I Was Once in Charge of Sales for a Startup. These Are My Tips for Founders.
I’ve sat to write a few of my key takeaways on B2B sales for technical startups and I hope these will help early-stage founders get a better understanding of how to approach the art of revenue creation.
Sales operations at early-stage startups is a tough, fascinating journey. I have myself experienced it when I was amongst the founders of ICS², a startup which developed a unique solution for Industrial Control Systems cyber-protection. I was in charge of Sales and, looking back at it today I understand that, quite frankly, I didn’t have a clue on where to start. I knew I wanted to make a switch and add another layer of experience and knowledge to my previous technical background so that I can take the startup to the next level. But I did not know at the time how to find quality leads or how to take a call with someone I’ve never met before. Further along in my career, I joined Claroty to oversee Sales in the APAC region. At that point, fear was no longer present as soon as I realized I had the fortune to be surrounded by Sales experts. Tomer, Richard, Gary, Colin, Galina and Amir taught me a lot of what I now know about accelerating growth in startups. In this post, I would like to share with you some of the golden advices I collected through my crash course years and later experience in sales for startups.
How to find your first customers?
There are a few different approaches on how to find your first customers:
Bottom up vs. Top down
- Bottom up: If, for instance you are selling a service such as Monday.com or Grammarly, you’d probably want to approach pretty much any employee, at a lot of different types of companies. You’d get your foot in the organization’s door through its employees.
- Top down: If, however, you are selling a product such as a complex computing system, perhaps you should start form the top, and approach the relevant C-level/VP executive. Make sure you conduct a thorough research on which manager is the most relevant, and try to verify that this is the person who makes the decision on your types of products. Should you approach the Chief Information Officer (CIO)? Chief Technology Officer (CTO)? VP R&D? It’s best to know in advance so you do not waste people’s time. That said, sale cycles looks different in every company. If as a startup you already have a way in, don’t throw it away easily, even if sometimes it will require a few meetings to get you to where you need.
Direct vs. Working with Partners (Resellers, Distributors, VARs)
On your first days at a startup you must be creative. On one hand, you should find your clients, approach them directly and learn the full cycle of how to sell your product. On the other hand, you should parallelly work on finding and working with the best resellers out there in specific territories, based on recommendations and research. If you are selling an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for Critical Infrastructure globally and you can form a partnership with a mega-company such as Checkpoint and by that, get access to some of their clients this might be a good idea. This is a way for you to get access to markets, clients and individuals you wouldn’t have necessarily reached on your own.
How to approach clients?
First, do your homework. Understand your product and the market in which you are going to launch it. Consider your sales offering and understand to whom its useful. Research the competitors, if any, to learn who you are up against. See what they are doing well, and gather whatever intelligence you can take from them. Remember, all knowledge is useful. It doesn’t matter what source.
Second, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and jump into research. The question: which organizations fit best for the products that you sell? Try to think broad. Sometimes your prospect clients are hiding out of sight. A lot of young startups tend to think that they can sell only to a certain type of customers who have a pressing need to use their products. This concept is true for some ventures, but when you are a startup you must remember that there is a lot of potential in places you did not think of. Nobody can think of all the options. We are a result of things that happened to us, articles that we’ve read and the network that we have. Other people think differently. They know about companies and markets that we did not necessarily think of. Thinking creatively is key. Your dream sector or customer might come from unexpected places. Keep your ears listening and your eyes peeled. Every meeting can be a sales opportunity if you think about it right.
Opportunities don’t just come to people, you make them happen: create a list with all the business verticals you can think of and rate the organizations that fit you best based on criteria such as need, size, geography and whether you know if they have a similar solution already and if so, whether they are content. Ask yourself the question: can you deliver?
After we’ve created a list of potential customers, now it’s time to find the best people to approach. Identify the key roles within the organization who are the decision makers. Once you’ve pin-pointed the most relevant people DO NOT cold-email them or approach directly via LinkedIn. The preferred and most effective strategy is to get a ‘warm intro’. Who do you know that can help? Who do you know who knows someone who can help? Think laterally. Use your own network, your employees’ network, your investors’ network, friends-of-friends’ network, and spread the word around that you are chasing a specific client as much as business permits. Targeted marketing campaigns, PR, reports, webinars, events and conferences that you know they’ll be at, are all obviously also a great way to get the leads you want.
Before you approach your top, dream, most wanted clients, make sure you are ready. It is often better to rehearse before the premiere. Think meritocratically when choosing the line-up for that all important meeting. Your best performers may not be your most senior team member. That said, sometimes life throughs you a curveball and the first person ready to meet with you is the most important for you.
How do you define your main verticals?
Where can you make an impact? What verticals do you own and which ones are you poised to take. Remember, in the meeting itself plausibility and believability are going to be everything. Ask yourself, how many verticals can you support? What are the most common use cases? Which verticals have the greatest potential to create revenues?
How do you define which territories you are going to sell to?
One of the most crucial things in sales is to decide which locations your company will be operating in. You should consider many risk factors and evaluate the market. and Look at the size of the market, the potential, the local regulations. Understand whether this location is accessible to you and whether it will be cost-effective to enter this market. Learn as much as you can on the local competitors and state of affairs. From my experience, a good role of thumb is, that Israel is a fantastic place in which to carry out pilot schemes for early-stage Israeli businesses before you scale-up. Use the opportunity to understand the pressure points in your company, sharpen your offering, and develop a strong onboarding process. Take the time to ensure great results in Customer Success. You will be judged on your track record, so make it exemplary.
After the pilots period is finished, the United States is usually the market of choice for Israeli startups. Israelis tend to thrive in the US because Israel is one of the technical innovations in the world and the U.S. is where big tech companies are based. However, the U.S. is not the only market in the world for tech innovations. Japan, Germany, Australia and the UK are additional examples for great markets to explore.
I hope you found my Sales advice for startups useful. Even if you take only one thing from this blogpost, it might eventually end up in bringing in your next customer.
