WEBVTT
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Rob, welcome back, man.
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Good to see you.
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Good to see you.
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We got to hang out in person for about 30 minutes while you were in New England.
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Yeah.
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New England turns out beautiful in September.
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We did uh one of my buddies got married in Maine and uh swung through New Hampshire.
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And uh can confirm that Rob has a great deadlifting, weightlifting setup uh in his basement.
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It's just basically behind him.
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So anybody that that wasn't totally convinced can be can verify.
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And anybody who's in New Hampshire ever, for whatever reason you might be in New Hampshire, you're welcome to come by, shoot me a note.
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Happy to happy to show it off to you.
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Yeah.
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Um and worth it.
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Worth it in September, probably October too.
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It's really, really pretty.
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Um well, hey, Rob, this week we are talking about scaling sales.
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So uh I I think this one will be um relevant for a lot of folks, but why don't we talk about like specifically why this one's on your mind?
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Uh the the post is called When Are You Ready to Scale Sales Sales, uh Scaling and Failing Sales.
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Um, Rob, why is this one on your mind?
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And what are we gonna get into today?
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Uh so I've had a couple conversations with like real sales advisors.
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I don't consider myself a real sales advisor, I consider myself a founder who helps figure out product market fit for the like zero to one stage, um, which includes selling as a piece of it, but it's not sales per se.
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And so I've talked to traditional sales advisors, like real sales advisors who are the people you plug in when sales works.
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And whenever they hear what I do, they're like, oh, yeah, you're the thing that people need when they come to me, uh, most of the time.
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And so one person liked sent it, sent it like very crisply to me, where he said, I'm getting introduced to startups who want to scale sales, and almost zero of them are ready for scaling sales or for a sales advisor.
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And so that made me think there's like an interesting thing because I always talk about sales, we always talk about sales, but um but there's a kind of like difference between the kind of sales that we're talking about and the kind of sales that's in a lot of founders' minds when they think about sales.
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When you think about sales, you might think about hiring people and scaling and that kind of thing, which comes at some point, but there's this like figure it out stage that's earlier, where if you try to do the scaling things in the figuring it out stage, you first of all, it just like doesn't work, but it's brutal in the way it doesn't work.
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And so hopefully this post gives you some intuitions about when you should be thinking about the kind of scaling sales versus the selling to learn type stage.
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Um, and then just generally how to think about scaling um uh what it is, what it isn't.
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Yeah.
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And we we see those types of questions from founders in the in the community.
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It's like, okay, I've maybe I've I've done some early sales and I'm wondering like who my first sales hire should be, or how I know when the right moment is to bring in somebody external.
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Do I, you know, when I do that, do I stop doing founder-led sales?
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Like what's the what's the balance here with the evolving organization?
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Um, we're gonna get into the concept of the case study factory model um and how that answers the question of uh how does the company evolve basically and specifically in the direction of sales.
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Um, but Rob, one thing I want to get into is like you you allude to this.
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What breaks when you do it wrong?
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Let's talk about the example of um, you know, maybe there's founders that are listening who they haven't really started thinking about bringing on sales hires, or maybe they've thought about it, they haven't done anything about it.
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Like, what's at risk here if they uh you know go too early?
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Yeah, so I'll I'll tell what my story was here because I thought, right, I I had the theory that hiring sales reps causes sales to scale.
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Right?
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It hiring sales reps causes sales.
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And um and I figured that, okay, I'm not a good salesperson, but if I hire a good salesperson, they will be able to sell better than I can.
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And like, and so and so this was this was very early on.
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But what happens is that when you hire sales reps or sales leaders or whatever it is, before you've figured it out, and we can talk about what figure it out means, um, they will do sales things.
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They will send emails, they might even book meetings, they will do a lot of work, you'll and you will be doing a lot of sales things and helping them that feel like they are productive things.
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You'll be debugging messaging, you'll be figuring out comp plans, you'll be figuring out all this kind of stuff that all has the like outward appearance of leading sales, scaling sales.
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And what will happen is you'll wind up, this is again, this happened to me, and I've seen it happen way too many times, is um you'll start to have the CRM looks starts to look promising.
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You'll be able to say, Oh, we have a million in pipeline, we have 10 million in pipeline.
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I heard recently someone who's like, we have 500 million and LOIs.
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Cool, that means zero, right?
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And so um, but what happens is you um you have all this stuff that looks promising, and then again, my experience, seen it a bunch of times, each deal starts extending or disappearing, or you get ghosted.
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And it feels like it, well, it was after the demo, it was after a group demo.
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It was at it was it felt like we were talking, we were talking about piloting, you were talking about da-da-da-da-da.
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We were like, and so they are a bunch of ones that like the feeling is oh, it's just around the corner.
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But that it feels like that corner keeps getting pushed out, pushed out, pushed out, pushed out.
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And at some point, and this you'd always knew this deep in your soul, but at some point you realize or you uh start asking yourself, was any of this real?
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Am I being gaslit here?
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Did I like what is actually happening?
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And so that takes months, like non-zero months.
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It can take it, I think it took me like nine months to have that realization, because as as demonstrated, I am very slow at on the uptake.
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Um, and so um uh but like this, it's a brutal kind of failure because uh it seems like everything is coming into place.
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You have the messaging docs, you have the sales process docs, you have the CRM, you have all this kind of stuff.
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And then it just all evaporates and you start to question everything uh up until then.
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So that's why you don't want to try to scale sales before it's ready.
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And if you if you bring on, like these sales advisors will tell me, if they bring a sales advisor on, the sales advisor is not designed for this stage.
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They're designed for a stage where sales like works somewhat repeatedly, and we've seen end to end it works.
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We know that it's not everything is not a variable.
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Same thing with the sales hire, right?
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Like when you're early stage, everything is a variable.
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Who's our ICP?
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What's our messaging?
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What's the product?
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Like, what's the right feature to lead with?
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How do we dump everything is a variable?
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Uh, and that is like not a stage for somebody who is like a a even like a top sales rep.
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I've had uh talk about in here a friend, a friend poached the top sales rep from a startup, like celebrated the person the sales rep did not close anything for him, like in in six or nine months or whatever, then then went on to the next startup and became the number one sales rep there too.
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And so it's just like like this is a founder stage.
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It's the the kind of pre-physics stage when you're kind of figuring out the physics.
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It is it and in that stage, if you try to scale something or what or try to do traditional things in that stage, it just won't work.
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Yeah.
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That not not that, excuse me.
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Not that specific example.
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Um, but I think there is something in the the founder mentality, some not it for all founders.
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Um, like there's the founder whose instinct is just like go find demand, sell to demand, grow that demand.
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Like that person's probably not thinking, when do I bring in somebody to sell for me because their instinct is to sell.
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The there's another type of founder, probably I'm closer to this bucket, um, which is like, okay, I do the I do the product thing.
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Like I do the, you know, I build the thing, and somebody else is the one that like figures out how to sell the thing that I build.
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Um and I think what what you've really laid bare here in like recent years, basically, is like those things are coupled.
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Uh they they can't be uncoupled in the zero to one or zero to ten kind of like that really super early stage.
