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Richard Harris

Founder and CEO, The Harris Consulting Group · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveauthorhost@rharris415 ↗LinkedIn ↗theharrisconsultinggroup.com ↗

Richard Harris is a B2B and SaaS sales consultant who founded The Harris Consulting Group in 2013 and developed the N.E.A.T. Selling framework. He authored The Seller's Journey, co-hosts the Surf & Sales podcast, and has trained sales teams at companies including Gainsight, Zoom, Salesforce, and DoorDash.

12statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 3.92/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

1 not checkable as stated how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 assertion · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Richard argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Richard Harris on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Richard Harris said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
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…”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 13:19 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 9:25 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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…”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 9:37 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Opinion
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 16:54 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 8:50 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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 …”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 11:22 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 11:41 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 15:19 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Insight
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”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 18:43 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Statistically Only One In Three Sales Reps Actually Succeeds
“Statistically, I see about one in three reps actually making it on a regular basis.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 19:15 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
What-if
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 3:16 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now
Disclosure
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.”
Richard Harris May 8, 2021 ▶ 5:39 Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now May 8, 2021 12m
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