(opinions) picked up from doing enterprise/gov sales as a startup founder, relevant to early days of a saas mostly
- you can't outsource sales before pmf, and you probably don't have pmf yet
- talk to (at least) a potential customer every day, keep track of what you said and how they responded
- make and give your leads materials they can use to sell internally, figure out who makes decisions (probably not who you talked to first) and make sure it's relevant to them; you may need multiple versions
- aggressively think about pmf, don't worry too much about official definitions here. just ask yourself: "if i took a month long vacation, could sales ostensibly be on autopilot?" if no, you don't have it yet. if yes, take the vacation you're doing great
- look for pmf by making your idea smaller, not bigger, or you will waste money and time
- when you can make a product idea really tiny in scope, and someone will still pay for it, you've identified a strong pain point you can exploit (aka charge for). Build the product/platform around that, not the other way around. Never convince yourself you have to build a huge thing before you can sell it, you're most likely wrong. optimize for finding that tiny scope early on
- when i say look for or find or think about pmf i mean come up with a way to pitch your product, and then pitch it to someone new. then compare that to the last times you did it. you have to talk to a lot of people for this to work, way more than you think. your product will not sell itself, you will have to talk to a lot of people. as many as physically possible to get the feedback you need to create a sales cycle that runs without you i.e. pmf. this is something that took me multiple years to internalize. you're just never talking to enough potential customers
- don't ignore seo, and pick names that are easy to say and read; figure out where your customers consume media and get your content there. every business will be different here, and you gotta get creative
- something i saw on reddit that stuck with me: first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. i operationalize this as: do not begin engineering a product until you're clear on how it will be marketed and sold, bonus points if you can convince someone to sign a contract saying they want it-- and remember in B2B/gov this can (should?) be a sales channel partner not just an end-user
- you can't outsource sales before pmf, and you probably don't have pmf yet
- talk to (at least) a potential customer every day, keep track of what you said and how they responded
- make and give your leads materials they can use to sell internally, figure out who makes decisions (probably not who you talked to first) and make sure it's relevant to them; you may need multiple versions
- aggressively think about pmf, don't worry too much about official definitions here. just ask yourself: "if i took a month long vacation, could sales ostensibly be on autopilot?" if no, you don't have it yet. if yes, take the vacation you're doing great
- look for pmf by making your idea smaller, not bigger, or you will waste money and time
- when you can make a product idea really tiny in scope, and someone will still pay for it, you've identified a strong pain point you can exploit (aka charge for). Build the product/platform around that, not the other way around. Never convince yourself you have to build a huge thing before you can sell it, you're most likely wrong. optimize for finding that tiny scope early on
- when i say look for or find or think about pmf i mean come up with a way to pitch your product, and then pitch it to someone new. then compare that to the last times you did it. you have to talk to a lot of people for this to work, way more than you think. your product will not sell itself, you will have to talk to a lot of people. as many as physically possible to get the feedback you need to create a sales cycle that runs without you i.e. pmf. this is something that took me multiple years to internalize. you're just never talking to enough potential customers
- don't ignore seo, and pick names that are easy to say and read; figure out where your customers consume media and get your content there. every business will be different here, and you gotta get creative
- something i saw on reddit that stuck with me: first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. i operationalize this as: do not begin engineering a product until you're clear on how it will be marketed and sold, bonus points if you can convince someone to sign a contract saying they want it-- and remember in B2B/gov this can (should?) be a sales channel partner not just an end-user