It’s the tactics… and it’s not just the tactics
My philosophy on early-stage sales
Getting traction for your startup is paramount, unavoidable, critical…. and so very hard.
I learned this firsthand.
In 2017, I co-founded a startup, and struggled with sales the entire time. While we had major sales wins from customers like Wayfair, DraftKings, and ezCater, it was so much harder than I ever would have guessed. Since then, I’ve been exploring why it’s so challenging to find traction, product-market fit, and repeatable sales for most founders.
The first reason why early-stage sales is so hard is that the tactics founders are often taught are wrong.
The sales tactics taught to founders are often:
Reverse-engineered from late-stage sales processes, despite the fact that selling after product-market fit is fundamentally different than selling pre-PMF
Outdated and icky, implying that you need to be pushy or manipulative to make a sale, when what works is having genuine, curious conversations
Taught by “born salespeople” who struggle to empathize with the emotional rollercoaster of founder-led sales
Finding tactical sales guidance that is current, proven, and designed specifically for selling at early stages is hard enough.
But that’s not all.
I’ve worked with hundreds of founders, and I’ve seen many of them learn the right tactics, but not apply them. Something else is going on here.
Some startups don’t make the time for selling, and prioritize perfection over progress.
Some startups have hangups, hesitations, or limiting beliefs about sales.
Some startups try to grow too fast or outsource sales before they should.
My core belief is that founders struggle to reach repeatable sales before it’s too late because they don’t have the right tactics, or once they learn what works, they just don’t execute quickly, consistently, or with focus.
To get real sales traction before you run out of runway or time, a startup needs more than just tactics. They need what I call the Four Pillars of Repeatable Sales.
Tactics: Founders need proven selling approaches that work for zero-to-one: tactics that help you learn from the market, close ideal customers, and do it all with limited budget and time.
Perspective: Founders must manage the mental game of selling by overcoming perfectionism and leveraging every “no” into priceless market intelligence.
Consistency: Founders need to show up for their sales process — no more selling in ad hoc spurts and looking at metrics that don’t matter. Instead, they need a consistent, non-negotiable sales practice to generate a full pipeline and reliable revenue.
People: Founders must scale their team smartly. They need to know when and who to hire so every single new teammate accelerates progress towards product-market fit.
These four pillars create the foundational structure required to build recurring revenue. Without them, the structure of your startup starts to crumble, and your experience as a founder becomes more challenging and painful, too.
What happens without the Four Pillars of Repeatable Sales:
Tactics: Without the right tactics, it’s much harder to find product-market fit. Founders end up selling to anyone, decreasing their chances of building a truly repeatable and scalable revenue model. They feel scattered by chasing deals that aren’t the right fit, instead of identifying and pursuing strong, narrow matches. They over-engineer their sales process, preferring outreach methods that feel grown-up, but don’t yield results.
Perspective: Succeeding at founder-led sales requires a specific perspective. Without a sales-forward perspective and a willingness to not know all the answers in front of your customers, selling becomes stilted. Founders overprepare or become defensive, only to run sales conversations that feel rehearsed and end in ghosting, if they run them at all.
Consistency: Without a consistent sales practice, reaching true escape velocity is near impossible. Founders must contend with myriad distractions, most of which feel more fun or “safe” than selling. Founders can let important-but-less-critical commitments take over, like product development, teambuilding, or networking. They also over-architect their sales practice and get lost interpreting its data, instead of optimizing for momentum and clarity. Without a consistent and non-negotiable sales practice, consistent revenue becomes that much harder – and it’s already very hard!
Team: Founders must move wisely when it comes to teambuilding. Founders can quickly run towards outsourcing or delegating sales to avoid their own discomfort, but this often ends in wasted funds, wasted time onboarding someone who couldn’t deliver (e.g. the growth-stage sales star who needs a tried-and-true playbook to be successful), and no increase in clarity on who your buyer actually is.
As a founder, I struggled with each and every one of these pillars.
Now, I work with founders to ensure that they build up each of these four pillars so there’s a strong, secure structure underpinning all their revenue efforts.
You’ll learn the proven sales tactics that work for early-stage startups in 2025. But you won’t just learn the tactics. Together, we’ll make sure you apply them. We’ll address any and all of the core challenges that you’re uniquely facing and that are holding you back from repeatable sales.
If you’re an early-stage founder seeking guidance on repeatable sales, there are a few ways you can work with me to ensure that every fundamental pillar of repeatable sales is solid. Check them out here.
What founders have to say about my sales advising