S5E1 – How to Scale Beyond Founder-Led Sales in B2B SaaS With Gavin Tye

How to Scale Beyond Founder-Led Sales in B2B SaaS.

In the early days of a startup, founder-led sales are crucial. Founders know their product and market well, often leading customer conversations. But as the company grows, this approach can hold back progress. To succeed long-term, it’s essential to shift to a scalable sales model. In this first episode of Season 5 of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast, host Joran sits down with Gavin Tye, the founder of Sales Market Fit, as they take a look at a simple plan to help make this transition and allow your business to thrive.

Embracing Change: Recognizing the Need for a Sales Evolution

The first step is to recognize that change is needed. Founders must realize that their direct involvement in sales may soon limit growth. The next step is to create a repeatable sales process. This means mapping out each stage of the sales journey—from finding leads to closing deals. A clear process helps new team members understand their roles and ensures customers have a consistent experience.

From Insights to Action: Crafting Your Sales Playbook

Creating a repeatable process is just the beginning; it needs to be teachable. Founders should put together a sales playbook that covers everything—from making a pitch to handling objections and closing sales. This guide empowers the sales team to follow a proven path, making onboarding easier and aligning everyone with the company’s sales goals.

Hiring the Right Talent: The Art of Choosing Your First Salesperson

Now it’s time to hire your first salesperson. Focus on skills rather than just experience in the same industry. A candidate who has succeeded in high-pressure sales roles can bring valuable skills to the team. It’s important to set clear expectations and provide support to this first hire, as they will set the standard for future team members.

Tracking Progress: The Importance of Monitoring Sales Dynamics

As your sales team grows, effective management is key. Founders should track important performance indicators (KPIs) and monitor deal progress. Regular feedback sessions with the team can help identify areas for improvement and keep the sales strategy effective. By overseeing the sales pipeline, founders can step in when needed to maintain momentum.

Scaling Smart: The Power of Iterative Growth

After hiring your first salesperson, focus on scaling carefully. Don’t rush to hire more team members; ensure each new hire is contributing before bringing in the next. This gradual approach allows for ongoing improvement in the sales strategy and reduces risks. Sharing lessons and best practices within the team can also boost performance and growth.

Conclusion: A Strategic Leap Towards Lasting Success

In summary, moving away from founder-led sales is crucial for any growing business. By creating a repeatable and teachable sales process, hiring the right people, and managing the sales pipeline effectively, founders can ensure a smooth transition. This approach builds a strong sales team and sets the stage for lasting success. Ready to make the leap? Your future is waiting!

Key Timecodes

• (0:52) – Introduction to Season 5 and Guest Introduction
• (1:44) – Discussion on the Success of the Podcast
• (2:19) – Topic Introduction: Moving Away from Founder-Led Sales
• (2:34) – Definition of Founder-Led Sales
• (3:22) – Role of Subject-Matter Expertise
• (4:01) – Importance of Founder-Led Sales in Early Days
• (4:12) – Challenges and Need for an Outcome-Focused Approach
• (5:21) – Transitioning to Team-Based Selling and Common Mistakes
• (6:54) – Challenges in Applying Traditional Sales Processes
• (7:19) – When to Move Away from Founder-Led Sales
• (7:29) – Four-Step Process for Transitioning
• (9:53) – Summary of the Four-Step Process
• (10:37) – When to Consider Moving Away from Founder-Led Sales
• (11:26) – When to Hire Salespeople and Importance of Structure
• (13:12) – Challenges in Hiring the First Salesperson
• (14:19) – Scaling Beyond Founder-Led Sales for Long-Term Growth
• (14:25) – Importance of Framework in Scaling Sales
• (16:01) – Avoiding Micromanagement in Sales Teams
• (16:08) – Framework for Sales: The 5.8 Method
• (18:10) – Importance of Aligning to How Buyers Buy
• (19:10) – Importance of Following a Sales Process
• (20:14) – Difference Between Methodologies and Sales Strategies
• (20:43) – Frameworks for Helping Buyers Through Their Journey
• (21:10) – Advertisement for Reditus
• (21:22) – Common Mistakes in Transitioning from Founder-Led Sales
• (22:20) – High-Level Talk vs. Market Understanding
• (23:22) – Hope as a Strategy
• (24:58) – Hiring the First Salesperson
• (25:02) – Skills Needed in the First Hire
• (26:02) – Experience vs. Skills in Sales Hires
• (27:13) – Teaching and Managing the First Hire
• (27:33) – Access to Frameworks
• (29:34) – Skills Over Experience in Hiring Salespeople
• (30:32) – Scaling a Sales Team After the First Hire
• (31:53) – Iterating and Lessons Learned from the First Hire
• (32:33) – Best Practices in Transitioning from Founder-Led Sales
• (33:36) – Importance of Founders Leading Sales
• (34:44) – Prioritizing Sales Efforts
• (34:51) – The Fat Guy, Skinny Guy Model
• (35:32) – Approach to Helping Clients
• (36:41) – Audit and Plan for Founder-Led Sales
• (37:11) – Advice for Founders Growing to $10K MRR
• (38:42) – Converting Beyond Your Network
• (39:05) – Advice for Founders Growing to $10 Million
• (39:12) – Return on Effort in Sales
• (40:32) – Summary of the Episode
• (42:09) – Final Remarks and Closing Thoughts
• (42:48) – Contact Information and Closing

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Gavin

Not many salespeople have the ability to completely change the trajectory of a business, right? Anyone that’s great is not going to leave a company if they’ve been there for more than 12 months or two years. No one likes to be sold to. If people will disengage online if we try to sell, but we have to come from the mindset, I genuinely want to help the customer see the right value for them to make a decision to move forward if they see fit. So it has to be completely customer-centric. People try to apply a sales process for a business with momentum, who is winning clients consistently to a company that had zero momentum. And the way that you approach the market changes as your business grows. If the technology adoption life cycle, you’ve got the innovators, early adopters, early majority, how you try to engage with those stages in the market changes.

