The Sales
Operations
Playbook
A Guide for B2B Startups
By Iskender Dirik
1. Creating demand
2. Building your sales model
3. Building a sales team
4. The sales process
5. Managing a sales team
6. Selling through partners
7. KPIs for sales growth
8. Entering new markets
9. Entering the United States
10. How to adopt insight selling in your business
11. Negotiating the best deal
12. Sales hints
13. Rules of thumb around key metrics
14. Book recommendations
15. Acknowledgements and biographies
Table of contents
3
Introduction
Increasing sales is critical to the success of B2B software startups. A healthy
customer base is essential to being able to access investment, scale up, and
achieve ultimate success. Yet, many startups are founded by entrepreneurs
who have backgrounds in technology, not sales. They don’t necessarily have
the skills or experience they need to build an effective sales organization.
They aren’t sure where to start, but even the best product in the world won’t
sell itself. As sales expert (and engineer) Stefan Groschupf says, “If you want
to create a successful company, it is as critical (or even more so) to build
your go-to-market functions as it is to build a great product.”
When I talk with B2B enterprise software entrepreneurs that are looking to
scale up their business, and I ask about their biggest challenges, they always
answer "sales". That’s why we’ve created this guide. Based on the insights
of founders, experts, and entrepreneurs who have built successful startups,
4
PS: I’d like to thank all the contributors who’ve so generously given up their time for
this guide—check out their biographies at the end to find out more about them and
their experiences.
Iskender Dirik
Managing Director
Microsoft ScaleUp Berlin
Microsoft for Startups
this guide aims to demystify the entire sales process for startups. This guide
explains where to start, what to do, and what to avoid. It covers everything
from making the first sale to structuring the organization, expanding interna-
tionally, building a partner channel, and identifying salary ranges for key roles
across different countries.
Sales is not a black art—success doesn’t just happen magically.
It can be learned and mastered by even the most technical founder.
You need to lead it.
Wherever you are in the startup process, this guide will benefit your
sales strategy, now and in the future. I hope you find it useful.
5
About Microsoft for Startups
Microsoft for Startups supports entrepreneurs in building and growing their
business with free access to technology and business resources. Our teams
work with startups around the world, providing them with free access to the
Azure cloud, enterprise grade technical support and development tools. In
addition, we provide dedicated resources to support startups in effectively
selling their cloud solutions to enterprise organizations, in partnership with
Microsoft’s global sales organization and partner ecosystem.

Microsoft ScaleUp Program
The Microsoft ScaleUp program (previously known as Microsoft Accelerator)
is designed for Series A startups and offers access to sales, marketing and
technical support. Eligible startups partake in the immersive program at one
of our seven global locations followed by ongoing support from a dedicated
team of success managers.
Microsoft for Startups,
helping you build, grow and connect
To learn more and to see if you qualify, visit
startups.microsoft.com
Microsoft for Startups is a unique program designed
to accelerate the growth of startups with free access to
technology and business support.
6
Once you have your product, you clearly need to create demand for it
in the market. That means understanding your sales funnel and how
you use content to move prospects through it, and then providing
your sales teams with the means to close the deal.
1
Creating
Demand
7
To start, the first thing you need to understand is how you meet these
needs and what the sales process is within your market.
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Sales Funnel
Initial Contact
Qualification
Build business case
Solution Development
Presentation
Evaluation
Negotiation
Closing
Renewal
« Top of the Funnel »
Awareness: WhitePaper,
Checklists, Short videos
« Middle of the Funnel »
Interest: Ebooks, Case Studies,
Tutorials, Webinars
« Bottom of the Funnel »
Decision: Trial, Demo, Offer,
Meetings, Sale
ToFu
MoFu
BoFu
Spend time to understand the buyer journey for your product or solution.
Prospects have different needs and different levels of interest across the
stages of the sales funnel. Think about how you can first attract them and
then move them toward the final sale.
“You will only win on the streets if you are able to present in
a compelling way that your solution is ‘good enough’ to solve the
customer’s particular issues, not necessarily that it provides
the best technical solution to a problem.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
8
Top of the funnel (ToFu): This is the early stage of attracting prospects and
creating awareness. Achieve this through high-level marketing content that
explains general concepts through white papers, checklists, and short videos.
Middle of the funnel (MoFu): The deliberation phase where the prospect
begins to ask if your product will meet their needs. To help here, you need
more in-depth material that gives evidence of your benefits—so longer white
papers, case studies, tutorials, or the chance to evaluate the product itself.
Bottom of the funnel (BoFu): Only at this point do salespeople become in-
volved actively. This is where buying decisions are made—ensure you have
all the materials available to your sales team so they can convince and close.
The key aim is to make selling a repeatable, efficient process. Remember,
your time is precious, so don’t waste it on those that aren’t looking to buy.
“The only thing you need to focus on is what makes you different,
and that is where you need to focus all of your marketing efforts.”

— Daniel Reisner, Herzog Fox & Neeman
“Make things trainable and understandable. Salespeople won’t stop
talking just because of a lack of information. They’ll continue to
talk and sell whatever comes to mind, which is dangerous.”

— Ian Collins, Wysdom
9
How do you start the awareness process to get people into the top of your
funnel? You need to create demand, which comes in two forms:
→
Inbound: prospects find and contact you,

through your marketing and their own searches.
→
Outbound: you find prospects, either by buying contact lists to



call or by researching potential prospects. For example, if your

product helps those involved in billing in telecoms companies,

you need to create a target list of the top 50 telecoms companies,



including whom to approach.
Aim to create a 50:50 balance between inbound and outbound leads.
The following diagram shows the process for bringing people into your
sales funnel. It shows the type of marketing content you need to generate
demand and to move it forward. You need to ensure that content is useful
and solves customer pain points—otherwise, it won’t resonate and
they won’t be interested.
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Demand generation
Website
Landing Pages
Ebooks
Webinars
Email Campaigns
Content Marketing
Social Media
Emails
Calls
Conferences
Search Ads
Sales Funnel
Contact Lists
10
Prospects now drive much of the process for enterprise sales themselves,
doing more of their own research before making contact with vendors.
This means that content marketing is key—you must have the right infor-
mation available for them to find and read. Before creating your content,
research the current market landscape to make sure you focus on relevant
topics. Look at the specific keywords that prospects are searching for,
measure your performance, and continually look to improve the process.
Content Marketing
A specific way of evaluating buying interest and helping qualify where your
prospects are in the sales funnel is to use content honey pots. These provide
a variety of related pieces of content—you can then map interest in relation
to the sales funnel. So, if a prospect downloads a white paper on “What is
big data?” they are likely to be at the top of the funnel, compared to “Big
data in production” which is much closer to the point of reaching a decision.
“Content marketing is the number one way of
getting customers interested in you.”
— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
“At the early stage it isn’t even sales – it is evangelizing.
You’re feeling out the market, gathering feedback at the
same time as you are soft selling.”
— Ian Collins, Wysdom
11
Content Honey Pot
“You need marketing much earlier than you think. Founders have
probably been in a darkened room for two years developing the
product, and they may not be aware of changing market dynamics.
Getting ‘market in’ data is critical and letting the market know who
you are is more critical.”
— Edward White, Interana
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Awareness
“What is Big Data?”
“Success with Big Data”
“Big Data Production”
Interest
Decision
12
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Content Marketing
is the #1 method
to generate demand
Measure
Promote
Links
Design
Content
Research
Keyword Research
Write
•
Research the keywords and types of content
your audience is looking for
• Write and design
compelling content
•
Put it behind registration walls
•
Promote it via PR marketing,
advertising and social media
•
Get the links out there so that it
is widely shared
• Measure, optimize and improve
13
Building your
sales model
Startups will have different go-to-market strategies depending
on their price, target sectors, and maturity. These will impact
the type of salespeople you need, their compensation, and
the length of the sales cycle.
2
14
“Before starting, ask yourself three questions in the following order.
What am I selling? (In other words, what customer pain am I solving?).
Who am I selling to? (In other words, who will end up using my product
and who will end up buying my product – sometimes these are different
people), only then comes the third question – How do I sell it? Once you
answer those, you can understand what the right sales model is for you.”
— Amnon Drori, Octopai
Sources: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Self Service
Inside Sales
Field Sales
•
Simple Products
•
Low Price < $1.000
•
High Volume
•
Short Sales Cycles
•
Highly Profitable
•
Difficult to build
•
Easy to scale
•
Complex Products
• Medium Price < $20.000
• Medium Volume
•
Sales Cycles < 3 months
•
Profitable
•
Fairly easy to build
•
Scale through sellers
•
Highly Complex Products
•
High Price > $50.000
•
Low Volume
•
Long Sales Cycles
•
High Sales Cost
•
Easy to build
•
Difficult to scale
Different sales strategies for startups
For simple, low-priced products, a sales team is cost prohibitive. Therefore,
make it easy for customers to buy directly through self-service on your or
partner websites (such as online marketplaces), and focus your time on
driving demand through marketing and advertising campaigns. This model
allows you to sell globally without a sales force, but your product must truly
address a large market to succeed.
15
Startups with products that have a global appeal can successfully grow
quickly and scale early leads by showcasing their products on online mar-
ketplaces, such as Microsoft AppSource or Azure Marketplace. This enables
them to be easily found, downloaded, evaluated, and bought by customers,
without needing to employ a salesforce. While this primarily works for less
complex solutions, it can also help the buying process for enterprise soft-
ware by making it simple for corporates to test or trial your product without
needing extensive support from your engineering team.
Using marketplaces to scale
“We have over 500+ downloads of KenSci Clinical Analytics through
Microsoft AppSource from customers and partners across US, Canada,
Denmark, Singapore, and New Zealand, where we have no field sales
coverage. For a small company, the value of this scale is incredible –
it gives us an opportunity to address and prioritize product investments
over customer acquisition investments, which in turn helps us deliver
more value.”
— Sunny Neogi, Chief Growth Officer, KenSci
“We are a small company with just over 30 employees in two
countries. Yet we have tens of thousands of customers in over
200 countries, all secured through AppSource. That was
achieved without a single salesperson on our staff.”
— Mathias Bjorkholm, CEO, Pickit
If your product is more complex, but still has a relatively short sales cycle,
the likelihood of prospects wanting to physically meet your sales team is
low. Therefore, you should focus on creating an inside sales team, operating
by telephone/email.
16
This also means that you can target multiple countries from a single loca-
tion, subject to language requirements. Many startups employ expatriates in
their inside sales team to target their home country—for example, having a
Spaniard based in Berlin who targets Spanish prospects.
For most complex, big-ticket products with high prices and low volumes, you
need a dedicated field sales force that can go out and meet prospects face-
to-face, answering their questions and closing sales. Bear in mind that these
sales cycles can be extremely long, so your funding has to be able to outlast
them.
Buying Center
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Buyers
Influ-
encers
Approvers
Decision-
makers
Users
Gate-
keepers
Initiator
17
To help satisfy everyone within the buying center,
adopt this three-step process:
The days of a single person being responsible for the buying decisions are
long gone. In enterprise sales, you interact with multiple influencers within
the buying process. Here are some typical roles:
1.
Identify who is involved: What are their job titles and responsibilities?


