Tomasz Tunguz wrote this lucid post on using mental models for Sales hiring at Startups. The first is that of looking at the experience of the sales person through the lens of Market Leader or Market Challenger. Selling for a Market leader is considerably easier and allows sales people to leverage the brand. However selling for a startup is very different and involves educating the market and convincing the buyer to abandon the market leader in the process of buying the challenging solution,
The other is between Playbook creation and Playbook execution. For startups creating selling playbooks become critical.
In a related post on Challenging customers during the sales process he refers to study of 6000 sales pro’s by Corporate Executive Board which had some interesting findings –
– Most customers don’t perceive difference between competitive products
– Second, the most important factor in a purchasing decision is internal consensus that a vendor is the right one for the job
– The Challenger is the best in tacking the above two bottlenecks.
What models are you using for hiring Sales people for your startup? Read both posts before you do.
Where I learnt this #417
MENTAL MODELS FOR HIRING SALESPEOPLE AT STARTUPS
https://tomtunguz.com/mental-models-hiring-in-sales/
CHALLENGING YOUR CUSTOMERS DURING YOUR SAAS STARTUP’S SALES PROCESS
