As a founder, you must be crystal clear on the problem your solution solves, and make sure this is articulated clearly in relatively plain language across your GTM strategy.
It needs to become core to your sales methodology and needs to have a clear Return on Investment.
As you build traction and gain customers, you’ll then want to build case studies with clear evidence of ROI, which will quickly become the lifeblood of your sales and marketing strategy.
Clarity of solution isn’t just for sales decks; it should run through your messaging, methodology and strategy.
Too many founders wait too long to plan for scale.
From early on in your journey, you need to think about what your organisation needs to look like in one year, two years and three years from now, and build towards it.
This is critical because you don’t want to end up in a position where one year in, you have some success but realise your organisation needs to look vastly different. If you have to end up reverse plan, it’ll be such a waste of time and money, and a distraction that you don’t have time for.
Attached to that planning exercise, I highly recommend avoiding premature CRO or VP Sales hires. They often end up being expensive missteps.
Instead, seek trusted advisors who can act as your guide, plug into your existing organisation and help shape the right GTM structure before you go big on headcount.
Great salespeople don’t have to be subject matter experts. What matters is intelligence, curiosity and drive.
There are a lot of average people in sales, because it’s easy to get into sales. Sometimes it can feel like someone with similar experience could be an advantage when hiring, but you don’t need those people first.
You can educate and train people on the problems you’re solving and the challenges you’re tackling through your engineers, founders and CEO.
What you need instead is people who are motivated, who can develop, and who have a lot of potential to grow.
Look for potential future leaders who can grow with you, and don’t compromise in the hiring process. If there’s any doubt, even if it’s just a small hesitation about fit, move on to the next person.
Nothing is more expensive than undoing an incorrect hire a few months into the role.
Small companies often trip themselves up by making life more complex than it needs to be.
Most people believe the opposite, but larger companies are often much simpler because they can’t survive unless they have simple processes.
Whether it’s pricing, contracts, marketing, sales processes or even the product itself, simplicity is the only way to scale.
Complexity kills repeatability, and if you want to grow fast, you’ve got to scale, and the only way to do that is by having repeatable processes.
Good data isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential from day one.
A lot of founders will think that because they’re early-stage and small, they don’t need a lot of data or analytics. What ultimately happens is that you’ll struggle to justify investments, raise capital and most importantly, make informed decisions, based on data rather than held beliefs.
Even a lightweight RevOps function can ensure you’re tracking the right KPIs and building a scalable data foundation, so it’ll be easier for you to scale from Seed to Series A, Series B, etc.
While a remote model brings a lot of flexibility, you can’t entirely run a business remotely. There needs to be some face time with your team, and especially with your customers.
That’s not to say that you should call your entire team back into the office full-time, but there needs to be intentional time spent together in person to collaborate and make decisions.
Similarly, with your customers, of course, you can discuss a lot of topics on Zoom, but you’ll only really get to know your customers and their business by spending time with them. Having that face time and really getting to know each other will take you from being another tech vendor to a multi-dimensional partner.
There’s a lot we can do remotely, but you can’t build and scale your entire business in that way.
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