dana-consulting.com

Two Sales Myths

that will kill your

B2B Startup

And how to Avoid Them

THE SALES CHALLENGE

Both increase need for market

validation (aka sales)

Is this what you’re seeing?

Challenging fundraising

environment

Increased need for business

validation & revenue to extend

runway

Early stage

(seed, early A)

Remaining questions about

product/market fit and scalability

PREDICTION:

Most Startups Will Fail The Sales Challenge

SALES #FAIL

42% No market

need

29% Ran out of

cash

19% Got outcompeted

Sales planning-related

18% Pricing/

Cost issues

17% Poor

product

17% Need/Lack

business model

14% Ignore

customers

14% Poor

marketing

7% Failure to

pivot

10% Pivot gone

bad

23% Not the

right team

13% Disharmony on

team/investors

8% Don’t use

network/advisors

Team-related

Source: CB Insights

SALES #FAIL • #1 – Building something nobody wants

• #4 – Failure to execute sales & marketing

• #6 – Chasing investors, not customers

• #7 – Not making sure you have enough $$

• #8 – Spending too much money

• #10 – Ignoring social media

TEAM #FAIL

•#2 – Hiring poorly

•#5 – Not having the right co-founders

•#9 – Failing to ask for help

WHY?

SALES (IS) FOR DUMMIES

Of 479 accredited U.S. business programs

• Only 101 have a sales curricula

• Only 15 offer either an MBA in sales or a sales-oriented graduate curriculum.

Of the 350,000 graduates with a bachelor’s in business, and 170,000 MBAs,

only a tiny fraction have been taught anything about sales.

SALES ISN’T COOL

SALES IS SCARY

LACK OF EDUCATION & FEAR PRODUCES TWO DESTRUCTIVE SALES MYTHS

Compelling

Product

Myth

Myth of the

Superhero

Salesperson 1 2

THE COMPELLING PRODUCT MYTH

“If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t

invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad

business – no matter how good the product.”

Peter Theil

Zero to One

If you build it, will they come?

MYTH OF THE SUPERHERO SALESPERSON

Hired for Contacts

• Personal network only gets you so far

• Selling to your friends is not a scalable

business

Hired for Industry Expertise

• Industry can be learned

• Focus should be on sales skills and

unique startup needs…

YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SUPERHERO IF YOU….

Hire 1 or 2 junior salespeople

• Wont work if managed by founders

without sales experience

• No formal training program, sales

process or metrics

• Focus on hunting, not growing or

providing feedback

Hire a senior “VP of Sales”

• Expensive ($$ and equity)

• High failure & turnover

• May be too removed from

cold calls, sales execution

UNIQUE STARTUP HIRING CHALLENGE

Unique startup

needs in sales

• Strategy + process +

execution

• Eye towards

scalability

Founder

inexperience in

sales

• Hard to understand

own needs or hiring

criteria

Bad candidate pool

• 25% of salespeople

fired every year

• Successful are

expensive and wont

leave for untested

product

A BETTER WAY

1 Do your

homework!

Start sales

ASAP 2 Hire for the

right stuff…

slowly 3

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

#1: Interview 20 Existing & Prospective Clients • Don’t pitch your product!

• Understand jobs, pains and gains

• Understand how solving problem now

• Understand decision-making process and influencers

for similar purchases

#2: Research Your Competition • Competitors include:

Doing nothing

Customer doing themselves

• Pros/cons of your product vs each

START SALES ASAP

#1: Get Sales Training ASAP

• Founders must sell ASAP

• Develop sales scripts focused on qualifying questions, customer pain

• Collect and track feedback (especially “no’s”)

START SALES ASAP

#2: Build Out Consistent Lead Generation Process

• Consistent leads = predictable revenue

• Try multiple lead gen channels

• Outbound email marketing, cold calling

• Referrals

• Partnerships

• Link content to ads to capture leads

• Public speaking/webinars

• Ready, fire, aim … but keep an eye on ROI

HIRE INTELLIGENTLY…SLOWLY

#1: Your Early Sales Team

• Founders sell first

• Appointments scheduled by sales development rep

• Customer success for client feedback

• Marketer to create cheap, flexible, on-demand sales collateral

• THEN consider a salesperson or two (when consistent traction / product-market fit)

#2: Read This:

• Mark Roberge, The Sales Development Playbook, Chapters 3+4

• “5 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Salesperson”

ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE…

“A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and

scalable business model.

Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by

seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the

darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.”

Steve Blank

The Startup Owner's Manual

BEST BOOKS (+PODCAST) 1. SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham)

2. The Ultimate Sales Machine (Chet Holmes)

3. Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (Brian Carroll)

4. The Challenger Sale (Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson)

5. The New Strategic Selling (Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman)

6. The New Conceptual Selling (Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman)

7. The Sales Acceleration Formula (Mark Roberge)

8. Predictable Revenue (Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler)

9. The Sales Development Playbook (Trish Bertuzzi)

10. Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success (Colleen Stanley)

11. Podcast: The Why, How, and When of Sales (a16z)

THE DANA ADVANTAGE

Rent a VP of sales

Services:

• Lead generation and sales strategy

• Sales process development

• Sales hiring

• Sales training

• Ongoing sales coaching/

management

Benefits:

• Cost effective vs FT hire

(longer runway)

• Startup experience

www.dana-consulting.com

Duke, GW Law

Attorney

Sales @ Northwestern Mutual

Co-Founder & President @ WellnessRebates

Founder & CEO @Dana Consulting

victor@dana-consulting.com