I don't care if you're in a big company or a startup. You should
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Welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel kleb Miller. Today
we are focusing on making career moves. John Kaplan joins me for the conversation.
Hi John, Hi Rachel John. This topic actually came from and as
sender subscriber who I was talking to who had worked at a large company,
had a lot of resources, great enablement, but had recently gone to a
startup and felt like he was a little bit on an island. And we
work with a lot of people who sell these B to B tech SaaS platforms,
and the benefit of that is you're often working with high growth companies.
You get options, and you really could get on a rocket ship and there's
always that idea that maybe you go sell for a smaller company and really get
in at the start of something great and growing isn't easy. So when you
decide to make these shifts, if you decide to get down to a startup,
get more experience, get some equity, you want to make sure that
you are selling for a great company that is going to have a great foundation
for you. And a lot of times, if you're good at your job,
you get recruited and there are a lot of promises made sometimes in that
interview process. So today we're going to talk about weading through the noise,
making the shift into a smaller company, and some things that you want to
think through before you jump. Yeah. I think this is a great topic
and timely because there's no shortage of opportunity out there. But I think I'm
hearing from a lot of reps that are considering making this move, and my
advice is always the same. It's to make sure that you know what you're
getting into and to be honest with yourself on an assessment. And so we're
going to talk about some of those things today. Yeah, So let's just
start with some things I need to be assessing if I'm considering making the jump
to a startup, I would say, first, right, are those essential
questions that we so often talk about? Yeah, we talk about those,
and they're incredibly important. I'll just list them really quick. What problems do
you solve, how specifically do you solve them, how do you solve them
differently or better than anybody else? And where have you done them before?
And ideally you want a clear understanding of those answers. And the product may
be cool, but what problem is it solving? How big is that problem?
Which means how much money will people spend to solve it? And how
many people have that problem? Is it in a growth market? Those are
really really important questions to ask. Inside of this, there's two other really
important concepts for you to consider. One's called MVP, which is minimum viable
product, and that's a version of the product created with the least effort possible
to be used for validated learning about potential customers. So the MVP has just
enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development. So
MVP is critical to understand where are they on that milestone? And then ICP
is an ideal customer profile and this is a detailed description of the type of
company or customer that would benefit the most from your product or service. So
it's important for you to understand where a startup is on these concepts because it
will have a big impact on what you sell and how you sell. So,
for example, if the product's not fully baked, you may be involved
in gathering additional technical requirements from customers and bringing them back to your company.
Again, could be a cool product, but the problems it solves, you
know, could be small, and therefore it's a small market for it,
and that's not going to be a great outcome for you. So it's really
really important for you to understand those answers and to understand what it means for
you. Right are you going to be able to sell this product, to
get a pipeline together where you can have a great conversation. I've been talking
to a couple of AI companies, smaller getting that seed round. They have
a great product, it's really cool, but I know they're struggling with finding
pain that product solves and an important end and making the customer see the urgency
of the purchase, finding urgency to change the way they're doing it right now,
so you want to make sure if you're selling the product, I feel
like you can drive a great value based business conversation around it. So John,
let's talk a little bit about the sales motion specifically and what am I
looking for at the perspective company. Yeah. I like how you position this
though, once you look into the three whys, which we talk about a
lot, why buy anything? Why buy anything now? Which is the urgency
you were just talking about, and why buy from me, which is really
kind of the answers to the four essential questions? And really understand what makes
you different? So you're looking to have a clear understanding of those, and
it's awesome important for you to understand how the buyer buys. We're talking about
the motion now, so how do they buy? It's not just who the
buyer is and why they buy? How do they buy? So this is
going to have a lot to do with how you generate pipeline. It's going
to determine sales cycles, sales strategy, how to build customer relationships, what
resources are required for are engaged agents? And how do I get access to
those resources? And I want you to write this one down because this is
really important and startup companies. You'll hear me talk about the term one hundred
pound brain effect in startups, and what I mean by that is you want
to take a look at recent sales campaigns and see who in the company has
to be on those calls for you to be successful. In many startups,
it's often the technical founder. So that technical founder has to be involved or
wants to be involved in every sales call. And that's great if you have
her all to yourself, but if she has to be on every call and
also has other responsibilities like the product or even CEO, this typically causes a
lot of problems with scale. So timing has a lot to do with this
conversation. So I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you definitely need
to understand the details behind that. In regarding pipeline, again, does the
pipeline come from a hunt motion? Does it come from a product led growth
motion? Are we just flooding the market with demos and trials and hoping something
sticks. These are things you really need to understand. You're probably not going
to have leads from a robust marketing engine, you don't have brand awareness.
You need to think hard about how you're going to build your pipeline. You
know, have you done that before? How long has it been since you've
done it that way? Will the type of pipeline generation give you energy or
take your energy away from you? And I have a lot of people when
I'm asking them these questions, they say, Yeah, you know, that's
no problem. I know how to do that. I've done that lots of
times before. And typically what I'm saying is, I'm not asking you if
you can do it. I'm asking you if you're willing to do it.
Now. What I mean by that is is that motion going to give you
energy? Or is it going to take energy away from you? That's why
I say, Rachel, you have to be really, really honest with your
assessment. Yeah, and what you're looking for. The other thing I mentioned
at the top, John, is to think about is enablement. Right,
you might have to be enabling yourself and there aren't going to be those same
avenues you're accustomed to helping you when you're in such a small company. Yeah.
I think it's a great point. So you need to have the mindset
of I need development, so I just have to figure out how and where
I'm going to get it from. And you own that. I don't care
if you're in a big company or a startup. You should always hold yourself
accountable for your own development. So let's talk about how you could do that.
You know, in a startup, Let's say you go find the answers
to the four essential questions. Typically it's with somebody that's more technically focused,
but the beginning of the answers to those four essential questions or the answers those
four essential questions typically are inside the company. You just have to get them
into your langguage, into the customer's language, and have it show up in
the moment of truth in front of a customer. She got to go find
out what it is first, learn how to attach yourself to biggest business issues
facing your customers. Learn how to influence the decision criteria with your differentiation.
And you always have to be a voracious qualifier. So everyone listening should be
a student of medic or medpic. That's just kind of table stakes today.
No matter whether you're in a big company or a small company, you should
be a student of qualification. Don't be afraid to go to a customer and
ask them, if I'm new with a company, I have done this before
I go to a customer and I say, why did you buy? Why
did you buy then? Or why did you buy now? What was the
urgency? And why did you buy our stuff? Why did you buy my
company stuff? I also like to ask customers, you know, things like
where are we better than we actually think we are? And where are we
not as good? Is where we need to be? And what you'll find
is when companies have made a bed on your company in the early stages,
purchased your technology, they need you to be successful. So they're going to
respect number one that you're asking on those questions, and number two, since
they need you to be successful, they're going to give you a very very
honest, typically a very very honest response to those questions. So again to
summarize that, don't be afraid to go out and ask customers that are using
the product why they're using it, how they're using it, how they purchased
it, what they're doing with it, what problems it solved to validate kind
of your value proposition. That is a fundamental development point for you to go
out and be successful in the marketplace. Yeah, and I would also I'm
going to take a little moment here and give a little a cender plug.
We have a lot of reps who had made that journey right sold for big
companies move to the startup, don't have enablement and are using that platform to
enable themselves to apply medic concepts. These customer concepts you're talking about, John,
to their current environment. Right, Things change, the point of view
might change because you're selling a new product. You have to kind of brush
up on those fundamentals that you have been using your entire career. The other
thing I want to talk about, John, is the funding, right,
And depending on the startup, you might want to consider their funding. How
much time do you have to be successful? Do you have a good runway?
And if you do, that would make you feel better about jumping from
a company that might have a stronger foundation. Oh right, So you're bringing
up such a great point about funding, and we didn't even really scratch the
surface on that part for this topic today, So we might have to come
back and specifically talk about that on another episode, but let's just kind of
at the high level. In general, it's important for you to understand what
stage a startup is in. And there's people called different stages, but they
go anywhere from like a preced environment all the way to an exit. So
it's important to understand where they are and where they are and their funding along
those stages. This is going to have a major impact on what you will
be selling, how you will be selling, who you will be selling to,
and very importantly, how you will be compensated. From an ote perspective
and an equity perspective. So the equity equation and startups is a major major
component of your decision making and that's not always fully understood, and it really
really matters. So we might have come back on another one, Rach and
talk about funding specifically. Yeah, as I brought that up, John,
I was like, oh, this is probably more than just a little mentioned.
What bottom line is you want me to take up money if you're going
to work from them? Really good topic here Again. I hope some of
you who are thinking about making this take heed John's tips. Feel free to
reach out if you have any additional questions. But as we wrap here,
John give us a bottom line for the reps out there who are considering making
the jump to the startup. Sure, just like in selling, you must
always qualify the opportunity and be honest with yourself on your capabilities and your desire
to do what's required for that company at the time. So we're going to
do some concepts like market fit, MVP, and ICP. You want to
understand what those are and where they are and their progression through the stages of
a company. You want to understand problems you'll solve, how you solve them,
how you solve them differently or better than anybody else, because that will
be the beginning of your sales conversations. And are we talking about a growth
market or a shrinking market? A lot of times people it's so simple.
It's like, you know, how big is the problem, how much of
people willing to spend on the problem, and is there a big market for
that problem for people that have that problem. Sometimes people don't even consider that,
and you just got to step away and look at it. Is it
clearly defined what I'm going to be asked to do and how I will do
it? And does that give me energy on what I'm being asked to do
or will it take energy away from me? Don't get caught in the trap
that says I've done that before, I can do it again. It's not
whether you've done it before, do you want to do it again? It's
an incredibly important conversation. So, no matter where you are, you own
your own development, whether you're in a big company or a small company,
and these are some things that you can do no matter where you are.
Appreciate it, John, my pleasure. All right, thank you to all
of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. At Force Management,
we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Are proven methodologies, deliver
programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the
ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is
our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit
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