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.
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Blond: Sales Reps Will Fail If Founders Cannot Close Deals First
“If you as the founder cannot close customers and generate revenue people that sort of specialize in sales will definitely not be able to. There is no one better qualified to acquire your first set of customers than you as the founder.”
Blond: Do Not Hire Initial Sales Reps From Salesforce or Rippling
“If you are hiring your first AE, first AEs number one and two, They need to have seen an early stage startup environment. Do not hire from an extreme example, be Salesforce, but gosh, even today, you know, don't hire from a rep who came from rippling. And join…”
Sam Blond: Generating demand, not conversion rate, is almost always the startup bottleneck
“And I just believe that demand masks a lot of other potential problems and almost all startups. The bottleneck to growing faster is demand. We are constrained by the number of opportunities that we are creating. We are misdiagnosing this as a conversion rate p…”
Sam Blond: Account executives must generate their own demand from day 1 to 1000
“Salespeople should absolutely be responsible for controlling their own destiny in a way, generating their own demand that often manifests through outbound. I think this is true on day one. This should be true on day 1000.”
Blond: Startups should prioritize startup experience over domain expertise when hiring initial AEs
“Where people over index is domain. If you are hiring your first AE, first big AEs number one and two, they need to have seen an early stage startup environment.”
Top sales talent avoids third-party recruiters
“Most of them do not go through a third party recruiter. They want to go somewhere where their reputation precedes them a little bit.”
Blond: Move on from underperforming sales hires who lack effort or attitude
“If the performance isn't there, you sort of default to, okay, what is the effort and the attitude like? And if either are lacking, this is either like a zero time or one time conversation with the person around performance.”
Blond: Assessing early sales hires should take 30 days at most
“I, the number that was coming to mind for me, it almost doesn't matter how long the cycle is with these early hires in particular, I think, 30 days. And in here, you're probably closer to right with your week. Most, you know, many folks say a quarter, many fol…”
Sam Blond: AI Cannot Devise Creative or Unconventional Sales Campaigns
“I think what, at least today, AI does not accomplish that humans still do is this aspect of being creative. You know, the AI isn't going to tell you here is your contrarian or unconventional outbound sales campaign that is different from what everybody else is…”
Blond: Run late-night, small whiteboard sessions for contrarian sales ideas
“At a ten-person startup, Harry, you're the founder, you're gonna be in this meeting, the two sales reps are gonna be in this meeting, and then maybe we have, like, somebody in growth, that person's gonna be in this meeting. So we've got four people in this mee…”
Sam Blond: Picking the Right Startup Defines Career Success More Than Performance
“The reality is the importance of picking the right company it just really defines one's career. I attribute so much of my success to joining the right businesses. Now, like, I was able to perform within those businesses, and, you know, for context, we're talki…”
Blond: Top Sales Reps Outperform Bottom Reps 3x Even in Hyper-Growth
“But what happens seemingly universally, even at the best companies in the world, like Zenefits in 2014, is there are outlier performers That perform at something like three X to the bottom performer. And so you get a team of like 10 people, even when you're in…”
Blond: Startups should always hire two individual account executives first
“The way I start is hire two individual contributor account executives. Those are sales reps. Always start with two.”
Blond: Startups should not hire SDRs before hiring a sales leader
“I don't like hiring SDRs prior to hiring a sales leader. Because they need a lot of hands-on management.”
Blond: Startups must win non-friends customers before hiring sales
“You should have a handful of non-friends and family revenue-generating customers, and a process that you believe is repeatable in terms of generating more of these customers.”
Blond: Test sales candidates by having them pitch their previous company's product
“Oh, I think the prior company is a really interesting one, because I think what's hard about sell me my company, meaning, you know, let's, let's say you sell me 20 VC, right? You're a 20 VC expert, and I'm not. So, you know how to pitch this product better tha…”
Blond: Effective sales hires improve leading pipeline metrics almost immediately
“If you make the right hires, there are metrics that you should start seeing improve almost immediately, regardless of how long the sales cycles are.”
Blond: Having early performance conversations with a hire is a red flag
“If you're having sort of like performance expectation conversations really early on, you know, I think that is a bit of a red flag but you know, not it's not one size fits all, once again.”
Sam Blond: Startups Should Target Outbound in Concentric Circles
“I think the way that startups should be approaching this, first is on who you are targeting, and then how you target them. So who you are targeting, think about the universe in terms of concentric circles. And you want to start with the sort of like closest co…”
Sam Blond: Startups should only offer discounts late in sales cycles to drive urgency
“I think where people make mistakes and salespeople in particular make mistakes is like just defaulting to discounting. This is something that happens very late in a deal and it happens with A very clear trade-off, which is driving urgency to close.”