Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Jordan Van Horn: Founders must explicitly document who NOT to sell to

Jordan Van Horn · 20VC: The Memo: What is a Sales Playbook? Does the Founder Need to Create It? Should the First Sales Hire Be a Leader or a Rep? · Jul 27, 2022 · at 4:51

Jordan Van Horn was not on this episode. A recording of them was played into it, so these are their words but not an appearance on 20VC. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.

Jordan Van Horn, revenue leader at Monte Carlo Data, breaks down the core components required in an early founder-led sales playbook.

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“Also, by the way, it's really important for that founder to document who you're not trying to solve the problem for, because that's going to be a direction of how you actually focus the sales team that you go and hire.”

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Assertion Supported

Monte Carlo reached $1B valuation and 80 GTM employees without HR

“One funny thing about Monte Carlo is we managed to get to like a billion plus valuation. We managed to get to an 80 person go to market team, and we still hadn't hired a recruiter or a head of HR.”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 4:34 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

ARR does not matter in the early days of a startup

“Early days, I don't care at all about what price people pay. ARR doesn't matter at all. There's a hot take from a sales leader early days. I think the only thing that matters is that you're learning and that you have good customers who are good fits that are g…”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 14:15 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Opinion

Dropbox struggled by lacking clarity between consumer and enterprise sales

“I would say that Dropbox did struggle at times with a core identity of whether it was a consumer company or whether it was an enterprise sales company. And so I think that we spent a lot of cycles and we missed a lot of opportunities because we didn't have tha…”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 2:45 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Van Horn starts sales interviews by listing Monte Carlo's operational flaws

“I start every first interview, I don't know if it's a good iron practice or a bad one, but I say like, oh man, we have problems. Like, let me walk you through all of the things that are wrong at Monte Carlo and all the things that we need to fix in the next si…”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 28:11 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Low ASP sales motions should be single-threaded and move quickly

“It doesn't make sense to build like this multi-threaded, overly engineered you know, go to market motion when you have a 4000 dollar ASP. And so for those lower end of the markets, be single threaded, that's fine, but just move quickly because time kills all d…”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 16:39 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Managers should know within 30 days if a new hire fits

“You should know within 30 days about whether someone's going to be a fit or not.”

Jordan Van Horn Aug 17, 2022 ▶ 49:07 Jordan Van Horn: 3 Reasons Salespeople Fail; How to Make a Sales Playbook | 20VC #918 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Jordan Van Horn: Founders must explicitly document who NOT to sell to

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