Attn founders — Ship Code : Ship Revenue

Sales Wound #54

A wise person once told me, “There are only 2 bottlenecks in business. Build $hit, Sell $hit.”

This helped me immensely as I transitioned from coding to learning how to sell. As I gained more experience in Sales I found myself using many of the same principles I learned in shipping code which iterated into my current understanding of how to build a company. It boils down to 2 things and 2 things only : “Ship Code : Ship Revenue”

• Why does this even matter? If you do not value your best sales person on the EXACT same pedestal as your best engineer, you.will.fail.
• Am I even qualified to have an opinion on this? Most sales blogs aren’t even written by someone who’s shipped revenue before. Ask the author if they have ever “carried a bag” (ie had a direct sales quota.) It’s binary, you either have or you haven’t. Just like an engineer shipping code.

I’ve found this is a very effective method to teach Founders how to translate what they know (shipping code) to the other most important function in the company: Sales

Every other function down to the Office Manager should be aligned with either of these. Everyone should clearly know which team they are on.

Shipping Code or Shipping Revenue

Sales is EXACTLY like Engineering. Except of course Sales Pros + Engineers are completely different breeds. Sales people work early am and like it loud. Engrs work late…