someone who needs
your product this kind of feedback is
useless at best and counterproductive at
worst in practice I see Founders make
this mistake in two ways first by trying
to sell enterprise software to startups
now if your product solves a problem
that companies only have when they get
big like for example an HR information
system then trying to sell it to
startups is a waste of time but Founders
still do it all the time because other
startups are much easier to talk to than
busy big company Executives and the
second is trying to go bottom up with a
product that needs to be adopted top
down and that's a little jargony so let
me illustrate it with an example imagine
you're building productivity software
like notion your product can be adopted
bottom up meaning that individual
employees or teams can start using it
independently without having to
coordinate with anyone else inside the
company and in this case talking to
individual contributors or their direct
managers is totally fine but what if
you're building building software for
large hospitals in order for a hospital
to start using your product you're going
to need a lot of different teams to
coordinate with each other so you might
need the CIO to sign off on your
security and compliance and you need
their software team to integrate your
product with their in-house systems you
need the doctors to enter billing codes
at after each appointment and you need
their Ops Team to manage Collections and
so on and so on and in this case talking
to an individual doctor won't be useful
you need to talk to a senior leader like
a CFO or a CIO to do a deal now there's
a meme that YC says you should sell to
companies who will buy quickly even if
they aren't good customers this is a
misconception you should try to find
companies that will buy quickly but you
shouldn't spend time trying to sell to
companies that don't actually need your
product or won't be good customers you
need to find people who have the problem
you're solving and the budget and
decision-making authority to buy your
product we'll spend more time on this
point later let's get back to our sales
funnel so you've managed to get your
prospect on the phone your job on the
first call is not to sell your product
that comes later in the first call we're
just trying to do two things first we're
trying to qualify our Prospect by
figuring out whether they have the
problem we're trying to solve and the
budget and decision-making authority to
buy the product and second we're trying
to schedule a follow-up call for a
product demo now many Founders face
plant in the first call by diving
straight into their pitch these Founders
are making one of the biggest founder
sales mistakes not asking enough
questions and they make this mistake
because they misunderstand how sales
work they think of the company they're
trying to sell to as a big monolithic
entity and they think of the sales
process as adversar
where it's their job to come up with a
perfect pitch that will break down their
targets defenses but outside of some
used car dealerships that's not how
sales works in the real world in the
real world you're almost always selling
to an individual human not a big
monolithic entity and that's good news
because humans are easier to understand
than organizations and that turns out to
be really important in the real world
sales is not adversarial it's about
deeply understanding a customer's
problem and help helping them solve it
and great salespeople spend most of
their time listening because that's the
best way to understand someone's problem
they ask all sorts of questions what
made you decide to take this call tell
me about this problem how long have you
had it how bad is it who else does it
affect how do you quantify the impact
why haven't you solved it already what's
your budget for solving it how does your
organization buy software who makes the
buying decision who else will need to
weigh in on this decision now sometimes
when you ask questions like these you
discover that your prospect doesn't
actually have the problem you're trying
to solve or they have it but they don't
care enough about it to buy a solution
or they don't have any budget or any
number of other reasons that they won't
actually be a good customer for you and
if you do that that's great you just
saved yourself and your prospect a lot
of time and you can focus your energy on
other prospects that are more likely to
buy now if on the other hand it turns
out that your prospect does have a
problem you can solve you're in luck
you've earned the opportunity to show
them how your product works the next
step is a demo most Founders think of a
demo as a chance to finally show off
their product in my experience thinking
about it this way is a Surefire way to
deliver a bad demo that's because your
job in a demo is not to show off your
product it's to convince your audience
that you can help them solve their
problem and one helpful trick I've
learned is to think of your demo as the
script for a great movie a great script
always starts with a recap of who the
main character is that's your user and
the problem she's trying to solve this
is your chance to demonstrate how well
you were listening during your first
call if your audience believes you
understand their company and their
problems they're going to take you
seriously when you talk about how to
solve them when you're ready to show the
product resist the urge to take your
audience on a feature tour where you
walk from screen to screen showing them
everything your product can do instead
tell a story that shows exactly how your
main character solves her problem and
this is the point great demos actually
feel like good stories they have a flow
where each step leads to the next and
every feature you show has a clear
reason for being there they usually have
one or more magic moments where you
surprise your audience with how easy or
delightful something is and great demos
are also personalized for the audience
this is where you get to use all of the
information you collected during that
first call tailor the demo to their
company use their logo their website
their customers uh the names of the
people on their team the more you can do
to help them visualize exactly how your
product would work in their company the
better I'll give you an example from the
early days of optimizely when Dan and I
started building we booked demos with
all of our competitors and every single
one of them used a website to show what
it was like to use their products to run
AB tests and we thought this was really
lame so we spent weeks building a
feature that made it easy to demo our
product right on our customers websites
instead of a dummy website and I knew it
was worth it when I saw marketer eyes
light up when they watched us change
things on their landing page that would
have taken them months to do on their
own so if you do a good job your
prospects and their team will come out
of this meeting convinced that you can
solve their problem and if that's the
case it's time to talk about pricing I
get a lot of questions from Founders
asking how to price their products and
the truth is there isn't a simple
formula for doing this so if there isn't
a formula how do you pick a number well
fortunately you can ask questions
earlier in the process that will make
your job easier here like how much is
this problem costing your company how
many people are responsible for
maintaining your in-house solution
what's your budget for solving this
problem how much are you spending on my
competitor and it's okay to wait to
share your pricing until you've had a
chance to ask these questions in fact if
your product requires lots of work or
customization to implement you probably