What are their pain points?
2.
Build a value proposition matrix that matches your product or service


against these pain points. How do you overcome them and what is the added

value that your product brings?
3.
Create appropriate messaging for each person. Bear in mind that

people buy painkillers, not vitamin pills. That means they will choose


solutions that solve their problems now, rather than investing in things

that might benefit them at some point down the road.
→
The initiator, who first looks at your product or solution




and begins the sales process
→
Users, who will be relying on your product on a daily basis
→
Influencers, such as consultants, who have opinions on the product



and what need it solves
→
The decision maker, who is signing off on the purchase,

typically a VP or director in an enterprise organization—

bear in mind that they may not hold the budget
→
Approvers, such as procurement departments
→
The buyer, normally the CFO or Head of Finance
→
Gatekeepers, those that can prevent a sale.

This could be the CIO on technical grounds such as not wanting data

to go off-premise into the cloud
18
“Look to answer two simple questions to build your elevator pitch –
why will other people need this solution now?
And then why would they pick my solution to solve that problem?”
— Neil Ryland, Peakon
“At the end of the day, there’s a person who holds the P&L in a Fortune
500 company—they are the major decision maker. But the CFO has a veto
for CAPEX reasons, the CIO has a veto for technical reasons, and there
are a significant number of influencers.”
— Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI
If you are unsure of your messaging, then A/B test. Run ads on channels such
as LinkedIn, targeting your selected audiences with multiple ads, each with a
different pitch. Measure clicks to see which resonates most strongly.
“Find the person who feels the pain and
believes that you’re the solution.
That cuts through the size of the company.”

— Clare Jones, what3words
19
Building a
sales team
Your sales team will evolve over time—but as we’ve said, it is
important that it starts with the founder. Initially, you need to
evangelize and test the product in the market, shaping it so
that it meets market needs.
It is vital that you don’t hire salespeople too early—you need
a mature sales pipeline, value proposition, and use cases to
ensure you get value from them. That’s why it is the role of
the founder to explore and gain early sales, validating your
product in the market.
3
20
“The job of the founders is to figure out sales.
Once you have done this, after raising Series A funding, then build
up the sales team. The product has to be transportable and
packaged right before you bring in sales.”
— Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
“If at least one of your founders or your CEO is not
your best salesperson, you are usually in trouble.”
— Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI Inc.
Only then, once you have successful customer use cases under your belt
and demand reaching the bottom of the funnel, should you bring on sales
people. Begin by recruiting generalists at the account executive level, who
can work with you to handle the end-to-end process, then specialize as
your revenue grows.
“Tech founders need some expertise in sales or have to hire
someone with this skill set. There has to be someone who knows
how to develop a product that is needed in the market.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
21
“Employ a sales manager when, as the sales leader,
you realize that you are spending less than 40 percent of your
time on strategic work and can’t answer the question ‘what
will my business look like this time next year.’”

“The traits I look for when hiring for early stage sales execs
are Loyalty, Attitude and Tenacity (LAT), as I have yet to meet
anyone that coaches someone these traits.”
— Neil Ryland, Peakon
“Never hire just one salesperson at the same level – hire two.
That way you can find out if the product is not working in the market,
or if the salesperson is not working.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
“Founders often don’t get out of their comfort zone
in terms of sales, particularly between seed stage and Series A.
They have to get on a plane and SELL!”
— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
22
Roles
Responsibilities
Profile
Numbers of FTEs
Seed
Stage
Growth
Stage
Series
A Stage
VP Sales/CSO
0
0
0
0
0-1
0-3
1-2
1-4
9-12
4-5
2-10
18-24
3
1
1
Sales Manager
Account
Executive (AE)/
Sales Represen-
tative
Pre-Sales/
Sales engineer
Sales Develop-
ment Represen-
tative (SDR)/Busi-
ness Dev. Rep.
Leading the sales
team effectively
while aligning sales
with other process
in organization
Managed sales team
before, strategic,
structured, and
analytical mindset.
Must align sales with
rest of organization
Top performer,
either from your
competition,
promoted internally
or with experience
selling to the same
markets that you are
targeting, 3-5 years
experience; needs to
be data-driven and
capable of aligning
team
Leadership of sales
team; Recruiting and
onboarding
Point of contact for
customer for initial
stages of the sales
funnel
Point of contact for
customer before
deal is closed;
answer any in-depth
questions about
product for Re-
quests for Proposals
(RFPs)
Lead qualification
and generation
Ambitious, hungry,
could be extrovert
and introvert (many
clients are intro-
verts!), but key in
being likeable and
good at listening
Technical expert (of-
ten business infor-
matics background)
and/or ex-consultant
with tech back-
ground (e.g. ex-KP-
MG, BCG etc.)
Junior position;
at start of sales
careers, strong com-
munication skills.
Hire these early to
free up founders
to focus on bigger
opportunities
Roles and Responsibilities
See appendix for detailed source references.
The ratios in this table will vary depending on the complexity of what
you are selling and the sales model you adopt. For example, if you are
a high-volume, self-service based business, you will not need a sales
force at all.
23
To help understand the size of sales team you need, Christoph Janz of
Point Nine Capital has created a spreadsheet-based model¹. This uses
your Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR), monthly growth, and churn
rates to outline the numbers and roles you require to hit your overall
growth targets.
A sales team cannot function effectively in isolation. Don’t forget supporting
roles—as shown in the Supporting Roles graphic. You need to be generat-
ing inbound leads and keeping customers happy. This is particularly vital in
a software as a service (SaaS) business with annual renewals, making the
customer success team crucial to growth. Some companies even have a VP
of customer success, rather than a VP of sales. The average cost to bring in
a dollar of annual contract value revenue is $1.18²—you must therefore retain
and upsell to grow.
“Sales always wants more than marketing delivers –
more than anyone could deliver theoretically.”
— Ian Collins, Wysdom
¹ Source: Christoph Janz, Point Nine Capital via The Angel VC
http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2015/06/by-time-youre-at-2-3m-in-arr-you-need.html
² Source: Pacific Crest Securities/Matrix Partners SaaS Survey
https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/2015-saas-survey-part-1/
24
Sources: Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI; Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group;
Edward White, Interana; Ian Collins, Wysdom
Marketing Team
Generate interest in
product; customer
engagement activities
such as events; Deliv-
ering to sales people;
align marketing and
sales reporting; gen-
erate leads for sales-
people
Focused on delivering
sales leads. Pragmatic -
start with a generalist
and then specialise
(digital, branding, PR
etc.)
Most important; Hire
early and develop team
as you grow
Once you have 5-7
customers on board
Use external resources,
keep off your payroll as
long as possible
Consultative, prob-
lem-solving, and able
to build rapport with
customers
Ideally a pragmatist.
Start by employing
someone who has
legal and other experi-
ence (e.g. a CFO)
Increase customer sat-
isfaction and retention-
crucial for SaaS-based
subscription business-
es. Should bring in sales
representatives when
potential for upselling
or co-selling is deter-
mined
Legal and
contractual work
Customer Success
Team
Legal Team
Roles
Responsibilities
Profile
When to hire
Supporting roles
As your startup and sales grows, be careful to avoid silos building up
between different parts of your team (such as Sales Development Repre-
sentatives (SDRs) and Account Executives (AEs)) and with other parts of the
organization such as marketing. Put in place processes to ensure that
information is communicated clearly between roles—prospects hate having
to repeat themselves again and again to different people during the
sales process.
25
“It can be highly irritating for a big customer to answer ques-
tions from a SDR, who then hands over to an AE, who then
passes them to a customer success team, etc. Focus on a work
split model that fits with your business.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
The structure of your sales team will change dramatically over time, but the
figures in the Roles and Responsibilities graphic above shows the typical
numbers of people with each role at different funding stages.
Incentivizing salespeople properly is critical to engaging them, particularly
as you enter the growth phase. The following salary benchmarks give you an
idea of how to structure salespeople’s packages and what they expect.
“First-time founders usually underestimate
how hard it is to scale sales.”
— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
“I’ve seen companies—especially bigger organizations and corporates—
where different parts of the sales team work in isolated silos. They close
a deal, sign the contract, and throw the ‘dead body’ over the fence.
This may work in the short term, but doesn’t create sustainable value
in the long term.”
— Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
26
Salary benchmarks – Germany, United Kingdom and United States
Supporting roles
VP Sales
Sales Manager
€80k - 110k
€50k - 70k
€45 - 75k
€75k - 125k
€40k - 90k
€32k - 45k
€40k - 90k
€27 - 34k
Account Executive
Pre-Sales/Sales Engineer
Usually no variable
salary; quite similar to
an engineering salary
Sales Dev. Representative
€130k - 200k+
€65k - 100k+
30% - 50%
30% - 50%
40% - 35%
10% - 30%
Roles
On Target Earnings
Fixed Salary
Variable Comp
VP Sales
Sales Manager
£90k - 110k
£45k - 70k
£35k - 60k
£75k - 125k
£40k - 90k
£38.5k
£40k - 90k
£80k
Account Executive
Pre-Sales/Sales Engineer
Quite similar to an
engineering salary
Sales Dev. Representative
£150k - 200k+
£65k - 100k+
40% - 50%
40% - 50%
50%
10% - 30%
Roles
On Target Earnings
Fixed Salary
Variable Comp
VP Sales
Sales Manager
$250k - 300k
$100k - 200k
$40k - 70k
$80k - 140k
$70k - 150k
$40k - 65k
$55k - 120k
$32k - 52k
Account Executive
Pre-Sales/Sales Engineer
20%
Sales Dev. Representative
$250k - 450k
$150k - 200k
40% - 50%
40% - 50%
50%
20%
Roles
On Target Earnings
Fixed Salary
Variable Comp
See appendix for detailed source references.
27
Bear in mind that other factors will impact the package that
sales people expect:
→
You’ll pay 20 percent more for salespeople in hotspots

