
Welcome to Startup Selling: Sell More Stuff, a course designed to help you better understand the buying process at companies and how to navigate your product or service to the point of the sale.
Always have this workbook handy while taking the course. Filled with complementary material for the course, the workbook will help stimulate ideas and provide a place to write those ideas down.
Needs Analysis is the basis for the sales process - this act alone places you in the problem from the client's perspective. It's never about your product, your technology, or the code you use. It's about solving customer needs.
What is most and least important to the customer?
How is this need fundamentally hurting the prospect's business?
How did you uncover this need?
Did you verify this need with other individuals at the target client?
Who is involved with this purchasing decision? This includes the Economic, User, and Technical aspects of the purchase.
Who are your Buyer Types?
Who are these people at your target account? How do you know? How can you verify?
What is the best way to establish a 1:1 Needs Analysis meeting with them? Who can help you?
Has your Product Champion changed since your initial approach/introduction?
Do you have multiple Product Champions? How can you develop multiple Product Champions?
Who are your Detractors/Antagonists?
In this lecture, we discuss the process of creating Value Statements that address the specific needs of each buyer type.
In this lecture, we discuss the different types of impediments that you might face during the sales process and how to properly foresee said problems, and work around them.
In this lecture, we discuss the process of Implementation by using a real world case study.
In this lecture, we discuss how the creation and use of Progress Signals will have you navigate through the Stages of the Sale.
How will you assess progress? Does your client agree with these milestones?
What are the mutually agreed upon milestones?
What action is your prospect taking that indicates progression of the sales conversation?
In this lecture, we use a real world case study to create a Sales Map of how we are able to start with only a Product Champion and progress to the final sale (though sales are never final).
Now that you have a clear picture of Customer Needs, Buyers, and Implementation, how does the Work Agreement capture the economics of your relationship?
Does the client require a NDA or Master Services Agreement (MSA)?
How many seats are required?
How will you deal with shared licenses? Audits?
What are the normal billing cycles - annual, quarterly, monthly?
Where does your offered price sit relative to list price? Are you offering a significant discount to the client?
How will you recover discounted prices at time of renewal?
Whose budget?
(Yes, this course really is free. Read more about why it's free here.)
Most sales courses, training, and workshops focus on "selling" when in fact, you need to know your customer's buying process. That's what you'll learn in this class.
By identifying the components of the buying and selling process, you can increase your conversion rates and accelerate your time-to-sale. Enterprise sales (i.e. business-to-business), purchasing decisions can take 3, 6, or 12 months (or more!) with many decision-makers, influencers, and individual buyers involved.
We use the Sales Model Canvas as your framework to achieve these objectives. The Sales Model Canvas is a simple process to follow starting from the first conversation with your prospective customer all the way through the sales and buying process, and to successful implementation your solution with your new client.
The course includes case studies from various industries and solutions, including:
All of the materials, course lectures, and case studies have been presented at live, in-person workshops with startup and technology groups including:
Workshop Testimonials
"I attended a live workshop for this course. I have this stuff on my desk. It's our sales compass - where are we on each deal? Are we on track? Where are we going?"
- Arthur Bart-Williams, Founder, Canogle, Speaker & Mentor at the Lean Startup Conference
"Very practical Quickstart for a non-salesperson to do lead discovery and conversion. I’d previously read Solution Selling to overcome a feeling that I’m an engineer not a salesperson, but found the book too theoretical to help. This workshop was a hit-the-ground-running introduction where I left feeling that I can do sales. Highly recommend it."
- Riaz Rizvi, Principal at Kickstart Platforms
"Scott was instrumental in developing our enterprise sales process by teaching us how to navigate through target prospects and developing sales experiments to optimize our process."
- Patrick White, CEO at Synata, Best New Enterprise Product at LAUNCH 2013
Book Reviews for "Startup Selling" and "52 Sales Questions Answered" (by the course author)
"I found this book useful as we all sell something to someone no matter what our job is. The customer could be your manager or co-workers, and you might be selling your new idea rather than a product. No matter what you sell, you bound to pick up useful ideas in this book."
- Ali Julia, Amazon #1 Reviewer, Review of "Startup Selling"
"There is a wealth of information here - the book makes the reader feel like being in attendance at one of his seminars. Sambucci is bright, witty, focused, and right there on the front lines of success. Just buy into it."
- Grady Harp, Amazon Top 50 Reviewer, Review of "52 Sales Questions Answered"
"If you are an entrepreneur who wants to get up to speed quickly on selling to business, in particular selling software, the book belongs on your short list of must reads."
- Sean Murphy, Founder SKMurphy, Review of "Startup Selling"