S6E16 – You Built It, Now Sell It: Mastering Founder-Led Sales for your B2B SaaS with Zoltan Vardy

Imagine this: you’ve finally finished building your product after countless late nights. The code works, the demo is ready, and your first prospect is waiting. Your heart races because you know one thing for sure: if this person says no, nothing else matters. On this episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast, host Joran Hofman chats with Zoltan Vardy, founder of The Launch Code, about why this exact moment is so important. As a founder, you’re not just pitching a product—you are the product’s voice, its story, and its proof. Customers don’t care about fancy features or your funding round. They care about solving their pain. And when that pain is real, they need someone who truly understands it—you. Founder-led sales give you the chance to connect directly with buyers, test your messaging, and build trust in ways no marketing tool can. According to Zoltan, it’s not just about selling. It’s about leading with purpose, listening deeply, and learning fast. If you’re not leading the charge, you’re missing the biggest growth opportunity your startup has.

The Misconception in Tech Sales

Many tech founders think a great product will “sell itself.” It rarely does. Zoltan Vardy tells the story of Banners, a startup that struggled until it solved a clear pain for sports broadcasters. Once the team switched from “nice-to-have” to “need-to-have,” sales started.

Importance of Founder-Led Sales

Talking directly with buyers gives founders raw feedback. You learn which words resonate, which features matter, and whether the market truly cares. Founders who stay close to sales find product-market fit faster than those who hand it off too early.

Common Mistakes in Founder-Led Sales

Two traps catch many founders:

• Relying only on friends and old contacts.
  
• Blasting mass emails and hoping for replies.
  Both feel busy but do not scale. They hide the real work of finding and serving an ideal customer.
  

Zoltan’s Sales Blueprint

Focus – Craft a sharp value proposition, a simple offer, and clear messaging.
Structure – Build a repeatable process: start with outbound outreach, then support it with inbound marketing.
Scale – Set goals, track data, and hire a team that follows the same proven steps.

Overcoming the Pain of Sales

Sales can feel hard. Accept the discomfort and center every call on solving the customer’s problem. Action Audit’s founder moved from dread to confidence once he saw clients light up at his solution.

The Transformative Nature of Sales

Sales is storytelling. It starts with the buyer’s pain, moves through your offer, and ends with their relief. When that arc is clear, both you and the buyer grow.

Practical Steps for Starting Sales

1. State the problem you solve.
   
2. Describe your perfect customer.
   
3. List target companies.
   
4. Personalize outreach—lead with their pain, not your features.
   

Handling Objections

Write down the top objections you hear. Prepare simple, honest answers. Practice until each reply feels natural.

The Future of Sales and AI

AI can research prospects and draft emails, but it cannot replace human trust—especially for big deals. Use AI as a helper, not a substitute.

Persistence and Scalability

Sales is a long game. Set clear targets, track every step, and lock successful moves into your process. Many founders face setbacks, yet those who persist often reach remarkable exits.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Founder-led sales demand focus, clear process, and steady grit. Solve one real problem for one ideal customer, refine through direct talks, and keep going despite rejection. Do this, and sales becomes the growth engine your startup needs.

Key Timecodes

• (0:00)- Importance of Solving a Problem in Sales  
• (0:38)- Introduction to Founder-Led Sales and Guest Introduction  
• (1:23)- Misconceptions About Sales for Tech Founders  
• (2:40)- Case Study: Banners and the Importance of Problem-Solution Connection  
• (3:27)- Why Founder-Led Sales is Crucial  
• (4:40)- Example: Camp Map and Founder-Led Sales Turnaround  
• (6:00)- Common Mistakes in SaaS Sales  
• (7:20)- Zoltan’s Blueprint for Successful Founder-Led Sales  
• (9:44)- Starting Sales: Value Proposition and Customer Targeting  
• (11:43)- Overcoming Fear and Pain of Selling  
• (13:13)- Transformation Example: Action Audit  
• (14:53)- Sales as a Transformation Process  
• (16:07)- Challenges in Implementing the Blueprint  
• (18:32)- Steps to Get Started with Sales Today  
• (20:00)- The Myth of Hustle Culture and Real Sales Work  
• (21:16)- AI in Sales: Enhancements, Not Replacements  
• (23:30)- Preparing for Objections in Sales  
• (24:16)- The Future of Sales with AI Integration  
• (26:05)- Sales in Enterprise: Importance of Personal Touch  
• (28:00)- Case Study: Dextery’s Clear Problem-Solution Connection  
• (30:01)- Iteration in Value Proposition and Market Fit  
• (32:29)- Persistence in Entrepreneurship  
• (32:39)- Summary of Key Advice on Founder-Led Sales  
• (33:09)- Advice for Growing SaaS Companies: Zero to 10K MRR  
• (33:55)- Advice for Scaling to 10 Million ARR  
• (35:05)- Final Summary and Key Takeaways  
• (37:21)- Zoltan’s Offer: Free Chapter of The Launch Code Book  
• (37:45)- Encouragement for Founders to Embrace Selling  

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Zoltan

To really be able to successful sales, you’ve got to solve a problem. It’s not about trying to teach or force somebody to buy something they don’t need, but you go through the process of solving a problem for them, and that builds momentum, your confidence grows, and the process becomes familiar. Founders who are committed to sales and engaging in the sales process are going to be the best advocates for their vision and for their product in early-stage conversations. You have to understand that selling, it’s not like you’re forcing something to buy something. In effect, if you are forcing them, then you’re actually doing them a disservice. What you should be doing is you should say, what is understand the problem, understand the goal that they want to achieve, understand the pain that they’re experiencing, and present whatever it is you’re offering as a solution.

