Founders: Here’s how to get your sales pitch in ship-shape — Peter Kazanjy 

 I'm looking forward to the conversation. Pete, thanks for joining us.

 so most people know you through your book that you wrote a number of years ago called Founding Sales, and we'll put a link in the show notes to make sure, um, it's easy for folks to get their hands on a copy. Um, and when you think back to the first draft that you put together, are there things that you've changed your mind about, um, that you've tweaked, um, or maybe that you double down and feel equally as strong about now that it's been a number of years since the first version was published?

 Uh, yeah, I, I think that probably one of the biggest things that has changed in the market is the recognition of how important it is for founders to do their earliest selling in a, in a, in an organization's kind of like life cycle, if you will. Um, I think there, there's a deck that I present pretty frequently called founder led selling.

Um, that with the whole kind of like preamble of it is all about like, why founders have to care about this. Um, And I think that that's, that part is maybe a little, like, needs a little glowing up. Uh, that's not really mentioned in the book as much, but I think it's kind of become pretty table stakes to recognize that.

Now that doesn't mean it's any easier for people who don't have a background in selling to, to earn those new chops. It's obviously very tenable to, to do. But I think that's probably like the biggest thing is kind of the, the, the growing recognition that this is the right design pattern for making early stage companies successful.

 Why do you think when you look at the last five or 10 years of, of kind of companies that were started and are working,

 they tended to be actually started by more technical people versus sales-oriented people.

 Hmm. Yeah, I, I think the reason why is because you have to think about like where, where companies come from, and obviously investors think a lot about this. Um, you know, I think a little bit about this, but I think where companies come from is, is somebody having, like recognizing that there's a problem in the market, uh, and then also having enough kind of product and technical capacity in order to see how technology could be fit against that, that problem to solve it.

And I, I actually don't know if that's something that's unique in like the last five or 10 years. Um, I think that that's a fairly common thing in general. Like the people who are observing problems in the world have a tendency to be product minded folks. They're unsatisfied about. This, this tool or that tool, or this unmet need.

And then they also have the technical capacity, or at least like, you know, understand how they might fit together the Legos that are in the market, or maybe new emergent Legos that have shown up in order to solve that. And this is kind of why, um, like those people are gonna be the ones who are creating new technical innovation.

They're also the ones who are going to be closest to the problem. And then of course, the new solution that they've, they've pieced together. Uh, and, and that's kind of why they have to be the person to sell it initially as well, because especially when it's new technology or, and that's kind of like the, the market that we all work in, they're probably the most expert person at that new combination of things in the world.

So expecting someone else to be able to articulate the value proposition and sell it effectively is, is probably gonna be a, you know, a sucker's bet versus them getting good. At, at doing that themselves. So I think that's kind of like the, combining those two things together is kind of the natural through line of successful early stage, at least B2B companies.

 And kind of building on this, when you think of kind of the prototypical, B2B founder, maybe it's software infrastructure or SaaS, et cetera, who, who as we, as we were both just mentioning, tend to be more product and technically oriented, why is this work of developing this go to market muscle actually more challenging than maybe a lot of people would imagine in the.

 Yeah. I, I think that honestly, the reason why is because it's just a new muscle that people aren't necessarily used to. Um, if you think about the, the day to day of a product manager or a, you know, a software engineer or a designer or even like, You know, a consultant. If you think about the, the sort of folks who oftentimes start companies, um, if you think about like the, the actions that they take on a day to day basis, they're pretty distant from what eventually sales behavior looks like.

So sales behavior is. Um, you know, being able to pro process dozens of parallel conversations concurrently, not at the same time, but, you know, hold a dozen or two, two dozen concurrent conversations in one's head. Um, you're constantly meeting new people. You're rapidly gaining rapport with them, Um, and also things.

You know, persuasion and like asking people for money, asking people, um, you know, if they, if they think that the product that you're presenting to them fits the problems that they, that you've revealed to them, all those sort of behaviors are things that you don't necessarily do on a day to day basis when you're a product manager or software engineer or designer, what have you.

