reading [w1] of the week — annotations — When Sales Isn’t Just Selling [a16z]

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When Sales Isn't Just Selling: Advice for Founders in Early Markets

Redefine how you think about the word “sales”

• Danger — Avoid “salesy” to convince others to buy, to be nice
• Reality — Going for that kind of customer/interested that is in pain, or that resonates with the company vision/cause/product (strategically and tactically)
• Reality — Founders need to incorporate / focus in the sales mindset, aiming to tie the vision, product, market

The First Sales Rep Doesn’t Actually Sell

• Founders sell — yes, they may not understand the process of sales, procurement, etc;
• Danger — if founders don’t sell, major problem — go back to revisit hypothesis, vision, product, market, and the customer!
• Sales Rep are sniffers, seekers, mappers of the customer or decision buyer inside orgs, org chart experts, org reverse engineers, they find the idiom, the language out there that resonates with the product, they identify budget existing, or champions, they may validate persona within the org; they help negotiate price and navigate procurement (not sure what is this)
• Sales Rep may Help Access to The Founder to Sell
• They “ qualifying customers and deals (understanding whether there is a real opportunity or not);”
• They “finding budget (remember, in early markets there may not be an existing budget line);”
• They “(3) mapping the target org (figuring out who the key decision makers and stakeholders are);”
• They “(4) calling in reinforcements (startup founders, product managers, etc.) at just the right time;”
• They “ (5) navigating procurement and pricing.”
• Danger — Therefore they don’t have to be technical; they don’t have to be too mature as Sales Rep in the sense of pushing your *supposed value* into a relationship. You want to step back here, to know if there is a fit/traction and if an existing purchasing force/idiom/language resonates with your offering (problem-solution).

Sales Engineers Sell

Terminology of the section: early sales rep, sales engineer, account executive.

• One sales engineer per sales rep;
• Sales engineer does the *technical close*, they actually sell; while sales rep is the foundation structure backing (the author refers to sports analogy of the sales rep being a “quarterbacking”;
• They may or may not write code, then they are deeply technical;
• They understand the technical side and how the technical parts are being used or it adds value to the customer user;
• They are people (customer) friendly
• They understand the market landscape
• Doubt — They understand “what differentiate different players” This made me wonder here, maybe it’s everyone like the decision maker, the actual practical user. Would this incorporate someone like a saboteur?

Sales Enablement is Equally Important as Sales

• With SRep and SE in place;
• Strong Product Marketer doing Sales Enablement;
• They are responsible for materials, collaterals;
• They refine the broad (hundreds of meetings with sales pitch related done by founders, Sales Rep, SEs) into “simple, repeatable positioning” (plus sales collateral).
• They keep everyone in the same tune (selling same thing to same people);

When to Bring a VP of Sales

• Mistake #1 — VP sales before a sale(s)
• Ideal — VP sales to scale, (or in the rare event of responding to a too strong pull force);
• In essence, you don’t want to put the sales VP into forcing or scaling function (what they do) when you are actually trying to figure things (searching).
• In essence, if you put them to act before search more fine, you may force them to force your product team for fast-track feature, or to rush interaction with the wrong customer; VP sales is pushing the accelerator in the scale terms.