[00:00:38.430] – Joran

Today, we’re going to talk about founder-led sales, how to launch and build a successful business.

[00:00:48.300] – Joran

My guest is Zoltan Vardy. Zoltan is a B2B sales adviser who helped over 200 B2B tech founders in 26 countries win more high-ticket clients and grow revenue faster. He’s also the author of the book called The Launch Code, Master founder-led sales and boost your startup revenue growth. He’s a chairman at Avento, an enterprise SaaS technology company. And before all this, he spent over 30 years in sales where he closed over 2 billion in contracts. Today, you’re going to share the myth, if you build it, they will come. He’s going to give us a solution for it as well. So welcome to the show Zoltan.

[00:01:20.930] – Zoltan

It’s great to be here, Joran. Thank you for the invitation.

[00:01:23.170] – Joran

No worries. I’m Dutch. We always dive right in. So we’re going to dive right into the conversation. Let’s just start with the What is this misconception you think people have about sales, and especially, I guess, SaaS founders have regarding sales?

[00:01:36.770] – Zoltan

Tech founders generally have a product background, right? So they love the product, the features, the ins and outs of the product they’re developing. And what I What I found is that there’s often this misconception that your customers are going to be interested in the same level of detail. They assume that this great product is going to sell itself, and they don’t really articulate what I would call a clear problem-solution connection. I think this mindset leads to a lot of problems because unfortunately, if you build it, your customers will not come. They have to understand why whatever it is your offering has value. I talk a lot about examples of companies I worked with in the book, Launch Code, and one of the ones that speaks to this is with a company called Banners, which illustrates the challenges of building a product first without identifying a clear problem. What the founders there did was they had developed this interesting streaming technology, and they started using it to broadcast fitness regimens online during the COVID era. Then they pivoted to using it to livestream shopping in Asia. Then they turned it into an interactive advertising platform. Each time, they struggled to gain traction.

[00:02:40.130] – Zoltan

Their breakthrough came when they started focusing on the problem they wanted to solve. They identified a specific pain point. A lot of broadcasters in the sports industry were trying to unify fan engagement in some way, and they basically were able to then pivot and use this technology to solve that problem. This shift from nice to have to need to have is what really helped them build and scale their business. The way that the founder, again, Peter talks about, he said, We had a product that didn’t have a problem, and we needed to learn that lesson. I think that’s something that a lot of SaaS founders need to do.

[00:03:11.280] – Joran

I guess to come back to the beginning of the misconception, it’s if you build it, they won’t come. You really need to be able to solve a problem. Absolutely. You can have the best technology, but there needs to be a problem to actually solve.

[00:03:23.530] – Zoltan

Because otherwise, you’re just doing it almost as a hobby rather than as a business.

[00:03:27.130] – Joran

We’re going to talk about founder-led sales. Maybe as a first question, why is it important as a founder to do sales today?

[00:03:35.150] – Zoltan

Founder-led sales is what ensures that you’re going to get direct feedback from customers about finding product-market fit. The process of going out, talking to customers, understanding their pain points, understanding what’s important to them, what’s less important to them. It’s what builds trust, which shows that it helps you refine your messaging, defines your product positioning based on live market response. Also what it does, and this is really important, it actually builds trust with potential customers. I think founders who are committed to sales and engaging in the sales process are going to be the best advocates for their vision and for their product in early-stage conversations. In so many cases, I’ve seen this in the companies I’ve worked with, where if sales was a bit of a struggle, they couldn’t really get traction, the moment a founder embraced the sales process and started engaging in those conversations was when they really started getting results. Those founders who delegate this early on will find it’s a much more difficult path.

[00:04:30.230] – Joran

When you say embrace the sales process, you really mean getting into the sales cost themselves, or is it also about actually creating a proper process around the sales?

[00:04:40.770] – Zoltan

It’s both. I can give you an example of the company I worked with called Camp Map, which is basically a SaaS tool that helps campground owners to provide information to their customers about what they can discover at the campgrounds. I was working with a founder called Simon Neill, and he was in a situation where he had hired some salespeople to do a lot of the early-stage sales for his company. He had He ended up going to a position where he had basically three months of runway left. It was at that point, he said, Look, it’s either I fix this or I’m going out of business. He literally rolled his sleeves up. He restructured his offer. He introduced an onboarding fee because he had realized the customer is willing to pay upfront for certain elements of his product. He started directly addressing client objectives. What he ended up doing is actually taking the company out of that really deep drop and going to a stage where they’ve now quadrupled their SaaS revenues. He’s gone from a single market in Central Europe to 11 markets around the world. It was because he actually took part in the process of selling.

[00:05:34.710] – Zoltan

In doing so, he then learned what worked and what didn’t. I think that’s a really important lesson for founders is this is not just about you going through that process. It’s about setting the stage so that when it comes to actually hiring a team and building a team, then you know what type of organization you need to build, what type of personalities you need, and effectively, what needs to be done.

[00:05:52.360] – Joran

It’s a lot of sense because this is like a success story, right? If we turn it around, what is the most common mistakes SaaS companies make while they’re trying to do founder-led sales?

