Max Raphel’s Post

Hello network! 🌐 Building an effective sales strategy isn't the easiest of tasks, especially when you're a startup!💡😅 I mean, you're already busy assembling the dream team, nailing the pitch, and basically trying to change the world... and now this? Don't fret! Here's a little secret for you! 🤫 ✔️ Understand your customers! 👨💼👩💼 Start by truly diving into their needs, desires, and pains. Creating a customer persona is not a bad start at all! ✔️ Focus on solving problems! 💼 Every great product is a solution to a problem. Position your startup as the ultimate problem-solver! ✔️ Deliver A-class customer experience! 👏 Because, at the end of the day, people remember how you made them feel more than anything else! But the most important point? It has to be your tenacity in sales!💪 Every “No” gets you one step closer to that “Yes”! Anyone else has built a start-up sales strategy from scratch? Or perhaps you're in the process of building one? Let's share our experiences and grow together! 💡🚀 #startups #sales #strategy #growth #customers #entrepreneurship

Ever wonder what really stops people from buying from your startup? 🤔 It's NOT what you think! One of the biggest barriers to Startup success is Fear😬 ! But you may be surprised that it’s not YOUR fear… Long before I launched my first company, and even before I went to business school, I had 3 different sales jobs for VERY different companies (a vacuum cleaner company, Toyota, and Xerox). I’d expected that selling would also be VERY different. Spoiler… It turns out that selling is selling.📈 It also turns out that whether you are selling B2B or B2C, you are selling to a Person. And all of the sales frameworks I’ve studied over the many years since the vacuum cleaner company, focus on identifying and overcoming “sales objections”.🛑 🚦 It also turns out that most sales objections are not the thing that people give you as the reason why they won’t buy. In most cases, the REAL reason they won’t buy is FEAR.💀 They are AFRAID! They are afraid that: ➡️ Your offering won’t deliver the outcome you promised ➡️ Buying from you will be seen as a “mistake” (buyer’s remorse) ➡️ Your offering isn’t “robust enough” to handle their needs ➡️ Your company won’t last and they will have to switch again ➡️ That there are “hidden costs” that will change the value equation for them ➡️ Buying from you means missing out on a better choice The list goes on and on. 📜 If you want to get customers, especially when you are an early stage company, one of the keys to your effectiveness will be to identify and mitigate these fears! What are some of the fears that are keeping people from choosing you?🤔 Follow ➡️ #TheFoundersForge for more keys on getting early customers Follow ➡️ #FounderCoaching for tips on being the best founder you can be! #StartupLife #CustomerCentric #BusinessGrowth #EarlyStage

Last week a couple of young startup founders asked my opinion on how they should split their time between sales and operations. My proposal to them: 100 - 0 % 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘵. 𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘰 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴. Any business exists primarily to serve its customers. In exchange for this service, customers usually pay the business some money. In the very beginning of starting your company, you will be faced with a number of non-commercial issues: - Structure - Legal - Funding - Personnel And you may be drawn into trying to address each one of them. Leaving behind: - Talking to customers - Closing deals - Listening to the market As I often advise young founders: You attract what you put your focus on. If you focus on the market, the customers will come. 𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴.... After 30 minutes of conversation, we started talking and focusing on their market, their customers, etc. We identified a number of opportunities and prospects that otherwise would have remained hidden, such as: → Lead generation mechanisms → How they could improve their conversion rates → Their service absorption levels → Key sales metrics they must track → How to handle overbooking When you have an overselling problem, you can start solving other types of problems. → 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: When setting up a company, it is very important to choose the problems to be solved in the first place. What troubled you last week? Feel free to drop a comment sharing your thoughts, and if you've found the content valuable, give it a thumbs up! 👍 #businesscoaching #startup #founders

Startup founders, did you know that your ability to sell can greatly impact the overall success of your venture? While lead generation may not be your strong suit, your passion and vision can help drive sales. Even introverts can become effective salespeople and selling is a skill that can be learned more easily than the ability to develop a product. So don't shy away from sales, embrace it as an opportunity to showcase what makes your startup unique. Remember, your success depends on it. #startupfounders #sales #success #innovation #startups

Want to build a startup sales strategy that saves money, gains client trust, and provides valuable feedback? You need to explore founder-led sales, which is a sales methodology where the company founder is heavily involved in the selling process and strategizing for the company. Even if you think you’re too busy as a startup founder to make sales calls or you don’t have the skills necessary for selling, there are plenty of benefits to founder sales that can outweigh the challenges of this method. So, what are the benefits of founder-led sales? For one, this method is a great option for cash-strapped startups that may not have the money to bring on dedicated sales reps. “Rather than paying to hire and train sales reps and buy equipment for a bigger team, the startup can use founder sales to conserve money until revenue increases. Plus, the founder is already equipped with the knowledge and passion to sell the products, meaning the startup can save time and money on training sales reps, too.” Saving time and money are just some benefits of utilizing a founder sales strategy as an early-stage startup. Explore more of the benefits of founder-led sales in the latest resources blog post on HubSpot for Startups. #startups #sales #founders

