Pete Kazanji explains to Rob Walling how founders can overcome the awkwardness of closing deals through deliberate practice.
Insight
Kazanjy: Software never sells itself outside very thin PLG use cases
“People will just buy this on their own, which like is not the case. Never is the case. Unless you're talking about like a very, very thin kind of like PLG use case.”
Insight
Kazanjy: The natural-born salesperson is a myth; selling is pure practice
“One of the things that drives me nuts is how people will tell folks like, oh yeah, there's born sellers. And I think that's BS, right? I think it's just practice.”
Insight
Kazanjy: Founders should lead sales until reaching $1M to $3M ARR
“What the founder would need in order to get from Zero to that first, like one, two, three million dollars of ARR before you want to professionalize the sales organization with like dedicated sales management and sales leadership and what have you.”
Insight
Kazanjy: Most sales organizations fail at managing by quantitative metrics
“Most organizations really suck at measuring and managing by metric. I was pretty okay at it because I'm kind of a sales nerd, but most organizations are pretty poor at that. And most sales managers and sales leaders say, as we kind of like to joke, like don't …”
Insight
Kazanjy: B2B SaaS founders must treat time, not prospects, as scarce
“The thing that's a big, kind of, mind shift in sales is that the thing that you have scarcity of is your time. You don't have scarcity of prospects, and so oftentimes what ends up happening is people get really wrapped around the axle, like chasing opportuniti…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kazanjy: Early-stage SaaS first-meeting win rates range from 10% to 15%
“If you have a 25% win rate, which is really good. Like, you know, if you win a quarter of the deals, like first meetings that you take, like, that's a really good win rate. Most early stage, especially in new categories, it's gonna be a lot lower than that bec…”