[00:06:00.490] – Zoltan

I think founders fall into one of two traps. The first trap is what I call the I know a guy method of sales, which is basically, I know somebody I happen to have been in business with, or my uncle used to work for a company that used to do this, and I’m sure we can sell their product or service to them. That is maybe effective in the short term. You can get maybe a couple of deals, but it creates a false sense of security because you end up spending time selling to people who already you’ve built some trust with. The problem is it’s not really scalable. There’s a limit to how many of these type of relationships you can build. The other end of the spectrum is a spray and pray approach. You send out 10,000 emails or direct messages and you pray that somebody’s going to respond. That’s what I believe to be more about tying your blindfold on and throwing darts. Sometimes you hit bullseye, sometimes you don’t. It’s really difficult to gain traction. I believe that those are the typical mistakes that lead ultimately to founders spending too much time trying to sell to too many different types of people rather than narrowing down on an ideal customer and really focusing all of their efforts on serving the needs of that ideal customer to We then scale the sales process.

[00:07:01.610] – Zoltan

Okay, cool.

[00:07:02.260] – Joran

Let’s dive into your blueprint. We can’t rely on I know a guy. We can’t rely on send and spray. We need to find a middle ground that’s not going to our own network and not going to everybody. If somebody now is listening and if they want to do founder-led sales successfully in the best approach? What would be a blueprint framework they can use?

[00:07:20.420] – Zoltan

The blueprint that I developed was on the back of my own 30 years of closing large B2B deals in a corporate setting, but also as a founder, as well as the work I had done with over 200 founders in 26 different countries. What I discovered is that they basically fell into three typical traps. The first one was they lacked focus. They didn’t have a really clear focused offer message. The first pillar of the launch code is the system that I wrote about in the book and also that I teach, is that you really define a clear value proposition. You clearly define a product offering simple three options that customers can choose from, and then you create a messaging that gets people engaged and want to learn more. That’s the first and most important thing. The second problem that I’ve discovered a lot of founders had is they didn’t really have a structured approach to selling. How do you acquire customers? They did a little bit of everything. The second pillar is around structure your client acquisition so that you can close more deals with less effort. That means focusing on outbound sales to start, putting together a list of target customers, going out, speaking with them, engaging with them, building partnerships with third parties who will enable you to expand your reach and your efficiency and build your credibility, and then finally going into inbound marketing where you’re actually creating an environment where people will find you, mostly through digital marketing and some event marketing.

[00:08:33.150] – Zoltan

The third problem was this concept of, Okay, so as a founder, I’m there in the front line of sales, but there’s only so much one person can do in 24 hours a day, so I need to figure out how to scale this. That’s where you get into setting the foundation and the guidelines for scaling your sales operations so that ultimately you empower a team and that you as a founder can get more into strategic decision making. What do you need to do that? You need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Goal setting, you need to be able to track your performance, see what works, what doesn’t. So you’re making decisions based on data rather than gut feeling. Finally, developing a team that covers off a lot of the different key functions within a sales and marketing team, from content development to lead qualification and so on. It’s that focus, structure, and scale process or blueprint that I teach and that has benefited a lot of founders who needed guidance to figure out how to sell effectively.

[00:09:22.430] – Joran

I want to dive deeper in, I guess, into the blueprint. Most SaaS founders, especially early stage SaaS founders, probably struggle with focus, defining a value prop, creating messaging around it, as you mentioned. Can you dive deeper in? Let’s say you’re going to help us ask about who’s just starting out and who might have not done sales properly. Where should they start? How should they start? What should they do?

[00:09:44.980] – Zoltan

The first thing you have to do is to create a very simple way of communicating the value you deliver. Step one is creating a value proposition. Now, when you’re doing a value proposition, you obviously make certain assumptions. You make assumptions about the problem you’re solving, about who you’re solving it for, how you’re solving it differently. But I’ve got this five-step process where you say, you go through that process and ultimately you get that single sentence that articulates that value proposition. Once you have that, you can start testing it, you can go out and start having conversations with customers and seeing how it resonates. In some ways, you’ll find that certain elements of it are going to work, others are not. Then as you start having these conversations, you’ll also realize that you need to narrow down your offering. One of the mistakes that a lot of founders make is they try to sell too many things. It’s this blank sheet of, Oh, I can help you I have this problem. I can do it this way. But really narrowing it down saying, Hey, these are the three different type of options you have. One of these is most likely to be relevant for you.

[00:10:37.820] – Zoltan

I suggest you choose A rather than B because… So you create that process, that funnel of decision making. Then once you’ve created that, then you can get into the process of acquiring customers. Nothing replaces the value of just having a very clear idea of who your ideal customer is, defining that in as much detail as possible, identifying 50 companies that match those criteria, and getting in front of those people and having those conversations. Everything I’ve just described, I admit, sounds like a lot of work. I think that’s one of the key messages I have throughout the book is this process of selling is not some revelation where you find that hidden red button under the desk that says sell quickly. It’s actually a process of trial and error, which can be quite painful sometimes. I actually do talk about the pain of sales as a requirement of success. You have to go through that process, and eventually you’ll find the smooth process that’s enabling you to scale your sales.