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Um, let's talk about when what you're looking for.
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Um, before we get into you know how it works and stuff, we've talked about okay, yeah, it there's a lot at risk.
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What should founders be looking for in their business to know where they are and the yeah, don't even think about sales advisor up until it's time, like you know, pull you know, start reaching out.
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Um yeah, so I would say the um there I have the three-part test here, which is um you need a repeatable case study, which is one kind of person trying to do one kind of thing but blocked for one specific reason, where you give them your product or they pull your product out of your hands, and they are successful at doing that thing.
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That's the case study, and that needs to repeat, right?
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Like it's not just one person, it's one person who represents a bunch of other people doing roughly the same thing.
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That's that's thing one.
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Thing two is you need to demonstrate that you can or you you need to basically have a factory for repeating that case study, where step one is you can find those people.
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Step two is you can turn them into customers.
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Step three is you can turn them from customers into retained customers who don't churn and ideally erratic.
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Um, and so, right, like so you need the case study, you need the steps in the factory to be figured out and non-magical.
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And the third thing is when I say you need to know these things, I mean real knowledge, not theoretical knowledge.
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You and I, and anybody are the kind of person who listens to this, can very easily write down a repeatable case study, a thing that looks like a repeatable case study and a thing that looks like a process for sales and whatever.
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And those will by default be wrong if we write them down ourselves.
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We have to basically demonstrate the repeatable the repeatability of both the case study and the factory by closing an increasing number of customers month on month for a couple of months.
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Once we have that kind of thing coming together, then it's like, okay, we've gone from the the the there are infinite variables or there are a bunch of different variables and questions to now the physics are fairly straightforward here.
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We know the mechanics of all of this kind of stuff.
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And it's now more about systematizing things and like, and we can talk about the kind of what scaling actually means, but it's less of like a figuring out, like we don't know, and more of a okay, it works.
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Now how do we do more?
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Yeah.
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The the way you uh write about it and it you lay out, I recommend we'll put the link to Rob's uh Substack in the in the show notes.
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Um the way that you talk about it in there is like basically, you know, you start out, you're building your factory while you're selling, essentially.
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Volume starts to come through that factory, and um it the vol as the volume is increasing, like here's what you write.
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And as people come through your factory at a higher rate, you'll have volume to debug where these makeshifts makeshift machines break, like the machines in the factory.
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We'll talk about that in a moment.
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Um, and then two, be forced to redesign the machines to handle more volume.
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Eventually, even with these machines in place, you'll run out of your own capacity to run them at all.
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And so you'll hire people to run the machines.
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What is uh, Rob, you've you've been through this where um like that.
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I assume like the machine in the case of your first startup was like you running it, was like something like delivery through Excel or like through uh Google Sheets that you were, it was like the way that you were delivering the product to the customer, like that was a machine.
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Um, but what did it as the volume is coming through?
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Like, what are the machines, like what is a founder's experience likely to include?
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What are some of the things that they're likely to be kind of like duct taping together in order to keep the machine run or to keep the factory running before they start to bring in other people to professionalize?
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So I think, yeah, I think like zooming out the case study factory, the case study and the factory, I think are the like most important things that I have created that uh that like nobody cares about.
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Like nobody, I like when I say nobody, we have two listeners to this podcast.
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I have like 40 readers on Zubs.
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Nobody like every time I describe this to somebody, they're they just their eyes glaze over.
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This is a me problem because these are super important.
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The case study in factory, they tell you exactly where to focus at any one point in time.
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They are the most important models that I have created.
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And so if you don't, if you're listening, you don't like understand it, or if at some point it clicks for you of what these things are, please tell me because I am doing a horrible job communicating this.
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Um, and so and so case study, so case study factory is again like the case study is the thing your business produces.
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You your business is a system or a factory that produces as its output not product, not revenue, but case studies.
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And those case studies need to be as close to identical to one another as possible.
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Uh, because if there's like a bunch of variants in different case studies, you can't, it's hard to build a factory, one factory that can put a lot of volume when everything changes, every variable changes each time something new comes through the factory.
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So you want rough like uh uh standardization uh through there.
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So it's one case study that it produces, or you know, and it produces that at a high volume.
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That's what a startup is.
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And when you think of a startup that way, you understand how stuff moves through the factory, right?
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Customers pull themselves through the factory versus you having to push them through the factory, convince them, persuade them, do all this kind of twist their arms.
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Um, and it tells you where to focus at any one point in time, which is what's the bottleneck or the constraint in the factory.
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If you know theory of constraints, you can basically uh use that to say, okay, where can I focus that will cause the rate of case study production to increase in the factory?
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There's only one place that the constraint let's focus on whatever that is.
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Okay, that's the case study factory thing.
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Now, early on, you have none of this.
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You have nothing.
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I you don't even have a hypothesis.
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I killed that last week.
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That's gone.
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Um and so what you have to do is you have to find an anecdote of somebody who's trying to do something stuck and will pay you.
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That's your kind of like first case study looking thing, and it's probably not even complete yet.
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And you're like, okay, cool, I need to go and repeat that a couple times.
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Now, when when you're in this stage, it doesn't make sense to create a bunch of machinery or hire machinists, right?
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Machinery would basically be the like uh the the process, the sales process, a very detailed and documented sales process.
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Doesn't make any sense to do that at this stage because you don't really know what the repeatable case study is.
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You've just done it maybe once or 0.75 times or something like that.
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Like it's you haven't done it yet.
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And so at this stage, what matters is figuring out what the repeatable case study actually is.
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And so you want the least amount of machinery possible so you can be super flexible when you encounter a person who has some form of pull, and you can say, okay, right, like I can just construct one slide about how we can help them and see what they do with that.
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Right.
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And so that at this stage, you you do not want to have an a fancy factory.
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And having a fancy factory at this stage when you haven't figured out what pull really is, will guarantee you get the factory wrong.
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Yeah.
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It's uh you're actually, you don't realize this because it feels productive, but you're creating a massive liability because actually deconstructing the factory in order to meet pull is hard.
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It's it's it's kind of like almost emotionally hard.
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But it's it's hard for like you'll you'll have pieces that are um I'm thinking about product right now.
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Like you'll you'll build a product that you're then trying to sell, you'll realize that parts of the product work, other parts don't, but maybe because of the architecture of them, they're hard to pull apart or something like that.
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Um, but even in the sales process, you're saying like there's also things that you're putting together.
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And early, early on, the goal is like maintain maximum flexibility while you are figuring out what is the thing that the customer is going to pull through your through your factory.
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Yeah.
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And like if you if you take something, like there's a startup I know where their second meeting in the sales process when they're like early stage was an ROI meeting.
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Like, and and which sounds right, like it's something you would see in a kind of functional case study factory, maybe, well, like a post-product market fit company.
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But and so what they were doing was they were basically interrogating people to create an ROI model that wasn't relevant at all in the decision making.
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They were like totally wasting the second call because they were imposing some machinery on something that did not require machinery yet, and we did not know what effective, right?
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Like you're trying to scale something before it works.
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Um and so um super interesting in part because it was probably the right advice for a certain type of company.
