You Are Salesperson Number 1 (your startup's survival depends on it)
Generated by DALL·E
We’ve had the privilege of meeting many early stage edtech founders since starting Long Term Impact. Many are pursuing a path of independent revenue-driven growth rather than being dependent on round after round of outside capital. We believe there are three key milestones for growing an edtech company in a “third way” that’s not bootstrapping nor hypergrowth:
Raise a modest amount of capital from patient and impact focused investors.
Find product-market and product-sales fit with a lean team.
Reach sustainable profitability through sales instead of relying on larger rounds of financing.
We’ve encountered a big mistake in how early stage founders are spending their limited time, energy, and resources:
No one on the founding team has fully embraced being “Salesperson #1”
Without anyone on the founding team being Salesperson #1, we believe that the startup will likely fail to reach the three milestones above – specifically, they will reach the end of their runway before finding enough product-sales fit to break even.
What is “Salesperson #1”?
Being Salesperson #1 is not just about performing certain sales activities and tasks. It is wholeheartedly and enthusiastically adopting a new professional identity. Being Salesperson #1 means that your core purpose, primary contribution, and most satisfying feelings of progress are now centered on figuring out how to gain revenue.
I totally understand if this makes you flinch or feel uncomfortable. Before I started Goalbook, I was a programmer, special education teacher, district administrator, and an introvert. I was extremely fearful and reluctant to do anything that had to do with sales – it felt self-promotional, money-driven, and inauthentic to my own self-concept. I had to learn quickly that being “Salesperson #1” didn’t have to be about greed, wealth, or self-interest. Instead, by going out and building relationships with potential customers through sales, I became more and more convinced of the need for our product and its potential impact. I also came to grips with the fact that if we couldn’t figure out sales, Goalbook wouldn’t survive long enough for us to achieve any meaningful level of impact in the first place.
But, our product isn’t ready to sell.
The reasons we’ve heard most often from founders around why no one is being “Salesperson #1” are:
Our product isn’t ready to sell
We are focused on getting the product right first
We still need to build some highly requested features
Yes, product development is a mission critical activity. Yes, a better product can capture more of the market than a weaker one. Yet in most of these conversations, I suspect that these reasons are less about the product and more about why sales is not being prioritized at all. A key question that comes in my mind during these conversations is, “is it really the product that’s not ready to sell, or is it the founders?”
I didn’t believe Goalbook was ready to sell, but it was.
I’ve made this mistake too. During the first year of Goalbook, Justin and I were struggling to sell our founding product. Late in 2012, while attending a conference for Directors of Special Education, I noticed that any session that mentioned the words “Common Core” and “IEPs” had standing room only crowds with palpable levels of stress and anxiety in the air. The nearly-national rollout of new learning standards and assessments was imminent and administrators were charged with ensuring that students with special needs and the teachers supporting them weren’t left behind.
I was convinced that there was a product opportunity here and immediately after returning from the conference began working on a prototype with some members of our early team. It wasn’t long before we had a rough sketch of the UI and an Excel spreadsheet with some sample Common Core aligned content. I assumed that the next step was to start having our engineers build a working MVP.
So naturally, I was horrified when Justin told me that he was going to set up a demo with the Chief of Special Education at the one large school district where we could get a warm intro. I remember saying something to the effect of, “Demo what?! No you’re not. AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET IS NOT A PRODUCT!”
Justin showed that spreadsheet anyway. In hindsight, I am thankful he did because in that demo we learned that the district had purchased a similar product, how much they spent on it, and the specific reasons they were dissatisfied with it. We even got a verbal commitment that they would purchase ours instead once we could deliver a working product.
I can’t tell you the level of motivation and validation I got from that sales meeting. We weren’t just building an MVP now. We were building an actual product that this district needed and was going to buy. We knew what they wanted and understood why even our bare-bones web application was going to be more impactful for them than their existing solution.
This meeting kick-started our product-sales fit journey, and that was even more important than the incremental revenue of this one deal. We now had a real conversation with a real decision maker, better understood their pain point and how much we could charge, and began iterating on how to best communicate our unique value proposition and demo.
You are the salesperson your startup has been looking for
No matter your current level of confidence and experience in sales, I can assure you that if you are willing to take the plunge, you will be the most effective salesperson for your startup. You will bring unique and unfair advantages that no professional salesperson will have:
No one will be more authentically passionate about your product and the buyer.
No one will be more driven: sales isn’t just your job, it’s a matter of survival.
No one has authority over the whole company: your insights from sales can impact decisions across all aspects of your business.
Are you ready to become “Salesperson #1” and find product-sales fit?
We hope to share some more tactical guidance on finding product-sales fit for early stage edtech startups in future posts. But there is one thing I can tell you with certainty today:
The only way to start finding product-sales fit is by trying to sell your product.
It’s learning by doing and you can do it! But if you feel like you need a bit more guidance or just need more convincing, I wholeheartedly recommend you watch the two talks below. I’ve found them deeply insightful, empathetic, and actionable in the transition to being Salesperson #1.
How to Sell – Tyler Bosmeny (Co-Founder and CEO of Clever)
Founder-Led Selling – Pete Kazanjy (Entrepreneur and author of Founding Sales)
– Daniel
