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Entrepreneurship and Sales Sales and Engineering Advice for Building a Successful Company with Tyler Bosmeny and Amin
Entrepreneurship and Sales Sales and Engineering Advice for Building a Successful Company with Tyler Bosmeny and Amin 
This is a summary of a YouTube video "How to Sell by Tyler Bosmeny" by Y Combinator!
4.8 (66 votes)
Tyler and Amin provide advice on sales and engineering to help build a successful company, emphasizing the importance of networking, understanding customer needs, and finding a scalable sales model.
- 🤝Tyler and Amin will share their expertise on sales and engineering to help build a successful company, and feedback is encouraged to improve Startup School.
- 💰Founders should prioritize sales and focus on prospecting leads to close deals, understanding the technology adoption curve to identify potential buyers.
- 🤝Networking, attending conferences, and crafting personalized cold emails are key for sales success.
- 🤝Listen 70% of the time and ask questions to understand the customer's problem and how to best solve it on sales calls.
- 💰It took two months of respectful follow-up to close a $100,000 customer, with an agreement ready to propose and an understanding of the redlining process.
- 💰Find a low-touch sales model that is scalable and cost-effective to build a successful business.
- 🤔Prioritize customers who need your product the most, guess a reasonable price, be bold, and invest in marketing to generate demand.
- 🤔Gain experience in sales to know what core skills to look for in a salesperson, and look for Renaissance reps with energy and passion.
Key insights
Sales Techniques and Strategies
- 💰 Sales is a fundamental skill for any founder to master, even if it may not seem like a natural fit for their background or education.
- 💰 The closing process is crucial in sales, as it can make or break a deal and determine whether or not you have revenue.
- 📧 Personalization and actionability are key in crafting effective cold emails, rather than sending long and boring messages.
- 💬 Personalized and actionable emails are more effective in sales than lengthy product pitches.
- 💰 The key to building a hundred million dollar business is finding the right number of customers based on their average payment, whether they are elephants, deer, or flies.
- 💼 The best way to learn sales is through trial and error, with constant testing and experimentation.
- 💪 Hustle and grit are more important than experience when it comes to sales.
Importance of Customer Understanding and Relationship Building
- 🤝 Understanding the problem deeply can make anyone effective in sales, even without prior experience.
- 💼 Attending industry conferences is a powerful way to meet your users and potential customers, especially if you're selling to a business or corporate buyer.
- 💬 Sales is not about being a "battering ram" but about understanding and addressing the needs of the customer through active listening.
- 🤝 Building relationships and understanding customer needs is key to successful sales, not just pitching your product.
- 💬 The best salespeople listen 70% of the time and ask questions to understand how to help the person solve their problem.
Startup Growth and Milestones
- 💡 Startups need to have measurable milestones to truly measure progress towards success.
- 💼 Don't quibble over small things when trying to get your first customers, as early customers are crucial for the success of a startup.
- 🤝 Building a company and sales team is a learning process, but ultimately it's the most fun time of your company.
- 💡 You only discover product market fit from the yeses, not the no's, and if you can't get any yeses, that's a signal you don't have product market fit.
Detailed summary
- 🤝Tyler and Amin will share their expertise on sales and engineering to help build a successful company, and feedback is encouraged to improve Startup School.
- Tyler from Clever and Harsh and Amin from Triple Bite will give talks on how to sell and build an engineering organization, respectively, to help build a successful company.
- Fill out the mid point feedback form to help us improve Startup School and measure progress towards your goal.
- Don't make stuff up to impress; email Y Combinator's Start-up School for help.
- I was a math major and never thought I'd do sales, but ended up running the advertising for the college newspaper and learning to appreciate it as a craft.
- I figured out how to sell ads to local businesses to make money for the college newspaper, and set records for the Crimson.
- Sales has a lot of mystique, but hiring salespeople early on and learning how to sell to hard customers can help get your startup off the ground.
- 💰Founders should prioritize sales and focus on prospecting leads to close deals, understanding the technology adoption curve to identify potential buyers.
- Paul Graham advised to spend every moment of every day either building or selling.
- Founders have unique advantages in sales, such as passion and industry expertise, making them powerful at selling their product.
- Having three co-founders, one dedicated to sales, was key to our success.
- Founders should prioritize sales and focus on prospecting leads who may be interested in buying their product.
