This document provides an agenda and information for a Techstars Sales Workshop on getting a startup's first 100 paying customers. The summary is: The workshop covers sales fundamentals like defining sales, storytelling, and selling through curiosity. It emphasizes selling solutions to customers' pain points over optional features. Attendees are advised to start selling themselves before hiring others, track their sales funnel metrics, and use simple tactics like cold calls and emails while refining processes later. The goal is to execute quickly to gain traction rather than over-engineering sales systems initially.

1. Techstars Sales Workshop
Getting your first 100 paying customers

2. AGENDA
● What is sales?
● Don’t over-engineer (in the beginning)
● Do it yourself first
● Sell painkillers not vitamins
● Why storytelling matters
● Selling through curiosity
● Track your funnel
● Tactics and tools

3. WHAT IS SALES?
● Lifeblood of any business
● Honorable when done properly
● Crucial if you want success in life

4. WHAT ARE SALESPEOPLE?
● Salespeople are experts
● Salespeople are consultants
● Salespeople are educators

5. WHAT IS SELLING?
Selling is both an ACT and an ART.
ACT
of selling is the process - following
the necessary steps and actions to
get a customer to make a buying
decision
ART
of selling is appealing to a person’s
emotions - giving them enough
logical reasons to feel comfortable
buying

6. To be successful at sales,
you must be good at
both the ACT and the
ART of selling.

7. SELL PAINKILLERS NOT VITAMINS
● Vitamins are "nice to have," but not "need to have." Often times
these are features or functionalities, and not major platforms.
And just like in a drug store, preventive vitamins are optional.
They are usually priced at a major discount, compared to the
expensive painkilling prescriptions behind the counter.
● Painkillers are typically helping their clients to materially drive
more revenue or lower current costs out of their business. And,
even better, they are doing so with established line item
budgets, not requiring new budgets to be created, which can
take time and slow down your sales closing process.

8. STORYTELLING
● Appeal To Both Logic And Emotion By
Combining Facts With Narrative
● Stories resonate with people
● Use social proof
○ “This customer JUST LIKE YOU had the
same issue and was able to solve it with our
solution.”
● Be the middleman
○ tell them how other customers (just like
them) are using your solution.

9. SELLING THROUGH CURIOSITY
Layering & Probing Questions
● Tell me more about…
● What do you mean...
● How so...
● Why is that…
● What are your thoughts on…
● Elaborate more on…
● Say more about...
Layering & Probing Questions
- Give me some examples of… - What would be some examples of...
Quantify Questions
● How would you quantify…
● How did you come up with…
● How would you measure…
● What was your thinking behind…
● What was their thinking behind…
● What’s the impact of…
● What’s the benefit of...

10. DON’T OVER ENGINEER
● There’s value in execution and
speed
● Do whatever it takes to get
traction initially
● Do things that don’t scale

11. FIRST, DO IT YOURSELF
● You know your product the best
● Figure out target audience
○ Where to build lead lists & how to find
target prospects
● Script everything
○ Know what success looks like
○ Test new scripts: test - tune - scale
● Get enough data to determine if a
campaign is “successful”
○ Spend 100% of your time on sales for x
time
○ Get enough data that 3-5% conversion rate
can actually be a sale

12. FIRST, DO IT YOURSELF (cont’d)
● Once you figure out something that “works”,
hire someone to set demos for you.
○ This is called an SDR
○ This will help you get in more meaningful
conversations
● Hire 2 at a time
○ Competition
○ Fire fast
○ Track their funnel based on what you were doing

13. TRACK YOUR FUNNEL
● Always know your numbers
● What you track grows
● Everything is a funnel
Activity
DM Reached
Demo Set
Demo Complete
Sale

14. FUNNEL METRICS
1. Activity
Top of funnel is driven by activity. That can
be calls, emails, in-person visits, DMs, etc.
Activity feeds the rest of the funnel.
2. DM Reached
Track the number of decision makers
you are able to reach from your activity
metrics. If you make 100 calls and
reach 0 decision makers you might
have a problem with quality of your list.
Activity
DM Reached
Demo Set
Demo Complete
Sale

15. FUNNEL METRICS
Activity
DM Reached
Demo Set
Demo Complete
Sale
3. Demo Set
How many appointments, product demos, or
pitches are you setting for each decision
maker you reach?
4. Demo Complete
Of the demos you set, how many actually
how up?
5. Sales
What is your close rate?

16. OUR FUNNEL
Total Average
Dials 25,181 5,036
Demos Set 438 88
Demos Complete 294 59
Show Rate 67% 67%
Sales 55 11
Close Rate 19% 19%
MRR $4,491 $898
Total Average
Demos Complete 432 43
Sales 133 13
Close Rate 30.8% 30.8%
MRR $13,429 $1,343
Avg MRR $101 $101
SDRs: AE:

17. TACTICS
● Create a list of prospects
○ Find an industry directory
○ Search facebook for pages in a certain category
○ Google business listings
● Send outbound emails
○ Use a service like reply.io or outreach.io
● Cold call
○ Pick up the phone and call your prospects
● Facebook Message
● Upload lead list into FB as a custom audience
○ Supplement with a very tight lookalike audience
○ Drive to landing page designed to get you leads (goal
is a phone call)

18. TACTICS (CONT’D)
● Get listed on review sites
○ Review sites rank high and usually have
pay per lead or pay per click
● Reach out to influencers

19. TOOLS
● Building Lead Lists
○ Build manually using someone offshore from upwork.com
● CRM
○ salesforce, hubspot, pipedrive, google sheets (quick and dirty)
● Outbound Email
○ Reply.io, prospect.io, outreach.io
● Deep Social
○ Find relevant influencers
Don’t overcomplicate. Just execute. Refine systems and scale later.