Sell More Faster

From Amos Schwartzfarb, serial entrepreneur and veteran Managing Director of Techstars Austin comes the elemental, essential, and effective strategy that will help any startup identify, build, and grow their customers from day 1

Most startups fail because they can’t grow revenue early or quickly enough. Startup CEOs will tell you their early missteps can be attributed to not finding their product market fit early enough, or at all. Founders overspend time and money trying to find product-market fit and make false starts, follow the wrong signals, and struggle to generate enough revenue to scale and raise funding. And all the while they never really knew who their customers were, what product they really needed, and why they needed it. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and founders don’t need to face it alone. Through expert guidance and experienced mentorship, every startup can avoid these pitfalls.

The ultimate guide for building and scaling any startup sales organization, Sell More Faster shares the proven systems, methods, and lessons from Managing Director of Techstars Austin and sales expert Amos Schwartzfarb. Hear from founders of multi-million-dollar companies and CEOs who learned firsthand with Techstars, the leading mentorship-driven startup accelerator and venture capital firm that has invested in and mentored thousands of companies, collectively representing billions of dollars in funding and market cap. Schwartzfarb, and the Techstars Worldwide Network of more than 10,000 mentors do one thing better than anyone: help startup entrepreneurs succeed. They know how to sell, how to hire people who know how to sell, and how to use sales to gain venture funding—and now you can, too.

Sell More Faster delivers the critical strategies and guidance necessary to avoid and manage the hazards all startups face and beat the odds. This valuable resource delivers:

• A comprehensive playbook to identify product market direction and product market fit
• Expert advice on building a diverse sales team and how to identify, recruit, and train the kinds of team members you need
• Models and best practices for sales funnels, pricing, compensation, and scaling
• A roadmap to create a repeatable and measurable path to find product-market fit
• Aggregated knowledge from Techstars leaders and industry experts

Sell More Faster is an indispensable guide for entrepreneurs seeking product-market fit, building their sales team, developing a growth strategy, and chasing accelerated, sustained selling success.

Foreword xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: Sell More Faster—Why You Need to Read This Book 1

Starting Up 3

About This Book 9

Chapter 1: The W3 (Who, What, and Why) Framework 11

Where the Heck Do I Start? 12

Who are You Selling To? 17

What is Your Customer Buying? 21

Why is Your Customer Buying It? 24

Putting W3 Together 30

Chapter 2: Finding Your First Customers 37

The W3 Framework is Worthless … Until You Test It! 38

The Wrong W3 39

Sales versus Customer Development 46

How to Find Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) 50

Product–Market Direction and the Quest for Product–Market Fit 58

Now It’s Your Turn to Start the Customer Development Process 62

Chapter 3: Your Sales Process—The Road to Repeatability 63

Why Having and Knowing Your Sales Process is Important 65

Teasing Out Your First Sales Process 69

Building Your Sales Model through (Not) Guessing 78

Your CRM Blueprint and Early Sales Model 82

Chapter 4: Getting to Repeatability 89

How Do You Know When You’ve Made a Sale? 90

Value Trading and Pricing 92

Negotiation 101 98

The Process of Making a Deal 101

Chapter 5: Scaling Your Team for Speed 107

Knowing When It’s Time to Hit the Gas on Hiring 107

Your First Sales Hire 110

Finding Repeatability in Hiring 120

Paying Salespeople 131

Chapter 6: Big Businesses are Built after the Sale is Closed 143

Keeping the Momentum Going 144

Customer-Centric Cultures Win 147

The Postsales Process 149

Retention and Growing Your Revenue Base 154

Chapter 7: Now Go Out and Sell More Faster! 159

Take the Long View 160

Implementing What You’ve Learned 160

Revel in Your Passion 162

About the Author 163

Index 165

AMOS SCHWARTZFARB is the managing director of Techstars Austin, an early-stage investor, and startup operating executive with more than 20 years of sales, sales leadership, and strategy experience in digital, advertising, entertainment, and software. Amos's specific expertise is identifying product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. Amos's role in the Techstars organization includes mentoring, recruiting, and investing on behalf of the company around the world.

"Sell More Faster is the sales playbook every startup founder needs to read." —Brad Feld, partner at Foundry Group, cofounder of Techstars

Sell More Faster is the only practical playbook on how to build and scale your sales organization from day one. It will help you find product-market fit, test your sales theories and models, build and scale your sales organization, and develop ongoing relationships with your customers to grow your business exponentially. This book was written for anyone interested in starting, growing, or leading a modern startup so they can hit the ground running with a solid plan and have the foundation to build agile and effective sales teams.

This book is full of advice from successful founders, entrepreneurs, and early-stage leaders on their sales breakthroughs as well as their missteps. The overall approach, called, the W3 Method, is built around three crucial questions: Who are you selling to? What are they buying? Why do they buy? Surprisingly, these basic questions are often overlooked—yet they are critical to building any successful sales organization. The W3 Method equips you with the tools to articulate your strategy with your team, company, investors, and customers.

From the importance of a startup-friendly Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), to hiring and training a sales team, to creating a customer-centric sales culture, every lesson is drawn from the author's years of real-world success in startup sales, investing in, and advising early stage companies. Sell More Faster is the playbook every sales leader and startup founder needs to read.

Praise for Sell More Faster

"Whether you're searching for product-market fit or have found it and are starting to scale, this book will give you the play by play approach of what you need to do to build an awesome sales organization." —Brad Feld, partner at Foundry Group, cofounder of Techstars

"Anyone can sell a known product, brand, or reputation, but if you want to start from scratch, you have to listen to Amos Schwartzfarb." —Aziz Gilani, Managing Director at Mercury Fund

"Reading Sell More Faster will give you the same unfair advantage we had at ScaleFactor which has enabled rocket ship growth in a very short time. Sell More Faster is a must read for every startup CEO and Head of Sales." —Kurt Rathmann, founder and CEO at ScaleFactor

"Sell More Faster is a disciplined approach to figuring out who your customers are and how to build a high performing sales organization. If you're a pre-series A company, this book is a must read!" —Nicole Glaros, chief investment strategy officer at Techstars

"This is a book that all first time entrepreneurs must read. Getting to repeatable selling in an early stage company is by far the biggest challenge startups face and Amos provides an experience-based, prescriptive approach to getting it right the first time." —Rob Taylor, cofounder and CEO at Convey

"Every company needs to figure out who your customers are and how to scale your sales organization. Sell More Faster is the first book which takes that complicated task and breaks it down into a playbook every founder can follow." —David Cohen, co-CEO of Techstars

"When it comes to selling new concepts, Amos is without parallel. Startups and established companies often need to make major pivots in their business. When that happens, you need a talent like Amos who can quickly and successfully sell that new direction to clients." —Jake Winebaum, serial entrepreneur (and founder of Business.com)

"For anyone in sales—which is basically everyone—this book is a must read. I'm recommending this book to every startup founder and sales exec that I meet." —Anna Barber, managing director of Techstars Los Angeles