such as London and New York.
→
In Germany, salespeople will want a car.
→
The United States (and United Kingdom) are more focused

on variable compensation than other markets.
Bonus schemes
Across Germany, the United States and United Kingdom bonus mechanisms
are broadly similar, although they do vary between individual companies.
The main difference is that, in the US in particular, senior sales staff will
expect equity when joining a startup.
VP Sales
Sales Manager
Account Executive
Pre-Sales/Sales Engineer
Can provide a bonus linked to successful sales close; link to total reve-
nue v target or RFP win rate numbers where they are involved in deals
Can be linked to: meetings secured, quality and quantity of leads,
opportunities being accepted as qualified leads, bonus on deal close
Sales Dev. Representative
Based on overall company and sales team performance equity grant
(0.5-1% - more common in US/UK)
Based on team performance; Some share in long-term value
(particularly in US/UK)
SaaS: 10%-20% of first year deal revenue one-off license: 5% - 10%
Service Business: 5% cross- and upselling: should be treated as
new sales renewals: either nothing or 10% - 25% of initial value
(depending in business). Additional bonuses for fast sales or early
subscription sales possible
Roles
Bonus Scheme
See appendix for detailed source references.
28
Sales costs
Be clear on how your sales costs break down and therefore how they will
impact your bottom line. The following example demonstrates how to calcu-
late sales costs for your business.
Team: 1 sales manager + 5 account executives
Salary:
Sales Manager: €100k/y (50% variable);
Account Executive: €80k/y (40% variable)
Assumption: Each account executive brings in €400k in revenues.
So: 5 account executives x €400k revenue each = €2 million total annual revenue
For €2 million in revenue, the company pays €210k in commissions:
€50k commission for sales manager ( = 50% of €100k/y)
+ 5 x €32k commission per account executive ( = 40% of €80k)
= €210k in commissions
Assuming that the account executives and the sales manager achieve 100% of their
sales quota and thus get 100% of their variable salaries.
Example Sales Cost
29
The sales
process
Once you have generated demand and recruited a team,
how do you translate it into revenue? The sales process will
vary depending on your market and business model, but it is
vital to understand your process, map it, and follow it. The
more complex the software, and the bigger the organizations
you are selling to, the longer the sales process is likely to
be—it is not uncommon for a €100,000 deal to have a 6-12
months sales cycle.¹
4
¹Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
30
Sales Process
Lead Identification
Incoming Leads
From MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead: some
interest detected but no clear signs of concrete
demand yet) to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
Post-Sales: Implementation
Customer Success
Management; Proof of Concept
Inbound/
outbound
lead prospecting
Follow up on
prospects - qua-
lify as prospects
with a need
Proved executive
overview of how
product meets
business needs
for all stake-
holders
In-depth,
product demo
etc.
Become
vendor of
choice
Move from
verbal agree-
ment to issued
purchase order
Re-sign customer
for another year
Sales Dev.
Representative
Sales Dev.
Representative
Sales
Executive
Sales
Executive
Pre-Sales
Engineer
Sales
Executive/
Sales Manager/
VP of Sales/
Legal
Sales
Executive/
Sales Manager/
VP of Sales/
Legal
Customer
Success Team/
Sales Executive
Find and initial
qualification of leads
Tasks
Roles involved
Conversion rates
Description
Understand
customer
challenges
Send initial
information
Takes over
SQL as
relevant,
concrete
opportunity
Demonstrate
ROI, build
business
case
Product
demonstration
Product
evaluation trial
Demonstrate
compelling fit
for customer
needs
Detailed
contractual/
legal negotiation
Demonstrate
value delivered
Upsell and cross-
sell if possible
n/a
10-25%
30%
50%
75%
90%
90%
Qualifying /
Cold Calls
“Don’t use the preset sales probabilities in your CRM system—
it creates a false sense of security. Measure what is happening
on a monthly basis and then apply those real-world metrics to
your pipeline.”
— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Business
Justification
Negotiation
Evaluation
Closing
Renewal
31
“Find a buyer who has a need that fits with your product vision and
agrees to a ‘If you, then I’ scenario—‘If your product solves this problem
for me, I will purchase.’”
— Edward White, Interana
Turn sales into a repeatable, learnable, and teachable process that is specific
to your business.
Often, salespeople are anxious to push forward to the Evaluation phase and
don’t spend sufficient time on Business Justification—this creates problems
for finally closing the deal. Don’t rush to create a proof of concept (POC) be-
fore you have fully qualified and understood why someone should want your
product. Otherwise, the POC may be a success, but will not lead to a sale.
Very often the time required for negotiation is seriously underestimated. Re-
member that closing takes time, and will need continued senior involvement
from your team to shepherd the agreement through all the stakeholders on
the customer side.
“There’s a lot of documentation that comes after the handshake.
At big companies, the legal team is very disconnected from the
business team.”
— Ian Collins, Wysdom
32
The sales cycle is just that: a continuous cycle. Particularly for SaaS busi-
nesses, you need to ensure that the customer is happy and getting best
value from your software if they are to renew. Remember that you need to
minimize churn to grow, and that means focusing on customer success.
Sales representatives waste 63% of their time on non-revenue generating activities
because of inefficient and ineffective sales processes, according to a study by Insi-
deSales.com Labs. That’s why Automation Hero is introducing a proactive and adap-
tive sales AI assistant powered by an unparalleled business automation AI platform
to help with repetitive sales tasks.
By leveraging powerful deep-learning algorithms for classification, prediction, and
recommendation, Automation Hero augments sales reps and sales processes to
significantly increase sales efficiency and revenue growth. A recent MIT survey found
that 85% of executives believe that AI will enable their companies to obtain or sus-
tain a competitive advantage, but only 20% have incorporated AI in some way. Be
sure to get ahead of the curve now.
Find out how you can accelerate your sales productivity
by visiting automationhero.ai
“It is absolutely typical that your customer
acquisition cost is as high or higher than your initial revenue.”

— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Accelerate your revenue gains with AI.
33
“You can only be successful when your customers are successful.
If you onboard someone who doesn’t need your solution, they will
churn—before you get a return on your customer acquisition cost.
The customers have a bad experience, and won’t be happy. This is
not good for your brand, and it doesn’t make economic sense.”
— Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
As well as guaranteeing retention, boost your revenues by:
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
• Premium product bundles
• Additional functions
• Scale with users
• Scale with hardware
Cross-sell
Upsell
→
Cross-selling new functionality to existing customers
→
Upselling more licenses to existing customers as their usage grows
Post Sales
•
Integrated bundles
• Services
• Scale with data
• Scale with usage
• Scale with importance
Learn how to price to upsell!
34
Managing a
sales team
Once you have a sales team onboard, you need to ensure
that they are delivering results. In early stage companies,
before a VP of Sales is onboard, this management should be
the direct responsibility of a founder. Even when you have
a VP of Sales, you still need to ensure that the process and
management is seamless.
As the Managing Salespeople graphic shows, start with your
business objectives, translate these into sales targets, and,
finally, engage in actual sales activities. Don’t just create a
revenue target out of thin air and expect things to work
out — you need to divide it into clear and easily-measurable
sales goals.
5
35
Source: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero (from the book Cracking the Sales Manager Code)
Managing Salespeople

•
Financials
•
Customer Satisfaction
• Market Share
• Market Coverage
•
Sales Capacity
•
Customer Focus
•
Product Focus
•
Call Management
•
Customer Management
•
Sales Probability
Management
•
Territory Management
•
Sales Training
Business Results
Sales Targets
Sales Activities
Here are five areas to focus on when managing your sales teams:
1. Change as you grow
Enable your salespeople and ensure that they are supported with the right
structure and materials to drive revenues. Start with hunters, who can bring
in new sales, and as you grow, add more farmers that can increase revenue
from existing customers. Change your compensation plan every year as your
company grows.
“I break it into three buckets—zero to $5 million, $5 to $20 million,
and $20 million plus in revenue. The first stage is all about customer
proof, the second repeatability, and the third scaling out.”