[00:00:52.820] – Joran

We are already in season 5, which means we had 80 guests so far. In Season 5, we’re going to dive more into challenges and topics again, which you will experience as a founder like myself. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to move away from founder-led sales. My guest is Gavin Tye. You might have already heard him before as he was also a guest in Season 1, episode 4, to be more precise. After the podcast, I chatted with Gavin Tye multiple times around our sales process and how to become more sales market fit, which we also discussed in the podcast episode. He’s helping now clients to He’s moved away from founder-led sales. So he has seen the inside of multiple companies, as we say in Dutch, has been in the kitchen for multiple companies, which is always great because he’s seen a lot more than just one founder, right? Without further ado, welcome to the show, Gavin .

[00:01:44.640] – Gavin

Good Joran, and congratulations on Season 5. Did you expect you’d be here at what? 81 episodes now? Did you ever think you’d be at this place?

[00:01:53.180] – Joran

No, it’s a good question. I normally ask the question. I wasn’t prepared for this. No. I started the podcast just out of fun and to see, to learn for myself. I never imagined I get this far any amount of guests and the quality of guests I had so far. I wouldn’t thought about it when I started, to be fully honest. I’m really happy where we are with it right now.

[00:02:15.350] – Gavin

Mate, congratulations and thanks for having me on again. I’m looking forward to having a discussion.

[00:02:19.600] – Joran

Yeah, it’s going to be unique the first, second Timer. But I’m still going to ask the basic questions first to dive into the topic. We’re going to talk about how to move away from founder-led sales. Maybe Maybe even just a super basic question, what does founder-led sales actually mean?

[00:02:34.460] – Gavin

I think founder-led sales is actually the beginning. At the most simple terms, it’s the beginning of trying to sell your platform. The founder who is typically the subject matter expert in the business, they’re the ones who, from day one, are going to be working in a part-time job to then transitioning into full-time, who should know the problem that their solution solves. It makes sense for them to engage with the market, try to create a advantage, build up that sales momentum. They’re starting at a standing start, so zero sales momentum, which is zero trust in the market. And the founder is really the best person placed to add to the body of sales knowledge that is needed to get to the tipping point to start making sales of what they’re building, really, at the end of the day. Yeah.

[00:03:22.140] – Joran

So as you mentioned, you’re a real subject-matter expert because you started the company in the first place by having the knowledge. And then from there, You’re doing everything yourself, selling the entire product and building the product as well in the meantime.

[00:03:37.290] – Gavin

Most B2B SaaS founders today, if they’re starting a business, have some type of subject matter expertise. They’ve identified, they’re probably sitting in the job for a while and they’re going, Okay, can I build software to solve this problem? They should know that problem better than anybody. It makes sense for them to go to the market because it is difficult to get traction. Zero to one is very difficult.

[00:04:01.660] – Joran

Sometimes you see that people can’t get from zero to one, and they think, Hey, I need to hire salespeople to actually get me there. But why is it so important that you have founder-led sales in the early days?

[00:04:12.490] – Gavin

I’m a product of… I started working for an Australian startup in 2015, and we weren’t doing founder-led sales very well. I come in as that plus… I wasn’t plus one, I was maybe three, but the other two salespeople were failing, and the founder wasn’t that great at selling the product. It was great at getting interest, but it took a long time to actually unpack how to sell it. Why I think people have the challenge when it comes to founder-led sales is they’re not outcome-focused or they’re not trying to create a specific demand for their business They’re just going through the motions. They do a go-to-market strategy. They go out, speak to clients, and go, Okay, I’ve done everything that a go-to-market says, or what my SWOT analysis says, or what experts have set out in the field. I’ve done everything. They’re not buying and they don’t know what to do from there. I was in exactly that same position until I realized we needed to be outcome-focused. We needed to affect mindset shift inside our buyers’ minds to get them from not knowing us to wanting to buy us. The founder is going to be in the business for the longest time, then longer than any salesperson.

[00:05:21.000] – Gavin

There have to be the body of knowledge that can add to the sales strategy so it gets easier and easier over time. One more before we really dive in?

[00:05:31.030] – Joran

Why is… Because founder let sales isn’t the easiest thing to do, right? Why is it so difficult?

