All startups fail because they don't have enough customers. This presentation explains why and offers tips on how to minimize that risk.

1. dana-consulting.com
Two Sales Myths
that will kill your
B2B Startup
And how to Avoid Them

2. THE SALES CHALLENGE
Both increase need for market
validation (aka sales)
Is this what you’re seeing?
Challenging fundraising
environment
Increased need for business
validation & revenue to extend
runway
Early stage
(seed, early A)
Remaining questions about
product/market fit and scalability

3. PREDICTION:
Most Startups Will Fail
The Sales Challenge

4. SALES #FAIL
42%No market
need
29%Ran out of
cash
19%Got outcompeted
Sales planning-related
18%Pricing/
Cost issues
17%Poor
product
17%Need/Lack
business model
14%Ignore
customers
14%Poor
marketing
7%Failure to
pivot
10%Pivot gone
bad
23%
Not the
right team
13%
Disharmony on
team/investors
8%
Don’t use
network/advisors
Team-related
Source: CB Insights

5. SALES #FAIL
• #1 – Building something nobody wants
• #4 – Failure to execute sales & marketing
• #6 – Chasing investors, not customers
• #7 – Not making sure you have enough $$
• #8 – Spending too much money
• #10 – Ignoring social media
TEAM #FAIL
•#2 – Hiring poorly
•#5 – Not having the right co-founders
•#9 – Failing to ask for help

6. WHY?

7. SALES (IS) FOR DUMMIES
Of 479 accredited U.S. business programs
• Only 101 have a sales curricula
• Only 15 offer either an MBA in sales or a sales-oriented graduate curriculum.
Of the 350,000 graduates with a bachelor’s in business, and 170,000 MBAs,
only a tiny fraction have been taught anything about sales.

8. SALES ISN’T COOL

9. SALES IS SCARY

10. LACK OF EDUCATION & FEAR
PRODUCES TWO DESTRUCTIVE SALES
MYTHS
Compelling
Product
Myth
Myth of the
Superhero
Salesperson1 2

11. THE COMPELLING PRODUCT MYTH
“If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t
invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad
business – no matter how good the product.”
Peter Theil
Zero to One
If you build it, will they come?

12. MYTH OF THE SUPERHERO
SALESPERSON
Hired for Contacts
• Personal network only gets you so far
• Selling to your friends is not a scalable
business
Hired for Industry Expertise
• Industry can be learned
• Focus should be on sales skills and
unique startup needs…

13. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SUPERHERO
IF YOU….
Hire 1 or 2 junior salespeople
• Wont work if managed by founders
without sales experience
• No formal training program, sales
process or metrics
• Focus on hunting, not growing or
providing feedback
Hire a senior “VP of Sales”
• Expensive ($$ and equity)
• High failure & turnover
• May be too removed from
cold calls, sales execution

14. UNIQUE STARTUP HIRING
CHALLENGE
Unique startup
needs in sales
• Strategy + process +
execution
• Eye towards
scalability
Founder
inexperience in
sales
• Hard to understand
own needs or hiring
criteria
Bad candidate pool
• 25% of salespeople
fired every year
• Successful are
expensive and wont
leave for untested
product

15. A BETTER WAY
1 Do your
homework!
Start sales
ASAP2
Hire for the
right stuff…
slowly
3

16. DO YOUR HOMEWORK
#1: Interview 20 Existing & Prospective Clients
• Don’t pitch your product!
• Understand jobs, pains and gains
• Understand how solving problem now
• Understand decision-making process and influencers
for similar purchases
#2: Research Your Competition
• Competitors include:
Doing nothing
Customer doing themselves
• Pros/cons of your product vs each

17. START SALES ASAP
#1: Get Sales Training ASAP
• Founders must sell ASAP
• Develop sales scripts focused on qualifying questions, customer pain
• Collect and track feedback (especially “no’s”)

18. START SALES ASAP
#2: Build Out Consistent Lead Generation Process
• Consistent leads = predictable revenue
• Try multiple lead gen channels
• Outbound email marketing, cold calling
• Referrals
• Partnerships
• Link content to ads to capture leads
• Public speaking/webinars
• Ready, fire, aim … but keep an eye on ROI

19. HIRE INTELLIGENTLY…SLOWLY
#1: Your Early Sales Team
• Founders sell first
• Appointments scheduled by sales development rep
• Customer success for client feedback
• Marketer to create cheap, flexible, on-demand sales collateral
• THEN consider a salesperson or two (when consistent traction / product-market fit)
#2: Read This:
• Mark Roberge, The Sales Development Playbook, Chapters 3+4
• “5 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Salesperson”

20. ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE…
“A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and
scalable business model.
Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by
seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the
darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.”
Steve Blank
The Startup Owner's Manual

21. BEST BOOKS (+PODCAST)
1. SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham)
2. The Ultimate Sales Machine (Chet Holmes)
3. Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (Brian Carroll)
4. The Challenger Sale (Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson)
5. The New Strategic Selling (Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman)
6. The New Conceptual Selling (Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman)
7. The Sales Acceleration Formula (Mark Roberge)
8. Predictable Revenue (Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler)
9. The Sales Development Playbook (Trish Bertuzzi)
10. Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success (Colleen Stanley)
11. Podcast: The Why, How, and When of Sales (a16z)

22. THE DANA ADVANTAGE
Rent a VP of sales
Services:
• Lead generation and sales strategy
• Sales process development
• Sales hiring
• Sales training
• Ongoing sales coaching/
management
Benefits:
• Cost effective vs FT hire
(longer runway)
• Startup experience
www.dana-consulting.com
Duke, GW Law
Attorney
Sales @ Northwestern Mutual
Co-Founder & President @ WellnessRebates
Founder & CEO @Dana Consulting
victor@dana-consulting.com