— Edward White, Interana
36
2. Look for continuous improvement
Invest in training and learning from what goes right and what goes wrong.
“The issue is that people don’t take the time to practice—
they just compete. It is the equivalent of a football team or
an athlete just turning up to a match or competition without
any practice.”
— Peter Krauss, CoSelling
“Specifically, young, pre-product market fit teams need to get di-
rect prospect feedback from those who end up not buying. That’s
pure gold when it comes to product development and building your
overall go-to-market strategy.”

— Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
“Make sure you align your comp plan to the strategic objectives of
the business, otherwise salespeople will go around it to hit quota.”
— Neil Ryland, Peakon
3. Create a team and strong working environment
Build a culture—and give your salespeople ownership of it, so they are
accountable to each other. Ensure that you support remote sales staff,
particularly as you grow through video conferencing and messaging systems.
37
4. Support your sales people
Focus on sales operations. This is essential to driving incremental
improvements and handling reporting.
“If you don’t build a strong technology stack to automate a lot of
the processes and drive the messaging, you end up with a very,
very expensive and inefficient sales team that’s disengaged.”

— Neil Ryland, Peakon
5. Be fair on territory management
Set clear rules on sales territories and how you assign leads. Avoid conflict
by tying part of each salesperson’s comp plan to overall sales performance.
However, balance being fair with gaining revenue—feed the greedy,
not the needy.
“As you scale, make sure you work together across de-
partments much more than when you are tiny. It’s critical
to build ways of working collaboratively with your teams.”
— Clare Jones, what3words
38
Selling through
partners
By Caroline Egan, Inspiren
In addition to focusing on direct sales, startups should explore how partner
relationships can assist their growth. Partners have potential to support your
organizational objectives in many ways, for example, access to market, finan-
cial and market credibility, procurement, delivery capability/skills, and scale.
Remember that there are wide range of partners, so you need to understand
the ecosystem, even if you aren’t immediately focusing on partner sales.
Follow these seven tips from channel expert Caroline Egan to understand
and optimize your partner strategy.
6
39
1. Start from day one.
Think about partners when building your overall go-to-market strategy.
Even if you don’t plan to partner now, don’t do anything that will negatively
impact your ability to partner going forward. Your customer buying behavior,
competition, and market dynamics may change.
2. Understand partner types.
Don’t think of partners solely as resellers. They are much more varied—and
potentially more valuable—than that. They could even be involved in your
direct sales as advisers, influencers, or consultants. Ensure that your strate-
gy reflects this. Consider how your target prospects are influenced by other
organizations and how they purchase solutions today—this will help you to
identify partners that can potentially give you easier access to market and
support the whole journey of engaging new prospects to selling solutions,
successful delivery, and customer success management.
3. Build an ideal partner profile.
Draw up a checklist of what you are looking for in a partner in terms of skills,
market positioning, and complementary products or services. Start with a
small number of partners, learn, and then refine your strategy. This will help
you to understand an ideal partner when you find one and reduce the num-
ber of non-performing partner relationships.
“It is not difficult to recruit a partner.
It can be really difficult to recruit the right partner.”

— Caroline Egan, Inspiren
40
4. Make your product channel ready.
If you are looking to sell through a channel, ensure that your solution is
packaged enough for partners to pick it up and sell it. That means going
through the sales process yourself first, and then fine-tuning it to effective-
ly activate partners and drive a repeatable, profitable, and happy sales and
customer engagement process.
5. Have a plan.
Create a simple business plan for every partnership and monitor it on an
ongoing basis. This ensures that everyone understands their roles and re-
sponsibilities with clear objectives, owners, and milestones. Communicate on
an agreed regular basis. Having a plan means there is a documented view of
what success looks like and what it will take to get there.
“If you don’t know what you are looking for in a
partner and what you need, then how can you
possibly know when you find it?”
— Caroline Egan, Inspiren
“Startups absolutely cannot afford to just bring on
lots and lots of partners and spend all their energy to
do that if those partners then don’t deliver.”
—Caroline Egan, Inspiren
41
6. Replicate your process.
Building a process for working with partners from an early stage is critical.
Without a replicable process, precious resources will be consumed and the
cost of sale in working with partners will be too high. Having a simple and
repeatable onboarding process for activation and enablement is particularly
important to not only use resources wisely, but also to reduce time to
revenue and a successful partnership.
7. Set clear margins.
When setting margins, consider the gives and the gets. What are you giv-
ing to partners and what are you expecting to get in return? Understanding
this gives you a clear idea of the cost of sale for the partner and therefore
impacts margins. For SaaS sales, think longer term—how will the margin
change in Year 2, Year 3, and beyond?
To find out more about how to incorporate partners into your sales strategy,
read Caroline’s white paper.
42
KPIs for
sales growth
Measuring your sales growth is crucial to understanding
your trajectory, and is a vital part of the calculations
made by investors at funding rounds. These KPIs, such as
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), are used to benchmark your
performance against others in your industry.
7
43
Source: Kristina Shen, Bessemer Venture Partners
Source: SaaStr podcast 176 https://player.fm/series/the-official-saastr-podcast-saas-founders-investors/saastr-176-
what-saas-startups-need-to-raise-a-series-a-today-why-we-need-a-new-framework-to-think-about-saas-multi-
ples-and-how-the-rule-of-40-changes-with-scale-with-kristina-shen-partner-bessemer-venture-partners
Drivers of
company value
Velocity of
growth
Efficiency
Retention
•
Best cloud companies scale from €1 to €10m Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in 2 years
•
Average cloud companies scale from €1 to €10m ARR in 3 years
•
Rule of 40 - established, later stage, public companies:
Growth in % + Profit in % is equal or greater than 40 (i.e. you can grow by 30% and
have a 10% profit or even grow by 100% and have a 60% loss = both equal 40%)
•
Rule of 70 - for fast-growing private companies in Series A/B, around 2 years before going public:
Growth in % + Profit in % is equal or greater than 70%
•
ARR measures revenues - what should be measured instead of ARR is the velocity of growth:
How fast are you adding new customers AND retaining existing business
•
Capital efficiency is important and can be measured:
For a company with less than €20m in revenue, the ARR should be greater than
the amount they burn in the same period
Example: Revenue growth from €10m to €20m;
burned €20m to do this = €10m gain/€20m cost = 0.5 efficiency score;
Bessemer Venture Partners aim for an efficiency score of 1
•
Burn less capital each month to acquire additional revenue;
this is particularly valid for Series B companies
KPIs for sales growth
The KPIs for sales growth graphic—based on a SaaStr
podcast interview with Kristina Shen, a Partner at Bessemer Venture Part-
ners—sets out some of the KPIs and rules that investors follow when it
comes to company value:
44
The KPIs, and what investors are looking for, will change from Series A to
Series B. And bear in mind that ARR only tells part of the story—it could
mean that you are adding new customers, while still churning existing ones.
Therefore, ensure that you are monitoring deeper metrics (such as upselling
or speed of leads closing) to get a complete picture.
“You need to focus on the velocity of the growth of new
business and churn on existing ARR. These are really the
two types of metrics you should be focusing on.”
— Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
45
Source: Kristina Shen, Bessemer Venture Partners
Series A
Series B
Velocity of growth
• Reasonable CAC payback period of
12 months for average SaaS compa-
nies
• Enough data to analyse how reten-
tion and churn is performing; Healthy
customer base? Scalability of the
business
• Market, competition, unfair
advantage
• Market, competition, unfair advantage
Focus
Focus
Velocity of growth
• Sometimes investors make a “ve-
locity bet” = if growth is there, they
trust in the founder to be the rest
Considerations
Considerations
Deeper metrics
•
Velocity of increase in pilots (bottom of the funnel pipeline)
• When pilots are running: how engaged is customer and how quickly does software spread
•
Positive conversations with existing clients on software
•
How quickly leads are growing
•
How well and fast SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) are closing
•
How well products are upselling to existing customers
KPIs for sales growth
ARR growth is a good way to see whether companies have hit their inflexion point, but
some companies hit the inflexion point before it’s reflected in the ARR
46
Entering
new markets
Once sales begin to flow, you can look to expand into new markets.
But don’t rush to open new offices—doing that has a price tag,
so ensure that there is demand first. Can you deliver using expatri-
ate salespeople in your existing office or through one of the founders
travelling there regularly? Follow a structured, checklist approach
to entering a new market, as shown in the KPIs for sales growth
graphic, to maximize your chances of success.
8
47
Look at demand (such as inbound requests), market size, existing reference
customers, business drivers, and the complexity of setting up there; then
compare different markets and choose the most attractive in monetary terms.
How do you identify the
next market to enter?
Office
Legal Entity
Founders
First Employee/Sales Rep.
Next Employees
Country Manager/MD
In the early stages, you can simply rent an office address and travel there
to keep costs light. As the business develops, you can then create a
full organization.
You may need to create a legal entity early to help with sales.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to employ staff directly until
much later.
In Europe, a founder can simply travel to manage new markets. However,
if entering the US, one of the founding team should move there for at least a
year to provide direct oversight of operations.
Start searching for candidates immediately after you enter the market, but
don't employ someone until you have certain amount of traction, such as 2-4
test customers. Then you can commit to hiring an account executive with
relevant market experience, selling to your target markets.
Scale the sales team as in your first country, adding a SDR, pre-sales engineer
as you grow.
Don’t hire a local country manager until you have a sufficient size of team
(around five people). Ensure that they have local language skills, but most
importantly that they have experience of selling locally to your target market.
Sources: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero; Amnon Drori, Octopai; Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group;
Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
When do you hire a country
manager? What skills do they
need?
Which employees should be
hired next?
When do you hire the first
sales rep. for the new mar-
ket?
What should be the role of
founders when entering a
new market?
When do you establish a le-
gal entity/local subsidiary?
When do you open
an office in the
new market?
Which market?
48
“Before Series B funding, your ability to add additional revenue
in one market with the cash that you have almost always exceeds your
ability to add additional revenue if you split it and enter a new market.”
— Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
If your local market isn’t big enough, move your sales team elsewhere.
For example, develop in Israel, sell in the United States.
“You need references to enter a new market. Social proof is
especially important in the US as they are bombarded with
sales messages each and every day.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
“If I have strong financial backing, I would rather lock up European
markets before going into the United States. It is a huge step and
shouldn’t be taken lightly because the time required from foun-
ders will be tremendous. It will take at least between $500K and
$1M to enter the US market with an initial team.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
49
Remember, no two markets are the same—you can’t necessarily copy/paste
what works at home. Business drivers, regulations, and even how customers
buy can be radically different.
“If you head into Europe from the US, I suggest start with your
tea drinkers, then go to the vodka drinkers, then come round to the
beer drinkers, and then you’ve got to be really brave and very well
connected to go into wine country! But regardless of which market
you enter, think about your talent pool in the location you select,
pipeline cost, competitors and how you can build pipeline
before you hit the ground.”

