Veronika is co-founder and CEO of Demodesk, a sales meeting platform that coaches reps in real-time. Before she had her sales team, she had built the entire company from scratch and acquired the first 100 customers on her own. This session will delve into her key learnings from hiring, to onboarding, and to managing her remote sales team that is now 17 people.

1. VERONIKA RIEDERLE
CEO
Demodesk
LAUREN WRIGHT
VP Revenue
Demodesk
Navigating the Rocky Road from
Founder-Led Sales to The First
Dozen Sales Professionals

2. The stages of growth
Product Market Fit
Founder
Predictable
Sales Team
Scalable/Repeatable
Sales Org
Brick by brick
$0-$1m
Building systems
$1-$10m ARR
Hyper Growth Team/
Market & Product
Expansion
$10m- $20m+ ARR

3. How to get the first 10 customers
● Friends & family
● Users -> customers
● 24/7 founder support

4. Understanding customer acquisition
Scraping LinkedIn Hacking Product Hunt Cold Calling

5. Building a founding revenue team
Tenacious
Hungry
Something to prove
Curious
Builder
Missionary
Intellect
Early sales rep DNA Iterate & Improvise
Prospect everywhere
Focus on results
Accept inefficiency
Do whatever it takes
Build relationships
Sell the vision
Duck tape & workarounds

6. Step guide to revenue growth
Experiment Scale
Go-to-Market Fit
2
Product-Market Fit
1 Growth and Moat
3
Goal of Phase Customer Success Unit Economics Growth & Moat
Target Market Early Adopter Early Majority Late Majority
GTM Process Customer Success Focused Codify Codify into Systems
Sales Hiring Process Builder Process Executor Role Specialist
Demand Gen. Personal Network & Referrals Scalable, Measurable Medium Many Mediums, Aligned w/ Sales
Pricing Solve for Customer Commitment Solve for Unit Economics Assess Disruption Risk
Compensation Based on Customer Success Customer Success + Unit Economics Add Promotion Path

7. Define Customer Success measurement to scale
Measure Product-Market-Fit using your
CUSTOMER SUCCESS LEADING INDICATOR
● Observable in weeks or months, NOT quarters or years
● Measurement can be automated
● Ideally correlated to the product CVP
● Repeat purchase, referral, setup, usage, ROI - are all
common. Revenue is usually a mistake
● OK to use multiple metrics
Slack
2,000 Team
messages sent
Dropbox
1 file added to 1 folder on 1 device
HubSpot
5 of 20 features within
60 days
To scale sustainably set up and measure
GTM SPEEDOMETER
● Define acceptable percentage of customers reaching value
● Measure by customer cohort
● Establish a pace, not a single hiring target (i.e hire 1 rep per
month, not 10 tomorrow)
● Monitor GTM Speedometer. If it looks good, increase your
speed. If it breaks, slow down and adjust
● Scale and iterate until you reach sustainable Unit
Economics (CAC/LTV > 3, Payback Period < 12 months)

8. Ruthlessly define your ICP
1) What central challenge are we solving and how
are we solving for this?
1) Understand and map out buyer journey (so far):
awareness/consideration/evaluation/decision
1) Define and REDEFINE your Ideal Customer
Profile (Who are the ideal NEXT 100 customers)

9. Aha Moments and Measurements
Incremental Maturity Stages
Solid unit revenue
economics to scale a
revenue organisation
Successful initial
acquisition &
growth/retention team
Can this be sold when the
Founder isn’t involved?
What problem are we
solving and is it big
enough?
❏ Customers will
pay for it
❏ Many customers
will pay for it
❏ Upsell /
expansion is
starting to
happen
❏ At least 1 non
founder is
productive /
performing
❏ Another sales
rep is on track
❏ Upsell /
expansion is
happening
❏ Generating
predictable
pipeline
❏ 30% conversion
qualified to CW
❏ Healthy net
churn / NRR >
100%
❏ 80% of reps at >
80% to target
❏ Predictable and
efficient ramp /rep
payback
❏ Unit economics
drive attractive
forward ARR
model + CAC
payback

10. Ideally you’ve got it all figured out at each stage
What problem are we
solving and is it big
enough?
Can this be sold when
the Founder isn’t
involved?
Successful initial
acquisition &
growth/retention team
Solid unit revenue
economics to scale a
revenue organisation
● ’Things have
changed’
narrative
● PLG / fast first 100
● Pricing
● Tools
● Basic Sales
Process
● Acquisition Model
/ Machine
● Operational
cadence
● Sales
Methodology
● Playbooks
● Expansion/growth
playbook
● New markets /
upmarket
● Upsell / cross-sell
strategy

11. What actually happens
● Hiring too many people too fast without a plan to productivity
(leads/onboarding program/sales playbook)
● Scaling when a piece of the puzzle is still broken
● No playbooks or lack of adherence to your proven science - rep failure
and fallout
● Deviating from the core problem you’re solving
● Burn, baby burn

12. Absolutely nothing works if you can’t nail hiring
Hiring is the most challenging and potentially detrimental piece of the puzzle
● No employer brand
● Failure rate is high (1 in 4)
● Labour market conditions are
challenging: wage pressure / the
great resignation
● Amazing talent is not always the
right talent - don’t get logo allure
Challenges
● Define your sales DNA and hire,
promote, and scale to those core
characteristics
● Build (and measure the
effectiveness of) a sales
onboarding program early
● Pace your scaling according to
passing specific ‘maturity gates’
to prevent premature scaling
(aka burn)
How to survive

13. How to build a sales organization from scratch
My Top Takeaways
Hustle
Hire the right talent
for every stage
Nail your ICP and
buyer journey
Figure out unit
economics before
you scale

14. THANK YOU