So it just, it ends up being a little bit new and, but it's not, um, the, the thing that kind of drives me a little insane is when people talk about like, natural born sellers or, um, or, or that, like, it's, it's a, it's a talent. It's, it's innate, those sort of things. It's really not. It's just something, it's just a muscle that needs to be built.

Sometimes people. Like gain some of those muscles through their backstory, like growing up with, you know, I don't know, like a lot of siblings or doing, um, mo like doing team sports or things like that. Like, oftentimes you'll start gaining those muscles in a non-professional capacity and then they're kind of transferable.

But that doesn't mean that they, that, that any person can't gain these, build these new skills on their own. And, and so like that's, I think really kind of the, the critical thing there is to recognize that it can be built. Um, and then just to buckle down and do it

 And, and on that point, I think one of the other things that I've noticed is that in, in most facets of life, we're drawn to the things that we're kind of innately good at. And so if you think about like the competency of building product and you're a product person and that's part of your job as, you know, a five person team in the early days, you as the founder, ceo, um, and then you think about this new muscle of go to market sales, et cetera. I, I think there's a tendency just to retreat and not exercise the new muscle and kind of do the things that are in your power alley. Um, it's kind of one piece. The other piece is just starting any new thing I think requires a lot of activation energy, and you kind of have to get over inertia. And so I, I'm curious if we go down kind of the muscle metaphor.

We're gonna talk a lot about when you're in the gym, what are the, what are the things you need to be doing? But do you have any thoughts on like, the meta idea of what are the rituals or systems you put in place to kind of hold yourself as a founder accountable for developing this new competency as opposed to just retreating to the things that you know best?

 For sure. I, I think one of the things that, um, one of the things that makes, uh, founders powerful is their generalism. It's also one of the things that potentially like makes them unemployable after they've be been founders a couple of times. But that generalism is something that, that makes, makes them very powerful and, uh, and it's a, a mechanism by which to create tremendous enterprise value.

And so the way that you of course build that generalism is by not shying away from the ability to, you know, be a great marketer or be a great writer, or be a great. You know, be a great seller, good enough before, of course it professionalizes with, you know, a VP that you abstract that off to. And, and so I think just recognizing that, like your job as a founder, at least early on, is to be a very formidable generalist across a variety of, um, you, we talk about t-shaped people all the time, is you wanna make that, um, that spike, uh, wider and wider.

And of course, the way that you do that is by learning new skills and embellishing them not, not beyond the, the kind of as tote of the S-curve, if you will. Uh, because at a certain point, um, you know that that's better done by a leader that you're gonna bring in to, to kind of succeed you and be even better at that.

But I think that's the first thing that you have to recognize. And then the next thing, of course is like, okay, cool, if we believe that that's the case, and then what are the mechanisms by which we, we do that. And I think that there's a couple of things that you can do. to kind of force yourself

Um, I think actually Brett, you had a, a fantastic tweet at one point, which is, um, what is the thing that you are doing in your professional role that is the equivalent of a piano player playing scales, Right? Um, and so what are the things that you do on a day to day basis that force you to re like, repeat the behavior that you need to get good at?

And so with respect to go to market and selling in specific, I think there's a bunch of things that you can do day to day. Like one of the things I coach my staff on all the time is we call it turbo rapport. turbo rapport. How quickly can you become friends with somebody? Uh, and especially how, you know, doing that in environments where, um, where people might be a little shields up.

So an example of that might be mo most people are maybe not super comfortable, just like talking to complete strangers. . And so if you can essentially keep score with yourself on how frequently you're talking with complete strangers, and then moreover, can you, like, how quickly can you get that person on your side, whether it's a flight attendant or maybe a bartender or you know, a barista or somebody, somebody who's like maybe used to people maybe not being the nicest to them in the world.

Um, can you, can you rapidly do that and get them on, on your side? Because that's a good example of a behavior that you're gonna be doing from a sales standpoint. If you think about a 30 minute sales call, probably about the first five minutes is it's a sprint to get them. to open up and, and to like you, because then what you're going to do, at least in a minimally viable way, because you're then, what you're gonna do is you're gonna use that, um, that initial affinity and rapport that you've built there to then dig into their business pains in a way where they're gonna be honest with you.

So like, that's an example of, uh, a game or, um, that, that is kind of like playing scales if, if you will. And then, then the next thing would be, okay, well there's a variety of different games that you can play or skills that you, you can practice, whether it's like turbo rapport like that, or writing really great emails, um, or, or telling good stories.

And then you just have to kind of KPI yourself on it. . Um, and the same way that making sure that you're going to the gym and are you keeping track of that, whether it's your, your Apple rings or your Strava app or fill in the blank. The same is true with sales. Like one thing that's. Folks don't necessarily really kind of comprehend with sales.

The sales is just the question of like a high quantity of high quality selling behavior. And so the behaviors that you're recording are things like customer facing meetings, you know, how many first meetings, how many second meetings, how many opportunities, how many things you're getting to proposal, how many emails you're sending, things like that.

And so just getting comfortable with instrumenting that and then holding yourself accountable to that, um, is something that's gonna lend success to your, your selling behavior later on. Like, Hey, I, I have an expectation that my account executives should have 15 customer facing meetings a week. Um, anywhere between five to seven of them should be first meetings with prospects that they have talked to before.

Um, they should be sending this many proposals on a monthly basis in order to get, you know, if a, if a win rate at a proposal is around 80%, we wanna see people sending around, uh, you know, five to eight proposals in order to get to four to five deals. You then back that up to your own behavior and say, Hey, um, I'm gonna talk to five strangers today, right?

And I'm gonna make friends with this many, uh, this many baristas this week. Those are sort of the, the kind of meta behaviors that you can kind of get good at, and then it just becomes natural, um, to, to bring that into your organization professionally.

 So to drill in on this sort of slightly, let's say you're, you're the founder, CEO of an early stage business. You have an early product, so a product that somebody could actually buy and use, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about this in a second. What do you think a week should look like? Like what is an optimal week in terms of where that founder CEO is spending time across the different parts of the business, including go-to-market efforts?

 Well, um, I think it kind of depends. It sounds like you, you said that you, you have a sellable product and, um, And it sounds like also there's probably a technical co-founder in this, um, in this example as well. Um, so I think that you, by no means would you expect like a full complement of selling behavior happening there.

Like, as I kind of noted earlier, a calendar for an account executive who's only, only, only selling is probably looking at like 15 to 20 customer facing meetings a week. That would be like a pretty hefty, uh, hefty load there with like, you know, 15 minutes of prep and 15 minutes after, uh, and time to kind of like manage an inbox and so on and so forth.

So maybe you could probably do about like a third of that, or 50% of that kind of depends if you have, like do you have existing customers that you're also onboarding as well? And then you have to spend, um, some of that calendar time doing customer success, implementation meetings, ongoing success, et cetera, et cetera.

But you know, anywhere, spending anywhere between. A third to two thirds of your, of your time doing that selling behavior. And then the selling behavior of course, then breaks down into top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. How are you filling your calendar by doing prospecting. Um, that kind of depends on how you get in touch with your ideal customer profile.

Um, whether that's inbound or if you're doing outbound. So there's gonna be a slice of your time that's gonna be dedicated to getting first meetings on the calendar. Then there's going to be a, a segment of time that's dedicated to executing those first meetings. And of course dealing with like the second meeting, the third meeting, et cetera.

And then there's gonna be the down funnel, uh, time as well, which is closing calls. And, and getting deals across the line. And so it kind of depends on, um, what your sales motion looks like. Like how many customer facing meetings with, how many distinct humans in an organization might be required in order to get a deal across the line.

And also if you're doing your customer success as you're, you know, as a founder seller, uh, initially, But, but I think that like, those would pro kind of be the broad strokes of what a calendar might, um, might look like there.

 In your mind, why does someone buy a piece of software from someone?

 Well, why do we buy anything? And I think the, the answer to that is it has to be very clear to me that my future state, the future state that I conceive of with that product or service. Being applied is, is dramatically better than my current state, both from a like technical, like left brain standpoint and also a right brain standpoint.

And, and I think this is an important thing, especially for more technical and product founders to understand, is that people buy for both reasons. Um, like obviously we buy fashion, uh, in order to like, you know, tell, tell stories about ourselves and, and represent ourselves and, and what have you. But the reality is, is that people do that in, in B2B purchases all the time as well.

And so, um, what, what our job is as sellers, especially, especially especially if you're talking about new categories of software, um, that hasn't really existed before, is to reveal that need. To the prospect or to the customer in a way where they probably aren't gonna land on it on their own. And this is something that when people kind of think of what selling looks like in the movies or, or what have you, they think about it being, talking fast and persuading somebody and, and what have you, versus asking questions that then leads an individual down a path.

These are not, they're not random questions. They're, they're intentional and directed that leads somebody down a path to recognize the, the gap in their current, you know, their, their current business. Um, and, and then, Puts them in a position where they understand the needs to be met and how they're unsatisfactorily being met right now, the cost associated with that, and then potential upside associated with changing, right?

Why buy, why now? And then that puts them in a prime position to be receptive to the value that your, the way that your, your product comes in and, and addresses that. But first you have to, they have to comprehend that unmet need in a very visceral way. Um, that not only helps them understand like, Man, I really need this, but also puts it at the top of their list because, you know, we all, we all have lots of problems, , and so what you want in order to drive a transac.

Is to make sure that that can be at the top of the list. And the way that you can get that to the top of the list is by really revealing a very substantial pain to the, the individual. And then ideally from a timing standpoint, be executing that conversation in a, in a very, um, in a timely fashion. Uh, like and those are what is are known as compelling event.

In, in sales, like as an example, um, you know, my software company, Atrium, we make data driven sales management software. A very critical point in time in a sales organization is after they've hired a bunch of sales reps. And so you really wanna make sure that reps are ramping appropriately, um, such that they're gonna hit their bookings targets in month 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

And so the way of course you pay attention to that is by looking at the leading indicators to those eventual bookings, those first meetings, those opportunity progressions, all those, those behaviors. And unless you have that instrumented, you're in a very bad situation. And so a compelling event for, for our business would be after an organization has hired a bunch of Ken executives or BU an organization has hired a bunch of sales development reps, the that in those managers and leaders are feeling that pain very substantially at that point in time.

Um, and they, and so it's not a, a big stretch in order to reveal to them. The, the pain associated with not having visibility into that progression. And then of course, the opportunity cost of not, um, not helping those reps get to success. And so those are the, that, like, that's why people buy, is they buy because they're trying to resolve those pains.

But the pains are not just like technical and business centric, it's also them personally as a sales manager, right? I want these reps to get to success. Also, what does it say about me as a sales manager, as a leader, if I don't get these reps to success, So it's mixing the personal and the business in a way that is like very visceral. Um, and also timely will, you know, helps, helps the transaction come to fruition.

 You touched on this just a second ago, but, uh, I'm really interested, what, what are some of the things you figured out specifically about selling a product where you're kind of creating a new category versus, um, selling a new product into an existing category?

 Yeah. So I think that selling a new product, uh, selling a product into a new category, um, the first thing you're kind of doing is, is like revealing an unmet need because there isn't a budgetary line item. So the examples that I like to use all the time here is like the applicant tracking system market.

So, you know, software, like database software that helps you track the, the recruiting process for new candidates. There's, there's always gonna be a kind of a next. Like shinier better version of that. So like, there's the legacy versions. There was like tole and success factors and, and Workday and Job Bite and so on and so forth.