[00:11:26.660] – Joran

You gave the example where the founder only had three months of runway, so he definitely felt the need to sell. I think a lot of SaaS founders who are there, they have the pain of selling, or I guess, as you mentioned it, they don’t always want to sell or they feel it as a burden. How to overcome that or even the fear of selling?

[00:11:43.670] – Zoltan

The pain of sales is something that you never really overcome. You get used to living with it. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Even with my own business, I went through a whole process of identifying where I could really add the greatest value. Every founder goes through the same way. So you basically go out there and you hear the objections and When you start understanding that for you to really be able to successful sales, you’ve got to solve a problem. It’s not about trying to teach or force somebody to buy something they don’t need, but you go through the process of solving a problem for them. That builds momentum, your confidence grows, and the process becomes familiar. A great example of a company I worked with out of Poland called Action Audit, founder-led. Alexander was a very typical technology founder, really strong product background. When we started working together, he told me how he really felt like sales was really odd and very stressful for him. As we worked through the process together, he understood that he needed to be at the front lines of that. He shifted his mindset to having to focus on solving a problem for somebody and not necessarily trying to force them to buy something they don’t need.

[00:12:44.200] – Zoltan

The results have been amazing. Basically, in two years, he went from a single market in Poland to 12 markets around Europe and the US. His SaaS revenue grew 400%, and he actually grew into somebody that enjoyed selling. He went from spending 5% of his time on sales to 60% of his time on sales. It’s a very typical transformation that I see from founders who are successful in building their businesses. They really lean into the process. They understand pain as part of the process, and they no longer fear sales. They actually embrace it.

[00:13:13.620] – Joran

In this case, he might not even experience it as sales at one point anymore. He experienced it as solving a problem for his clients.

[00:13:21.320] – Zoltan

Yeah, that’s a fundamental mind’s shift I talk about in the book. It’s something I had to go through as well. Just a very brief biography. I grew up in a family of academics. Both my parents were professors. Our dinner conversations when I was a child was about politics and history and not commercial thinking. I joke about how when a salesperson would cold call our house, my mother would get on the phone and pretend to be the maid and say, The Vardy family moved to Europe and please don’t call back again. That was the mentality that I had growing up about selling. What happened was I had my first sales job. I was actually working for Cartoon Network. My first sales job was I built my corporate career in the media industry. My first sales job was selling advertising on Cartoon Network in Central Eastern Europe. I remember going on a I had a business trip with my boss at the time, a guy named Dan Lovinger. We were in Moscow and I was struggling with this based on what I have this background I just described. He’s the one that told me, I said, Look, Zultan, you have to understand that selling, it’s not like you’re forcing something, they need to buy something.

[00:14:13.120] – Zoltan

In effect, if you are forcing them, then you’re actually doing them a disservice. What you should be doing is you should say, what is understand the problem, understand the goal that they want to achieve, understand the pain that they’re experiencing, and present whatever it is you’re offering as a solution to that. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t want help solving their problems? If you adopt that mindset, which I did as well, you’ll find that selling is just part of a fluid process. Sometimes you say no to customers because you can’t help them. Sometimes they say no to you because what you’re offering isn’t relevant for them. You move on and you find people who want to do business with you.

[00:14:43.230] – Joran

It’s almost what you’re currently doing. You’re telling a story in a way where, I guess, you had a certain beginning, and in the end, you had a certain end, and you’re going through it. That’s what sales is as well.

[00:14:53.320] – Zoltan

Absolutely. It’s a transformation process. By the way, I think it’s almost universal in themes. If you think about movies, if you think about. There’s always a hero who goes through obstacles to arrive at an outcome. By the way, writing the book is the exact same thing. When you sit down and write a book, you’re like, Okay, so what is the situation that reader is finding themselves in? In my case, a founder who fears sales, who avoids the pain, who doesn’t want to deal with it, understands that somehow he has to because he needs to build a successful business. You take them through this process at the end where they turn into somebody who actually is confident about it and enjoys it, likes it, understands its value. It’s the exact same process in general you’re your customer through. And something that if you do well, as with anything, the more you practice, the better you get at it, you can actually be very effective.

[00:15:36.700] – Joran

Are you struggling to find a cost-effective and scalable marketing channel? Check out where it is. We help you to have other people recommend your SaaS, and you would only pay them when they deliver you paid clients, making it a very cost-effective and scalable marketing channel. Want to learn more? Go to getreadytis. Com. And as you mentioned, we make it sound easy, or it does sound like a lot of work in your words. So we They have group in focus, structure, scale. But where do most founders struggle when they’re trying to implement the framework or the blueprint?

[00:16:07.920] – Zoltan

I think there’s three things that a lot of founders struggle with. The first is narrowing their ICP. There’s a natural presumption that the wider you spread your net, the more fish you’ll catch. I always use this example is that you’re much better off actually finding a little segment of a lake where the fish you’re gathering and you spread your net in that segment and you’re going to end up catching a lot more fish than if you try to spread your net across the entire lake. Actually, it’s a bit counterintuitive. The more you focus, the more likely it is that you’re actually going to be able to generate more business. That process of focusing, of letting go of things that you feel like, Well, if I do this, then I’m going to missing out on that, that’s the first challenge. The second is overcomplicating messaging. There’s a natural tendency for a lot of tech founders to speak in jargon, to speak in the latest buzzwords. The fact is, most customers just don’t have the bandwidth to understand everything. You have to speak to people as if you’re talking to an intelligent 12-year-old. That’s where you are going to be hitting that level of communication that’s going to break through that incredible noise that we’re surrounded by in terms of marketing messages every day, whether it’s online or offline, and just explaining what you offer in a very simple, easy underterms.

