Get your first ten customers
No brand, no referrals, no budget. Work out who to talk to, what to say, and how to close.
4 steps, 16 questions underneath, read for leading a gtm team
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1
Who you sell to
Picking a customer worth chasing, and knowing early when a deal is not one.
How do I get the team to actually use the ICP instead of nodding at a slide and then doing what they want?The gist An ICP that lives in a deck is decoration. Make it operational: turn it into fields in the CRM, into the lead scoring, into the list an SDR is allowed to prospect, and into a disqualification reason that a rep is rewarded for using. Then put teeth on it, publish win rate and cycle length split by in-ICP and out-of-ICP so the cost of ignoring it is visible to everyone every month. Reps follow incentives, not documents, so if off-ICP deals pay the same commission you have already lost the argument.
A Framework for Defining and Refining Your ICP Five questions you can answer this afternoon from data you already have, including the underused one about what objections churned customers gave y... 4 questions on who you sell to → -
2
Positioning and messaging
Making a buyer understand in one sentence why you exist and why you are the one to pick.
We are changing our positioning. How do I roll it out without breaking the pipeline mid-quarter?The gist Sequence it: sales first, marketing second, brand last. Reps carry the new story to live deals before the website changes, because they can adapt in real time and you get feedback in days. Give them the new pitch, the objection handling and the migration line for existing customers who bought the old story, then sit in on calls for two weeks. Change the site and the collateral once the pitch has survived contact. And decide upfront what you will not change, existing customers should hear an evolution of a promise they already bought, not an announcement that they misunderstood you.
A Product Positioning Exercise A five step exercise you can actually run in a room this week, ending in the market frame of reference that makes your strengths obvious. This is t... 4 questions on positioning and messaging → -
3
Outbound that works
Cold email, cold calls, LinkedIn, sequences and lists. How to start conversations with people who have never heard of you.
When do I hire SDRs, and how many AEs can one SDR feed?The gist Hire SDRs after you can point at a message and a segment that reliably produce meetings, not before. If a founder or AE cannot book meetings from cold outreach, an SDR will not fix it, they will just fail more expensively. When you do hire, hire two rather than one so you can tell a person problem from a process problem. Ratios depend on deal size and cycle length, but the useful discipline is Aaron Ross's original point: separate the person who opens from the person who closes, and measure the SDR on qualified opportunities created, not on activity. Give them a written playbook, a defined list, and at least a quarter before you judge them.
15-minute summary of Predictable Revenue The origin of the SDR role and of role specialisation in modern SaaS sales, condensed by the author himself so you do not have to buy the book to g... 4 questions on outbound that works → -
4
Running a sales process and closing
Discovery, demos, qualification, champions, procurement and the last mile to a signature.
How do I turn random wins into a sales process someone else can run?The gist Write it down, then make it boring. Take your last ten closed deals and map what actually happened at each stage, then turn that into templates: a qualification checklist, a discovery guide, a demo structure, a pricing sheet with approved discount bands, and a definition of what a stage change requires. Add a weekly pipeline review with the same questions every time, and run loss reviews on every deal you drop so the playbook keeps improving. Do not set quotas until the process is proven repeatable, because a quota on an unproven motion just teaches you that the rep failed. The test is simple: could a competent new hire close a deal using only what you have written?
SaaS Playbook: Sales India Built from a masterclass with Mohit Garg, former CRO at MindTickle, and written for cross-border companies selling from India, including how to str... 4 questions on running a sales process and closing →
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