— Neil Ryland, Peakon
“As a European startup you need use the U.S. as the first market.
Selling a software product in Europe takes twice as much time
and you get half the license fees compared to the U.S. You sell
twice as fast in the U.S. and get twice as much money.”

— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
50
Entering the
United States
By Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
The United States is the biggest potential market for most
B2B technology startups and, in many cases, success there is
essential to growth. Treat your entrance into this market as a three-
stage process (planning, setup, and execution and processing).
9
51
General – road map
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
•
Business plan &
Budget
•
Tax Structuring
•
Transfer Pricing
Planning
•
State Benefits &
Incentives
•
Incorporation
•
EIN
•
Bank Account
•
State Registration
•
TP Study & Intercompany
agreement
•
Global Options Plan
•
Payroll & HR setup
•
Accounting system setup
•
Global Financial
Management
•
HR, Payroll &
Recruiting
•
Transfer Pricing Com-
pliance (Intercompany
Invoicing)
•
Global Options Grants
(409A)
•
Synced Global Tax
Returns Fillings
Planning
Ongoing
Setup
Planning
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
•
Essential if
expanding into US
•
Base on overall
business plan
•
Need to demonstrate that
company will enrich the
U.S. economy
•
Recruitment costs are
high. Difficulty in
recruiting employees can
hold back activity and
increase costs
•
Avoiding Permanent Es-
tablishment (PE) exposure
when starting operations
before setting up a
legal entity
•
C-Corporation vs.
LLC/LLP
•
Use international
tax experts to structure
correctly and to
optimize global taxation.
This should be done
before incorporating
the US entity
•
All states offer tax ben-
efits & other incentives.
Take this into consid-
eration when deciding
where to operate from
•
Non-US founders
relocating need a Visa
•
L1 visa most popular
•
To apply you need a
USCIS-compliant busi-
ness plan plus 12 months
consecutive payslips
•
Visa approval can take
1-6 months (or even be
refused)
•
Professionally manage all
personal tax aspects of
the person relocating to
avoid double taxation
Business Plan &
Budget
Tax Planning Budget &
Incentives
Relocation &
Visa
52
Although it is possible to sell in the United States without a physical pres-
ence, it can quickly become complex in terms of taxes—not to mention tiring
for European founders who are constantly crossing the Atlantic. Begin plan-
ning early because, if you fail to do so, you are putting yourself and/or the
company at risk for tax exposures. If you have yet to establish the company
and are using a third-party agent or traveling frequently to the United States
for the purpose of sales, you are exposing yourself to Permanent establish-
ment taxation.
Execution
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
•
Limited Liability Compa-
ny (LLC) or C Corpora-
tion (C-Corp)?
•
Incorporate company
•
Apply for Employer
Identification Number
(EIN)/Individual Taxpayer
Identification Number
(ITIN)
• Open bank account
•
Select headquarters
location
•
State registration once
have employees
•
Around 1-2 months
total time
•
Engaging third party
Professional Employee
Organization (PEO)/Pro-
cessor
•
Setting up company
pension/health insurance
policies
•
Staff expect a good
benefits package(work-
ers’ compensation, health
insurance)
•
Have to offer benefits
to all
•
Biweekly payroll
•
Need to convert your
local accounting system
to operate as a
multi-currency system
•
Need to set up proper
intercompany accounts
•
Need to convert com-
pany Options Plan into
a Global Options Plan
(409A)
•
Have Transfer Pricing
(TP) Study &
Agreement in place
•
Consider 83 (b) election
filing to minimize tax on
founder share sales
Setting up the US entity
HR/Payroll
Tax & Accounting
53
Once you are done with the planning stage, you can incorporate the US enti-
ty. Doing this in Delaware offers tax and legal advantages. At the same time,
apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) or Individual Taxpayer
Identification Number (ITIN). Incorporation and getting an EIN can take ap-
proximately two weeks to two months depending on the company’s
holding structure.
Most startups incorporate as a C corporation (C-Corp), which is an indepen-
dent legal entity, separate from its shareholders and paying its own taxes.
The alternative, a limited liability company (LLC), differs in multiple ways,
including passing through profits to its owners, who are then liable
personally for taxes.
“There are 50 states to choose from. When companies
choose a location, they should go where they think they can
have more value for growing the business.”
— Gilad Pinhas, ERB
With incorporation and an EIN, you can open a bank account. Pick your bank
carefully—you need one that understands global startups. A bank that has a
presence in your home market is an advantage. If a bank knows your
VC investors, that can also speed up the process of opening an account.
Incorporation doesn’t impact where you set up your office—very few compa-
nies actually operate in Delaware! Don’t necessarily pick Silicon Valley or
New York for your office—many states offer incentives to attract companies
in specific industries through the SelectUSA program. You may also find it
helpful to be closer to investors and advisors.
54
Given the cost and time involved in hiring, many businesses start by working
with consultants. These are not full-time employees, so you do not have to
provide a benefits package, which full-time staff will expect along with their
salary. If you offer specific insurance coverage (such as health insurance),
you have to offer it to all employees—but you can vary the percentage of
participation you provide to different staff members. Use a professional em-
ployee organization (PEO) to get a better rate on these benefits policies and
lower your risk.
Make sure you follow regulations around tax and filing of relevant paperwork.
Often, it is simpler, and in the long run cheaper, to work with someone that
has done this before for other startups.
55
2. Processing
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
Transfer Pricing ("TP") Compliance of Parent
Company and its Subsidiary – TP Study in
place & Intercompany agreement
Initial Considerations:
How do you sell to your US Clients ? Direct
from foreign parent company to US clients or
through a US based Sub.
"Permanent Establishment" (PE) means that
the Foreign Parent is Exposed to taxation
in the US if it has presence on the ground
(Aggregated circumstances) which can cause
double taxation
Risk of Non-compliance:
Reversed burden of proof
A material adverse effect on audits
Double taxation, penalties and fines

