How to develop a predictable & scalable sales model

Here's lesson #3 of the Startup Sales Success email course. Let's figure out if you're ready to scale your sales efforts.

Startup Sales Success Email Course: Lesson #3 Most B2B startups try to scale their sales efforts prematurely. They build a product, get some early customers to use it and sometimes even pay for it and think the next logical step is to "scale sales". Wrong. The big issue with this strategy is that you need to be sure you actually have a working sales model before you scale anything. And most of the time early results cannot be replicated because they represent "low hanging fruit" types of sales. Examples include selling to other portfolio companies of your investors, people you have known for many years and any other source of deals that cannot scale or be easily replicated. Ask yourself these questions to discover if you're ready to scale your sales efforts: Do we know who our ideal customer is yet? How do we qualify them? Do we have a reliable and growing source of qualified leads? Do we have a sales process and conversion funnel that has consistently produced repeatable results? Do we have an estimate on our Customer Lifetime Value yet? If you don't have answers to these questions you're not there yet. Don't waste money & time at this point hiring more sales people.  Instead invest your resources in learnings and exploration.  Short term sales feel great and are important but what's even more significant for the success of your startup is to develop a sales model that will generate predictable and scalable results. How do you get there?   Follow the 3 step process outlined below and learn as much as possible each step of the way:   Step #1: Create a Customer Profile You need to find out who your ideal customer is. How can you identify them and what qualifying criteria do they have in common? Without knowing who your ideal customer is and how to qualify them correctly you can't develop a successful sales model. Step #2: Discover Scalable Lead Sources Now that you know who your potential customers are and how to qualify them you need to learn where to find scalable sources of appropriate leads. That's the most important factor in your whole sales model. If you can find a way to generate high quality incoming leads via marketing and/or find great sources for high quality outbound leads you're in a really good position to succeed and scale. Read this interview with Aaron Ross to learn more about setting up a successful outbound lead generation approach.  Step #3: Develop a Successful Sales Process Once you know who to sell to and you know how to reach them in a scalable fashion you can now focus on learning how to effectively sell to them. Utilize all possible approaches like sending emails, making calls, presenting demos and meetings in person and see what combination works best for your specific target audience. Make sure you track everything you do so you can learn from the data and develop a successful model. Here are the key things you need to track for your sales process: Your conversion funnel from lead >> qualified >> closed The average time it takes to move a lead from qualified to closed The average deal value per close Your average cost per close Here are the metrics you should monitor to develop your predictable and scalable sales model: # New Leads Per Month % Growth of # of New Leads Per Month % Leads that Qualify % Qualified Leads that Close # Average Time To Close $ Average Cost Per Close $ Average Revenue Per Close Once you have these numbers you can start putting together a sales formula with the goal to validate if your model is predictable, scalable and profitable. Once all the numbers add up to something that makes sense for your business you're finally ready to scale. And that should be the goal of any early startup sales efforts. Happy Selling! Steli P.S. Here's a very STRONG book recommendation on the subject: Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross P.P.S. Keeping track of all these metrics AND actively selling at the same time can be tough. We built a super simple tool called Close.io to make it easier for you to sell and develop a sales model that scales along the way. Close.io automatically keeps track of all your data. Check it out now if you haven't already: CLICK HERE   What startup sales hustlers say about this course: "This sales course is one of the few courses I am excited to read. Learning how to sell is a major problem for many startups, and this course is hands-down one of the best intros to selling I've seen in a long time." - Luke Thomas, Growth Engineer of YesGraph Close.io PO Box 7775 #69574 San Francisco, CA 94120-7775 You may manage your email preferences anytime.