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Ask HN: How does a technical founder find a sales partner (Enterprise B2B)?

11 points by mgamache ↗ HN
what is the best way to find a sales / business development person for technical founders of B2B Enterprise startups? It requires a little different skill set from selling a known product for an established company. Also enterprise sales is a particular beast that requires a particular set of skills.

4 comments

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mgamache
A lot of startups are consumer focused and there's a lot of 'how to your first 100 users' material, but how do you get leverage in a B2B space? Finding a customer to validate and work with your idea. Ideally, the customer is from a previous service or maybe someone you know, but that's not always the case.
notahacker
Normally the people that think they have a concept they can sell into their market are the ones looking for you!

If it's an enterprise product you've already conceived, hopefully you've built enough of a network in that space to be able to get introductions to the sort of person interested in selling into it. The main thing to vet them is to understand how they plan to cope with not having inbound leads, a marketing plan, any brand recognition or even a complete product at the start of the sales cycle. To a certain extent enterprise salespeople can self-select themselves out of that sort of opportunity if it doesn't suit them; they have other routes to big money through conventional jobs.

lacbuddah
Very true comment, "self-select themselves out", ie enterprise sales people want to make money, usually immediately, and not have to desperately work hard to close. If people aren't already BUYING, you have to be SELLING - these aren't the same thing. Most successful enterprise sales people are given a pipeline and simply facilitate the buying process - most are not hard closing.

1. You'll want to become much more visible, attend networking events and hone in on the right person. Don't just talk to irrelevant people, asks questions to filter out the wrong people, politely exchange cards and keep it moving - get to the right person and then have the lengthy conversation. BUT BE PREPARED, have a 20-30 second demo video ready on your phone, nail down your elevator pitch, etc and sell them on wanting to sell your product.

2. Demo your product at events, demo days, venture capital or investment events, contests, etc so that you get eye balls on your product. The person you want is either in the audience and will find you, or you'll get an even better unforeseen opportunity.

BUT all of this will take much longer than you think. Good luck!

mgamache
Both comments are right on target. "[they] simply facilitate the buying process" and the question "how they plan to cope with not having inbound leads" are pure gold and articulate my frustration with enterprise salespeople. They would not typically be the types to play the long game at a startup when they could be making real money.

thanks guys