10 Startup Sales Tips from Dreamforce 2015

Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross gave one of the best presentations today at Dreamforce in their talk titled Tales from the Front Lines: Building a Killer Sales Team. Jason is the author of SaaStr and Aaron is the author of Predictable Revenue — both incredible resources for entrepreneurs that care about sales (which should be most!).

Here are the 10 startup sales tips from their 10 slides:

1. A/B Test is Key. Hire 2-3 AEs & SDRs. Not 1.
   – A/B Test Helps You Learn
   – Any Sales Rep That Performs is Cheap
   – 1 Rep Performing = Repeatable
   – 2+ Reps Performing = Repeating
2. VPs Hire: Not Too Early – And Not Too Late
   – You have to sell it yourself first. And then hire 2+ reps. But once you have two that perform, get your VP!
3. Don’t Hire Early Reps You Wouldn’t Buy From
   – Later, you’ll need many types of reps.
   – In the early days leads are so precious.
   – You’ll never be comfortable handing them off to someone you don’t trust.
4. Make Sure You See the Customer Segmentation Pattern Early Enough
   – The Pattern is Set Early – $500k ARR
   – One it’s repeating, be confident.
   – You’ll have an “organic” type of core customer.
   – So from $1m – $10m ARR, just double down on what seems to be working.
   – Deal sizes will go up but pattern will stay the same.
5. If You Can, Go Upmarket Faster
   – If you can get one enterprise customer, you can get 10
   – If you have one customer in an industry, you can get 10
   – The outliers aren’t anomalies. They are the future.
6. Invest in Getting to a Mini-Brand
   – Brands are highly defensible, a proxy for whom to trust, and huge air cover.
7. Never Allow Revenue Per Lead to Drop
   – PR. Marketing. Upgrade the team. More customer success.
   – Competition doesn’t really matter for revenue per lead.
   – Deal sizes should go up.
   – You should only get better at closing.
8. How My 2nd VP of Sales Double Sales in 90 Days
   – Immediately upgraded the team to proven closers. The first week.
   – Got the most out of the team he inherited and got rid of the ones that weren’t working.
   – Didn’t attempt to do it alone.
   – End pipeline as a metric and any credit for it.
   – Embraced competition.
9. It Gets So Much Better at Initial Scale
   – No matter how bad you are at X or inexperienced at Y you will learn in SaaS.
   – Great will get ever better.
   – You will get even better. Guaranteed.
   – You will become a great SaaS CEO.
10. Not Doubling the Plan
    – Once the team was great, we exceed the plan. Every quarter, every year. Always.
    – I should have challenged us to do even better than 120% of plan.

Want to learn more? Pre-order Jason and Aaron’s new book From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue.