I always like to ask "What will it take for you to become a customer of ours?"

The key is to keep following up with questions until you arrive at a point when they say "and yes, then we'd buy"

See more about it here if interested: http://blog.close.io/sales-hacking-kung-fu-how-to-virtually-...

I appreciate the feedback but honestly disagree with you here.

In my experience conflict never escalades because of facts or differences of opinion/approach but almost always because people get too "attached" to their ideas/approach/solution and can't differentiate or argue based on pure facts but get emotional and later "religious" about their side.

One of the Heroku founders once said something to the effect of "We like people that hold their strong opinions loosely"

I loved that quote. It means that you want to have people with strong opinions in startups but not people that hold on to their opinions too strongly and are not open to sometimes trying someone else's approach in the name of progress.

You're right.

I'm a big fan of Lemkin but might disagree here although I'm not sure if it's semantics or if we truly disagree.

I think after you have just 2 reps it's usually too early to hire an experienced VP of Sales although I guess it's fine if you hire someone and give them that title.

Someone who is currently a director of sales or sales manager might be better for phase 2 although you should start looking for a VP as early as 2 reps since it's going to take a very long time to find the right fit.

Spot on!

Creating the right commission/compensation structure is super tough and crucial to create a scalable sales force.

In my experience that's not the first challenge startup founders have when they start their sales team.

First, figure out what sales channels/models are predictable and repeatable for your product/market.

Once you've validated a lot of assumptions reg sales model you can move on and worry about sales execution & scalability etc.

And at that point you better bring in someone who's done it before and knows how to create commission structures that will work for your company

what do you mean when you say "sales model" - is it the same as revenue structure ?

I'm trying to understand startup B2B sales as well and I'm trying to understand "sales terminology 101 for tech founders"

thanks for asking this question & sorry for the sales lingo :)

when I say sales model what I mean is the most successful/feasible way to sell your product.

is it via inside sales (people sending emails, making calls and giving online demos) or field sales ( people going door to door or flying to large enterprise customers for meetings etc) or a combination of both.

are you getting your leads via marketing (inbound) or do you have to do cold outreach (outbound) or a combination of both.

what tools and process do you use to sell what is the average time it takes you to close a deal what's the average deal size a sales person can close etc etc

all these factors and a bunch more would make up your sales model.

probably a good idea to write a post dedicated to this subject but I hope this clarifies it a bit :)

sometimes called the "Playbook"

thanks ! that helps.

I hope you write that blog post ;)

You might wanna try sending customer lifecycle emails to customers after a few weeks pitching them on referring you to their friends and see how well this performs.

I don't have first hand experience in automating this via email. My experience has been exclusively with phone sales so far.

Yeah that's what most people think (and sometimes it's the right approach).

For most SaaS apps your customer had a chance to experience the product on a free trial of some sorts.

If they are convinced enough to buy many will be ready to recommend.

Asking for it at that point only shortens the referral sales cycle (you don't have to schedule a separate call for this since you're already talking to them) and once you've closed the positive feedback loop they can start giving you more referrals (and at that point they've probably been a customer for a month or two).

Starting earlier just makes this gain a lot more momentum faster.

Yeah that's a fair point. If you don't talk to your customers today it might make sense to automate this via email.

Most likely you will have a much lower success rate since the biggest point of conversion in the approach outlined in the post is at the "2nd ask" (which is hard to do via email).

But it's a lot better than not asking for referrals in the first place :)

Would love to hear what kind of results you would see doing this!

Never seen a case where referral sales makes more sense than at YesGraph :) Excited to see the results you guys are going to get from implementing this!

oh that's a good point! I need to edit that into the original post :)

I've found that in B2B you don't want to "pay" for referrals and that people are more likely to make them when they feel like they are providing value to their network without any selfish incentives.

Once in a while someone will ask for it and it's up to you to decide if you want to give people a discount or something else for helping you close new business. I personally think that's reasonable when asked but wouldn't offer it upfront.

Really interesting insight, Steli. Did you ever offer a discount up front to get reluctant customers to introduce you to a new business[1]? If so, could you share how it turned out?

[1] those who likely know a business to introduce you to and are seemingly willing to do so, based on the maturity of the relationship with you and them.

The point I'm making is not that it's bad to ask for a discount. I do it all the time :)

The only difference is I don't ask for discounts before trying a product and determining that it fits my needs and I actually want to purchase.

The advice I give is to ask people politely to trial your product first and then offer them a discount if they actually confirmed that they like it

If someone offers you money, take it. Smart salespeople shut up the instant the prospective says,"yes."

That's true for one time deals where you don't care about success but not true for SaaS. Taking money from the wrong customers and running a high churn/high support cost SaaS app will destroy your startup.