Video · ~30 min

Enterprise Sales | Startup School

Pete Koomen · Y Combinator Free Intermediate

If your market is a small number of high-value customers, you are running an enterprise sales motion whether you call it that or not, and this is a practical, honest walkthrough of it. Pete Koomen (who took Optimizely to $100M ARR) breaks the funnel into prospecting, outreach, qualification, pricing, closing, and implementation, and makes the case that founders should do their own selling first. A good starting point for operating a low-count, high-value market rather than a generic sales pep talk.

• When each deal is large, founders should run their own early sales to learn the customer's problem deeply before hiring a team.
• The enterprise funnel has distinct stages (prospecting through implementation), and each one needs different attention when you only need a handful of wins.
• Closing ten large customers is a very different game from acquiring a thousand small ones, and the relationship work continues long after the first signature.