Sales

Executive summary

Early sales is the founder. Passion and domain knowledge beat sales experience. Run a funnel, shut up on calls, follow up inhumanly — and avoid free-trial and “one more feature” traps.

When to use this page

• B2B or high-touch products before a sales team exists.
• Going from zero revenue to first reference customers.

Founder advantage

“Hire the salespeople later” still means you are sales until then. PG: talk to users or build product — talking is selling. Commit one founder full-time to figure it out.

Funnel

Prospect → conversations → serious → close → revenue.

Prospecting

Only ~2.5% are innovators (Rogers) — treat it as a numbers game. Personal network, niche conferences (not CES), cold email (short: who / what / ask for time tomorrow). Clever: 400+ outreaches in early YC months.

Conversations

Shut up. Top reps aim ~30% talk / 70% listen. Ask why they took the call, how they solve it today, ideal solution. Uber Conference talk ratios predict close likelihood.

Follow-up stacks are embarrassing and necessary — one Clever deal had dozens of steps. Drive to yes or no; a thousand maybes kill the company.

Close

Redline with simple templates (YC open-sourced deal docs for students). Don’t quibble months over indemnities while the company dies.

Traps:

• “One more feature” → usually a pass, or write the feature into a signed agreement, or wait for multi-customer demand.
• Free trials → prefer annual with 30–60 day opt-out so you get commitment and revenue signal.

Scale shape

Know if you are elephants ($100k deals), rabbits ($1k), or deer. Don’t fly three times for a $1k ACV. Price and process must match the animal.

User interviews (related)

For product discovery: don’t show the product first; ask current behaviour; record calls; talk to non-users and competitor users; compensate with solving their stated problem. Emmett Shear / Twitch: stability and monetisation beat feature laundry lists from existing users.

Key takeaways

• Founders sell until process is repeatable.
• Listen, follow up, close with simple paper.
• Avoid free trials and feature hostage.

What to do next

1. Do things that don't scale for early customer intimacy.
2. Growth and distribution when self-serve motion appears.