[00:17:11.590] – Zoltan

The third mistake they make is they skip the structure. They do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but there’s no process that they follow. A great example of this I talk about in the book is a company called the Vicket, actually a company out of Romania. They were a typical situation. They had a technology which they used to stream live events. They were streaming sports events and city council meetings and entertainment events, and it confused the hell out of their customers. They didn’t know what they were selling. By narrowing the offer and realizing that their technology actually was really relevant to their sports, turned them into a perfect solution to a very specific problem, which in this case was helping sports team managers to identify and tape the practices and the games and to identify where they could help their players become better just by simply using that same technology for a very specific problem enabled the company to scale from 2 customers or 24 customers in a matter of months and to really start scaling their business in a way that made it long term beneficial for the business as well as for their founders.

[00:18:10.480] – Zoltan

Yeah, nice.

[00:18:11.620] – Joran

I think the most tricky part, if people are now listening and they think, Yeah, okay, I’m definitely going to start with sales. They probably have to buy the book, but we’ll add a link to it at the end and we’ll make sure people find it. If they won’t read the book or if they want to start, let’s say tomorrow or this afternoon already, what is one thing they could already do today to at least get started with doing sales themselves?

[00:18:32.540] – Zoltan

Okay, so the process I would go is, first, identify the problem you want to solve, step number one. And that has to be as specific as possible. So it shouldn’t be, I’m going to help people generate more revenue. It’s, I’m going to help them make their outreach process to potential customers 10 times more efficient, and it’s going to enable them to book a lot more meetings in less time. Just as a very specific sales example. Once you’ve identified the problem, then you’re going to say, Who is it that’s most likely going to benefit from this problem? That is the customer that you want to target. Once you’ve established those two things, then you will go out and you’ll make a list of 50 companies that match that profile that feel like the type of companies that would benefit from that problem solution connection. You then send simple personalized messages to each of the decision makers that you might have found on LinkedIn or you might have found through some of your network contacts, focusing on their pain, not on your solution, but on the pain that they have. Then you actually will, with the intention of booking introductory discussions and asking a series of questions to discover whether the problem you’ve identified exists and then figuring out how you can solve them.

[00:19:36.000] – Zoltan

That’s the foundational stuff. Obviously, there’s a lot of detail there, but if you just follow that general framework, you’re going to start getting a lot of information from the market. You’re going to be able to fine tune what you’re offering. You’re going to even have a couple of initial paying customers who will help fund your further advancement in the company. Nice.

[00:19:53.590] – Joran

I think it’s still a lot of work, but in the end, it’s going to be crucial to understand what are people actually looking for, why should they be buying you?

[00:20:00.290] – Zoltan

It’s funny, this question of a lot of work. I actually talk a lot about this. I do a lot of speaking engagements and also write about this a lot in my own content is that there’s this mentality that you’ve noticed in the last couple of years. Is it something that’s called hustle culture? Are hustlers? It’s folks that are like, Hey, here’s this three-step process. If you just do this and you work 60 minutes a day, you’ll be making a million dollars a year in no time. They’re usually posing with an orange Lamborghini and a beautiful model for a girlfriend in the advertiser. That mentality is definitely not what I offer and what this book is about. If that’s the thing that you’re looking for, then you look for that elsewhere. What I offer is a very clear process that you follow that with the necessary amount of investment of time and work and energy, you will read results, but it does require the investment. I’m sure as a founder yourself, you know that building a company is hard work. It’s not easy going. There’s a reason why a lot of people don’t start their own businesses.

[00:20:53.740] – Zoltan

You have to be prepared to put in the time and effort to achieve results. That’s what this is going to give you in the context selling high-ticket products and services to enterprise customers.

[00:21:02.750] – Joran

Yeah, because in the end, as you mentioned at the beginning, you can’t start with this send and spray approach. You just go out to everybody. I think that’s what people are trying to do or did with cold outreach, where they just message everybody they can because you can just download all the data you can.

[00:21:16.840] – Zoltan

Sales is a numbers game, right? There’s this standard statement that you hear people say, and there is some value to that. It’s more likely you will close business if you speak to 10 potential customers than one. But there’s a big difference between which 10 customers you’re going to reach prospects you’re going to speak to as well.

[00:21:30.210] – Joran

There’s only one first impression you can make. If you’re going to mess it up and you’re not actually solving their problem or you don’t know which problem you’re solving, you might not be able to solve it later down the line again.

[00:21:39.720] – Zoltan

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:41.360] – Joran

You gave some examples already, but let me just see if we have a couple more, can you give other best practices regarding founder-led sales?

[00:21:49.390] – Zoltan

One of the things I would recommend every founder do is to spend a bit of time preparing to handle objections. One of the current experiences I have is when you’ll sit down with the founder you’ll say, What would you say to this particular position? How do you defend your pricing? Or why should I, as a customer, believe that you have the capabilities to deliver what you say? These are very typical questions that any buyer is going to be asking themselves in any conversation. There’s no reason that you can’t prepare for those in advance. What I always propose, and it’s part of the core system that I offer, is a handling objections exercise where you basically identify, Here are the five or six or seven different questions that most likely people are going to ask. By the way, after the third meeting, you’re going to hear the same questions over and over again. Prepare the answers and do it in a very simple way. First, state the question. I understand it’s important for you that whatever solution you buy is going to be on time and at the budget that you’ve described. I understand why that’s important because after all, you’re running a business and you have to be able to rely on these type of things.

