The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 39 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Founders cannot outsource the initial sales playbook to a VP
“I firmly believe so. I don't think you can outsource that to a new VP of sales from the outside. I mean, I hear you talk about this all the time. I hear the range of opinions, but unless a founder can do that, I don't think that they're going to understand the…”
Hire top BDRs from second- or third-place market competitors
“Go to a company that's not number one in their category. Who's the number one BDR at a second and third place company? Cause that's hard. And if you have a great product and you bring that person into your environment, they'll do really, really well.”
Owner pays BDRs on closed deals and AEs on successful go-lives
“Our BDRs only get paid on close one business. Alignment. Our account executives only get paid when their customers go live.”
Most revenue leaders do not understand their own P&L
“They don't even understand it. They don't know where to start. They think it's the domain of finance, and finance gives them a headcount number, and they say, you have 17 reps, and you have to do this, and they say, okay.”
Owner does not conduct traditional pipeline or deal reviews
“So we don't do pipeline review. We don't do deal review because you can just see it on a dashboard. It's all programmatic.”
Norton: Owner reps are 3-4x more productive than field sales competitors
“And our competitors who run that model, we're anywhere between like three and four times more productive on a per rep basis than most companies.”
AI will increase demand for sales reps by spawning new companies
“And I think AI is going to drive so much more company creation that there will be a consistent demand For these roles, because the economics of the roles get better. There's more companies that need sales reps.”
Norton: Staff software engineers do not need in-office work
“I don't think you need your staff software engineers in an office to do their job well.”
Owner's in-person sales reps broke company records for EMRR sourced
“The two new ones broke the record for first month, the newest BDR in person broke the record for first month, and then the SDRs that are at month two and three both broke the previous records. This is the purely in-person team.”
Adding transaction volume estimates to sales comp boosted Owner's MRR per deal
“When we changed comp to include EGBV, which means they are going to be more focused on the higher value customers for the business, our estimated MRR on a per deal basis went up pretty significantly.”
Owner.com runs a 2:1 BDR-to-AE ratio in outbound sales
“On the outbound side, we have two BDRs for every account executive.”
Owner spent millions on an organic YouTube strategy that drove few leads
“We hired people that manage The YouTube experience for like the biggest creators in the entire world. And we were paying millions of dollars for this organic strategy when it was driving like a handful of leads every single month.”
Debating sales vs. marketing lead attribution leads to local maximas
“This is something that a lot of folks get wrong as they like squabble over attribution. They're like, oh, this is sales generated. This is marketing generated. And you end up at these local maximas.”
Owner's average sales cycle is under one week
“A lot of one call closes, but average sales cycles under a week.”
Norton: Time to lose drags on sales cycles more than time to win
“And the thing That drags on your total sales cycles is actually time to lose more often than it is time to win.”
Owner scaled from $2.5M to $40M ARR in under three years
“We're at, like, 40 today. Under under three years.”
Owner's customer acquisition costs are falling rapidly as it scales
“It's falling pretty rapidly for us. We're getting more and more efficient as we grow, but we've also made tremendous investments upfront.”
Norton: BDRs waste 30-50% of time on manual data research
“If you look at most BDR teams, like, 30 to 50% of their time is just Flush down the toilet with work that a data ops team should be doing for them.”
Norton: Building a great GTM organization is mostly systems engineering
“So much of building a great go to market organization is systems engineering.”
Norton: Revenue leaders fail by solving problems surface-level and reasoning by analogy
“I think one of the biggest challenges that revenue leaders have is we solve things at a surface level. And oftentimes we just like reason by analogy.”
Norton: Sourcing Talent Must Be a Core Responsibility for Revenue Leaders
“Revenue leaders need to see this as one of the most core components of their job. Oftentimes they look at this as the realm of TA, and it's the talent team's job to bring them candidates. Let's post jobs, we'll put it on a bunch of boards, and then we'll see w…”
SMB sales hiring should weigh 70% to 80% on intrinsic DNA
“I'm hiring SMB reps, so I'm like, 70% DNA and mindset. I just want people who have a professional Performance track record of excellence, and I don't care if it was sales or the valedictorian, captain of a sports team, first chair tuba at their, like, you know…”
Norton: Candidate hesitation on direct manager references is a massive red flag
“And now really pressing on, like, no, no, no, I need your last two direct managers. Maybe not the one they work for now, for obvious reasons, but being really specific there, and if there's any hesitation, or oh, well, like, I don't know if I can get in touch …”
Norton: Bad behavior during employee onboarding only worsens over time
“If you're already treating this person, you're like supposed to be in your best behavior in weeks, you know, in the early weeks and months, and if that's how that person acts today, then it's only going to be worse later.”
Scripting sales basics offloads cognitive load for higher-level tactics
“Scripting the basics enables you to offload that cognitive work. If I'm just thinking about where to take this call next, and I don't have a pattern that I've repeated all of these different times, I'm spending all of my cognitive load on low-level stuff.”
Owner requires new SDRs and BDRs in-office five days a week
“All of our new SDR and BDR hires are five days a week in office in Toronto now.”
Mobile-enriched leads drive a 13% to 16% decision-maker connect rate
“But now our call to DMC is like, 13 to 16%.”
Inbound account executives at Owner close $250,000 in ARR every month
“Our inbound account executives close 250 K ARR every month.”
Sales leaders should directly test new sales ideas on calls themselves
“The best way to figure out if they work is just doing myself.”
Owner.com finds more sales hiring success with 2-4 years experience
“We haven't had as much success hiring senior reps, like reps with a whole bunch of experience. We've actually had more success hiring people In like a two to four year experience range.”
BDRs will not perform manual lead research in five years
“Account research, lead prep, lead research, figuring out who to call. I think it's insane that companies do that today, that they have BDRs doing manual lead research.”
Norton: Toast has exceptional GTM execution and customer practices
“I have a lot of respect for Toast. Good product craft. Their GTM execution is really good. They operate in a pretty, like, respectful way, too. Like, we don't find Toast doing shenanigans to their customers.”
Norton: Early Owner Job Posts Generated 1,200 Applications via Personal Brand
“In the early days of owner, I could post a role We would get 1200 applications. We would get 60 to a 100,000 impressions on every single job post I put up”
Owner.com gets 95% of SMB leads mobile-enriched via Data Lane
“Now we also use this company called data lane. They're like zoom info for SMB essentially. And through data lane, we get 95% of our leads mobile enriched.”
Owner.com shifts revenue mix from 70% outbound to 60% inbound
“When I started, we were 90% inbound, and then at some point we were 70% outbound. And then we hired a new head of growth who's done an amazing job, and now we're 60% new inbound”
Owner.com targets four booked demos per AE daily
“We aim to have roughly four demos booked per AE per day with three held.”
Owner.com tested Connected TV ads on Amazon Prime without success
“We just tried CTV and didn't have a ton of success with it. Connected TV. So running pre-roll ads on Amazon Prime or the, like, set-top boxes.”
Owner uses Momentum to automate Salesforce field entry from call transcripts
“So we use Momentum that looks at the transcript of every single sales call, and it fills in the Salesforce fields for the rep. It fills in their opportunity record, it updates the account, the person, it says whether or not the event was run or not, all of tha…”