[00:05:38.340] – Gavin

Why it’s so difficult is people try to apply a sales process for a business with momentum, who is winning clients consistently to a company that had zero momentum. The way that you approach the market changes as your business grows. If the technology adoption life cycle, you’ve got the innovators, the early adopters, early majority, how you try to engage with those stages in the market changes. When a founder who with not a lot of sales experience read something online, it goes, Okay, I need an SDR, I need an AE. That seems to be working for a mirror When they’re doing product or their growth or something like that, I’m going to implement that in my business. But it’s the wrong type of engine to build momentum in the early stages. Founders aren’t starting from the premise of, which is what I’ve learned the The hard way is, although they’re trying to strive for product market fit, they need to find their sales market fit, align their sales process to how their target markets buy with the intentional strategy of creating demand for their product. No one really thinks about it. They stumble across creating demand. But in the early days, it’s building that trust and demand that matters so much.

[00:06:54.200] – Gavin

That’s why technical founders need to lead sales. They need to demonstrate subject matter expertise. The people that I’m speaking to are going, Yorin knows what he’s speaking about. He knows about affiliate marketing. He knows about referrals, like a partnership program. I’m going to trust him to lead me to growing revenue in that stream. But that can often be an unintended consequence of creating demand, not intentional. That’s why it’s so difficult.

[00:07:19.100] – Joran

Yeah, makes sense. I guess the topic today is we’re going to move away from founder-led sales at one point. When should a founder think about moving away from founder-led sales?

[00:07:29.870] – Gavin

It was a four-step process that I talked through with the founder, being able to move away. It’s a transition from founder led to team-based selling. It’s very difficult. I was a product of a founder going, I want to grow the business. I’m going to transition to team-based selling. It was a moment in time. He just said, This month we’re hiring a sales team. Off we go. But he never had the structure in place. The structure, first and foremost, is, one, you need to be able to convert and intentionally create demand. That’s first and foremost. Second, you need to be able to put it into a repeatable process that you can teach others. So one of the biggest challenges with founders is they may stumble through the sales process and be able to land some clients or sell to their first network, their immediate network, but they don’t extend past their immediate network and haven’t intentionally created a process. And so when they hire a sales team, they’re essentially going off you go and sell. But they’re not subject matter experts. They don’t know the problem very well. They’re not intentionally creating demand. They’re not learning from what the path that the founder has gone on.

[00:08:41.060] – Gavin

And often you see it all the time, what 60 Eighty, 90% of first-time hires in a SaaS business, salespeople often don’t work out. It’s not the salesperson’s fault. It’s just because there’s not a strategy or a process in place. It’s because the founder doesn’t understand it. They haven’t done the right things. The first step process is, number one, you have to be able to convert. That falls into, I’ll give you an image of this for your viewers to get a copy of it if they want. Inside converting, there’s a whole heap of steps inside of that. But then once you’re able to convert, then you have to be able to make it repeatable. If you’re doing bespoke sales processes for every single client, that’s not scalable, it’s not manageable. You have to be able to put it into repeatable framework to consistently create a conveyor belt of sales so people can move through in a consistent way. You could build economies of scale. And then next is you need to be able to teach it. So that needs to be transitioned into a playbook, a sales playbook. And then out of that, once it can be taught, you can create a recruitment framework, a coaching framework, and then you need to be able to figure out how to manage those deals.

[00:09:53.390] – Gavin

So you need to have deal tracking KPIs, you need to have a feedback loop to get better over time, and you need to be manage the sales process from a thousand-foot view across your salespeople. That’s why you need to do it in that four-step process. If you don’t do it in that four-step process, if you have a certain amount of momentum as a founder, and you may maintain that momentum with the first salesperson, but what will happen is less and less time will be spent with the other salespeople, and the performance will start to peter out a little bit.

[00:10:25.600] – Joran

If I would say, to quickly summarize, the four-step process, intentionally creating Converting demand, create a repeatable process, you can teach others. That means actually being able to track it. Yeah.

[00:10:37.290] – Gavin

Number one is convert. Inside converting, you need to be able to intentionally create demand. You need to be able to demonstrate value. You need to be able to prove your value. You need to be more efficient over time. It has to lead into your lead generation strategy. Then the second stage is, number one is can convert. Second one is must be repeatable. Number three, you can teach it to others. Number four is can be manageable. You have to be able to manage it across teams, across people. And inside of all those, there’s a hip of different subtopics that go into each one of those categories.

[00:11:11.410] – Joran

Yeah, that sounds good. I guess we started with the question, when should a founder think about moving away from founder-led sales, right? Are there any signs or any things you can identify as in, Hey, this is the moment that you really need to start transitioning away?

[00:11:26.830] – Gavin

Yeah, it’s a good point. Sometimes, maybe hiring a salesperson may not be the right, the first step is once you can start doing, let’s say, a founder is doing their own lead generation and it’s repeatable and it’s working, maybe that is when they start transitioning out. And maybe they use an agency for doing lead generation, or they’re using someone to book calls or whatever that is. But once it’s repeatable, once a founder can convert and then it’s repeatable, then they can just make it. Every business is different, but they can say, Okay, I know exactly what I need to do here to bring leads in or the first part of the sales process. I’m going to add that to the sales playbook or the standard operating procedure. I’m going to hire people in just to follow that standard operating procedure. Maybe it’s not enough to hire someone full-time in a first instance, maybe it’s to an agency or someone or outsourcing it to someone. Once you start that you’re building momentum and you’re using more time up, once you start being able to hire someone to full-time, then the founder can start pulling back in the sales process and withdrawing into more value adding steps in the process.

