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Summary of “How to Sell”

Posted on August 10, 2019
by yohanes.gultom@gmail.com (https://yohanes.gultom.me/author/yohanes-gultomgmail-
com/)

tured image is a photo by Mimi Thian (https://unsplash.com/@mimithian?utm_source=unsplash&u

This is my personal summary/notes from a talk by Tyler Bosmeny, CEO of Clever, Y

Combinator alumni
 How to Sell by Tyler Bosmeny

There are some popular myths about sales job where it is considered a high-class job that only
gifted people could deliver. In reality, that’s not always true. Some facts that Tyler observed in
his experience as a math-guy-turned-into-salesperson:

It’s you. Do not rely on people we hire (especially in the future)

Founder’s passion and knowledge trumps sales experience
Pick a founder to own (focus on) this
Talking to users = selling. There are only 2 important tasks in startup: building product
and selling (most of the time, by talking to users)

Break down sales process using the sales funnel that consist of four parts: prospecting,
conversations, closing and revenue

1. Prospecting
For a startup, it is a process to find “the innovators” (2.5% of the market, Diffusion of
innovations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations), Everett Rogers
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations))
Reach as much prospects as possible by: network, conference/events, cold (but
personal) emails
2. Conversations
The best salespeople are great listeners
Focus on understanding and building a relationship with the users
Posses inhumane willingness to follow up
Being persistence is helpful as long as you are being respectful
3. Closing
Have an agreement template ready. If you haven’t got one, use free template
(https://www.ycombinator.com/docs/YC_Form_SaaS_Agreement.doc) from Y
Combinator
Close quickly and move on. Avoid unending agreement revision loop
Beware of “one more feature” trap. Most of the time it’s a “pass”. If you really want
to build new features for customer, ask them to join/pay first and promise to build
them afterward
The “money-back guarantee” scheme is usually much better than “free trials”
4. Revenue
 Estimate (based on profit per customer) how many customers you actually need to
be sustainable (Five ways to build a $100 million business
(http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-
business.html), Christoph Janz (http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-
ways-to-build-100-million-business.html))
Improve efficiency along the way

Some other tips:

Prioritization: in the early days, optimize for the speed. Do not choose the “bigger”
prospects, but the “easy/fast” ones
Pricing journey: initially, guess your products/services price then learn incrementally
from feedback

 Startup (https://yohanes.gultom.me/category/startup/)
 summary (https://yohanes.gultom.me/tag/summary/)

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