And then a new cohort came along in the form of Lever and Greenhouse. Both of them were ATSs. It's like, Hey, what's your current ats? Oh, it's Job Bite. Oh, okay. If you're like most of our customers, you're grumpy about it for these reasons right here. Oh yeah, that's totally right. Yeah. Well, here's our solution and here's why.

It's, you know, it's faster, it's shinier, it's um, you know, it has all these kind of things like the budgetary, the line item is already there and we're just trying to persuade the person that like, you should drive this car instead of your existing car. Versus revealing to somebody, Hey, there's an unmet need that you're probably solving right now, either through like labor or alternatively through, um, just eating opportunity cost.

And so in, in that regard, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to make the invisible visible, um, and that. Is, it's, it's a harder sales challenge, . Um, but it's kind of the business that we're in as, as entrepreneurs because that's like, that's how we take this new technology that is developed and bring it to bring it to bear.

And so, um, really what that kind of comes down to is like doing a really good job of revealing to people those needs. Um, using narrative and stories to help people understand, um, how, how the current way that they're going about it is, is unsatisfactory. And then bringing to bear, like helping them understand how a new way could address this in a way that's very different than how they, they're going about it this way.

And so the other thing too with like new category sales is usually it's gonna be, um, you know, at least early on it typically will be lower win rate than your kind of traditional. Situation where you're just like, replace, like you have a better mouse strap than the existing mouse strap. Um, in this case, it's like, Oh, well, like, you know, instead of having my mousetraps, why don't we figure out a way of making sure that the mice never breed to begin with, as an example, Right?

So it's cha it's reframing people's, um, people's thinking. And, and that can be tough for folks. So there's, it's gonna be lower win rate to start out with. Um, it's going to be, um, oftentimes you're going to have to have multiple passes through the funnel with a given prospect in order for like the second time around they're, they're gonna be more prime to buy or the third time around.

And, um, so making sure that you keep close with those prospects who definitely had pain when you had your discovery conversations with them. Um, but recognizing that they may not necessarily transact initially. And then, um, Just repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. The, the other thing I would add, one of the concepts that we have, like Atrium, is in the situation that I'm describing right now, where the traditional way that organizations try to use data to, to manage sales teams is using horizontal analytics software, whether it's reporting in the CRM or like, you know, legacy business intelligence software or what have you, versus dedicated software that is focused on using metrics to improve the performance and, manage, uh, sales reps.

And so just you have to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat that there's a new way of going about things that like, that they should change the way that they think about that. Uh, and then when you find people. Our kind of live in the future already is one of the phrases, , that we, that we use to describe this in our sales team.

Like when you find people who are already in the future with us, you really gotta grab a hold of them and hold on, Titan. So one of the things that we talk about at Atrium is we call it the lifetime value of the human L T V H. Um, so when you find those people who really get the new. Of, of approaching, of approaching the market and approaching the solution.

Um, you wanna hold onto them tight. You wanna make them as successful as possible from a customer success standpoint. And then as, as they go on to other organizations, you wanna keep track of them. And because they'll buy again, they'll advocate for other people. You wanna make them famous. Um, as one of our board members like to say, likes to say, You wanna put 'em in the Pope Mobile and, and drive 'em around and, and because it's, it's really a snowball rolling down hill.

And so the more you can grab a hold of that proof and then sh bring it forward to the folks who might not live in the future just yet, um, so they can understand, oh, actually this is the way of doing it. Because this big letter, this, you know, very famous logo and this big title right here is, is using it to improve the way that they go about things and also got promoted , right?

Uh, and got more responsibility as a result of adopting the solution. Man, that sounds like something I'd sign up for. Sure. I'll buy your solution.

specifically as, as you just articulated, you know, oftentimes when you're creating a new category, um, you have to create new budget, right? To, to your point that ATS is a really elegant example of, you know, there was a line item for, um, success factors and now there's a line item for greenhouse or what have you.

Um, anything specifically around creating a new budget or figuring out kind of who the decision maker is. Cuz a lot of times with new categories comes new buyers for me, like an example that comes to mind I always find very interesting is gain. Which really created the category of, of customer success.

And so maybe customer success wasn't even really a function or it was nascent in, in navigating specifically how to get someone to pay in that model, maybe slightly different. Anything that comes to mind there for you?

 Yeah, so I think, um, this is part of the, this is part of the product marketing that organizations do when they construct their sales narrative. Um, which Ariel Jackson at First Round, um, uh, does a lot of writing on this, which is fantastic. Um, and I think that like, one, getting your, your sales narrative really good, including the part of like why do current solutions fail, and then what is the cost associated.

With that because it's the costs in question they can be opportunity costs. Um, and, and so like, those are typically the places where you can take this thing that's a gap, whether they're labor costs or opportunity costs, and then, um, dollarize them in order to shake loose that, like to create new budget for this.

So, um, probably a good example of this would be, oh, we can use my company as kind of, uh, we're pretty close to this. The way that organizations would traditionally try to use data and metrics to manage their teams, of course, is they would use these horizontal analytics solutions. The problem of course, is that sales managers or SDR managers, they're not necessarily very analytical or technical by background, makes sense.

They come from being account exec is SDRs, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't mean that they don't wanna manage biome metric. It just doesn't. It just means that throwing, you know, uh, death by dashboard at them with walls of Tableau is going to be very effective. It's just gonna be a bunch of like spaghetti for them to try to pay attention to.

And so what comes out of that is low performance on their team, right? Low performance on their team, where they, the individuals have. Issues that are identifiable by metric, like this person's win rate is low because their conversion rate out of these stages is problematic. This other rep over here, he just has an activity problem, he's not doing enough work.

And this other rep over here, you know, he's got an issue with pipeline hygiene as indicated by a high number of untouched opportunities. If a manager is not seeing those things, and instead is managing by gut or as we like to joke about managing by horoscope, everybody's win rate is going to be lower than it would be otherwise if the manager was managing effectively biometric.

And so either A, you need to dollarize that, um, that opportunity costs there and ideally in a new, um, in a new category, you, you prove this through your beta customers, your, your lighthouse customers, whatever. And then you, you, um, you case study it as much as possible. Um, and, and if you can, Create a trial situation.

Or you can use like product led, you know, product led sales, um, whether it's product led sales or maybe in a sales assisted motion where the product can deploy in some sort of capacity to indicate that upfront. That can be really helpful. So people have comfort around creating new budget and say, Hey, I'm gonna give you money in exchange for these raised win rates on my AE team, or I'm gonna give you money in exchange for higher performance on my SDR team, because now they're being managed better.

The other thing that you can do as well is oftentimes this will be being done by, um, by humans. In a, in a labor capacity, right? So again, to use like the Atrium example, it might be, hey, you are planning on hiring two more, you know, sales operations analysts in order to pay attention, like to, to interpret these metrics or interpret these dashboards on behalf of, uh, of these, of these managers.

Okay, great. Now you can just hire one of those people instead. And, and they spend 50% of their time on these higher value things as opposed to spending 50% of their time literally just like reading charts for, for sales managers and what have you. And so the important thing is to take that, um, that hidden, uh, hidden loss or hidden budget.

The budget might be salary expense, like I just kind of noted and, and bring that forward and say, Hey, you gimme $25,000 for this piece of software and, you know, uh, $150,000 of salary expense goes away. Or, uh, across. These 30 account executives, if we're gonna raise win rates by, you know, three points from 18 to 21 across this much bookings for your 20 account executives over the years, well, geez, that's, you know, an incremental million dollars in bookings as compared to $50,000 of software.

So like that, that's the mechanism by which you would really bring that home. Um, probably not for the end user or the, like, maybe even like the line of business decision maker, but, but more for the economic buyer like the cfo who's gonna say, All right, show me the actual business case and it better not be sales math , right?