[00:12:37.600] – Gavin

But it should be done in a pragmatic approach, right? And it’s know the outcome that you’re trying to achieve and make sure it’s documented. We’ve done this a few times where we’ve tried to hire an SDR, and in hindsight, we didn’t have the playbook in place. So although they’re trying, we failed to communicate what they were supposed to do, the value we wanted We wanted them to position, the steps, and how we wanted them to lead the client through the sales journey, and ultimately is a failure. So you need to be able to manage those people early in that process.

[00:13:12.950] – Joran

I’m going to ask a couple of questions regarding that as well soon, like hiring your first salesperson. But I think it’s a great point you make here as it is not always the salesperson’s fault, right? If they’re actually failing, you have to look at what have you been doing? So have you been creating these processes? Have you been making repeatable? Are you setting them up for success instead of a failure?

[00:13:34.640] – Gavin

The typical process or a lot of experience this as well is a founder was… They’re busy, right? So he’d hired us in or me in. And he was like, Oh, I could take that off my plate, go out and sell this platform. And it happened to be this platform was a multimillion dollar SaaS platform, and I didn’t realize the price point was so high at the time compared to others. But there was no support. And it was very It was very challenging. Every year, he would hire four or five salespeople, and by August, that they were gone because there was no support. You’ve got to support them, and you’ve got to be able to show them what they need to do. Otherwise, you’re going to be wasting money. You’re just not going to get traction, and it’s going to really put businesses behind the eight ball and be in real trouble.

[00:14:19.190] – Joran

Why is scaling beyond founder-led sales so crucial for long-term growth?

[00:14:25.960] – Gavin

At the end of the day, what it does is it allows you to go from one-to-one selling to to many and allows you to scale. I’ve got a client maturity scale that maps the whole journey of a business out from a founder thinking about an idea to a global-led team. A founder only has a certain amount of hours per week stick. You don’t want them to be burnt out as their business grows. You don’t want them to be involved in the everyday sales process. But they have to find a way to transfer their subject matter expertise and what they’ve learned during Having founder-led sales to a team. Without that, they’re going to lose momentum. And without that, they’re not going to be able to scale and reach that hockey stick growth or accelerated growth that they’re hoping to achieve or their shareholders expect them to achieve. And the main reason is because there’s not a… One, the founder doesn’t learn the critical lessons in a framework that works. And two, is they don’t transfer that knowledge that they’ve learned in a way that’s teachable to others so they don’t get the results or the results have an impact.

[00:15:30.970] – Gavin

It does affect growth over the long term. Yeah.

[00:15:33.720] – Joran

What you might see a lot as well is that if founders did founder that sales, they have been accustomed to do everything themselves, lead the entire sales process. How do you actually make sure that you also are able to let go, avoiding any micromanagement within sales. What is the fine line? Because if you don’t give any support to sales, you’re going to have to say what you experience. I guess what is the best way to let go?

[00:16:01.130] – Gavin

The best way to let go is have a framework. Most businesses will have a process. They will follow spin selling or they’ll follow MEDDIC, but that’s a methodology. It’s not a strategy for specifically creating demand and a need for your product. To do it in a method, I use this method that I created called the 5.8 method. It’s a framework that every business must go through, a customer must go through in order to buy what you’re selling. The first and foremost is you want to educate the market on the root issues that exist in the industry that you’re solving. Once you can get a clearance on that, because SaaS software is essentially… It’s intangible. All B2B SaaS software is, it’s a business process improvement tool. That’s all it is. We have to be able to give context to the business process that your solution fixes. Most people don’t even think about this. They think the market understands what the problem is. But you need to, first and foremost, educate the market on the industry problem at large. Then two, you need to articulate your solution. You need to say, Hey, that’s how I see the industry problem.

[00:17:07.100] – Gavin

So we’re looking at the same issue, and then this is how I’ve solved it or we’ve solved it in our startup. So that’s the as is process in your business or in the market. That’s what it would be if you work with us. And then next is demonstrate. So you want to be able to educate, articulate your solution, then actually show it in real time, demonstrate it, opposed to just doing a demo without context. And then you want to You want to prove the value that you offer. Most businesses don’t go through a process to actually prove their value in relation to their target buyer’s business because people will only make a decision in their own best interest. You need to give them context to the problems going on in their business before they make a decision to move forward. Then out of that, once you quantitate, then you formulate. You need to formulate your response or your strategy to win them as a client, whether it’s a land and expand strategy, whether it’s a whole organization rollout, whether it’s just a POC or it’s initial implementation, you need to formulate your strategy depending on how they will need to buy you.

[00:18:10.490] – Gavin

As a founder, if you know that they’re the stages they go through, then you can actually, once you get that repeated and you know it’s working, then you can manage your team through each one of those stages. You go, Hey, did you skip the articulate? Did you show the as is and to be process? They’re like, No, I didn’t need to. Okay, that’s a red We need to go back to that. By having a framework that focuses on outcomes and helping a buyer on their journey will help a founder step back and be able to manage deals at a thousand foot view and not have to get into the micromanagement of it all.

[00:18:44.520] – Joran

For people who want to dive deeper into this, this is exactly what we discussed in season one in the episode, selling up a sales process. I know you’re really strong on it. It sounds so logical always as in you need to follow the process, but it’s also so easy to skip those steps or to Okay, I figured it out now. I’m going to just wing it again. I think it’s always really nice to hear that you just stick with it, follow the process, go back.

[00:19:10.600] – Gavin

There’s a difference. Most people would tell when you ask them about what’s the process for sales, but particular B2B. You need to understand the economic buyer. You need to know when are they going to buy. If they got budget approval, they’re just things you need to know. That actually does not build demand for your product. There’s a difference. There’s an underlying fundamental first principle strategy and process we need to follow. All that stuff is important. I’m not saying it’s not, but there’s a higher level of we need to help a buyer move through their natural decision making journey. They need to see value. They need to be able to prove the value. And asking an economic buyer does not do that. We need to actually follow a framework and every business it goes through it. The car industry, when you go to buy a car or the real estate industry has sales market fit, they know buyers, they have to align to how buyer buys. They know in a car industry, if you go in a buy car and you need finance and you leave that lot, that car lot, you’re probably not coming back because you get distracted, you go elsewhere.

[00:20:14.730] – Gavin

So what they do is they have finance people sitting in the showroom going, oh, you want this? We have people here with finance because they know they have to align to how buyer buys. And we have to align with how a buyer, a person buy something. And It’s the biggest life-changing lesson I learned selling this high-value SaaS platform is just help them buy. Help them go through their buying decisions, their buying stages. And it’s a lot to do with mindset shift. Yeah.

[00:20:43.760] – Joran

Then especially following the framework, making sure that you actually help them through the buyer journey.

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[00:21:10.400] – Joran

You’ve seen the inside of multiple kitchens. Let’s talk about some fun things, mistakes. What are some common mistakes companies make while trying to make the transition moving away from founder-led sales?

[00:21:22.510] – Gavin

One of the biggest mistakes that I see is founders, let’s call a scale of zero to 10, zero not being very knowledgeable in a problem that a SaaS software company solves and 10 being an expert. A founder is on the scale of nine to 10, but they make a mistake that the market actually understands the problems that they’re solving really well, or they’re trying to talk about the symptoms and not the root causes. So a founder is talking very high level, but the market is here. And if they don’t understand the problem, the market would disengage and go, I don’t understand what’s going on. I can’t have context with the problem. I don’t understand the full impacts. They won’t pay attention and they won’t buy. They’ll go somewhere where they understand it fully. A founder, someone I’m working with at the moment, they’re revolutionizing the bicycle industry and they’re so entrenched in the problem and they’re like, This is what we’re doing. It’s amazing. These people will pop up in the next 6-12 months and they’ll be a B2B SaaS company to follow. We sat down and I was like, so tell me what you did.

[00:22:20.800] – Gavin

I was talking all the way through, clearly subject matter experts. And because I was once removed from the thing, I was like, okay, so you’re approaching the industry from the top down where the market is traditionally going from the bottom up. You’ve just nailed the value proposition and a way that we can communicate our value in a really simple way back to the people on the lower end of the scale. So one is they talk too high level for their market to understand. Then they don’t have a plan. They just go in and just check in with people or let people come back and they’re not leading them to a buy, to the buying decision. And they’re just hoping that they’ll get there. So the other second one is Hope forms a large part of their sales strategy. I hope they’ll come back. I hope they see the value. I hope I’ve done enough. I hope this coffee will lead to a sale. We need to remove hope as a strategy completely and try to lead someone to a sale with a very specific intent. I hope a salesperson will bring in sales because I’m not strong.

[00:23:22.600] – Gavin

It’s very dangerous to rely on hope.

[00:23:25.170] – Joran

I guess that’s why you had that before repeatable process. I guess you can’t rely just on hope. If you already done it yourself, built in a repeatable process, being able to teach it, being able to manage it, then after that, you’re taking away almost the hope completely.

[00:23:41.190] – Gavin

Yes, no one likes to be sold to. If people will disengage online, if we try to sell. But we have to come from the mindset, I genuinely want to help the customer see the right value for them to make a decision to move forward if they see fit. It has to be completely customer-centric. We have to put the buyer first and help them see what they can’t see and use our subject matter expertise to help them go, Oh, gosh, this was a bigger problem than I thought. I have to solve it. I need to solve it. It’s costing too much money or I’m missing out on too much revenue or it’s too much risk in our business. Okay, I need to solve it, and now I need your solution. It’s not trickery, it’s not trying to sell. It’s genuinely trying to help our target clients using our expertise solve the problems in that business that they’re not necessarily aware of to the fullest degree.

[00:24:34.160] – Joran

Nice. Let’s talk about hiring salespeople. I guess you always start with the first person, right? Let’s say we follow the four-step process. Again, we convert it, made it repeatable processes, being able to teach it to others and being able to manage it. How do you hire your first salesperson? What do you look at and how do you transition away from founder lead to hiring the first salesperson?