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Um and uh it it probably came out of a playbook that worked for a company where that was an important part of what their factory was.
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But not that doesn't mean uh especially early.
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It might be that you evolve in that direction eventually.
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It might be that you evolve in a completely different direction that never requires the ROI.
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But you know, like the a grizzled salesperson that's you know sold hundreds of millions of dollars in SaaS might might not realize that that piece of advice was right for their context and not right for the startup context that they were they were helping with.
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Yeah, and and going back a couple weeks, right?
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Because despite like or maybe it wasn't.
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Maybe they maybe that was never actually a a a thing there.
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It just happened to be a part of a sales process at some point that that like you know we can logic ourselves into it being causal when it's actually not, uh which is and so that's again, these are all reasons why I really, really like this case study.
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Please help me evangelize.
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I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with this.
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But it it like when you the pull, pull and the case study factory, like all of this stuff kind of like comes together.
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And so, um, but but so we were just talking about how early on, before you actually know how the like how the flow of the factory should work, uh, it doesn't make sense to build machines and to do to do a bunch of things to impose a bunch of it makes sense to retain flexibility.
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Now, as you start, let's say you get to three customers, you get to five customers, and you start saying, okay, you know, maybe two of those were relevant, but three of them look quite similar.
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And I'm actually starting to see that there is a repeatable thing here.
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There's a repeatable case study here, possibly.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:13.440
It's like, okay, great.
00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:20.400
And at this point, you might be delivering manually, you might be delivering as a service, you might be like, there's a variety of things that could be happening.
00:21:20.559 --> 00:21:29.759
Your sales process may just be like a slide, or it might just be you flying out in person be like, because you can't, right?
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:35.440
Like you just spend a day with the person and they buy for a hundred bucks a month and like none of the economics makes sense, but whatever.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:41.680
It's it's just you're kind of doing whatever it takes to figure out what the repeatable case study actually is.
00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:42.880
Okay.
00:21:43.519 --> 00:21:49.599
But now it's starting to come together and you're starting to like crank up volume a little bit.
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:58.160
You go from a couple calls a week of which none of them convert, to like, oh wow, we're starting to actually convert more and more people.
00:21:58.319 --> 00:21:59.759
And I actually have a sense of.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:10.000
Like most of what I've been doing has been counterproductive here, even while I was trying to be uh, you know, but but I actually know what's going to cause people to buy at this stage, I think.
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.480
And so then you make the sales deck.
00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:18.160
And so, and then you kind of like start to figure out, okay, like, and this is like the machinery.
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:26.000
You make the sales deck, you get the discovery questions roughly right, you get the steps in the sales process kind of roughly right.
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:36.400
And then you kind of have the product coming together, you start to figure out what onboarding is and how to make people get to success, how to make them not churn in a somewhat consistent way.
00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:40.319
You're building, again, it's like a makeshift factory at this point.
00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:53.519
It's still you and slides and a bunch of garbage, but it's it's kind of coming together into a coherent thing that is just not magical and you YOLOing it every single step along the way.
00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:57.440
And this is how the factory starts to come together.
00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:02.000
And if you just see more volume coming into this factory, what happens?
00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:06.319
Oh, your makeshift machines start to break and you start to fix them.
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:18.400
And as you do that, like that's the method by which you go from a, you know, just magical sales process to something that is repeatable and delivery process that's repeatable.
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:27.119
And as you do this and more volume and more volume comes through the system, you're going to become the bottleneck at some point, in some, in some thinking.
00:23:27.279 --> 00:23:29.680
And that's when hiring makes sense.
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:30.880
Okay.
00:23:31.119 --> 00:23:31.839
Fascinating.
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:37.519
So in in the uh until you are the bottleneck, um, not the right time.
00:23:37.599 --> 00:23:40.559
Is that just like a generalizable rule for the hiring?
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:50.079
It's like uh hiring should be as a direct response to a bottleneck in the business that can only be solved by bringing in additional people.
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:51.680
Is that is that true?
00:23:51.839 --> 00:23:53.599
Is that a fair characterization?
00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:57.359
Um I don't have to think about it, but it sounds right.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:58.400
Okay, cool.
00:23:58.559 --> 00:24:02.400
Um and uh in in this case, it's like the first sales higher.
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:09.680
What you would be, you know, one thing you mentioned is uh it's not you're not prescriptive about which is annoying and probably also right.
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:36.480
But you're like, okay, if if the bottleneck in the business is lead gen, then it's uh somebody that looks more like uh has the shape of a BDR is probably a go-to-market engineer or something, but it's like, okay, if the bottleneck in the business is pipeline, it's like getting enough people to talk to us, then hiring an AE who wants to do the sales process, like might not be the right answer.
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:43.440
It might be the right answer if you're like, no, I'm going to like spend, I want to spend all of my time on pipeline.
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:46.240
And so sales is like solved.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.640
And so I want to put a person on that so that I can then go figure out pipeline.
00:24:50.799 --> 00:25:01.119
But what people tend to do at this stage is they just tend to say, okay, it's like, seems like things are repeating, therefore, hire a salesperson, which isn't the answer.
00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:03.200
That isn't the default right answer.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:07.359
It might actually be, no, I can close these quite well.
00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:15.200
I want to build a profitable company and not actually have to hire a ton of people, or I want to figure out how to automate our sales process or something like that.
00:25:15.359 --> 00:25:20.640
And so, right, like it's gonna depend on what the bottleneck is and what you want to do about it.
00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:24.799
Yeah, you've you've written about this in the past through the weird if it didn't work.
00:25:25.039 --> 00:25:31.599
And I think this was actually related to sales criteria or hiring criteria for early sales hires.
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:39.680
Like what are the things that instead of like things that might work, what are what are the characteristics you should be working for that would be weird if they didn't work?
00:25:39.839 --> 00:25:43.519
And I feel like this is this kind of like lasers in on that to a certain extent.
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:52.559
It's like if you're if you're clear on the specific bottleneck, it makes it much more obvious what you should be looking for in a candidate.
00:25:52.640 --> 00:26:10.880
Um, and also the probably the shape of that relationship, whether it's bringing on a full-time hire, whether it's doing, you know, a some kind of like a fractional um how do you think, Rob, what's the difference between bringing on a co-founder and bringing on a like sales hire?
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:34.880
Or like it feels like there's some there in some cases you have like a technical co-founder and the and the business co-founder, or like, you know, that which is like almost sort of a sort of your first sales hire in some ways, but how do how do we, how should we think about the difference between somebody that you consider like, okay, they kind of co-founded this business or they're building it, and somebody that's brought in uh, you know, maybe it's more specific to sales, or I don't know.
00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:36.400
How do you how do you think about that?
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:50.960
Yeah, I think I I I generally think like if the factory isn't built yet, um, or like there the factor there's we don't know the case study or the factory, you have to bring on some somebody at a co-founder level because that is a founder level thing to figure out.
00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:59.680
Once it is once the factory and what and the case study are assembled, it doesn't necessarily need to be a co-founder.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:03.039
You can bring on a co-founder if you want for any variety of reasons.
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:14.319
Um but the but um like hiring a sales rep before the factory and the case study are are assembled uh is like not going to work.
