Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Entrepreneurial sales seeks conditional 'yes' answers to inform product roadmaps

Ryan Petersen · Ryan Petersen on Building Flexport, a Modern Freight Forwarder · Y Combinator · Aug 30, 2018 · at 41:36

Flexport founder Ryan Petersen explains his framework distinguishing early-stage startup selling from traditional enterprise sales.

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“What entrepreneurial sales is very different than regular sales. You want to get to know as fast as you can. So you stop wasting your time and get to the next Yes. You want to get to know within five minutes ideally. Yeah. That's great if someone hangs up on you. Cool. I can go to the next one. Totally. Entrepreneurial sales is the opposite. You want to get to yes. If you're saying, yes, I will ship with you if, and then what's that if statement? And you don't promise it. You just get, now you can bring that back to your product and engineering teams and say, these guys will ship with us if we can.”

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