[00:24:58.410] – Gavin

I think it comes down to what skills you need in the business, right? Not necessarily the experience. I’ve seen so many people get caught up and seeing a salesperson work for a T1 software business to go, This guy is going to change our business. Not many salespeople have the ability to completely change the trajectory of a business, right? Anyone that’s great is not going to leave a company if they’ve been there for more than 12 months or two years. But so what you need to have is a framework in place and know the skills that you need and the attitude. I was given a chance outside of B2B SaaS. So the founder gave me a chance. I was actually in blue-collar recruitment, a very competitive industry that had high KPIs. I come into the industry, I had a lot of background experience in blue-collar work and operational work. But I come into the industry and applied my high KPIs targets or face-to-face meetings, calling people and just getting in front of people. That’s really what the business needed at the time. We needed to get our name out there and I needed to find a competitive advantage the global Fortune 500 company.

[00:26:02.040] – Gavin

The thing is to look at what skill or task you need filled in a business. Then it may not be SaaS that a SaaS industry or SaaS experienced person that you need, maybe you need someone that comes from an insurance background or selling door to door that is not afraid to pick up the phone and do what needs to be done to get the name out there. And the rest can be taught. I do not have a software I have an operational background. I’m the conduit that goes from really technical founders and helps them frame their messaging to resonate with the market. You don’t need someone with a huge SaaS background, but you need someone who will do the work and you can teach, has a positive attitude that will continue to do the work above and beyond to what you need. But that’s where I would start is to go, what’s the skills we need in the business? I don’t need a $250,000 AE that work IBM or Canva when I’m a startup because I just don’t need that type of experience. I need someone who’s willing to get out there and just talk to so many people, have 50 conversations a month.

[00:27:13.120] – Gavin

But it helps to have a framework in place, a playbook that they can work to that you can manage to that works because you know it. It gets more experience and you start moving the salesperson through the funnel, or as you start going up in a tier, then you might need different salespeople. But I’m on a framework to match salespeople with startups as well.

[00:27:33.690] – Joran

You mentioned a lot of frameworks, right? Are these open or is it only when people start working with you? How do we get access to all the frameworks you’re mentioning?

[00:27:43.390] – Gavin

Yeah, so frameworks are different. The playbook is… It’s a framework of the playbook, so that’s what I work with my clients to help them develop. It’s finding your sales market fit is fundamental first principle-based, but how it applies to a market, every market is different. Wherever you’re applying, approaching the market and the buyers, how they buy, you develop your playbook according to how they buy. We have sellers have to align to how buyers buy. And so you create the playbook to align with that. But it’s in a framework. Now, as far as the coaching and recruitment framework, that’s all internal. But once you have the strategy to down pat, then it’s easier to hire into because you understand what you’re getting people to do, opposed to the traditional way Going, Okay, I’m going to hire salespeople. I’m going to let them go out and do what they want. They come from a software background, they don’t know how to sell. It’s a fool’s errand to go down that path. Experience shows that most salespeople don’t work out from that old way of doing things.

[00:28:43.910] – Joran

I like the approach because if I look at, for example, my personal trajectory, I did outbound sales with a company where I got trained to do, I don’t know, what was it? 70 calls a day. You need to have 25 qualitative calls out of those because not everybody picks up. Then you just, as we say in Dutch, a plate for your face. You’re not afraid to pick up the phone. You just go at it. Then once you get to a job and then suddenly you only have to do 20 calls, you’re like, Oh, is this it? The expectations are completely different. Then whereas you’ve never done cold calls and you have to do 20, they might think, Oh, shit, I have to call 20 people. I like the skills set first where if they already did the hard things, same as yourself, high targets, and then you move into a different industry where it looks a bit easier, then you’re going to have somebody with good motivation.

[00:29:34.870] – Gavin

Yeah, 100%. There’s a whole doing the 70 calls, you naturally learn about tone and to match to the other person on the phone, the form of body language. When I come into B2B SaaS, I was like, no one’s going to be calling these big enterprise companies in Australia. Everyone’s going to want to do it by email. I would call. I travel to every state, every capital city in Australia. I would be always on the road because I knew that was our competitive advantage over the incumbent Autodesk and SAP of the world who are in their client businesses already. I was out there not afraid to do what I was doing for five years before in a recruitment industry, but I was doing it on a larger national scale, and it ultimately worked out. I inadvertently learned the sales market fit process as we went. But it’s the effort that saw me through there in the early stages. What the founder could not pay attention, he could not do the effort that I was doing because he was too busy.

[00:30:32.810] – Joran

Yeah, makes sense. This is the first hire, right? How do you go after about the first hire? How do you actually then grow a sales team after that initial hire?

[00:30:44.610] – Gavin

I think one of the biggest things is here is hiring your first one. You should not think about hiring your second one until your first one is actually being productive. It’s like changing gears too quick. I think once you get the first person up to being productive or least productive in that stage of the pipeline, maybe that’s enough for now. But depending on what you want to do, if your market’s big enough or your region is, just following that blueprint, this should always be iterating. Lessons learned, the market What didn’t work with that first hire, we should be doing lessons learned and applying it. Doing feedback sessions with that salesperson going, How did that work? Did that not work? What are they doing to add to the framework? The framework should always be It’s added to as a team. As the body of knowledge gets bigger and bigger, it should get easier to add salespeople in. But it always goes down to the framework. It might take you the 12 months to onboard the first salesperson and get them up to being productive, but then it Why take you eight months to do the second, and then the third could be six, and then the fourth could be every three, and then you’re hiring someone every two months because you’ve got the process down pat.