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.119
It's like and it's it I think it's actually a disservice to the salesperson you're hiring.
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:21.680
Um because they're just set up to fail.
00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:22.400
Yeah.
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:25.200
Let's let's talk about um and then we'll we'll wrap.
00:27:25.359 --> 00:27:28.079
Um what should you give?
00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:44.799
How do you bring on that first sales hire um to help them be successful to avoid the, you know, how how do you like you've identified that you're the bottleneck, you know that the solution to that particular bottleneck is to increase capacity, like bring in somebody.
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:46.480
How do you set them up for success?
00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:47.200
What are you giving them?
00:27:47.359 --> 00:27:48.160
What are you handing them?
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:49.119
Yeah, what do you do?
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:59.839
Yeah, so so thing one I would recommend is to actually find a sales advisor who ideally is is uh pilled in pull, who is who who knows the the theory.
00:28:00.079 --> 00:28:17.599
Um and what that the reason is just like you get a VP of sales who's done this a bunch of times, scale from one to ten plus uh a bunch of times, they're gonna know a bunch of stuff about onboarding successfully and like and hiring that um you won't.
00:28:17.759 --> 00:28:22.720
Um, and it's just like helpful stuff that uh will save you six months.
00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:27.200
And so I just recommend finding a sales uh a sales coach for for that stage specifically.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:31.119
And then second is, and what they will almost certainly tell you is like, okay, cool.
00:28:31.279 --> 00:28:33.920
First, we need to have it like a process documented.
00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:48.160
Basically, the machine, the machines that you have developed need to have instruction guides, and you need to follow those instruction guides yourself to prove that they work, and then so that you can then hand off the instruction guides and they will also work.
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:59.920
And um, and yeah, probably a bunch of other things like have strong opinions on who you should hire, uh, uh like what kinds of sales reps you should hire early on, which we can maybe come back to if anybody's interested in the future.
00:29:00.079 --> 00:29:03.519
But uh in general, those are the these those are my recommendations.
00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:04.480
Awesome.
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:12.400
Um well, anything before we wrap, Rob, that you would you would add here, uh, other takeaways, things that founders should do for this?
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:35.039
Do with Yeah, so I like I I end with the scaling question, which is basically once you have a case study and kind of like a rough factory, like scaling is a function of just asking one question again and again and solving it, which is what's the one thing that is currently limiting the amount of volume coming through our case or or exiting our case study factory?
00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:38.400
And what do we need to do to eliminate this constraint?
00:29:38.880 --> 00:29:43.359
That one question is the question for the scaling stage.
00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:48.559
And you just keep asking it, and it's almost it's whack-a-mole with constraints.
00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:53.119
Uh, and and that's how you and that that question causes you to then hire, right?
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:57.519
It causes you to then bring on advisors, it causes you to raise money sometimes, right?
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:04.720
Like it's it's the thing that will cause all of the downstream actions that lead to the behavior that we see as scaling.
00:30:05.599 --> 00:30:14.000
Yeah, we'll have to have to dig into your archives and find the um uh the case study, the original post on the case study factory, which is really good.
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:25.759
And worth, I would say like that was my thing taking away from the the this is a this is actually a case study factory podcast episode disguised as a when do I hire hire a person?
00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:40.720
And as you mentioned, we were talking before we started recording, it's like almost all of your content is actually like a case study factory, uh startup is a case study factory uh post disguised as like one of these other symptoms of that or where it specifically plugs in.
00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:47.519
Um but this one in particular had me thinking about where where the bottlenecks in in my startup.
00:30:47.599 --> 00:31:00.480
Um how do what does this mean about the way that I should divide uh you know divide my time and my attention and and uh you know how can I increase the way that I'm thinking about my uh my startup as a case study system or factory.
00:31:00.559 --> 00:31:06.000
Um and so maybe uh an exercise in there for for our listener if they accidentally made it this far.
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:15.039
Um other other than that, uh we've got uh if anybody accidentally again made it this far, we're starting the next PMF camp on literally Monday.
00:31:15.119 --> 00:31:23.359
And so if you're listening to this on Friday or Saturday, I'll be checking my email this weekend if you have interest in joining RC at Reframe B2B.
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:25.759
Uh and we'll leave some info in the in the show notes.
00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:29.279
Anything else, Rob, that is on your mind before we wrap?
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:30.400
No.
00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:31.759
All right, cool.
00:31:31.839 --> 00:31:33.119
We'll catch you everybody next week.
00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:33.759
See y'all.
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:01.120
Rob, welcome back, man.
00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:02.000
Good to see you.
00:00:02.399 --> 00:00:03.120
Good to see you.
00:00:03.200 --> 00:00:09.759
We got to hang out in person for about 30 minutes while you were in New England.
00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:10.320
Yeah.
00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.039
New England turns out beautiful in September.
00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:17.760
We did uh one of my buddies got married in Maine and uh swung through New Hampshire.
00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:24.879
And uh can confirm that Rob has a great deadlifting, weightlifting setup uh in his basement.
00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:26.640
It's just basically behind him.
00:00:26.719 --> 00:00:30.800
So anybody that that wasn't totally convinced can be can verify.
00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:36.560
And anybody who's in New Hampshire ever, for whatever reason you might be in New Hampshire, you're welcome to come by, shoot me a note.
00:00:36.799 --> 00:00:38.640
Happy to happy to show it off to you.
00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:39.359
Yeah.
00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.640
Um and worth it.
00:00:40.799 --> 00:00:42.960
Worth it in September, probably October too.
00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:44.159
It's really, really pretty.
00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:49.200
Um well, hey, Rob, this week we are talking about scaling sales.
00:00:49.439 --> 00:00:58.799
So uh I I think this one will be um relevant for a lot of folks, but why don't we talk about like specifically why this one's on your mind?
00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:05.040
Uh the the post is called When Are You Ready to Scale Sales Sales, uh Scaling and Failing Sales.
00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:07.680
Um, Rob, why is this one on your mind?
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:10.239
And what are we gonna get into today?
00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:14.719
Uh so I've had a couple conversations with like real sales advisors.
00:01:14.799 --> 00:01:27.840
I don't consider myself a real sales advisor, I consider myself a founder who helps figure out product market fit for the like zero to one stage, um, which includes selling as a piece of it, but it's not sales per se.
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:35.359
And so I've talked to traditional sales advisors, like real sales advisors who are the people you plug in when sales works.
00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:44.719
And whenever they hear what I do, they're like, oh, yeah, you're the thing that people need when they come to me, uh, most of the time.
00:01:44.879 --> 00:02:04.480
And so one person liked sent it, sent it like very crisply to me, where he said, I'm getting introduced to startups who want to scale sales, and almost zero of them are ready for scaling sales or for a sales advisor.
00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:25.520
And so that made me think there's like an interesting thing because I always talk about sales, we always talk about sales, but um but there's a kind of like difference between the kind of sales that we're talking about and the kind of sales that's in a lot of founders' minds when they think about sales.
00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:49.840
When you think about sales, you might think about hiring people and scaling and that kind of thing, which comes at some point, but there's this like figure it out stage that's earlier, where if you try to do the scaling things in the figuring it out stage, you first of all, it just like doesn't work, but it's brutal in the way it doesn't work.
