10. What will my revenues look like 120 days after I hire you? (Have him/her explain to you what will happen. There’s no correct answer. But there are many wrong answers). Ok let’s make it 11 actually: 11. How should sales and marketing work together at our phase? (This will ferret out if they understands lead generation and how to work a lead funnel. Believe it or not, most candidates don’t understand this unless they were really a VP Sales before). 73. What do most people not know about startup sales? Let me just add one simple one: It’s Supposed to Be Hard To Sell In The Early Days. By that, I mean, people will try free B2C products out for fun. They will try snapchat and tik tok. They’ll play around with free games from the AppStore. But no one wants to play around with business apps they’ve never ever heard of. Let alone buy them. So, it’s confusing. If you have zero customers, you have a problem. Go get 10 that aren’t your friends, ex-bosses, etc. 10 Unaffiliated Customers. THEN you’ll know you have something. An MSP. Something worth buying. And then if it’s hard -- man, I know Slack makes it look easy. But it isn’t. It’s supposed to be hard in the early days. As long as you are adding more customers every month, don’t get discouraged, don’t quit, don’t think it’s impossible. Just try to do exactly what you’ve been doing, just a little better every day, adding the best talent to the team you can afford, obsessing, improving. But 100 prospects said NO to you today? I know that feels like crap. I know it’s never felt worse or harder. It’s supposed to be like that for now. Later, you’ll have a brand, inbound leads, referrals, a demand gen engine, and all that. Until then ... it’s a day-to-day struggle and 1000 No’s. SAASTR.COM 70