11 Surprising Truths About Early-Stage Startup Sales

Rushing too quickly to validate in the market can often be an ill-fated activity.

Hint: It suggests you're likely falling victim to bias rather than learning (i.e., testing obvious points/truisms). Speed to invalidate/refine is much more important. It's easier to see what's not working than what's ‘sort of’ working. Also, the market is efficient; assume someone else can get there just as fast—unless, of course, it requires purposeful iterations and decisions.

Early customers buy access to the founder before the product.

Hint: After initial validation and traction, you must prove the founder isn't the product. :) Balancing act.

Day one market vision is (almost) never the same vision that takes you to product/market fit.

Hint: Never wait for the product to go to market. See point #2.

Learning/selling to a warm network breeds more false positives and slows you down.

Hint: This is not a representation of the true market, and GTM math is still invalidated—there are more unknowns lurking.

A founder will have the highest win rate.

Hint: Passion/visionary-led sales are the highest performing.

Outbound leads should have a higher contract value than inbound.

Hint: You get to target and pick, and execs seldom inbound - they delegate and have someone else do their research and become educated. If you're not educating, you’ll likely be in a bake-off.

Early on, you can be ‘further away’ from product-market fit when selling to enterprises than when selling to users/small businesses.

Hint: value outside the product, i.e., services, customization, flexibility, etc.

To break into the enterprise, you can't be a comparable.

Hint: Procurement teams will first suggest that the business unit aligns with existing preferred vendors.

More leads is seldom THE sales problem — esp. early on.

Hint: Fewer leads with a high win rate can be just as successful.

A long sales cycle (12+ months) suggests a problem, OR you’re a commodity, which is also a problem early on.

Hint: Enterprises will pay for services and pilots to learn and ensure the best fit — and this is the fastest way for you to get feedback. If you don’t own this, they are paying someone to educate them and set a strategy — you've likely lost the deal.

Traction/success abroad seldom puts you further ahead in the U.S.; it often requires some unwinding.

Hint: Product and vision are shaped by the local market, and seldom does a local market strategy/vision fully translate abroad. The longer you wait to expand into the U.S., the longer it will take to sort product/market fit.