shouldn't quote a price until you
understand exactly what your customer
needs in any case even if you asked all
of these questions upfront the reality
is that pricing involves a lot of
guessing in the beginning and the advice
that I give to startups is to think of
each pricing conversation you have as an
opportunity to run an experiment in
which you test a price point and then
learn from your prospect's reaction to
it in the early days of optimizely we
had published self-serve pricing for
customers who just wanted to swipe a
credit card for a basic version of our
product and an Enterprise plan that
required you to go through sales we
didn't publish pricing for the
Enterprise plan which gave us the
flexibility to try a different price
each time the pricing mistake that
Founders make most often is charging too
little for their product or even making
it free in exchange for product feedback
Founders do this because they're worried
about charging too much they think
they're going to scare customers away
one of the most surprising things I
learned was that when a customer really
wants your product it's hard to scare
them away by quoting a price that's too
high for example I remember my
co-founder Dan coming out of a sales
call and telling me that he'd worked up
the nerve to quote the prospect $10,000
a month for our software and the
prospect ended up talking us down to
2,000 a month and then buying our
initial quote was 5x what they were
willing to pay and they still bought in
fact higher prices can help you figure
out whether customers actually need your
product the cison brothers famously
charged more for stripe in the beginning
than their competition did the fact that
they were able to sell their product
anyway was compelling evidence that they
were on to something and it helped them
focus on the customers who were most
desperate for a solution high prices
make customers more serious this brings
me to another important point about
pricing remember that the most important
conversations about pricing will happen
without you in the room your prospect
will need to convince others in the
organization that your product is worth
the price you're asking you can make
their job easier by giving them slides
or a PDF one pager that explains how
your pricing works it's usually a good
idea to include an overview of your
product and the benefits of using it in
case your prospect needs to talk to
people who aren't familiar with it in
any case don't spend too much time
thinking about pricing in the beginning
pick number ideally one that makes you a
little uncomfortable and pay attention
to how your prospect reacts it's okay to
let them negotiate you down remember in
your first few sales you're optimizing
for learning not unit economics now that
you've agreed on a price it's time to
close the deal closing is not a single
conversation it's a bunch of things that
need to happen from the moment your
customer decides they want your product
to the moment they actually buy it big
companies especially ones in highly
regulated Industries have formal
procurement processes that usually
include stuff like security and privacy
reviews legal reviews and signoff from
compliance teams it's less formal in
smaller companies but you should expect
at a minimum to go through a redlining
process with their legal team the
biggest mistake that I see Founders make
at this stage is getting surprised and
discovering that what they thought was a
done deal is in fact not done at all and
may take weeks or months of additional
back and forth or fall through
completely now the way to avoid getting
surprised is once again to ask a lot of
questions asking your prospect upfront
how they buy software and who needs to
sign off will give you a clear picture
of the hurdles you're going to have to
overcome in order to get a signature you
should do everything you can at this
stage to move through the procurement
process quickly ask explicitly if there
are steps like filling out a security
questionnaire that you can get started
on early and execute in parallel and
keep your legal documents as simple as
possible I recommend starting with the
open- source templates published by YC
company common paper keep timelines and
scope of work out of the legal contract
if you can and put them in an order form
or a shared project tracking document
instead and most importantly remember
that your prospect who at this point has
become your Champion is your biggest
Ally you should be in constant
communication with them and when you
need help getting something unstuck you
should ask them first remember they
can't solve their problem until you get
through procurement so they're heavily
incentivized to help you make it happen
now that you have a signature
congratulations it's time for your
customer to actually start using your
product this is the implementation and
it's the last step we're going to talk
about today and I'm going to lead with
this the single biggest mistake that
Founders make is thinking that
implementation is the customer's job we
made this mistake more than once at
optimizely in fact we closed six figure
deals with customers that were excited
about our product and then we discovered
a year later when it was time for them
to renew that they hadn't run a single
AB test with optimizely and this was
confusing at first why would a customer
who is willing to pay so much for a
product fail to use it at all in this
case the approximate cause is that the
marketing team who bought our software
couldn't convince the software
engineering team to help them install it
on their website the real cause though
is we didn't do our jobs we thought our
customer was buying a product so we sold
them one and left the rest up to them in
reality our customers were buying a
solution to a problem and all of the
work required to get from product to
solution was our responsibility we
learned to start asking marketing
leaders about the work required to
implement optimizely very early in the
sales process we started building
detailed implementation plans with
marketing and Engineering leaders well
before a contract got signed and in fact
if we weren't able to do that we
wouldn't sign a contract at all and the
trick we learned was to treat the
customer implementation the same way
that we would a high priority project
inside of our own company by project
managing it so we put together a shared
road map we made sure that every task
headed owner we set up regular check-in
meetings to hold everyone on our side
and theirs accountable for getting it
done your sales funnel only really ends
when your customer is using your product
habitually and when you get to that
point congratulations hopefully you have
a customer for life all right we've
covered a lot today from prospecting to
doing your first call delivering a great
demo pricing closing and finally
managing the implementation of course
there's so much more to learn about
sales and the best Founders devour
everything they can on the topic if you
want to go deeper I recommend Peter
kazi's book founding sales it's a
fantastic resource and it's free online
but like most most of the hard things
about building a company the best way to
learn is by going out and doing the
thing so if you only remember one thing
it should be this just get started
you'll make mistakes but with enough
attempts you'll figure it out and
selling will start to feel natural
pretty soon you'll discover that you've
acquired a new superpower you'll find
it's useful not only in getting
customers and revenue but in fundraising
and hiring too and soon enough you'll be
the one giving advice like this to new
Founders thanks for watching
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