[00:31:53.950] – Gavin

I think there’s a whole strategy, the crawl, walk, run strategy. Too many people try to go from zero I’ll go to 100 too quick. But I think there’s no harm in taking your time and really learning what you need to learn and then getting better each time from that. You’ll find that your momentum will maintain or maybe dip slightly, but you will bounce back a lot quicker and you’ll reach that hockey seat growth quicker.

[00:32:18.630] – Joran

Love it. I think this is almost somewhat going into the next question, best practices. We talked about mistakes, right? You helped a lot of clients. Are there any best practices, real cases you’ve seen Is there anything you can share about what they did really well?

[00:32:33.850] – Gavin

Yeah, I can tell you what doesn’t work well. I can tell you, first and foremost, that what doesn’t work well is the founder won’t lead sales. They have to be able to at least oversee sales, and they need to be the hub where all the lessons come back to. If a founder does not control that, and the secret to great sales success in 2024 and beyond is the subject matter expert of the founder. Because they know the problem intimately. They can give context to the market to show them the inefficiencies and the risks that the business, their client, the buyers are in. So that’s first and foremost. If you don’t own that and you have a salesperson who is doing that, then you get the mercy of them. And if they leave, all that tacit knowledge leaves the business and it can cripple the business if there’s not enough momentum. But the main thing that I see is the clients that I’ve worked with who are most successful, they’re already doing the effort and their subject matter expertise. All we’re doing is adding to a framework and they go, I got it. It was just something that I was missing.

[00:33:36.690] – Gavin

And then they’ve been able to position their problem in the market. And then that gives the… If they can position the problem in the market really well, then it It’s a flag on the ground to really demonstrate their value against, and then they’re off. So always creating a starting point of the sale, and that is around defining what that market problem is in context. That’s the biggest thing. And we see it in a fitness industry, Yorin, where if you were just to show someone that lost weight, you just show this skinny fellow or skinny lady, you can say, yes, I can see they’ve gone on some transformation. But it’s not until you see their before photo that you go, wow, that’s a massive journey. And that’s where most founders make the mistake. They’ll go, hey, this is us. This is our skinny photo image of what we do. We solve this, but you really need to show the starting point. Once you do that, everything goes from there. And it’s just consistent effort over time. It’s prioritizing sales effort. Make it the first or second priority of every day of the week. Don’t leave it to the fourth or fifth of the day because your buyers will be exhausted and they won’t be open to talking to you.

[00:34:44.870] – Gavin

And your efforts could likely fall on deaf ears or tired ears because they’re not in a head space to hear from you.

[00:34:51.880] – Joran

I think that’s a great example. We worked on it. I don’t know if the name is supposed to go out, but the fat guy, skinny guy model where you go from before going into the gym to actually doing all the work and getting there. We walked through that model as well. I think for us, it really helped as in to identify where they’re right now and where we want to get them while training them along the way. I think it’s a good model to work out for any SaaS company. Which goes into my next question. It’s a bit of a promotional question maybe, but if you would… You’re helping multiple businesses, right? What do you actually do? How do you help them to build all these processes, frameworks?

[00:35:32.450] – Gavin

Every business is different, right? They’re on a different trajectory from how effective they are at selling. The first stage is the framework’s the same. First and foremost, the framework is the same. We need to position the right type of value at the right stage of their buying journey. But the first stage of this is an audit to understand where a business is in this stage of the transition from founder-led sales at the beginning of sales through to team-based selling. If there’s a drop in revenue or sales momentum or effectiveness of the team, we just reverse engineer this Venn diagram and I will do an audit and ask a business, Hey, talk to me about this. Often within about five minutes, we can unpick that and then we work on actually, it’s nearly always about creating demand. They don’t specifically create demand. They haven’t got enough trust with the market for them to buy it consistently. It’s about that. Then how do we apply that and teach it everyone in the team. But everyone is different. They’re on a different spectrum. And so the first part is starting to find out where they are. So we do an audit and then out of that, we’ll make a plan.

[00:36:41.550] – Gavin

If you’re a founder, just doing solo founder-led sales, that’s a It’s a different thing. The first and foremost, know where you are. You need to learn how to convert. So I work with groups of founders every now and then. We’ll run a boot camp where we run the 5-8 method, which is the strategy of creating demand. It’s about helping you convert, then helping you put that into repeatable process. Then once you can do that, then you’re on your path to be able to hire salespeople and begin to scale in a pragmatic way. That makes sense for your business.

[00:37:11.540] – Joran

We’re going to dive into the final three questions. You already know them, but I’m going to ask your advice again. When we look at a B2B SaaS company founder who’s just starting out and trying to grow to 10K MR, what advice would you give him or her?

[00:37:30.100] – Gavin

The main advice is slow down before you speed up. Too many people try to scale too quickly or they have shareholders that expect the return. The main thing is here is slow down, learn to convert, and You have to learn to convert past your network. Because of your network, it gives you a false representation of the value. You have to be able to sell beyond your network. So slow down and crawl, walk, run. Once you can figure out how to convert, the first one is always the hardest, but the second and third are just as hard as the first. Because this is dark zone where you go, I think I’m doing everything right. I feel like it’s right, but they’re not buying. It’s just that they need to go through their stages on their side. That’s the first one to 10K MRR is first and foremost, learn to convert and through a repeatable process that specifically creates demand. You have to be able to create a need for change in a client business and a need for your product second. Without creating that need, it’s a real difficulty. Now, if you’ve got a market with a lot of momentum, that need has been created by your competitors or something else.