[00:22:43.870] – Zoltan

You restate. Then you say, how about the fact that in my case and what we’re offering, we actually are going to be able to guarantee delivery on time because we got these and these systems set up and we’re going to be able to guarantee a delivery of the quality you like because if we don’t, we’ve got 100% money back guarantee. Then you reaffirm. That’s why I’m confident that if you already choose our solution, you’re going to find that you’re going to get the benefits and the outcomes that you paid for, and you’re going to be a satisfied customer. Just preparing those type of scripts in advance is something that is going to help you become more confident in the way you engage with customers, but also is going to give you a real manageable tool that you can use and you can pass on to others in your organization because it’s very likely that anybody who’s selling your product or service is going to come across these similar objections during the sales process.

[00:23:30.090] – Joran

It’s interesting because I did cold outreach 10 years ago or maybe even a bit longer ago, and we had exactly this. We had the common objections, and then we had answers to all of them. After you do 20 or 25 calls, you keep hearing them all the time. At one point, you pick your favorite answer, and you just put it in without even thinking about it. But funny enough, I don’t even have that currently myself as a founder. Where I’m doing sales, I don’t have this list ready for me.

[00:23:56.010] – Zoltan

Maybe that’s something benefit you’ll get out of this conversation is you’ll spend a bit of time to do I’m happy to share the worksheet that I have for that, so it’ll help you get there quicker.

[00:24:03.340] – Joran

Nice. How do you see the future of sales? Because we can increase on it a little bit. You now have all these AI agents. Of course, we have all these outbound tools as we talked about a little bit already. How do you see the future of sales. Yeah.

[00:24:16.440] – Zoltan

Look, the impact of AI is undeniable. It’s something that is… It’s like a tsunami taking over business in general and certainly the sales. It would be disingenuous of me to say that AI is just hype and you shouldn’t integrate it. I think that The right way to use AI, however, is to think of it as a way to enhance your sales process, not replace it. I think there’s a big difference because there’s some people that are saying, You don’t need SDRs anymore. I just read something like Klarna got rid of 700 customer service agents. Now they’re begging them to come back. There’s this overcorrection of things. I think where AI can help is it can give you a lot of additional information about your target customers. It’s a great source of research and information. With a simple prompt, you can get a lot of information about the company you want to talk to or the people you’re speaking to. That’s an incredible benefit. I think it’s very useful in terms of messaging, creating personalized content, creating tailored messaging based on certain bits of information. Again, very useful. I think it’s useful in terms of automating certain processes like CRM updates, typical things that a lot of people use to spend a lot of time doing.

[00:25:20.420] – Zoltan

But it doesn’t replace the trust that an individual can build with a customer over the sales process. I can tell you in high-ticket sales, which I focus on, it’s absolutely essential. I don’t care how super personalized your AI agent is. I’ve never heard an enterprise customer say, I appreciated how that chatbot understood my pain points. It’s just not a realistic situation. You have to lend automation with authenticity that comes with personal engagement. If you do that well, you’re actually going to find that the benefits of speed and accuracy are going to be there, but you’re still going to have that personal touch that ultimately is what enables people to buy from other people.

[00:25:57.460] – Joran

When you talk about the deals you do, when When you talk about enterprise, what is the starting ticket price typically you would have?

[00:26:05.070] – Zoltan

That varies from market to market, but it starts, I think, around 50,000 to all the way up to millions in terms of annual recurring revenue. Obviously, in Europe, in the US, It’s a 250,000 in Europe. In Europe, in Western Europe, it’s probably 100,000. In Central Eastern Europe, it’s probably 50.

[00:26:20.150] – Joran

If you’re above that threshold with your ACV, then you probably want to have the person in there. Do you have any opinion on if it’s going to be lower than that? There’s a lot of companies who don’t target enterprise.

[00:26:30.970] – Zoltan

That’s something I have less experience with. But if you’re selling at a €20 a month type of pricing point, just as an example, it’s probably something that people will have much more of an initial reaction to something and click and buy. If you’re selling at that price point, automation could be more effective. But if you’re selling anything where it’s going to require somebody to put a little bit more of thought into buying it or not and just having that sense that you’re actually doing business with somebody rather than a chatbot, I think you’re going to have to use some element of personalization, a personal contact to do that.

[00:26:59.800] – Joran

Yeah. In the end, the fundamentals remain the same. They wanted to have a problem and they want to have it.

[00:27:04.190] – Zoltan

One thing I always tell the founders I work with is nobody cares who you are until they understand what problem you solve for them. That’s why it’s so important when you lead with your communication, you always talk about customers we’ve done business with. I’ve experienced this situation. This is a situation that we found to be valuable that we can solve, and this is how we solve it differently than anybody else. One example that I think it brings this to light is a company called Dextery out of the UK, a company that I started working with when they were a couple of hundred thousand euros ARR. Now, they’re over 10 million in space of about three years. They basically offer a solution for warehouse managers to manage inventory in large warehouses. Their special sauce, their unique technology is an automated robot that can scan inventory within the warehouse in a matter of an hour and stretch up to 12 meters high to gather this information. That was a situation where when we started working with them, they were focused a little bit more on retail. Covid hit, retail took a hit, and then basically, they repositioned the company to focus on logistics.