•
a penalty of 10.000 US Dollars is imposed
for each Form 5471 or Form 5472 that is
filed after the due date
•
Penalties are set if no (correct)
contemporary documentation exist
Tax compliance
Processing stage
Once your business is up and running in the United States, and is making
sales and employing staff, you need to ensure that you are meeting regula-
tions. These fall into three main areas: tax compliance, transfer pricing, and
tax considerations.
1. Tax compliance
When it comes to paying tax, the financial risks of non-compliance are enor-
mous. Ensure that you have the right documentation in place, are filing on
time, and structure your US subsidiary to avoid the possibility of paying
double taxation in two countries. Remember, even if the company is inactive,
once it has been created, it always needs to file a tax return.
56
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
4. Tax considerations
Once your company is registered, you will need to file tax returns and reports
on a state level (that is, where your US office is based), on a federal level,
and globally. This means that tax returns must be synchronized between the
country you are based in and the US, and then filed methodologically togeth-
er. Many startups fail to do this, leading to investigations and fines.
The "Arm's Length Principle" means that all
intercompany transactions (Sales, services,
loans, etc.) between the Parent and its sub
must be at Fair Market Value ("FMV").
In order to determine the FMV to company
needs to obtain a Transfer Pricing Study from
3rd party expert.
The Parent and its subsidiary must have sig-
ned intercompany agreement ("ICA") in place.
Prices included in the ICA must be based on
TP study.
US forms to be filed to the IRS must include
relevant separated forms that reports all inter-
company transactions (5471,5472).
How do we finance the subsidiary?
•
Loan / promissory note
(thin capitalization rules)
•
Guarantee
•
Capital Note
What profits would suffice?
Sales vs. marketing
Management
IP
Transfer pricing
3. Transfer pricing
Clearly, your US subsidiary will be using IP, time, and even materials provid-
ed by its parent company. These can be charged for, but the transfer pric-
ing rules that govern them are strict. You must demonstrate and document
that you are charging a fair market rate, based on the Arm’s Length Principle,
working as if the two companies and owners were unrelated.
57
Source: Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB
Key advice to follow before entering the United States from
Kimberly Drory and Gilad Pinhas, ERB:
→
Perform a deep dive due diligence
→
Organize funding and maintain focus
→
Plan, plan, plan
Sales tax
•
Payment of advances to the IRS/
Extension filing
•
Federal + state tax reporting
No requirement for audit.
Instead – a requirement for
an annual tax return to be filed.
Submitting US Tax reports
in a global perspective:
•
Submission of reports at Federal level -
Form 1120
•
Submission of state-level reports
•
Submission of Reports at the International
Level - Forms 5471, 5472
•
Submitting an FBAR form
• Managing Global Tax Reporting Process
Tax considerations (Nexus)
Top 3 US expansion hints
Perform a
“Deep Dive”
Due Diligence
Planning,
planning,
planning
Funding and
Focus
Before going global, it is crit-
ical to understand what the
full impact on your business
will be
A company is never in a place
where it is funded enough.
Keep focused on achieving the
next funding round – and the
team focused on performance
There is no room for mistakes.
If you go to the US after Series
A, you won’t get to Series B if
you don’t perform
58
How to adopt
insight selling in
your business
By Peter Krauss, CoSelling
The techniques you use to sell have a big impact on your success, particu-
larly when you are approaching larger/Fortune 500 organizations. You have
to focus on meeting the customer’s known—and especially their unknown or
under-estimated needs—and building a rapport with prospects that demon-
strates your understanding and expertise of their business. You have to
address the customer’s business value, not the specifics of your solution.
First, let’s look at the most common methods of selling in this box out.
10
59
Depending on the complexity of your product and the maturity of the market,
there are three phases of selling.
The Evolution of selling
Phase 1: product selling
Smart people selling a product for a good price leads to high margins.
High margins attract rivals who charge lower prices, which depresses
margins.
Phase 2: solution selling
Now companies combine multiple products to create solutions as
differentiators. To sell such a solution, you need to solve a problem.
In this scenario, all vendors ask the same question repeatedly about
those pain points, which annoys prospects.
Phase 3: insight selling
What customers look for today are vendors offering a piece of wis-
dom—something they haven’t seen before, have overlooked, or un-
der-estimated. Provide them with such an insight and you, the sales-
person, will be seen as a trusted advisor. This positions you perfectly
to sell to the prospect because you have built a strong, insight-based
relationship.
As the box out demonstrates, insight selling is an extremely powerful way of
closing deals. Here are six key ways to successfully adopt it in your business:
60
1. Create the right content.
Humans prefer not losing to winning, so tailor your value proposition and
content accordingly. What is your prospect losing by not using your solution?
What is the true cost or risk of the status quo to them?
2. Have a goal.
Once you have the content, understand the ideal sales process and follow
it step-by-step. Control the sales call, have a plan and a clear objective.
Your objective should be simple and measurable, like “book a meeting with
the prospect” or “commit to a workshop,” not “teach the prospect about my
product.” Don’t oversell in the early stages of the sales process.
3. Follow a clear process.
Know the sales process for your industry and follow it step-by-step. As a re-
sult, you will be able to predict what will happen at each step and anticipate
the questions that prospects will ask, so have the answers ready.
“Your inability to answer foreseeable questions
destroys customer confidence in you and your solution.”

— Peter Krauss, CoSelling
“Invest time in defining really good questions that make the cus-
tomer think about his situation—don’t give him an elevator pitch.”
— Peter Krauss, CoSelling
61
Define a good script, create lively stories, construct a precise elevator pitch,
train your salespeople, and ensure they learn it. Make sure they have prompt,
to-the-point answers. Teach your team to lead prospects to your solution,
not to lead with your solution.
4. Use acronyms as a structure to help.
When preparing for a sales meeting, and during a sales call, you need to en-
sure that salespeople get all the important information you need and don’t
miss out on anything vital. Go through these acronyms internally, and use
them as a checklist to prepare questions as a guide in a sales conversation.
However, be sure not to use them in front of the customer.
Sales acronyms
Ask questions to understand the prospect’s Situation, then make the prospect
aware of Problems that need to be solved. Shine a light on the Implication of not
solving/addressing the Problems, and then get the prospect to then visualize the
Need-payoff (that is, what the benefits will be of a solution).
SPIN
S: Situation
P: Problem
I: Implication (what does it mean to the customer?)
N: Need-payoff
BANT
B: Budget - how much is the prospect willing and able to spend?
A: Authority – who is the decision-maker?
N: Need – is there an urgent business problem to address?
T: Time – what is the timeframe for finding a solution?
62
5. Always be learning.
Analyze why you lost deals, and also why you won.
Where was the winning point? Who did you convince? How?
6. Target the right quality and quantity.
If you are in a big market, make sure you use your time wisely. For example,
it can be better to spend five minutes on initial calls, thus reaching more
potential clients than preparing each call for 30 minutes and reaching no
one. Be clear what your objectives are at each sales stage, and then trust the
numbers. In early sales stages, quantity equates to quality.
63
Negotiating
the best deal
By Daniel Reisner, Herzog Fox & Neeman
11
Negotiating sales deals, particularly with Fortune
500 companies, can be unnerving for startups.
However, these eight hints will help:
64
1. Improve confidence

Overcome the fear factor by increasing your self-worth. Remember,
you are talking to this potential customer for a reason—they are interested
in your product. Identify your product’s key differentiators along with your
own strengths, and use your passion about your business to improve
your confidence.
2. Identify the sources of power
Power in negotiation is the capability of forcing the other side to change its
position due to something you possess. Identify the sources of power for
yourself and your prospect. For example, do you have a valid alternative?
If yes, then use its existence as leverage.
Use the power of weakness—for example, ask for shorter,
less complex contracts, given that you are a small startup without access
to expensive lawyers.
-
Strategic: what are your interests and what are the interests of

the other side? Is there a “zone” of possible agreement?
-
Tactical: what are your starting positions?

How do you justify them?
-
Operational: what is your optimal negotiation team?

When, where, and how would it be best for you to hold

the negotiations?
Types of preparation
65
3. Prepare, prepare, prepare
Think through negotiations—not what you are going to say, but where your
interests lie. What do you want to achieve? What will lead you to walk away?
Repeat this for everyone involved to plan your strategy.
4. Take control of the process
Prepare a written agenda. This demonstrates professionalism,
and gives a structure to the discussions that should benefit you.
5. Listen
Stress can lead you to talk too much. By listening instead, you get informa-
tion on what the other side wants, and you make people feel better and
ultimately more receptive. Avoid shouting or loud tones; rather, use a low
voice, a technique that encourages people to listen to you.
6. Location is not an issue
Don’t be concerned about where you negotiate. Home team advantage is
only a factor if you believe in it. Being away from your office can be a posi-
tive—you can hit the pause button, say that you need to check with a boss
or colleague who is not present, or ask for a break more easily. This is more
difficult if you are in your own office, where everyone is available.
“Most people going into negotiations encounter high levels
of stress. And, as a result, this has an impact on their effec-
tiveness and also on their capability to listen.”

