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Pete Kazanjy: Why the Founder Must Lead Sales in the Early Days

By Pete Kazanjy · Sales · 1 min read

Steve Blank always talks about how startups can't get to scale without firing their first VP of Sales. It's because they skipped the step where the founder sells. You can't outsource the first couple dozen customers.

Key Points

You can't outsource sales for the first couple dozen customers — you lose the feedback loop
Selling yourself teaches you three things: what to build, how to talk about it, and what to teach your first salesperson
B2B startups scale by adding salespeople — 2, then 4, then 8, then 16 — but you have to write the playbook first

You're playing a game of telephone with a third-party seller. You want to keep that in one brain to start, then package it.

You Can't Outsource This

Kazanjy: Steve Blank always talks about how startups can't get to scale without firing their first VP of Sales. It's often because they skip that step. The founder says — I'm going to hire some sales leader and outsource this. You really just can't do that. Not for the first couple dozen customers.

You lose the feedback loop. You lose the learnings of whether or not your message fits the market. You're playing a game of telephone with a third-party seller versus you. You want to keep that in one brain to start.

You're playing a game of telephone with a seller. Keep it in one brain to start.

Three Reasons Founders Must Sell

Kazanjy: One — it helps with product development because you're not going to have that abstracted. Two — you're going to be the person who figures out how to talk about it in an effective way. Three — it makes it so you can package that up for other humans.

When you have a repeatable selling while loop, then you package it and hand it to someone else.

Figure out what to build. Learn how to pitch it. Then package it so you can teach someone else.

2, Then 4, Then 8, Then 16

Kazanjy: B2B startups scale by adding more salespeople who have customer-facing meetings with prospects. There are only 40 or 50 hours in the week. The way you scale up is by adding more salespeople.

That's why packaging it up is really important. You shove it into the brains of 2 more salespeople, then once they're successful you go to 4, then 8, then 16.

Shove the playbook into 2 brains. Then 4. Then 8. Then 16. That's how B2B scales.