Most technical founders underestimate the importance of sales in their startup's survival. They focus on shipping features, writing code, re-writing code, pivoting, and making their MVP "perfect," often neglecting direct interaction with potential customers. Here's the reality: As a founder, you wear every hat, and the most important one is figuring out how to monetize, market, and sell. If you want this to be a full-time gig or raise funding, this is your main job. But most technical founders procrastinate on this. "Product isn't perfect, needs more time" is just an excuse. It's never perfect; you'll always be shipping. You won't know what good looks like until customers tell you with their wallets. Raise your confidence with these 3 steps:* 1️⃣ Get a sales coach or mentor to help you deal with head trash. 2️⃣ Join a founder-led sales community for peer support. 3️⃣ Implement a minimum viable sales process to avoid winging it every time. You'll build a better product faster if you're constantly speaking to the market. The more prospects and customers you interact with, the better you'll understand their pains and workflows. You'll never guess this correctly hiding behind your code. Get out there and sell.  #StartupSales #FounderTips #TechFounders #Sales #Entrepreneurship #Founder 

Strategizing your sales may be the most crucial step in building a startup. It's about understanding your market, and more specifically, your early adopters.  Startups, unlike established companies, cannot rely on existing customer data to forecast their sales. Instead, they need to anticipate the needs and desires of early adopters who are willing to take a chance on an unproven product or service.  Here's how you can craft an effective sales strategy for your startup Step 1: Identify your target customers, their needs, problems, and how your product can resolve those. Step 2: Understand the market landscape, competition, and how you can differentiate your offering. Step 3: Determine your value proposition. What makes your product or service unique, and why should your target audience choose you over others? Step 4: Develop a sales process that includes prospecting, qualifying, presenting, and closing. Step 5: Measure, analyze, and adjust your strategy based on feedback and results. Remember, there's no one-size-fits-all strategy. What works for one startup may not work for another. Take your unique context into account and adapt accordingly. So, how are you crafting your sales strategy? Are you focusing on early adopters? --- DM me TRIAL for a 14-day trial. #Startups #SalesStrategy #EarlyAdopters #DecisionMaking ---------------------------------------------------- If you like my content... 🔔 Follow me and hit my bell for 3x posts per week on decisions and drive growth with confidence.

I recently mentioned the opportunity and challenges of using warm intros as a sustainable revenue channel. Here's one approach to make this a reality: IntroHub streamlines the process of securing warm introductions to decision-makers by first allowing users to connect their email accounts to the platform. Once connected, IntroHub analyzes the user's contacts to identify potential connections within their extended network. Users can then request introductions to valuable prospects that are within reach of any IntroHub user. When a User facilitates an introduction, they earn a credit, which they can then use to request an introduction to a prospect that they would like to meet. This system of giving and receiving introductions is the essence of IntroHub – creating incentives to help members of the community. So far, I've interviewed 50 sellers, from  SDRs to CROs, across industries. By far most sellers want IntroHub to exist. But there are some skeptical sellers. These are smart and qualified potential users with significant sales experience. Thanks to them, I know the fundamental hypothesis that must be true for IntroHub to succeed: “Are users (sellers) willing to make introductions to their contacts on behalf of other, unknown users (sellers) in exchange for a credit that they can use to request an introduction to high value prospects from other users (sellers)?” I've heard convincing arguments for and against this proposition. But those arguments rely on assumptions, analogies, and feelings. If founders acted in accordance with the lowest common denominator of wisdom, then nothing would get done. Instead, this situation calls for a calculated risk of time and resources to gather evidence that proves or disproves the hypothesis, given the potential upside if true. So here we go again, Sandeep Arneja! Our next milestone is to build and ship a minimum viable product that can test the core hypothesis. You'll see more on this in the coming weeks 💪 #Startups #Entrepreneurship #SalesTech

Experienced salespeople will come in and smash sales, one after another in a startup. Well, that’s what founders think will happen, but it often doesn’t… The reality is that this rarely happens because every business is different. If the business hasn’t built up an effective process to win sales, the salesperson is starting from scratch. Maybe their strength is following a process and not creating one. This is why founder-led sales is so important. Founders must learn the foundations to set up everyone else for success. Having a solid framework to follow can significantly reduce the time needed to learn. It provides a structured approach, making the learning process more efficient and effective. I'm curious to know if anyone has found another way that works? #startup #founder #b2b

“Let’s say I had a magic wand and ___ wasn’t an issue. What happens then?” (Post 2 of 10 on the most helpful phrases for selling at a startup that I’ve learned from sales coaches and mentors) 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬: It’s easy to get into the weeds of a minor objection early on in the sales cycle. Though you’ll need to address the objection eventually, it can be a better use of time to find out if there’s still a deal at all and if the objection is worth diving into at this point. Too often, I see founders begin negotiating price, getting deep into security technicalities, or gameplanning how to win over a specific stakeholder before they determine if there’s even a deal on the table. I like to use this phrase if my prospect raises a minor objection while I’m trying to understand their buying or decision making process. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞: 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒕 [on demo]: “Wow, this looks great, I wish we could have this” 𝑭𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓: “Great, how do we make it happen?” 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒕: “Well, the price range you shared earlier seemed high. I need to know that we’re getting the best price. Would you match the price with our quote from [competitor]?” 𝑭𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓: “I understand price is important to you, and I’m happy to go into detail of our pricing when we prepare a proposal after detailed scoping. For now though, 𝘭𝘦𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯?” In this example - rather than discussing pricing before you even know if you have the technical win, this phrase helps steer the prospect to continue sharing more about the decision-making and buying process. Follow Startup Sales Consulting if you’d like more tips like these, or book a free consultation if you’re a founder who wants to accelerate your go-to-market motion #founderledsales #startups #sales #accountexecutives