Founder-Led Sales for US Go-to-Market — Part 1

For years, I have been doing Enterprise Sales, from selling early-stage scrappy products to sophisticated technology frameworks across schools, big retailers, hospitals, and government to Big IT firms. Have learned the nuances of working with multiple leaders from functions like HR, Engineering, Marketing, and CEOs.

But, all in India :D

Recently, our startup took a pivot and we are currently exploring the AI Infrastructure space (a story for some other time). That presented an opportunity for me to learn & build for the US market.

In this multi-part series, I will be sharing my learning & Insights for doing founder-led sales and hopefully beyond for US Market.

In this article, I will be sharing my personal framework for discovering & prospecting to find early adopters in the US.

Please note, this can specifically help Pre-PMF early-stage SaaS companies. For others, hope you find it a good read & do share what has worked well for your space & stage in the comments.

In the first stage, when no one knows about you OR you don’t even have a company name, the simplest thing that you can do is a cold reachout.

In my opinion, Don’t outsource even the reach-out process. It may sound very logical to get an intern to do the monotonous work. But there are some nuances that you learn while doing it like Drafting the messaging, Invalidating your assumptions, discovering your ideal persona, and learning what channel works or not.

I have spent the last 3 months doing 1500+ reachouts. Since then my meeting rate has improvised from 3% to 12%, and a positive response rate from 7% to 20%. ~ 4X growth by spending the same amount of time.

The first step to achieving the above outcome is:

1. Discovering your ICP :

A simple framework that I used to build our first cut of ICP:
- Identify 1–2 problems that you are trying to solve and it would help which persona to succeed in their role and where it fits into their current workflow. For ex — if it's the retention of users, it's for marketing.
- Then, look at the business impact. It helps you trim down your industry and function focus. For example, a privacy-led data platform can be a burning pain point for regulated industries.
- Different product wedges that will help you succeed and how it’s different from existing players. Whether it will be more successful in a specific industry vertical OR market segment.
- And once you have answers to the above question, write down the most important attributes that you look for in your early adopters and their repeatability. For ex, companies looking to hit profitability, looking for innovative solutions to beat the competition, tectonic market shift leading to the need for a solution like yours, etc

Note: Don’t limit your answers only till Buyer Persona & User, look for who are the influencers who can impact decision making. For ex, Compliance for security purpose OR engineering for implementation etc. They generally have a strong vetto

Once you have built the first cut you can use the following tools & channels to find your persona.

• Company Discovery:
  Crunchbase ( Internet companies/Startups) and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (All kinds)
• Persona Discovery:
  - Lead filters on LinkedIn Sales Navigator like Company size, Industry, Function, and Experience level. Add specific designations/tools in the keyword to get more specific results.
  - Be part of direct & indirect competitors' slack & discord communities and find people who are using those products.
  - Look for posts on Twitter & LinkedIn by people who have written content about your competitor's product.
  - Go to platforms like G2 and search for people who have posted reviews about your competitor's product.
  - Go to open forums like Reddit, Hacker News, and high-quality Whatsapp groups and ask to connect with people who are using your competitor products to understand their challenges.
  - Use mentoring platforms like Plato, ADPlist, and Growthmentor to accelerate your process by finding the right mentors.
  - Network & Learn on learning platforms like Reforge, Chief.

Different channels for reach outs that I have seen work well are,

1. For Buyer Persona, LinkedIn is the best tool when you are targeting SMB to Mid-Market and Director & Above Talent. In the case of Enterprises, Emails are preferred more. On average, reach out to 3 people from the same company.
2. If you are trying to get a few entry-level to manager-level users to try out your product, hang around on relevant slack communities for non-technical and Discord for technical persona.

2. Templates for Prospecting:

The most used channels are LinkedIn & Emailers. Sharing some templates that have worked well for me after tons of experimentation:

Before you read further, the most important thing, please don’t spam people with transactional messages & never-ending drip campaigns. You would be surprised to know people are so willing to help you if you reach out with a genuine request.

LinkedIn

First, try with a small cohort of 100 people, experiment with your content, and continue to grow your response rate.

Send a normal request with a note, much-better than Inmails & Sales Nav reachouts.

LinkedIn Request Sample:

OR

A follow-up sequence of two messages post accepting your request is enough. If you don’t get a response, move on.

Because of LinkedIn Limit, a single person can only do 100 reach outs per week.

Emails

First, build a targetted list of companies, you can use Lusha to extract emails. If your ICP is not clear at this stage, don’t try to build the entire list in one go. As you speak with prospects you will build clarity.

Email Template:

A 14-day and 7-message touchpoint campaign with a combination of Email & LinkedIn work well.

I have seen the maximum response on your third message by the 7th day.

I understand that as a founder your schedule could be tight but quality 2–3 hours every day, maintaining an average of 10 companies, and 30 profiles can result in 2–3 meetings every day.

Enough for now.

In Part 2, I will talk about conducting your customer discovery calls and how they can help you get your first design partners. Always remember, the goal of the first call is to get the second call :)

If you wish to connect with me, I am here — @Twitter.