Like dollarizing it such that they, you can go arm in arm with your champion to that person who is responsible for dispersing the funds and, and have an airtight case. That's kind of the way I go about.

 As someone's figuring out the narrative that you just articulated, how do they self-diagnose if it's working? And I think kind of what's particularly challenging when you're just getting going is, and you articulated this a minute ago, which is like you're gonna have a lower conversion rate as you're kind of creating a new category.

It's also very data sparse, right? It's not like you have 50 million in recurring revenue and you can start to take a more analytical bent. And so any thoughts on how a founder should reflect on if the narrative is working or is optimal?

 Yeah. Well, I, I think early on, yeah, you're making decisions under uncertainty and you have sparse data, but you really should be paying attention. But, but sparse be sparse. Data is better than no data. And so early on, even when you're in sales conversations, um, you see this. , right? Um, you, you're having a zoom call with somebody and you're asking them your discovery questions and, and they're really getting into it.

Oh, man. Yeah. That is a huge problem. Yeah, it is really frustrating. Like they're see the hair on the back of their next standup. That would be an example of like your discovery questions are landing, uh, or after your, the discovery part of your conversation, you progress to a, you know, maybe you're going through a couple slides to, to kind of frame what your solution does that you can see that they're really, they're nodding along, right?

They're go uhhuh. Yeah. Right. They're active listening. Those are all like really positive indicators versus someone who's like checked out , they're really not, it's not landing. Um, those sort of things. So like those are kind of very tactical. face to face, ways that you can identify that. Um, it's probably not dissimilar to when, when people are going on dates, you can tell if it's like working or not

Um, and then as you do more and more of those repetitions, then you can start getting into like the metric ways of, of seeing if it's working. And what that would usually indicate is, okay, are we getting to next meetings? Right? Um, you know, are, if there is a, a natural progression in your sales motion where we say, Hey, like use ATM as example, We have a sales assist motion.

One of the cool things about our software is it takes about five minutes to set up, uh, a free account typically, and people will set it up on their own, but typically it happens in the context of a discovery conversation. And so we measure this very, very specifically. The, the proportion of discovery conversations that result in, uh, an Atrium account being set up is indicative of how well the rep.

Uh, does at eliciting pain and revealing to the individual kind of the challenges that they have in their current organization around how they're using data metrics to, to measure their team, um, measure and manage their, their reps. And, um, and if somebody's not doing a great job of that, it'll show up in their, their conversion rates.

Right? Um, typically we, we say that about 80% of first calls will land, will result in a, in a, each account being, being set up there. So we have about a dozen sales reps right now. So if we see variation in that, we know that somebody's maybe having a hard time with their first calls, you can do that with your, your, in like yourself as a founder seller as well.

If you're not getting to second meetings, like, Hey, you know, based on what you're saying right here, Brett, I honestly think it would be fantastic for us to maybe deploy our software with you guys, give you a little bit of a, a taste of what that looks like. Cuz it sounds like, you know, problem A, B and C are, are kind of bugging you.

Um, you know, would you be open to that? And if Brett's response to that is like, Heck yeah, let's go. Right? And there's multiple people who are like, Heck yeah, let's go. All right, that's working. Um, if the response to that is like, eh, I don't know. Let me, let me talk to, let me talk to somebody. Like let me talk to, you know, my, my boss or, or whatever.

Well, you know, that's probably indicating that there's a little bit of like, work to be done that done there, both from a discovery question standpoint. Um, or maybe the narrative or, or what have you, right? So, and then as you get better over, and then it's just an iteration loop, all right, great.

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Peter Kazanjy is the co-founder of Atrium and the author of “Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-To-Market Handbook.” He shares advice for getting in front of customers and nailing your pitch in the early days. 

Founders: Here’s how to get your sales pitch in ship-shape

Peter Kazanjy, author of “Founding Sales,” shares advice for getting in front of customers and nailing your pitch in the early days. 