Hero Selling, Scaling, and the 3 Big Questions

When it comes to survival — the precursor to success — startup founders face a scope and scale of challenges that make mere mortals wither.

That's why when it comes to helping founders — particularly B2B and edtech founders — my goal is to make my advice practical and actionable.

Hero Selling and Scaling

Founders already know what is meant by hero sales even if they don't use that term.

For the uninitiated and simply curious, hero sales are sales made by the startup's most enthusiastic, most knowledgeable, and most devout believers in the vision and mission the company could ever hope to have — the founders.

You founders are true superheroes! You're donning your capes and doing the hard and important work of meeting prospects (when you're not meeting with investors) and nurturing them (both) into becoming believers.

• No one knows your markets and buyers better than you.
• No one knows your origin story and all the reasons why you were inspired to start your company better than you.
• No one is in a better position than you to do world-class discovery and qualifying of product-market fit with each and every prospect.
• No one can "do the ROI math" and connect with the prospect's leaders to forge an agreed-to plan for a decision better than you.

That's a lot. Pretty clear that the challenge you have is how to scale that up.

You still get to keep your cape if you like. You still get to fly into your markets to save the day for your customers by solving their critical business problems.

Still, you're only one person; maybe a team of a few people with LOTS of other responsibilities.

Here's the advice I have for pretty much every B2B startup.

Once you've achieved MVP — Minimum Viable (or even better, VALUABLE) Product — and your hero sales to get cash in the door, your next hire needs to be people to bring more cash in the door, right?

Here's some tough love, especially to the product geniuses I totally admire and respect. If it means hiring one less developer, do it. The reasoning is simple. Without sales, there's no need for anyone else.

The 3 Big Questions

Helping your salespeople to succeed is your job. You share that job with marketing if you're fortunate enough to have them. It's up to you to equip your salespeople with the knowledge and tools they need to be successful.

Don't let anyone kid you, that's a lot of work. It might even feel that it would be easier and cheaper for you and your fellow founders to keep doing sales. Hey, I think you should always be doing some sales. Again, the issue is scale.

Almost no matter where you are in your business's evolution or how much experience you already have, I suggest ramping up your new sales hires by answering these 3 Big Questions for Sales:

1. Whom do I talk with?
2. What do I say?
3. Why should they care?

If you're a founder of an emerging startup who's making "hero" sales in the $1M neighborhood and you're ready to scale up sales predictability, then may I suggest we talk to determine if and how I can be of help to you in ways similar to how I've helped others?