[00:28:00.930] – Zoltan

We worked a lot on refining that messaging, being very clear on the problem they solve, and then emphasizing the benefits of that unique technology they had to solve that problem. That combination of clear problem solution, connection, clear ICP, and clear competitive advantage is what helped them really scale very quickly.

[00:28:19.100] – Joran

In this case, you almost said it in four or five sentences, so it sounds super quick, easy to do, but I can imagine this took time. How long does a typical pivot like this take and how much effort would it take?

[00:28:31.940] – Zoltan

Effort is massive. Time is going to be a function of how effective you are in making the right decisions. For a SaaS product that’s starting out to reach product market fit, I think it’s an 18 to 24 month process. That’s my gut feeling. Then from then, it becomes a question of scaling. Having said that, product market fit is not an end game. It’s a moment in time where you have found there’s a problem that you’re solving in a unique way and customers are willing to pay for it. I’m sure you will have experienced this as well in your background is that at certain stages, you have to revisit your problem-solution connection. Is that still valid? Or are we now going into a slightly higher market? Or are we spreading ourselves a little bit broader? The example I use is Amazon. We think of Amazon as an everything store, and today it is, but that’s not how it started. How did Amazon start? It basically started with Jeff Bezos selling books to online, basically young men who were using the internet in 1996. He created that problem solution connection. He offered that solution. He used that as a way to build his logistics His background, to make the system work, the recommendation engine.

[00:29:33.430] – Zoltan

Then he started adding additional products to his inventory, first with music, then with the videos, until it’s become the giga company it is today. It started with one problem and one solution.

[00:29:45.850] – Joran

I guess early stage, you’re going to fix probably one problem, and at one point, you’re going to build more features, even though people don’t buy them, they buy the benefit, right? Yeah. At least, you’re probably going to have more problems to solve. Your problem solution connection, as you keep mentioning, will change over time.

[00:30:01.180] – Zoltan

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a natural iteration, right? It’s not a static situation. Your value proposition is never really done. It’s just at a different stage of imperfect. I think that’s what you have to understand is it’s an iterative process that you’re constantly going back and evaluating and looking at it. There are those moments of time, and you probably have the sense as well. You’re in that moment of flow. Everything’s going. Sales cycles are shortening, ACV is growing, objections are disappearing, and you’re just making traction that’s growing. It feels great, but there inevitably will be a new competitor, a new market situation. Just think about what’s happened the last five months in the US. It’s overhauled fundamental market assumptions about costs and global trade and everything. These are things that companies need to simply react, and they can’t stick it with their core situation forever because there are going to be factors that are going to impact your value proposition as well.

[00:30:46.460] – Joran

Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Sometimes you think you have figured things out and you’re growing nicely, and then at one point, things are just stagnating, and then you’re like, Why doesn’t it work anymore?

[00:30:56.400] – Zoltan

I’ll tell you, isn’t it frustrating? It’s like, I spent all this time putting all these and putting the puzzle together and finally had that feeling, and now it’s gone. It’s super frustrating, right?

[00:31:05.050] – Joran

Yeah. I think the hardest part is always, what are you going to do about it? Going back to the basics, as you keep mentioning, sounds obvious, but it’s sometimes a thing you won’t do because you think you already figured it out.

[00:31:16.320] – Zoltan

Yeah, I know. That’s where the persistence element of entrepreneurship comes in, right? I think that’s such a point of difference between super successful entrepreneurs and the successful entrepreneurs. I’ve got a good friend that went to university with getting Mark Wallace. He runs a bunch of businesses now, but Back in the mid ’90s, he started what was a precursor to Dropbox. A lot of my classmates who graduated with me from Cornell University went to consulting, banking, and legal, and all that typical professional stuff. Mark was a bit of an outlier in that sense. He was an engineer background, but he started a business. I remember going back in these annual get-togethers we’d have, and people would be talking about their promotions and their salaries and all that stuff. Mark was like, Yeah, I’m kicking away with this business, and hopefully it’ll get better. Then one day we read that he sells his company for $125 million. This is 15 years I remember asking him, What happened? How did you do this? He said, Look, I literally had about seven different times where I went home and I told my wife, I didn’t have enough money to pay the team.

[00:32:08.820] – Zoltan

We got to close this business. But somehow, through some miracle, he found some solution to solve whatever financial situation he was facing. And lo and behold, he stuck it out long enough where he was able to sell the company for hundreds of millions of dollars. At the end of the day, that’s the difference between an entrepreneur and an employee. You’d find that magic solution out of nothing.

[00:32:29.190] – Joran

Persistence, being super stubborn, that’s what we are. If you had to summarize your best advice on founder-led sales in one, two sentences, what would you say?

[00:32:39.310] – Zoltan

Successful founder-led sales requires a focus on the right customers, agility to adapt your approach to changing market circumstances, and the persistence to keep going despite rejection.

[00:32:50.140] – Joran

I think that’s going to be probably the biggest thing, persistence, and it’s the hardest thing as well. Absolutely. We’re going to start wrapping things up. We’re going to go to the final two questions One of the famous questions. When we talk about growing a B2B SaaS company, what advice would you give a SaaS founder who is just starting out and growing to 10K monthly recurring revenue?

