3 Principles Early Stage Startup Sales Reps Need to Structure Their Weeks
If you’re an Account Executive, VP of Sales, or Account Manager at an early stage startup, prioritization is everything.
Time is your greatest asset and there’s almost too much opportunity if you’re the only one on the sales team or have a territory without boundaries.
So, how are you going to structure your weeks for success?
Here are 3 principles every sales leader should follow:
1 - Automate Your Processes
Your focus should be on the sales activities that get you the most value for your time. Period.
Any daily task that doesn't have considerable revenue tied to it should either be delegated or automated.
Example: If 75% of your business comes from Partners reselling your software products and 25% comes from website leads…
Don't let the opportunities with a much lower close rate bog up your calendar.
Create an automated email campaign to nurture those website leads and focus your personal calls/emails on your Partners.
2 - Relentlessly Disqualify Opportunities
When you have a stellar product, it's easy to want to hop on a meeting if a lead is interested.
However, if you keep hopping on meetings without knowing whether or not your tool is a good fit, you lose valuable time.
Before you take the call, have a prospect watch a demo video or fill out a questionnaire.
Let them disqualify/qualify themselves before you even step foot in a virtual meeting room. You’ll find that this frees up a ton of calendar space and that your leads will respect that you’re not wasting their time.
Example: Our business uses a Client Questionnaire to determine if leads are a good fit for any of our 28 products.
When companies fill this out, not only does it give us valuable insights on the pain points in their business, but we also can see in under a minute if our product may be a fit.
3 - Debrief Every Week
Taking 30 minutes at the end of your week to see what worked vs. what didn't is WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD.
Throw away the processes that bear no fruit (or automate them) and double down on what's working.
Your job is a constant battle of throwing hundreds of pencils in the ceiling and seeing which 5-10 stick. Learn from your winners and ditch your losers.
Example: I tried roughly 5 new discovery questions with strategic Partners last week.
“What are your big boulders for growing your BC (Business Central) business in 2024?” stuck like glue and opened a bunch of doors.
You can bet I’m hitting repeat on that.
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Stay Strong out there early stage sales leaders and let me know what principles you live by.
G
