Everything Richard Harris said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Big-Company Sales VPs Frequently Fail As First Startup Sales Hires
“If I go see people hire VPs of sales from places like Oracle, Or some other big company as their first rep, the biggest challenge, the biggest reason they don't work out is because they haven't actually built something from the bottom up. They haven't built th…”
Startups Must Hire Natural Closers Before Building Formal Sales Processes
“So what I think the key piece is bringing on that closer first. You need to bring in the closer who knows how to do it without the process being built.”
Founders Should Delay Formalizing Sales Processes Until Rep Two Or Three
“Yeah, you do want a sales process, but not super early on, not with your first, second, or third rep. Maybe by the time you get to your second or third, you start to figure out what your first process is. And even then I call it a process hypothesis because it…”
Customer Success Teams Inherit False Beliefs That Selling Is Inherently Bad
“Part of the challenge with customer success is they've been fault, been fed a false belief system that sales is bad.”
Startup Sales Lack Universal Playbooks During The First Two Years
“Everything's an experiment the first two years in sales, right? There is no, here's the playbook for everybody.”
Founders Must Personally Lead Early Sales To Understand Their Motions
“1000% founders need to do the first part of sales. I don't know if it needs to be a number, like a million, like it depends on sort of what the, you know, they need to do it so they can understand the motion at the early stage, right? It's the pre series a or …”
Harris Warns Founders That Hired Reps Rarely Match Their Close Rates
“What founders also have to do is they got to realize that their reps are never going to be able to close at their ratio in most cases, because they're the founder.”
SaaS Products Need $2,500 Minimum ACV To Justify Human Sales Touch
“I think it's gotta be, I think it's gotta be a couple hundred bucks a month. It's gotta get to 2500 dollars a year for it to be worthy of some level of touch.”
Harris Advises Tying Equity To Quota Goals To Improve Sales Retention
“There should always be a smidge of equity into this goal, right? Like the more you give back to your team and they feel like they have ownership of the organization, The longer they're going to stay”
Statistically Only One In Three Sales Reps Actually Succeeds
“Statistically, I see about one in three reps actually making it on a regular basis.”
Harris Regrets Declining Gainsight Stock Options In Early Consulting Deal
“You know, the biggest mistake I made in that deal is I should have taken options, but that's, so that is an instance where I got in really early to build.”
Harris Charges Flat $18,000 For Five-Week Sales Training Engagements
“Or for something like that, it's around 18, give or take. Yeah. For the five week. And so, and I don't charge by the hour and I don't charge by the head.”
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