[00:33:09.470] – Zoltan

To grow from zero to 10K MRR, you have to focus relentlessly on a single ICP and narrow use case. That’s the first thing. I think you have to build a simple outreach process that gets you in front of that ICP and gets you engaged in meaningful conversations. You have to be open to iterating and using the feedback you get from prospects to refine your value proposition. I think you track your progress, see what’s working and what’s not. I think if you do that, you are going to be able to slowly but surely find that product market fit and start growing that MRR in a way that will ultimately lead to the next phase of development.

[00:33:46.630] – Joran

The next question, what advice would you give a SaaS product who then reach to 10K MR? So have the product market fit and it’s going towards 10 million AR. Yeah.

[00:33:55.380] – Zoltan

I think when you’re going into the next phase of development, it turns less from those fundamental building blocks into scalability. And that’s where you really have to create very clear company-wide goals and KPIs. You have to create a very transparent way of tracking performance, whether it’s through lead generation or conversion or retention. You start building a sales team, you start defining roles, you train people on a playbook, you delegate responsibility, and you institutionalize a lot of the things that at the early stages you were just figuring out along the way. If you do that well, you actually will find yourself really hitting your stride. I think the great example I have is on Tavo, the loyalty technology, the SaaS company I’m a chairman of. These guys I’ve known from day one was just a couple of founders, and they’re trying to go through the tough parts of finding products market fit. Then they got to a point where they were to hire a global sales leader. The founders stepped back from day-to-day sales but still kept their face to the market, and they institutionalized a lot of things. It’s basically what’s created, put them from a standpoint of making a couple of maybe 30, 40,000 MRR to what it is today, which is probably over 400,000 MRR.

[00:35:04.520] – Zoltan

Nice.

[00:35:05.520] – Joran

Cool. I’m going to try to summarize. If we go the way all to the beginning, the biggest misconception is if you build it, your customers will come. That’s not going to be the case. If you’re going to do founder lead sales, it is going to be perfect. Get directly back, discover pain points, building trust, and learning what is actually working. The biggest mistake, I know a guy, and then reach out to all of them or go the other way around. Send and spray approach, that’s not going to work for you. If we’re going to follow Follow your blueprint, focus, structure, scale. If you start with focus, define a clear value prop, create messaging around it, identify the problem you’re solving. Ideally, put your value prop in a single sentence, see how it resonates with your market. Really narrow down your offering. Don’t overcomplicate your messaging and spend time to handle objections because it’s going to help you to become more confident. If we go to structure, close deals with less effort, narrow down your ICP, find a small segment to focus on, get used to the pain and fear of selling, and really try to solve a problem.

[00:36:00.550] – Joran

It’s just going to make things easier. Create a process for your sales and keep persistent. If we’re going to go to scale, create goals, playbooks, processes, being able to empower a team to do the work and make decisions based on data instead of gut feeling. If we look at AI, leverage it, but it won’t replace the trust of a person, and keep following problem, solution, connection. I guess to end it off with, when you think about sales, who doesn’t want to help to get their problems fixed or get the solution to their problem? Keep reminding yourself that.

[00:36:32.720] – Zoltan

You’re a human ChatGPT. That was a perfect summary.

[00:36:35.830] – Joran

Who needs AI?

[00:36:38.320] – Zoltan

Exactly. For anybody who’s interested in actually hearing everything that Yoran just summarized in a little bit more detail and more form, I do want to make an offer to your audience. For those of you who want a taste of the launch code book, which again captures the work I’ve done with these 200 odd companies, lays out the system, but brings it to life through stories and examples, as a good book should, ask that you or recommend that you go to zultanvardy. Com. That’s my website, forward/book. So zultanvardy. Com/book. You can sign up there to get the first chapter of my book for free, and you can decide later on if you want to purchase it either in e-book format or in printed format or soon in audio format coming out in early July. Welcome anybody to do that. If you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, you can do so. I’m still to this day the only Zultan Vardy on LinkedIn, as far as I can tell, so I’ll be easy to find.

[00:37:21.160] – Joran

It’s always my pitch as well. I’m the only Joran Hoffmann, or at least the only Joran Hoffmann with a blue sweater.

[00:37:25.490] – Zoltan

Growing up in the United States in the ’80s with a unique ethnic name was a nightmare. Now I’m benefiting it from it because it’s actually relatively unique and people can find me easily.

[00:37:33.920] – Joran

Nice. And you bought the. Com domain.

[00:37:35.550] – Zoltan

I did indeed.

[00:37:37.230] – Joran

We’re going to add a link to your LinkedIn profile. We’re going to add a link to your website with the book so they can get the first chapter for free. Anything else before we close off?

[00:37:45.600] – Zoltan

I would encourage founders to get out there and get comfortable with the idea of selling because it’s going to be not just a rewarding experience, but actually it’s the key to building a long term sustainable business. If that’s not what you’re in the game for, then there’s no point in getting started.

[00:37:57.450] – Joran

Perfect closing. For people listening, we’re going to a poll to Spotify. Please answer it so I can learn if you guys actually enjoyed the podcast, the episode or not. If you haven’t done so, leave us a review so we can boost the algorithms. Thanks again for coming on Zoltan.

[00:38:11.630] – Zoltan

It was my pleasure. Thank you very much.

[00:38:13.090] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of to 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.