Last week I was talking to an entrepreneur that’s in the process of scaling out his sales team. Scaling a sales team is much harder than it sounds. Sales people, as you’d expect, are great at selling themselves, but not always great at selling to prospects. Then, sales reps often want to be sales managers, and managing people is a very different skill than selling to people. Here are seven sales lessons for entrepreneurs:
- Learn modern BANT qualifications
- Do the match to ensure inside sales makes sense
- Align special incentives with desired outcomes
- Plan out the first 30 days for a new sales rep
- Develop a sales playbook
- Model the time it takes to ramp up sales reps
- Hire reps ahead of plan at scale
- Implement a sales development process
Bonus: Every entrepreneur should read these four sales books.
Entrepreneurs need to understand sales even if they aren’t a “salesy” person. Start with these eight sales lessons and read the four books to build a solid foundation.
What else? What are some more sales lessons for entrepreneurs?
David Cummings on Startups 