Resources for Founders
Yassss! Thousands of words on arcane enterprise software topics! Just what I wanted!
These are an aggregation of materials produced by, me, Pete Kazanjy (Twitter, Linkedin) to assist early stage founders. So you know I have some standing for this, I founded TalentBin which exited to Monster in 2014, wrote Founding Sales, and founded the Modern Sales Pro community.
These materials are primarily focused on b2b software companies with a direct sales go to market, but also applicable beyond.
Many of the materials are from Founding Sales (Twitter, Website), my book on enterprise sales for founders and other first time sellers, while others are materials made for the companies I advise or have invested in. Many are linked from the invaluable First Round Review, source of other great materials for founders.
Regardless of their source, the aim of publishing them here is to help folks in need of this sort of information to shorten their learning curves and avoid the same sort of mistakes we learned the hard way, and rather have more success, more quickly.
Sales Basics - For founders / others just starting out.
Startup Sales Maturity Model & Founder Led Selling:
- Deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pcSy-zV-776abGmZ8WJ7bGeXcHQAxscdypGdrUz28_c
- Video of presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAutzV21Gus&feature=youtu.be
Sales Narratives (Product Marketing basics):
- First Round Review: http://firstround.com/review/To-Build-An-Amazing-Sales-Team-Start-Here-First/
- First Round Review: http://firstround.com/review/building-your-best-sales-deck-starts-here/
- Deck: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/sales-decks-for-founders
- Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qIzADEvSthw
Sales Mindset Changes (for first time sellers - founders, etc.):
- First Round Review: http://firstround.com/review/10-ways-you-need-to-change-how-you-think-and-talk-to-succeed-at-sales/
- Deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Y6gDRlKryDTlt69K6yhd9MKBEwXTzxOxNVD5MQP1r7s/edit?usp=docslist_api
Startup sales email / phone / demo scripts:
- First Round Review: http://firstround.com/review/here-are-the-scripts-for-sales-success-emails-calls-and-demos-that-close-deals/
- Blog: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/demo-scripting-for-founders
Sales Scaling - Tools for when you know it works, and you want to scale up your GTM.
- Startup Sales Maturity Health Check Checklist: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/sales-maturity-health-check-checklist
- Sales hiring: http://firstround.com/review/the-anatomy-of-the-perfect-sales-hiring-process/
- Sales onboarding: http://firstround.com/review/youre-losing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-because-of-poor-sales-onboarding/
- Sales staffing growth model: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/saas-sales-staffing-and-scaling-model
Management
- Early stage startup meeting cadences (What meetings you should be having, and why): https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/what-meetings-should-my-startup-be-having
Marketing Resources
- PR launch basics checklist for founders: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/public-relations-launch-checklist-for-early-stage-startup-founders
- Video collateral basics: https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/minimum-viable-video-collateral
Recruiting
Startup Recruiting: What different types of recruiters are for, and when you should use them: http://firstround.com/review/Ive-Worked-with-Hundreds-of-Recruiters-Heres-What-I-Learned/
Startup Referral Recruiting: Proactive referral recruiting magic: http://firstround.com/review/Mine-Your-Network-for-Early-Stage-Hiring-Gold/