00:02:50.000 --> 00:03:01.439
And so hopefully this post gives you some intuitions about when you should be thinking about the kind of scaling sales versus the selling to learn type stage.
00:03:01.599 --> 00:03:07.039
Um, and then just generally how to think about scaling um uh what it is, what it isn't.
00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:07.840
Yeah.
00:03:08.159 --> 00:03:11.919
And we we see those types of questions from founders in the in the community.
00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:23.120
It's like, okay, I've maybe I've I've done some early sales and I'm wondering like who my first sales hire should be, or how I know when the right moment is to bring in somebody external.
00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:26.400
Do I, you know, when I do that, do I stop doing founder-led sales?
00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:29.599
Like what's the what's the balance here with the evolving organization?
00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:43.919
Um, we're gonna get into the concept of the case study factory model um and how that answers the question of uh how does the company evolve basically and specifically in the direction of sales.
00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:47.919
Um, but Rob, one thing I want to get into is like you you allude to this.
00:03:48.159 --> 00:03:50.080
What breaks when you do it wrong?
00:03:50.240 --> 00:04:01.360
Let's talk about the example of um, you know, maybe there's founders that are listening who they haven't really started thinking about bringing on sales hires, or maybe they've thought about it, they haven't done anything about it.
00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:06.000
Like, what's at risk here if they uh you know go too early?
00:04:06.319 --> 00:04:18.560
Yeah, so I'll I'll tell what my story was here because I thought, right, I I had the theory that hiring sales reps causes sales to scale.
00:04:19.439 --> 00:04:19.680
Right?
00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:23.040
It hiring sales reps causes sales.
00:04:23.439 --> 00:04:33.040
And um and I figured that, okay, I'm not a good salesperson, but if I hire a good salesperson, they will be able to sell better than I can.
00:04:33.199 --> 00:04:36.240
And like, and so and so this was this was very early on.
00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:50.639
But what happens is that when you hire sales reps or sales leaders or whatever it is, before you've figured it out, and we can talk about what figure it out means, um, they will do sales things.
00:04:50.959 --> 00:05:02.480
They will send emails, they might even book meetings, they will do a lot of work, you'll and you will be doing a lot of sales things and helping them that feel like they are productive things.
00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:16.720
You'll be debugging messaging, you'll be figuring out comp plans, you'll be figuring out all this kind of stuff that all has the like outward appearance of leading sales, scaling sales.
00:05:16.879 --> 00:05:28.720
And what will happen is you'll wind up, this is again, this happened to me, and I've seen it happen way too many times, is um you'll start to have the CRM looks starts to look promising.
00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:32.240
You'll be able to say, Oh, we have a million in pipeline, we have 10 million in pipeline.
00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:35.920
I heard recently someone who's like, we have 500 million and LOIs.
00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:38.079
Cool, that means zero, right?
00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:55.279
And so um, but what happens is you um you have all this stuff that looks promising, and then again, my experience, seen it a bunch of times, each deal starts extending or disappearing, or you get ghosted.
00:05:55.519 --> 00:05:58.560
And it feels like it, well, it was after the demo, it was after a group demo.
00:05:58.639 --> 00:06:03.600
It was at it was it felt like we were talking, we were talking about piloting, you were talking about da-da-da-da-da.
00:06:03.759 --> 00:06:10.079
We were like, and so they are a bunch of ones that like the feeling is oh, it's just around the corner.
00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:14.720
But that it feels like that corner keeps getting pushed out, pushed out, pushed out, pushed out.
00:06:14.879 --> 00:06:25.839
And at some point, and this you'd always knew this deep in your soul, but at some point you realize or you uh start asking yourself, was any of this real?
00:06:26.079 --> 00:06:27.680
Am I being gaslit here?
00:06:27.839 --> 00:06:30.480
Did I like what is actually happening?
00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:37.040
And so that takes months, like non-zero months.
00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:47.680
It can take it, I think it took me like nine months to have that realization, because as as demonstrated, I am very slow at on the uptake.
00:06:47.839 --> 00:06:57.920
Um, and so um uh but like this, it's a brutal kind of failure because uh it seems like everything is coming into place.
00:06:58.079 --> 00:07:02.399
You have the messaging docs, you have the sales process docs, you have the CRM, you have all this kind of stuff.
00:07:02.639 --> 00:07:08.399
And then it just all evaporates and you start to question everything uh up until then.
00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:14.639
So that's why you don't want to try to scale sales before it's ready.
00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:23.839
And if you if you bring on, like these sales advisors will tell me, if they bring a sales advisor on, the sales advisor is not designed for this stage.
00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:31.519
They're designed for a stage where sales like works somewhat repeatedly, and we've seen end to end it works.
00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:34.639
We know that it's not everything is not a variable.
00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:36.480
Same thing with the sales hire, right?
00:07:36.639 --> 00:07:40.480
Like when you're early stage, everything is a variable.
00:07:40.639 --> 00:07:41.759
Who's our ICP?
00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:42.720
What's our messaging?
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:43.759
What's the product?
00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:45.680
Like, what's the right feature to lead with?
00:07:45.759 --> 00:07:48.000
How do we dump everything is a variable?
00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:54.800
Uh, and that is like not a stage for somebody who is like a a even like a top sales rep.
00:07:54.959 --> 00:08:13.759
I've had uh talk about in here a friend, a friend poached the top sales rep from a startup, like celebrated the person the sales rep did not close anything for him, like in in six or nine months or whatever, then then went on to the next startup and became the number one sales rep there too.
00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:18.879
And so it's just like like this is a founder stage.
00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:24.319
It's the the kind of pre-physics stage when you're kind of figuring out the physics.
00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:32.639
It is it and in that stage, if you try to scale something or what or try to do traditional things in that stage, it just won't work.
00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:33.600
Yeah.
00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:36.080
That not not that, excuse me.
00:08:37.279 --> 00:08:39.440
Not that specific example.
00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:45.679
Um, but I think there is something in the the founder mentality, some not it for all founders.
00:08:45.759 --> 00:08:52.320
Um, like there's the founder whose instinct is just like go find demand, sell to demand, grow that demand.
00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:58.879
Like that person's probably not thinking, when do I bring in somebody to sell for me because their instinct is to sell.
00:08:59.279 --> 00:09:07.279
The there's another type of founder, probably I'm closer to this bucket, um, which is like, okay, I do the I do the product thing.
00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:15.600
Like I do the, you know, I build the thing, and somebody else is the one that like figures out how to sell the thing that I build.
00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:23.600
Um and I think what what you've really laid bare here in like recent years, basically, is like those things are coupled.
00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:30.720
Uh they they can't be uncoupled in the zero to one or zero to ten kind of like that really super early stage.
00:09:30.879 --> 00:09:34.320
Um, let's talk about when what you're looking for.
00:09:34.399 --> 00:09:41.679
Um, before we get into you know how it works and stuff, we've talked about okay, yeah, it there's a lot at risk.
