Rosenberg: Startup founders are too close to product to build sales playbooks
Matt Rosenberg · Matt Rosenberg: Why You Should Not Hire Sales Leaders From Big Companies | E1068 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 4, 2023 · at 11:05
Matt Rosenberg, CRO of Grammarly, discusses sales leadership hiring and early sales playbook construction with 20VC host Harry Stebbings.
0:00 / 0:33exact quote · 33.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“They have superpowers in lots of areas, but my point of view is building a playbook ain't one of them. And let me explain. I think you need a level or a layer of abstraction to be great at building a playbook. Now founders are so close to their business. They're so close to their product. Their language is the language of going out and talking to investors, of talking to pilot customers, and they hear things through that lens. That's not actually the lens through which I think you ought to build a playbook.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Matt Rosenberg
Rosenberg: Never hire early sales leaders with big tech pedigree
“Harry, don't hire anybody from Google. Okay. Don't hire anybody that says on their LinkedIn, ex Google, ex Amazon, ex Facebook. Okay. When they put that on their LinkedIn, they're associating themselves with the success of the business. And it is almost imposs…”
Rosenberg: Hire ex-bankers or ex-consultants as your first sales leaders
“What you're looking for when hiring that sales executive is something very different. The first sales executive. And here's my point of view. You want to hire. An ex banker, an ex-consultant, an ex-lawyer. You don't even necessarily want to hire an ex-sales le…”
Rosenberg: Early sales hires should collaborate rather than compete
“Not with your first two sales hires, not that early. You want collaboration, not competition. You want people to be able to experiment with each other and say, I asked this is the response I get, what do you think? This worked for me, does it work for you? You…”
Rosenberg: Early-stage startup products never sell themselves despite founder claims
“And as much as the founder who sells you into the job says, there's product market fit, we figured it out, it's gonna be glorious, all you have to do is work, walk into the market and it'll sell itself. Well, it never does. It just never does.”
Rosenberg: Custom 20% of a Sales Playbook Determines Success
“There's 80% of commonality. It's that 20% that actually is the difference between winning and losing, and that 20% of the playbook that you really have to build only once you get there, and you understand the business deeply, and you understand the process, th…”
Rosenberg: Early Startups Should Hire Sales Leaders Before Junior Reps
“I think you should be a sales leader. I really do. I mean, I think that the junior rep has a lot of success because they're figuring it out. They're the first one on the ground. And so you want to invest behind that person. The reality is you're trying to buil…”