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Matt is currently the CEO of Revenue Nomad. He is passionate about helping companies scale throughtout all phases of growth and unlocking the full potential of GTM expertise via the fractional market. Before starting Revenue Nomad he lead Consulting Operations at Skaled for almost 10 years.

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This one is for the Startup CEOs, Founders, and early-stage Operations gurus! Are you burning the midnight oil, juggling sales, strategy, and a dozen other hats? Maybe you feel disorganized, or everything feels like priority #1. Operating like this is not sustainable and eventually the outcomes of your efforts begin to plateau. This article is about adding structure to the "trial by fire" nature of startup with an ultimate objective of working yourself out of these roles and into new ones.

Common Pitfalls in Business Growth

No matter the milestone, from $0-$1 million, $1-5 million, $5-10 million, to $10-20 million, $20-50 million, businesses encounter predictable hurdles. Being aware of these, along with the right resources, can help leaders sidestep these pitfalls, ensuring a smoother growth trajectory.

$0-1 Million: Setting the Foundation for your Initial Sales Team

Hiring mistakes are a significant are significant early. We want to bring in sellers or Sales leaders (especially when our background is not in Sales) before we have achieved a few business viability milestones. Hiring Sales reps before you have achieved these milestones is a recipe for failure and lost runway. The worst part is that when the team fails it will have been your fault, not theirs. Here is your checklist on what you need to achieve before think about hiring:

• Confirm Product Fit: Can it be sold repeatably to the consistent market segments?
• Complete 50+ discovery meetings
• Win rate above 20%
• Close 5+ deals from cold outbound

• Document the Process: Do not over-architect at this stage. It's about getting the basic steps and interactions documented so the initial hires sound like you. Once you hire your first VP Sales they will take this to the next level.
• The target ideal client firmographics (company size, industry, location, etc)
• The target buyer personas (titles, responsibilities, common challenges, typical top priorities, preferred communication style)
• The messaging and process for booking meetings (channels, email templates, cold call scripts, etc)
• The script for running discovery call (how to open the call, questions to ask, how to end the meeting, what makes someone a good/bad fit)
• The materials for closing deals (this will vary based on your sale but generally this will include some form of a proposal deck that can be leveraged when presenting your solution back to the client)
• Product & pricing details

• Setup a basic Technology stack: At this stage you want to focus on just the essentials necessary to close deals and manage existing customers
• Implement a CRM (many options but you will never outgrow Salesforce and it will save you a painful migration down the road)
• Sales Navigator (identify your Target Accounts and Buyer Personas)
• Lead Source Data (again there are many options so do your homework to explore which data providers have leads that line up with your target)
• Sales Engagement (early on you will want to look into tools like Apollo that have a freemium model. Eventually as you scale up you may want to look into some of the tools that are a little more robust but come with a bigger price tag and min user count)

• Additional exit criteria: How else will you know you are ready to move on to the next stage?
• You have 2-3 Sales Reps who are consistently closing deals
• Your team is building pipeline via cold outbound efforts OR your inbound funnel is healthy enough to support more sellers
• New market segments are opening up and with that a need for new sales strategies and processes
• The strategic needs of the sales team have increased as a result of your initial success and you need more time to focus there

The Road Ahead

In the next article in this series we will cover the roadmap for success as you set the Foundation for Growth and scale from $1- $5 million.

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