00:09:41.919 --> 00:09:56.639
What should founders be looking for in their business to know where they are and the yeah, don't even think about sales advisor up until it's time, like you know, pull you know, start reaching out.
00:09:57.279 --> 00:10:25.919
Um yeah, so I would say the um there I have the three-part test here, which is um you need a repeatable case study, which is one kind of person trying to do one kind of thing but blocked for one specific reason, where you give them your product or they pull your product out of your hands, and they are successful at doing that thing.
00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:30.320
That's the case study, and that needs to repeat, right?
00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:36.879
Like it's not just one person, it's one person who represents a bunch of other people doing roughly the same thing.
00:10:37.120 --> 00:10:38.960
That's that's thing one.
00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:51.039
Thing two is you need to demonstrate that you can or you you need to basically have a factory for repeating that case study, where step one is you can find those people.
00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:53.840
Step two is you can turn them into customers.
00:10:54.080 --> 00:11:00.159
Step three is you can turn them from customers into retained customers who don't churn and ideally erratic.
00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:08.879
Um, and so, right, like so you need the case study, you need the steps in the factory to be figured out and non-magical.
00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:16.639
And the third thing is when I say you need to know these things, I mean real knowledge, not theoretical knowledge.
00:11:16.799 --> 00:11:30.240
You and I, and anybody are the kind of person who listens to this, can very easily write down a repeatable case study, a thing that looks like a repeatable case study and a thing that looks like a process for sales and whatever.
00:11:30.399 --> 00:11:35.039
And those will by default be wrong if we write them down ourselves.
00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:49.039
We have to basically demonstrate the repeatable the repeatability of both the case study and the factory by closing an increasing number of customers month on month for a couple of months.
00:11:49.279 --> 00:12:04.399
Once we have that kind of thing coming together, then it's like, okay, we've gone from the the the there are infinite variables or there are a bunch of different variables and questions to now the physics are fairly straightforward here.
00:12:04.559 --> 00:12:07.440
We know the mechanics of all of this kind of stuff.
00:12:07.519 --> 00:12:21.120
And it's now more about systematizing things and like, and we can talk about the kind of what scaling actually means, but it's less of like a figuring out, like we don't know, and more of a okay, it works.
00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:23.120
Now how do we do more?
00:12:23.440 --> 00:12:23.840
Yeah.
00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:32.240
The the way you uh write about it and it you lay out, I recommend we'll put the link to Rob's uh Substack in the in the show notes.
00:12:32.399 --> 00:12:40.480
Um the way that you talk about it in there is like basically, you know, you start out, you're building your factory while you're selling, essentially.
00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:47.519
Volume starts to come through that factory, and um it the vol as the volume is increasing, like here's what you write.
00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:56.000
And as people come through your factory at a higher rate, you'll have volume to debug where these makeshifts makeshift machines break, like the machines in the factory.
00:12:56.159 --> 00:12:57.279
We'll talk about that in a moment.
00:12:57.440 --> 00:13:02.080
Um, and then two, be forced to redesign the machines to handle more volume.
00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:07.759
Eventually, even with these machines in place, you'll run out of your own capacity to run them at all.
00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:10.159
And so you'll hire people to run the machines.
00:13:10.320 --> 00:13:14.960
What is uh, Rob, you've you've been through this where um like that.
00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:30.799
I assume like the machine in the case of your first startup was like you running it, was like something like delivery through Excel or like through uh Google Sheets that you were, it was like the way that you were delivering the product to the customer, like that was a machine.
00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:33.840
Um, but what did it as the volume is coming through?
00:13:33.919 --> 00:13:38.639
Like, what are the machines, like what is a founder's experience likely to include?
00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:50.080
What are some of the things that they're likely to be kind of like duct taping together in order to keep the machine run or to keep the factory running before they start to bring in other people to professionalize?
00:13:50.799 --> 00:14:04.639
So I think, yeah, I think like zooming out the case study factory, the case study and the factory, I think are the like most important things that I have created that uh that like nobody cares about.
00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:09.279
Like nobody, I like when I say nobody, we have two listeners to this podcast.
00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:11.679
I have like 40 readers on Zubs.
00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:16.399
Nobody like every time I describe this to somebody, they're they just their eyes glaze over.
00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:19.039
This is a me problem because these are super important.
00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:26.159
The case study in factory, they tell you exactly where to focus at any one point in time.
00:14:26.399 --> 00:14:29.840
They are the most important models that I have created.
00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:43.440
And so if you don't, if you're listening, you don't like understand it, or if at some point it clicks for you of what these things are, please tell me because I am doing a horrible job communicating this.
00:14:43.679 --> 00:14:51.519
Um, and so and so case study, so case study factory is again like the case study is the thing your business produces.
00:14:51.679 --> 00:15:01.679
You your business is a system or a factory that produces as its output not product, not revenue, but case studies.
00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:07.759
And those case studies need to be as close to identical to one another as possible.
00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:20.960
Uh, because if there's like a bunch of variants in different case studies, you can't, it's hard to build a factory, one factory that can put a lot of volume when everything changes, every variable changes each time something new comes through the factory.
00:15:21.039 --> 00:15:25.279
So you want rough like uh uh standardization uh through there.
00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:31.440
So it's one case study that it produces, or you know, and it produces that at a high volume.
00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:32.960
That's what a startup is.
00:15:33.039 --> 00:15:37.679
And when you think of a startup that way, you understand how stuff moves through the factory, right?
00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:46.559
Customers pull themselves through the factory versus you having to push them through the factory, convince them, persuade them, do all this kind of twist their arms.
00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:53.679
Um, and it tells you where to focus at any one point in time, which is what's the bottleneck or the constraint in the factory.
00:15:54.159 --> 00:16:06.399
If you know theory of constraints, you can basically uh use that to say, okay, where can I focus that will cause the rate of case study production to increase in the factory?
00:16:06.559 --> 00:16:09.919
There's only one place that the constraint let's focus on whatever that is.
00:16:10.159 --> 00:16:12.879
Okay, that's the case study factory thing.
00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:15.759
Now, early on, you have none of this.
00:16:15.919 --> 00:16:16.960
You have nothing.
00:16:17.279 --> 00:16:18.960
I you don't even have a hypothesis.
00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:20.159
I killed that last week.
00:16:20.320 --> 00:16:21.200
That's gone.
00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:28.799
Um and so what you have to do is you have to find an anecdote of somebody who's trying to do something stuck and will pay you.
00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:34.480
That's your kind of like first case study looking thing, and it's probably not even complete yet.
00:16:34.559 --> 00:16:38.000
And you're like, okay, cool, I need to go and repeat that a couple times.
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:47.519
Now, when when you're in this stage, it doesn't make sense to create a bunch of machinery or hire machinists, right?
00:16:47.679 --> 00:16:55.519
Machinery would basically be the like uh the the process, the sales process, a very detailed and documented sales process.
00:16:55.759 --> 00:17:01.200
Doesn't make any sense to do that at this stage because you don't really know what the repeatable case study is.
00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:05.519
You've just done it maybe once or 0.75 times or something like that.
00:17:05.599 --> 00:17:07.119
Like it's you haven't done it yet.