[00:38:42.210] – Gavin

There may not be an opportunity for you to position your subject matter expertise or your unique value proposition in a way because they already have an understanding of the problem and they’re being drawn to the gravity of a competitor. You have to still figure out how to create the need for change in your direction. That starts with framing the problem that shows in a unique way that shows your unique value.

[00:39:05.270] – Joran

What advice would you give a SaaS founder growing towards 10 million? It’s going to be a big step.

[00:39:12.490] – Gavin

The biggest thing we want to do is increase our return on effort. People talk about ROI, a return on investment, but sales is about return on effort. You don’t want to have to spend 20 hours closing a client. If you can learn how to do it in 10 through automation or pre done tools or other things, then you’re increasing your return on effort. So this is why you’re going to make it repeatable, build a sales playbook, share lessons learned across teams, and eventually you’ll measure or you’ll see a downward trend in effort. Even if a company, say, a company sales cycle is six months, but you’re only spending 10 hours of closing them, opposed to 25 hours, what you’re doing before, you’ve got a better cost of customer acquisition. So you could, in theory, close two clients in that time period because you’re spending less time. And then it’s about concentrating on that return on effort. And then you do that by having other salespeople in the team, transferring knowledge, scaling in a pragmatic way, managing deals, and then having the team being able to see possible speed humps and roadblocks and removing those before they get there to increase the likelihood of a deal closing.

[00:40:27.800] – Gavin

If you do all that, then the consequence of that is your growth, right? And that’s how you get to $10 million.

[00:40:32.690] – Joran

Exactly. Let me try to see if I can summarize this in less than a minute, what we just discussed about in 40 minutes. Doing founder-led sales right means you’re the subject matter expert. It’s a great way to start. If you are going to hire sales, it’s great because they are going to be outcome-focused, which often at founder-led sales, you’re maybe not. But before getting product-market fit, make sure you have sales-market fit. Again, listen to Season 1, episode 4 on how to create demand. Moving away from FounderLead Sales, four-stop process, convert, so intentionally create demand, create a repeatable process, being able to teach this to others and being able to manage it. Gavin  has an event diagram which he will share, and you need to have a framework which focus on outcome and the journey buyers actually go through. We can share that as well. Move away when things are repeatable, so do it in a programmatic approach. You need to educate your prospects on the problems. Commute them into a way that the market actually understands it, where you put the buyer first. When hiring your first salesperson, know the skills you need. So SaaS experience is not crucial, but really look for skills, and don’t hire anybody else before number one is productive.

[00:41:44.750] – Joran

So get the process in place before hiring next team members, and then try to work out maybe your fat guy, skinny guy model when you look at the gym example. So where does somebody start when you want to lead them towards, and really slow down before you speed up. So crawl, walk, run, and then build a repeatable playbook. It will help you to decrease the effort where you can focus on return on effort. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:42:09.190] – Gavin

It seems overwhelming, but it’s actually quite straightforward. We all inherently know this stuff, but we often skip it. We know it as buyers better than we know it as sellers. Because if we go into a store and someone does skip something here, we’ll go, Well, hang on a sec. That is not working for me as a buyer. But as sellers, because we forget it. It’s about being practical and first principle. It has to be. Otherwise, it won’t work.

[00:42:37.780] – Joran

Creating the process and actually following them, it’s going to be crucial. Absolutely. If people want to get in contact, Gavin. How can they do so?

[00:42:48.250] – Gavin

Linkedin. I’m always on LinkedIn. So Gavin Ty. Gavin, T-Y-Y-E at LinkedIn. I have a founder-led newsletter on LinkedIn. It’s on my profile there. The same with this article around the transition from founder-led sales, but I’ll give you a link to that as well, Joran, for your podcast. If you have any questions or you’re seeing a downward trend in performance by your team or you’re struggling in founder-led sales, reach out. We can have a chat and I can see if I can help you out.

[00:43:13.480] – Joran

For people listening, I would definitely just reach out and have a chat with Gavin  because I did it after the last podcast. And for me, it worked out great. So we’re going to link to your LinkedIn profile, we’re going to link to the Venn diagram, we’re going to link to the founder, the newsletter. And then for listening right now, please always leave us a review. If you haven’t, give the podcast a follow, and we’re going to add pause to the podcast. I always want to love to hear what you guys want me to focus on because the last ones were always about people wanted to hear more about bootstrapping, about practical things. Really try to do that in season 5. Just give me feedback and I’m more than happy to incorporate into this season. Thanks again for coming on, Gavin .

[00:43:58.580] – Gavin

Mate, congratulations on the four seasons so far. It’s been amazing. It’s one of my top five podcasts I listen to all the time. Keep up the great work and see you again as a third guest on season 10, hey?

[00:44:10.990] – Joran

Nice. Love it. Thanks.

[00:44:13.340] – Gavin

See you, mate.

[00:44:14.490] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show, if you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reditus, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.