- To make sales, you need to prospect, have conversations, and close deals, understanding the technology adoption curve to identify who will take your call.
- Reaching out to potential buyers of a startup's product requires a lot of effort and grinding, but there are three things that can help find the innovators in the market.
- 🤝Networking, attending conferences, and crafting personalized cold emails are key for sales success.
- Networking, conferences, and cold emails are three ways to find prospects and don't underestimate the power of your network.
- Attend industry conferences to meet users and form partnerships and customers.
- Figure out who's going to be at the event in advance and email them to network.
- Conferences and emails are important for sales and can be highly productive when done in advance.
- Don't send long, boring, irrelevant cold emails; instead, craft personalized, actionable emails to reach out to prospects.
- 🤝Listen 70% of the time and ask questions to understand the customer's problem and how to best solve it on sales calls.
- Hey, I'm Tyler, CEO of Clever, and I'd love to chat with you about our product this week.
- Send personalized, genuine cold emails to get conversations with prospects.
- Sales is about listening, not repeating points until someone buys.
- Talking too much on the first sales call will kill your deal.
- Salespeople are successful by listening 70% of the time and asking questions to understand the customer's problem and how to best solve it.
- Sales is about listening and there are many steps to the process, from prospecting to pricing calls.
- 💰It took two months of respectful follow-up to close a $100,000 customer, with an agreement ready to propose and an understanding of the redlining process.
- It took two months of persistent follow-up to close a $100,000 customer in enterprise sales.
- Be persistent and respectful when following up, but don't be afraid to move on if you get a "no".
- You need to have an agreement ready to propose and be prepared to go through the redlining process with the customer's lawyers.
- YC has an open-source sales template available on their website to use as a starting point, but it should be customized and counseled.
- Don't quibble over small things and don't build one-off features for customers; focus on getting the first customers and building what customers need.
- Avoid free trials and offer annual agreements with a 30-day opt-out to get commitment, validation, and revenue.
- 💰Find a low-touch sales model that is scalable and cost-effective to build a successful business.
- To build a 100 million dollar business, you need to find either 1000 customers paying $100k, 10,000 customers paying $10k, or 10 million customers paying $10.
- To build a successful business, you need to find a low-touch sales model that is scalable and cost-effective.
- The price of your product and your sales motion are connected, and how much people are willing to pay will affect how you approach sales.
- Send thoughtful and personalized follow-up emails on a weekly basis to customers who have not responded.
- 🤔Prioritize customers who need your product the most, guess a reasonable price, be bold, and invest in marketing to generate demand.
- You can only discover product market fit from yeses, not noses, and the importance of reference customers is that they require more work than going full know, but can be beneficial.
- Prioritize customers who need your product the most and can move quickly, and use big companies as references and logos.
- Guess a reasonable price and iterate based on feedback from the market.
- Be bold and believe in the price you set for your product, and iterate based on customer feedback.
- Invest in a marketing function to generate demand for a $50 product, or raise the price to support a true sales effort.
- People don't need a lot of resources to buy a product if it solves their problem.
- 🤔Gain experience in sales to know what core skills to look for in a salesperson, and look for Renaissance reps with energy and passion.
- Trying it over and over again is the best way to learn sales, but there are also books like "How I Picked Myself Up From Failure To Success In Selling" which can help.
- Before hiring salespeople, gain experience in sales to know what core skills are needed.
- Look for Renaissance sales reps who don't need a lot of direction and can figure things out quickly.
- Look for a salesperson with energy, passion, and the ability to match the sales process, rather than relying on experience.
Q&A
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What topics will Tyler and Amin cover in their talks?
Tyler will discuss sales and Amin will discuss building an engineering organization.
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How can I provide feedback for Startup School?
Fill out the mid point feedback form to help improve Startup School and measure progress.
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How can I get help from Y Combinator's Start-up School?
Email Y Combinator's Start-up School for assistance, instead of making things up to impress.
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What are some ways to find prospects for sales?
Networking, conferences, and cold emails are effective methods for finding potential buyers.
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What should I prioritize as a founder?
Founders should prioritize sales and focus on prospecting leads who may be interested in buying their product.
This is a summary of a YouTube video "How to Sell by Tyler Bosmeny" by Y Combinator!
4.8 (66 votes)