00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:12.559
And so at this stage, what matters is figuring out what the repeatable case study actually is.
00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:28.480
And so you want the least amount of machinery possible so you can be super flexible when you encounter a person who has some form of pull, and you can say, okay, right, like I can just construct one slide about how we can help them and see what they do with that.
00:17:28.559 --> 00:17:28.720
Right.
00:17:28.799 --> 00:17:35.359
And so that at this stage, you you do not want to have an a fancy factory.
00:17:35.519 --> 00:17:42.559
And having a fancy factory at this stage when you haven't figured out what pull really is, will guarantee you get the factory wrong.
00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:43.119
Yeah.
00:17:43.279 --> 00:17:55.039
It's uh you're actually, you don't realize this because it feels productive, but you're creating a massive liability because actually deconstructing the factory in order to meet pull is hard.
00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:57.599
It's it's it's kind of like almost emotionally hard.
00:17:57.839 --> 00:18:04.720
But it's it's hard for like you'll you'll have pieces that are um I'm thinking about product right now.
00:18:04.799 --> 00:18:16.559
Like you'll you'll build a product that you're then trying to sell, you'll realize that parts of the product work, other parts don't, but maybe because of the architecture of them, they're hard to pull apart or something like that.
00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:22.480
Um, but even in the sales process, you're saying like there's also things that you're putting together.
00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:33.119
And early, early on, the goal is like maintain maximum flexibility while you are figuring out what is the thing that the customer is going to pull through your through your factory.
00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:33.599
Yeah.
00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:43.119
And like if you if you take something, like there's a startup I know where their second meeting in the sales process when they're like early stage was an ROI meeting.
00:18:43.359 --> 00:18:52.559
Like, and and which sounds right, like it's something you would see in a kind of functional case study factory, maybe, well, like a post-product market fit company.
00:18:52.960 --> 00:19:01.119
But and so what they were doing was they were basically interrogating people to create an ROI model that wasn't relevant at all in the decision making.
00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:11.200
They were like totally wasting the second call because they were imposing some machinery on something that did not require machinery yet, and we did not know what effective, right?
00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:13.680
Like you're trying to scale something before it works.
00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:22.559
Um and so um super interesting in part because it was probably the right advice for a certain type of company.
00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:32.319
Um and uh it it probably came out of a playbook that worked for a company where that was an important part of what their factory was.
00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.119
But not that doesn't mean uh especially early.
00:19:35.279 --> 00:19:37.759
It might be that you evolve in that direction eventually.
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:42.640
It might be that you evolve in a completely different direction that never requires the ROI.
00:19:42.799 --> 00:19:56.559
But you know, like the a grizzled salesperson that's you know sold hundreds of millions of dollars in SaaS might might not realize that that piece of advice was right for their context and not right for the startup context that they were they were helping with.
00:19:56.720 --> 00:19:58.799
Yeah, and and going back a couple weeks, right?
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:02.559
Because despite like or maybe it wasn't.
00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:07.039
Maybe they maybe that was never actually a a a thing there.
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:22.880
It just happened to be a part of a sales process at some point that that like you know we can logic ourselves into it being causal when it's actually not, uh which is and so that's again, these are all reasons why I really, really like this case study.
00:20:23.279 --> 00:20:25.200
Please help me evangelize.
00:20:25.279 --> 00:20:27.359
I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with this.
00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:35.119
But it it like when you the pull, pull and the case study factory, like all of this stuff kind of like comes together.
00:20:35.359 --> 00:20:54.400
And so, um, but but so we were just talking about how early on, before you actually know how the like how the flow of the factory should work, uh, it doesn't make sense to build machines and to do to do a bunch of things to impose a bunch of it makes sense to retain flexibility.
00:20:54.559 --> 00:21:05.279
Now, as you start, let's say you get to three customers, you get to five customers, and you start saying, okay, you know, maybe two of those were relevant, but three of them look quite similar.
00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:09.759
And I'm actually starting to see that there is a repeatable thing here.
00:21:09.920 --> 00:21:12.000
There's a repeatable case study here, possibly.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:13.440
It's like, okay, great.
00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:20.400
And at this point, you might be delivering manually, you might be delivering as a service, you might be like, there's a variety of things that could be happening.
00:21:20.559 --> 00:21:29.759
Your sales process may just be like a slide, or it might just be you flying out in person be like, because you can't, right?
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:35.440
Like you just spend a day with the person and they buy for a hundred bucks a month and like none of the economics makes sense, but whatever.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:41.680
It's it's just you're kind of doing whatever it takes to figure out what the repeatable case study actually is.
00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:42.880
Okay.
00:21:43.519 --> 00:21:49.599
But now it's starting to come together and you're starting to like crank up volume a little bit.
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:58.160
You go from a couple calls a week of which none of them convert, to like, oh wow, we're starting to actually convert more and more people.
00:21:58.319 --> 00:21:59.759
And I actually have a sense of.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:10.000
Like most of what I've been doing has been counterproductive here, even while I was trying to be uh, you know, but but I actually know what's going to cause people to buy at this stage, I think.
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.480
And so then you make the sales deck.
00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:18.160
And so, and then you kind of like start to figure out, okay, like, and this is like the machinery.
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:26.000
You make the sales deck, you get the discovery questions roughly right, you get the steps in the sales process kind of roughly right.
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:36.400
And then you kind of have the product coming together, you start to figure out what onboarding is and how to make people get to success, how to make them not churn in a somewhat consistent way.
00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:40.319
You're building, again, it's like a makeshift factory at this point.
00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:53.519
It's still you and slides and a bunch of garbage, but it's it's kind of coming together into a coherent thing that is just not magical and you YOLOing it every single step along the way.
00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:57.440
And this is how the factory starts to come together.
00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:02.000
And if you just see more volume coming into this factory, what happens?
00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:06.319
Oh, your makeshift machines start to break and you start to fix them.
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:18.400
And as you do that, like that's the method by which you go from a, you know, just magical sales process to something that is repeatable and delivery process that's repeatable.
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:27.119
And as you do this and more volume and more volume comes through the system, you're going to become the bottleneck at some point, in some, in some thinking.
00:23:27.279 --> 00:23:29.680
And that's when hiring makes sense.
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:30.880
Okay.
00:23:31.119 --> 00:23:31.839
Fascinating.
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:37.519
So in in the uh until you are the bottleneck, um, not the right time.
00:23:37.599 --> 00:23:40.559
Is that just like a generalizable rule for the hiring?
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:50.079
It's like uh hiring should be as a direct response to a bottleneck in the business that can only be solved by bringing in additional people.
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:51.680
Is that is that true?
00:23:51.839 --> 00:23:53.599
Is that a fair characterization?
00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:57.359
Um I don't have to think about it, but it sounds right.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:58.400
Okay, cool.
00:23:58.559 --> 00:24:02.400
Um and uh in in this case, it's like the first sales higher.
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:09.680
What you would be, you know, one thing you mentioned is uh it's not you're not prescriptive about which is annoying and probably also right.
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:36.480
But you're like, okay, if if the bottleneck in the business is lead gen, then it's uh somebody that looks more like uh has the shape of a BDR is probably a go-to-market engineer or something, but it's like, okay, if the bottleneck in the business is pipeline, it's like getting enough people to talk to us, then hiring an AE who wants to do the sales process, like might not be the right answer.
