Who you sell to, and why they care

Pick the customer you can actually win, and say the one thing that makes them lean in.

What founders use for who you sell to, and why they care, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. This is where the SDR and AE split came from, and the summary gives you the whole model without the book. The rule that no AE... Predictable Revenue Article · ~15 min read 15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross
  2. The most systematic treatment of recurring revenue as an engineered system rather than a set of departments, with 250+... Winning by Design Book · 556 pages Revenue Architecture Jacco van der Kooij
  3. The story of an Indian company arriving at a very specific ICP, founder-developers at zero-to-one startups facing a build... SeedToScale (Accel India) Article · ~10 min read How Chargebee Made its First Million Shekhar Kirani
  4. Five GTM bets from an Indian founder who reached $600M+ ARR, including spending $45k early to find which inbound channel would... SaaStr Article · ~10 min read Building A Global SaaS Empire: 5 Bets That Paid Off with Freshworks Founder CEO Girish Mathrubootham Girish Mathrubootham
  5. Splits the ecosystem into India-first companies serving the domestic market and global-first companies exporting, which is... Bessemer Venture Partners Report · Long report The Rise of SaaS in India 2023 Bessemer Venture Partners
  6. Tracks the Indian companies crossing $100M ARR and what changed in their motion to get there, which is the population you are... Bessemer Venture Partners Report · Long report The Rise of Cloud AI in India 2024 Bessemer Venture Partners
  7. Concrete on the mechanics nobody outside India writes about: INR pricing, UPI AutoPay recurring success rates versus... productgrowth.in Article · ~12 min read SaaS Pricing in India: The Rupee vs Dollar Dilemma productgrowth.in
  8. Zoho's answer to the being-from-India question is local teams, local offices and local pricing rather than louder marketing,... diginomica Article · ~10 min read Zoho talks up 'transnational localism' as key to success Chris Middleton
  9. Vembu on why India is Zoho's fastest growing market and could become its largest, which is the strongest available... Forbes India Article · ~12 min read Sridhar Vembu is preparing Zoho for the rise of India Harichandan Arakali
  10. The reference explanation of all eight letters from the people who own the methodology, free to read. Use it as a deal... MEDDICC Article · long read MEDDIC / MEDDPICC Sales Methodology and Process MEDDICC
  11. A seven-step method for building relationships beyond one contact. It is written for new deals but the mechanics are identical... Highspot Article · 11 min read Multithreading in Sales: The B2B Selling Framework Jessica Hitchcock
  12. The five part narrative structure (name the shift, name winners and losers, show the promised land, position capabilities as... Mission.org Essay · 11 min read The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen Andy Raskin
  13. The clearest explanation of what changes when you deliberately sell to the user and route around the economic buyer, and what... A.Capital Essay · 15 min read Bottom-up SaaS: A Model for Capital-Efficient Growth Ramu Arunachalam
  14. Goes past the list and scores each trigger by urgency with a response window, so you can actually decide what to work today.... Salesmotion Article · 16 min read 24 B2B Buying Triggers That Signal Active Buying Cycles Salesmotion
  15. From India's longest running SaaS podcast, this ties ICP, positioning and channel choice into one sequence, which helps when... SaaS Sessions Article · 18 min read The Ultimate Go To Market Strategy Framework: Your Blueprint for Success SaaS Sessions
  16. Answers the operational questions that stop most teams from starting: how many interviews before the patterns are real, who... Debriefing Article · 15 min read How to Run Win/Loss Interviews That Surface Real Competitive Intel Debriefing
  17. Before you can pick a side you need the vocabulary: liquidity, constrained side, multi-tenanting, matching architecture. This... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 20 min read The Marketplace Glossary Li Jin
  18. Once you accept that supply is usually the side to define first, this forces the next decision: are you going for everyone, for... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 18 min read Marketplace Supply Strategy: Comprehensive, Exclusive, or Curated Casey Winters and Anne Lewandowski
  19. IndiaMART started serving overseas buyers, lost that market after 2001, and rebuilt around Indian SME buyers posting... Inc42 Article · 12 min read Inc42 UpNext: How Looking Inward Changed Everything For IndiaMART Aditya Kondalamahanty
  20. Makes the case that a second segment is something you earn one to two years after your first motion is genuinely repeatable,... Oxx Essay · 16 min read From Fuzzy to Focused: Mastering Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to scale successfully beyond Product-Market Fit Ingrid Bonde Akerlind
  21. Lays out exactly what breaks in sales, marketing, onboarding and cost structure when you move segment in either direction,... Kalungi Article · 12 min read Should You Go Upmarket or Downmarket? What Actually Changes in Your GTM When You Do Cris S. Cubero
  22. Kellogg's framing, that the ICP begins as a founder hypothesis and should end as a regression on renewal, expansion and win... Kellblog Essay · 9 min read Your ICP Starts as an Aspiration and Becomes a Regression Dave Kellogg
  23. The build guide: weighted dimensions, negative signals that subtract points, and score bands that decide routing. It is the... Understory Article · 15 min read ICP Scoring Rubric Examples for B2B SaaS Teams Naufal Nugroho
  24. Indian founders comparing notes on launching in Southeast Asia, where technical maturity and buyer behaviour differ country by... SaaSBoomi Article · 12 min read Southeast Asia Expansion Playbook for Founders Looking to Launch a New Geo SaaSBoomi

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The questions

Who you sell to 16

Picking a customer worth chasing, and knowing early when a deal is not one.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. 4 → We have about fifteen customers and they are all different. How do I find an ICP out of that? 4 → How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy? 4 → Half my pipeline is outside our ICP because those are the leads that came in. Do I chase them? 5 → How do I get the team to actually use the ICP instead of nodding at a slide and then doing what they want? 4 → All 16 questions in Who you sell to →
Positioning and messaging 16

Making a buyer understand in one sentence why you exist and why you are the one to pick.

What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? 3 → How do I write a one-line description of what we do that a normal person actually understands? 4 → Our positioning reads fine on the website but every rep says something different on calls. How do I fix that? 4 → How do I build a sales deck that is not just a tour of our features? 4 → We are changing our positioning. How do I roll it out without breaking the pipeline mid-quarter? 4 → All 16 questions in Positioning and messaging →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →