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Segment's Founder: Most Founders Run Sales Backwards

By Peter Reinhardt · Sales · 1 min read

Founders pitch first and ask questions later. The best salespeople do the opposite — and it's not even close.

Key Points

Stop pitching. Start qualifying.
Use MEDDIC: metrics, economic buyer, decision maker, decision process, identified pain, champion
Ask questions for 45 minutes before you propose anything
The best salespeople ask 'why' until it's uncomfortable

The best sales people at Segment ask why to the point of uncomfortableness from everyone else on the team, including myself.

The Founder Sales Mistake

Most founders run sales the same way. Walk in. Give a shiny demo. Wait for the customer to decide. Peter Reinhardt says that's completely backwards.

Good sales starts with qualification. You understand the customer's problem better than they understand it themselves. Then you figure out if your product fits. The demo comes last — if it comes at all.

"That's not actually how good sales works at all. The way good sales works is you do qualification upfront."

The MEDDIC Checklist

At Segment, every deal goes through MEDDIC. Six criteria: Metrics. Economic buyer. Decision maker. Decision process. Identified pain. Champion.

If a sales rep comes back saying they're about to close a deal, the manager runs through the list. Can't answer all six? There's no deal. Period.

"If the sales rep can't answer metrics, economic buyer, decision maker, decision process, identified pain, and doesn't have a champion — there's no deal."

45 Minutes of Questions Before You Say a Word

Reinhardt's team was testing product-market fit for a new product. First approach: ask the customer if they have a data cleanliness problem. They'd say yes. Check the box. Move on.

Wrong. The real approach: spend 45 minutes drilling in. How many people work on data QA? Where are they based? What are their salaries? What buttons do they click? What happens when they find a bug? After 45 minutes, you understand the problem cold. Then you propose exactly what they just described to you.

"We would ask literally 45 minutes of questions. Now we actually understand their problem, their cost centers, everything. Then we say — what if we did a product that did X? And they say that would be amazing."

Ask Why Until It Hurts

Reinhardt: The best salespeople at Segment ask why to the point of uncomfortableness from everyone else on the team — including myself.