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:43.440
It might be the right answer if you're like, no, I'm going to like spend, I want to spend all of my time on pipeline.
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:46.240
And so sales is like solved.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.640
And so I want to put a person on that so that I can then go figure out pipeline.
00:24:50.799 --> 00:25:01.119
But what people tend to do at this stage is they just tend to say, okay, it's like, seems like things are repeating, therefore, hire a salesperson, which isn't the answer.
00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:03.200
That isn't the default right answer.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:07.359
It might actually be, no, I can close these quite well.
00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:15.200
I want to build a profitable company and not actually have to hire a ton of people, or I want to figure out how to automate our sales process or something like that.
00:25:15.359 --> 00:25:20.640
And so, right, like it's gonna depend on what the bottleneck is and what you want to do about it.
00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:24.799
Yeah, you've you've written about this in the past through the weird if it didn't work.
00:25:25.039 --> 00:25:31.599
And I think this was actually related to sales criteria or hiring criteria for early sales hires.
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:39.680
Like what are the things that instead of like things that might work, what are what are the characteristics you should be working for that would be weird if they didn't work?
00:25:39.839 --> 00:25:43.519
And I feel like this is this kind of like lasers in on that to a certain extent.
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:52.559
It's like if you're if you're clear on the specific bottleneck, it makes it much more obvious what you should be looking for in a candidate.
00:25:52.640 --> 00:26:10.880
Um, and also the probably the shape of that relationship, whether it's bringing on a full-time hire, whether it's doing, you know, a some kind of like a fractional um how do you think, Rob, what's the difference between bringing on a co-founder and bringing on a like sales hire?
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:34.880
Or like it feels like there's some there in some cases you have like a technical co-founder and the and the business co-founder, or like, you know, that which is like almost sort of a sort of your first sales hire in some ways, but how do how do we, how should we think about the difference between somebody that you consider like, okay, they kind of co-founded this business or they're building it, and somebody that's brought in uh, you know, maybe it's more specific to sales, or I don't know.
00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:36.400
How do you how do you think about that?
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:50.960
Yeah, I think I I I generally think like if the factory isn't built yet, um, or like there the factor there's we don't know the case study or the factory, you have to bring on some somebody at a co-founder level because that is a founder level thing to figure out.
00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:59.680
Once it is once the factory and what and the case study are assembled, it doesn't necessarily need to be a co-founder.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:03.039
You can bring on a co-founder if you want for any variety of reasons.
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:14.319
Um but the but um like hiring a sales rep before the factory and the case study are are assembled uh is like not going to work.
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.119
It's like and it's it I think it's actually a disservice to the salesperson you're hiring.
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:21.680
Um because they're just set up to fail.
00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:22.400
Yeah.
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:25.200
Let's let's talk about um and then we'll we'll wrap.
00:27:25.359 --> 00:27:28.079
Um what should you give?
00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:44.799
How do you bring on that first sales hire um to help them be successful to avoid the, you know, how how do you like you've identified that you're the bottleneck, you know that the solution to that particular bottleneck is to increase capacity, like bring in somebody.
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:46.480
How do you set them up for success?
00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:47.200
What are you giving them?
00:27:47.359 --> 00:27:48.160
What are you handing them?
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:49.119
Yeah, what do you do?
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:59.839
Yeah, so so thing one I would recommend is to actually find a sales advisor who ideally is is uh pilled in pull, who is who who knows the the theory.
00:28:00.079 --> 00:28:17.599
Um and what that the reason is just like you get a VP of sales who's done this a bunch of times, scale from one to ten plus uh a bunch of times, they're gonna know a bunch of stuff about onboarding successfully and like and hiring that um you won't.
00:28:17.759 --> 00:28:22.720
Um, and it's just like helpful stuff that uh will save you six months.
00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:27.200
And so I just recommend finding a sales uh a sales coach for for that stage specifically.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:31.119
And then second is, and what they will almost certainly tell you is like, okay, cool.
00:28:31.279 --> 00:28:33.920
First, we need to have it like a process documented.
00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:48.160
Basically, the machine, the machines that you have developed need to have instruction guides, and you need to follow those instruction guides yourself to prove that they work, and then so that you can then hand off the instruction guides and they will also work.
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:59.920
And um, and yeah, probably a bunch of other things like have strong opinions on who you should hire, uh, uh like what kinds of sales reps you should hire early on, which we can maybe come back to if anybody's interested in the future.
00:29:00.079 --> 00:29:03.519
But uh in general, those are the these those are my recommendations.
00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:04.480
Awesome.
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:12.400
Um well, anything before we wrap, Rob, that you would you would add here, uh, other takeaways, things that founders should do for this?
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:35.039
Do with Yeah, so I like I I end with the scaling question, which is basically once you have a case study and kind of like a rough factory, like scaling is a function of just asking one question again and again and solving it, which is what's the one thing that is currently limiting the amount of volume coming through our case or or exiting our case study factory?
00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:38.400
And what do we need to do to eliminate this constraint?
00:29:38.880 --> 00:29:43.359
That one question is the question for the scaling stage.
00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:48.559
And you just keep asking it, and it's almost it's whack-a-mole with constraints.
00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:53.119
Uh, and and that's how you and that that question causes you to then hire, right?
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:57.519
It causes you to then bring on advisors, it causes you to raise money sometimes, right?
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:04.720
Like it's it's the thing that will cause all of the downstream actions that lead to the behavior that we see as scaling.
00:30:05.599 --> 00:30:14.000
Yeah, we'll have to have to dig into your archives and find the um uh the case study, the original post on the case study factory, which is really good.
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:25.759
And worth, I would say like that was my thing taking away from the the this is a this is actually a case study factory podcast episode disguised as a when do I hire hire a person?
00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:40.720
And as you mentioned, we were talking before we started recording, it's like almost all of your content is actually like a case study factory, uh startup is a case study factory uh post disguised as like one of these other symptoms of that or where it specifically plugs in.
00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:47.519
Um but this one in particular had me thinking about where where the bottlenecks in in my startup.
00:30:47.599 --> 00:31:00.480
Um how do what does this mean about the way that I should divide uh you know divide my time and my attention and and uh you know how can I increase the way that I'm thinking about my uh my startup as a case study system or factory.
00:31:00.559 --> 00:31:06.000
Um and so maybe uh an exercise in there for for our listener if they accidentally made it this far.
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:15.039
Um other other than that, uh we've got uh if anybody accidentally again made it this far, we're starting the next PMF camp on literally Monday.
00:31:15.119 --> 00:31:23.359
And so if you're listening to this on Friday or Saturday, I'll be checking my email this weekend if you have interest in joining RC at Reframe B2B.
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:25.759
Uh and we'll leave some info in the in the show notes.
00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:29.279
Anything else, Rob, that is on your mind before we wrap?
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:30.400
No.
00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:31.759
All right, cool.
00:31:31.839 --> 00:31:33.119
We'll catch you everybody next week.
00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:33.759
See y'all.