— Daniel Reisner, Herzog Fox & Neeman
66
7. Recognize when they are ready to close
Only through practice will you learn how to spot the moment when
prospects are prepared to agree to terms—you’ll understand the signs after
completing multiple, successful negotiations.
8. Results are based on the negotiator, not the negotiation
Negotiations are not won or lost on the facts, but on the skills and
dynamics of the negotiating partners. While you can improve your skills
through training or by bringing in consultants to help, you can’t become an
expert negotiator if you don’t have the natural aptitude.
Make sure you send your best player to carry out negotiations—even if that’s
not you or your cofounder. After all, a football team wouldn’t keep its best
player on the bench. This can also give the negotiator the option of adding a
level to refer upward to act as a final arbiter of what has been agreed.
67
Sales hints
12
68
“Know yourself well and build the team around you to fill the
roles that you are not good at.”
“With a new product, people are really buying trust from us, that
we are not going to screw up, that we are going to deliver. They
are putting their careers on the line.”
— Ian Collins, Wysdom
„Don’t waste your time at least at first with very difficult custom-
ers that are far away from the bullseye. Find out where you can
gain fast traction to build trust among those customers who are
easier to acquire.”
“Validate what you’re selling and whom you are selling to.
Always continue validating.”
— Amnon Drori, Octopai
“In software, you can always get one or two customers
to buy. Getting 50 to buy is a different story.”
“Variable sales compensation must be part of a
comprehensive plan which is revised annually.”
— Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI
69
“Don’t hire someone simply because he is charismatic – hire someone
who gets things done. A good project manager is the perfect sales rep.”
“Customer experience is everything. Ultimately, the differentiator
between good and great companies is how strongly they focus on
customer success and implementation, post-purchase.”
“Tech founders have issues recruiting good salespeople as they don’t
know what they are looking for – and salespeople are very good at
selling themselves.”
— Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
“Acknowledge the growth stage you are in right now and the one
you want to reach next, and ensure you have the flexibility – espe-
cially people and processes - to bring the sales organization from
one stage to the other.”
“Think for yourself. Figure out the growth model for your specific
company and market. It isn’t enough to take someone else’s blue-
print and go-to-market approach and simply apply it.”
— Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
70
“Hire for intelligence, passion and dedication early because
those are the people that as you grow, will become unbelievably
valuable.”
“It’s important to acknowledge that as a woman it can be really
hard in tech sales, and in tech in general - find other women to
talk to and find your mentors early.”
— Clare Jones, what3words
“Get help with hiring salespeople.
A sales expert should hire salespeople.”
“There’s no point hiring salespeople until
you’ve figured out what they should be selling.”
— Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
“The two key skills you need in sales are asking effective
questions and active listening. With these you can produce
30 to 40 percent of your ultimate sales success.”
“There has to be strong collaboration between marketing and
sales – both sides need to hold the other accountable.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
71
“Measure the pipeline quality and the revenue that
comes out of it, not vanity metrics such as the
number of meetings booked or the number of calls
per day. Pipeline velocity is the key metric to
understanding your chances of success.”
“The two most successful traits in a salesperson
are focus and discipline.”
— Neil Ryland, Peakon
“Push your sales reps. They’ve got to be doing calls.
They’ve got to be outbounding. Always be generating
your own luck.”
“When you come across really good sales talent,
you should hire that person.”
— Edward White, Interana
Qualified Opportunities (#)
Win Rate (%)
Deal Size ($)
Length of Sales Cycle(days)
Pipeline
velocity (v) =
x
x
72
Rules of
thumb around
key metrics
13
73
“In software if your payback period is more than two years in
North America, then you are in a world of hurt. Under two years
you are in the ballpark, and if it’s less than a year you’re in the
sweet spot. Other regions and countries vary somewhat, but in
our experience, most large enterprises want to see a relatively
fast payback on their purchases of intellectual property such as
software and AI technology.”
— Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI
“Aim to have 50 percent of deals coming from inbound and
the other half from outbound – that’s the holy grail
for sales.”
“In software sales attrition is high. Always be at around 120
percent of the headcount you need. Make fast decisions on
sales performers.”
— Edward White, Interana
“It is best practice that the first ten to twenty contracts have
to be done by the founders themselves. Only if the founders
have closed ten contracts will they have the ability to teach
it to somebody else.”
“Up to 5-6 salespeople can be led by one of the founders.
If you have multiple founders, the most communicative
should have clear responsibility over the team.”
— Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
74
“Spend money the way it comes in. So, if you think
you will make $10 million this quarter, you want to
spend like you will make $10 million. If you under-
spend you lose market share.”
“The expectation of Software as a Service models is
that you achieve 90%+ renewals.”
—Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
“If you want to have one functional salesperson in three
months’ time, you should probably be hiring two.
Assume that only half of your salespeople work out.”
“Investors want to see a proven sales process – have a clear
link between pilots, contracts and then retention as this gives
high certainty around future revenue growth.”
“If you have something that resonates with the market,
you will convert between one in four and one in three of
your qualified leads as an early stage company.”
— Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
75
Rules of thumb: sales costs vs. revenue
When calculating sales costs, make sure you include every relevant expense
involved in attracting, acquiring, and retaining customers. This means using
not just sales and marketing costs, but also the costs of your customer suc-
cess team. Here are some useful tips on sales costs from industry experts.
“Hire the best in sales. The cost might seem impossible
but it needs to be done. It’s not even an 80/20 rule, it is
more a 90/10 —10 percent of salespeople are the best
at what they do, and you need to pay for them.”
— Ian Collins, Wysdom
“The sum of all marketing and distribution costs in
one year should be lower than the corresponding revenue.”
— Gero Decker, Co-founder and CEO at Signavio
in “The Art of Sales” podcast by “Digital Kompakt"
“For every dollar you spend you should get a dollar back
in terms of Net New ARR.”
— Kristina Shen, Partner,
Bessemer Venture Partners in SaaStr podcast interview
“It’s important to determine where cuts in sales costs will hurt
customer perceptions and negatively affect their buying behavior.”
— McKinsey
See appendix for detailed source references.
76
Book recommendations
We asked our contributors about their favorite sales books –
here are the results:
The Challenger Sale
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
Recommended by: Jakob Gillmann, Adjust;
Edward White, Interana; Stefan Groschupf,
Automation Hero; Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business
Group; Peter Krauss, CoSelling
Crossing the Chasm
by Geoffrey A. Moore
Recommended by: Ian Collins, Wysdom; Amnon Drori,
Octopai; Jakob Gillmann,
Adjust; Clare Jones, what3words
The Challenger Customer:
Selling to the Hidden Influencer
Who Can Multiply Your Results
by Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson,
Pat Spenner, and Nick Toman
Recommended by: Jakob Gillmann,
Adjust; Peter Krauss, CoSelling
The Hard Thing About Hard Things:
Building a Business When There Are
No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz and Kevin Kenerly
Recommended by: Jakob Gillmann,
Adjust; Clare Jones, what3words
77
Pitch Anything: An Innovative
Method for Presenting, Persuading,
and Winning the Deal
by Oren Klaff
Recommended by: Jens Hutzschenreuter,
Digital Business Group;
Neil Ryland, Peakon
From Impossible To Inevitable:
How Hyper-Growth Companies
Create Predictable Revenue
by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
Recommended by: Jakob Gillmann,
Adjust; Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
Joy at Work
by Dennis Bakke
Recommended by:
Amnon Drori, Octopai
It‘s Not about the Coffee:
Leadership Principles
from a Life at Starbucks
by Howard Behar
Recommended by:
Neil Ryland, Peakon
78
The Four Steps to
the Epiphany
by Steve Blank
Recommended by:
Jens Lapinski,
Angel Invest Ventures
How to Win Friends &
Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
Recommended by:
Neil Ryland, Peakon
Getting to Yes:
Negotiating an Agreement
Without Giving In
by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury
Recommended by:
Peter Krauss, CoSelling
42 Rules to Increase
Sales Effectiveness
by Michael Griego and Laura Lowell
Recommended by:
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
79
The Secret Law of Attraction:
Master the Power of Intention
by Katherine Hurst
Recommended by:
Neil Ryland, Peakon
Cracking the Sales Management Code:
The Secrets to Measuring and
Managing Sales Performance
by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana
Recommended by:
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Spin Selling
by Neil Rackham
Recommended by:
Peter Krauss, CoSelling
The Lean Startup
by Eric Ries
Recommended by:
Amnon Drori, Octopai
80
The Sales Acceleration Formula:
Using Data, Technology,
and Inbound Selling
to go from $0 to $100 Million
by Mark Roberge
Recommended by:
Jens Hutzschenreuter,
Digital Business Group
Black Box Thinking
by Matthew Syed
Recommended by:
Clare Jones, what3words
Antifragile: Things That
Gain from Disorder
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Recommended by:
Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
Hustle (TV show) –
The Road Less Travelled
(Series 5, episode 6)
Recommended by:
Jens Lapinski,
Angel Invest Ventures
81
Blueprint to a Billion:
7 Essentials to
Achieve Exponential Growth
by David G. Thompson
Recommended by:
Edward White, Interana
Never Split the Difference:
Negotiating As If Your Life
Depended On It
by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
Recommended by:
Clare Jones, what3words
The Score Takes
Care of Itself:
My Philosophy of Leadership
by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison,
and Craig Walsh
Recommended by:
Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
Integrity Selling
for the 21st Century:
How to Sell the Way People
Want to Buy
by Ron Willingham
Recommended by:
Edward White, Interana
82
To Sell is Human:
The Surprising Truth
About Persuading, Convincing,
and Influencing Others
by Daniel H. Pink
Recommended by:
Peter Krauss, CoSelling
Customer Centric Selling
by Michael T. Bosworth,
John R. Holland and Frank Visgatis
Recommended by:
Neil Ryland, Peakon
83
Acknowledgements
and biographies
84
Ian Collins, Wysdom
An entrepreneur and investor, Ian has founded seven tech companies in the
last 20 years, primarily in the enterprise software space, including Wyrex,
Mobile Diagnostix (HP), Clickfree, and most recently Wysdom. Ian invests,
mentors, and sits on the boards of several startups in the Toronto area.
He has raised over $150 million in venture capital.
Wysdom is the world’s leading cognitive care solution, using AI to provide a
single place to understand the customer need, respond with a great solution,
and learn from customer behavior. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with
offices in Kansas City and London, Wysdom is trusted by leading brands like
Rogers, Sprint, C Spire, and Digicel.
Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI

Jean has been CEO of three software companies, the first—Metrowerks—
started with four people and went public three years later, and was later
sold to Motorola. He was awarded MacWorld’s World Class Award for Out-
standing Contributions to the platform, in addition to being a finalist for the
E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Metrowerks won Software product of
the year on the Apple Mac platform. His second company, Reddwerks, was
a pioneer in the Internet of Things, providing supply chain solutions to ma-
jor retailers including Walmart, CVS, and Best Buy. He co-founded Cerebri AI
in 2016. Jean holds an MSc (Finance) from the London School of Economics
(LSE).
The Cerebri Value system measures customer experience—the value
customers place on their commitment to the brands and products
they purchase. Cerebri helps Fortune 500 companies understand their
customers, enabling customer success and increased revenues.
85
Caroline Egan, Inspiren
Caroline Egan is a Director of Inspiren and has over 30 years’ experience in
the technology sector, developing high-performing international channel and
partner models working in both high growth scale-ups (for example, Arbor
Software and Remedy) and in large vendor organizations (such as, Microsoft
and Informix (IBM)).
In addition, Caroline has coached and supported over 300 start-up/scale-up
technology organizations, and developed partner strategies, models, and pro-
grams through working with VCs, International Development Agencies, and
large vendors. She is also the appointed Executive GTM Advisor for Microsoft
Scale-up and Start-up in Europe.
She has run her own successful channels and alliances consultancy, has
mentored high growth Cloud IP vendor organizations through VC and devel-
Amnon Drori, Octopai
With 20 years’ experience in the high technology industry, Amnon specializ-
es in technology-oriented, pioneering startups working in new areas. He has
been involved in four previous startups, two of which were acquired and the
other two went public. These include Panaya (acquired by InfoSys) and Zend
(acquired by Rogue Wave Software).
Based in Tel Aviv, Israel with offices in NYC, Octopai was founded in 2015 by
BI professionals who saw a real pain point in the sector. Octopai developed
a centralized, cross-platform metadata search engine that enables BI groups
to quickly and precisely discover and govern shared metadata, which dra-
matically increases productivity, shortens time to market, and reduces risks
associated with erroneous data.
86
opment agencies, and held a director level and head of channels role at a
leading B2B sales and marketing agency in London for three years.
Jakob Gillmann, Adjust
Jakob is VP of Growth & Sales Operations for Berlin-based Adjust, where he
has worked since June 2016. Originally focused on building up the demand
generation teams in sales and marketing, he now devotes himself to optimiz-
ing sales operations and processes across the global business.
Adjust is the industry leader in mobile measurement and fraud prevention.
The Berlin-based company provides high-quality analytics, measurement,
and fraud prevention solutions for mobile app marketers worldwide, enabling
them to make smarter, faster marketing decisions. With Adjust’s open-source
SDK, app marketers can measure and analyze user behavior, user acquisition,
marketing ROI, and much more. Adjust’s platform proactively keeps datasets
clean through its Fraud Prevention Suite, verifies in-app purchases in real
time, and provides streamlined reporting for clear, actionable, and compara-
ble metrics. Adjust is a marketing partner with all major platforms, including
Facebook, Google, Snap, Twitter, Naver, Line, and WeChat. Dynamic Adjust
Integrations are used by over 1,200 leading networks and analytics providers
worldwide. In total, more than 20,000 apps have implemented Adjust’s solu-
tions to improve their performance.
87
Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group
After beginning his career advising large corporate companies on sales and
marketing at the Boston Consulting Group, Jens co-founded City Deal, which
grew to operate in 16 companies in six months, before being acquired by
Groupon. He then worked for Groupon in Europe, Asia, and the United States,
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero
Stefan is an AI and big data veteran and serial entrepreneur. He was one of
the few early contributors to Nutch, the open source project that spun off
Hadoop, which 10 years later, is considered a $20 billion business. He built
his previous company, Datameer, from the ground up to become a leader in
data analytics, and is now focused on leveraging AI to solve the biggest pain
point for businesses—sales productivity.
Stefan’s experience with developing and advising high-growth startups spans
from product inception and development to scaling and operations. At Data-
meer, he raised ~ $100 million in venture capital and doubled revenue six
years in a row. His passion for entrepreneurship has led to his active involve-
ment with a number of accelerators, coaching entrepreneurs on a path to
success.
Automation Hero’s innovative AI sales automation platform improves sales
reps’ productivity by offering the industry’s first personal adaptive and proac-
tive augmented intelligence assistant, Robin.
Leveraging powerful artificial intelligence algorithms, Robin processes big
data from users’ CRM, customer interactions, and Automation Hero’s data-
base to identify and automate sales processes.
88
developing a highly structured and effective approach to B2B sales.
Since moving back to Berlin, he has founded two companies, Digital Business
Group and Sales Potentials, in addition to sharing his experience as a mentor
with startups through multiple accelerators.
Digital Business Group provides sales consulting and interim management
for tech companies, while SalesPotentials is a B2B sales and business devel-
opment headhunter.
Clare Jones, what3words
Clare is the Chief Commercial Officer at what3words; prior to this, her back-
ground was in the development and growth of social enterprises, including in
impact investing. She studied for an undergraduate degree in English,
with her graduate degree in the Geography Department at the University of
Cambridge. Clare also volunteers with the Streetlink project, doing health
outreach work with vulnerable sex workers in South London.
what3words is the world’s first addressing system designed for voice.
Every 3m x 3m square in the world has been assigned an address made of
just three words from the dictionary. These three-word addresses can be
used to route cars or drones, used as an address when ordering online, or
simply given as a meeting point for a picnic in the park. what3words is used
in 170 countries and is being adopted by governments all around the world
as an official addressing system. Its investors include Daimler, Intel Capital,
Aramex, and Deutsche Bahn.
89
Peter Krauss, CoSelling
As a sales and leadership trainer and authorized Facilitator of the Challenger
Selling Model™ at CEB, Peter has trained over 10,000 delegates since 2006.
Before starting his training business, he served for over twenty years in sales
and marketing management functions in leading technology companies.
Peter has strong experience in sales efficiency and leadership development
through interactive workshops, coaching, change management and training,
and has worked across Europe.
Jens Lapinski, Angel Invest Ventures
Jens has over 15 years’ experience in running/building and investing in start-
ups. This includes launching the Berlin office of Techstars, where he man-
aged four programs and invested in 40 companies, which have raised $75
million plus in aggregate. Before Techstars, Jens was a partner at Forward
Labs (now Forward Partners), which he co-founded in January 2012. Forward
Labs built profitable startups at high speed using lean startup principles.
He is now the CEO of Angel Invest Ventures, an Angel Fund based in Berlin
which makes ten to twenty angel investments each year. He is also an advi-
sory board member at signals Venture Capital.
90
Daniel Reisner, Herzog Fox & Neeman
Daniel is widely-recognized as one of Israel‘s leading Public International Law
experts, a result of his 19-year career in government in this field. In addition,
for over 20 years, he served as a senior member of Israel‘s peace delegations
with both Jordan and the Palestinians, working in the triple role of negotia-
tor, legal advisor, and drafter. Since retiring from government service, he has
entered private practice and today heads the international law, international
trade, defense, and homeland security practice groups at Herzog, Fox & Nee-
man (Israel’s leading law firm) in Tel Aviv.
Neil Ryland, Peakon
Following a degree in sports science, Neil began his sales career in telesales.
He was then part of the founding commercial team at Huddle, a leading en-
terprise content collaboration platform for governments and enterprise.
As the company’s chief revenue officer, Neil built teams in multiple regions
and oversaw the rapid expansion of a UK basement startup to a global com-
pany. He joined Peakon as Chief Revenue Officer in October 2016, heading the
company’s commercial operations from the company’s London offices.
Peakon has grown at 606% in 2017 and now has global offices in New York,
London, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Auckland.
Peakon’s employee engagement platform is used by hundreds of businesses
across the globe to listen to their staff, enabling everyone in the organization
to reach their full potential.
91
Edward White, Interana
Originally from Ireland, Eddie has spent the last 16 years working in the
US technology industry, with a focus on data analytics for the last decade.
He helps companies to build and grow sales and develop their business, and
is currently vice president of business development for Interana.
Founded in 2014, by the team that build the Facebook data platform, Intera-
na is the only platform that makes it possible for any employee to ask unlim-
ited, unbounded questions and get answers from all of your raw event data
generated by users, in seconds. Employees can ask virtually anything - from
product development, to customer success, to engineering efficiencies and
get answers about how customers interact in real time and through time.
Kimberly Drory, ERB
Kimberly Drory is a certified attorney. As head of ERB’s Global Business
Development department, Kimberly caters to the business development of
both ERB and its portfolio companies. This includes working with the com-
panies in Israel and in the US on building their road map, fine-tuning their
needs, and helping them reach their goals.
92
Gilad Pinhas, ERB
Gilad Pinhas is an Israeli CPA and certified attorney with over 16 years’
experience in the field of finance, technology companies, multi-national
companies, and startups. He heads the US division of ERB and works
closely with companies expanding into the US from early stage set up
through to on-going financial management.
Based in Tel Aviv, New York, California, and London, ERB provides outsourced
financial, tax, HR, and accounting services to companies looking to build
their business globally. It specializes in working with startups, using its 23
years of experience to provide a one-stop-shop solution to their financial
and bookkeeping needs.
Iskender Dirik
Iskender Dirik is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and
tech expert with 20 years of experience in the digital world.
He is MD/CEO at Microsoft ScaleUp and Microsoft for Startups
in Berlin. Iskender is also Venture Partner for EQT Ventures, one of the
largest Venture Capital funds in Europe. Prior to that, Iskender led a
corporate venture capital fund and was for six years MD/CEO of a tech
consulting and software development firm.
He founded his first company at the age of 21 and built and
sold a couple of tech startups afterwards.
93
Appendix
Page 22
Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group:
“one sales manager/team lead for 6-8 sales reps;
one pre-sales for 3-6 SDRs, one SDR for 2-3 AEs”
Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group:
“in growth stage, you see one VP of sales, 3 sales managers, 18 sales reps,
4-5 pre-sales guys, and relevant number of SDRs”
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero:
“in growth stage, each sales manager should have 6-8 AEs”
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero:
“1 SDR; 2-4 AEs, zero everything else for seed round”
Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero:
“In general, you should have the following ratios at every stage:
1 SDR for 2 AE, 2 sales engineers for 3 AEs (if your product is very technical;
if not, you need less, which is better for you, but don’t risk bad Proof of Concepts or custo-
mer experience),
1 sales manager for 5-7 AEs maximum
Amnon Drori, Octopai:
Seed stage 1 AE, Series A 2-10 AEs, 1-2 sales engineers, 3-4 SDRs
Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI:
Seed stage 0 AE, Series A 2-4 AEs, 1-2 sales engineers, 1-2 SDRs
Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group:
Seed stage 3 AE, Series A 8 AEs, 1 sales engineer, 3 SDRs
Neil Ryland, Peakon:
Seed stage 1 AE; Series A 2-4 AEs, all depends on market size and traction
Peter Krauss:
Seed stage 1 AE; Series A 2-4 AEs, 1-2 sales engineers, 2-4 SDRs
94
Page 27
Thank you to all our contributors for their input on these benchmarks, particularly:
Jens Hutzschenreuter, Digital Business Group (Germany, United States)
Gero Decker, Co-founder and CEO at Signavio (Germany)
Neil Ryland, Peakon (United Kingdom)
Edward White, Interana (United States)
Jean Belanger, Cerebri AI (United States)
Amnon Drori, Octopai (United States)
Page 75
Source: Art of Sales Podcast via Digital Kompakt
https://www.digitalkompakt.de/b2b-sales-podcast/
Source: SaaStr podcast 176
https://player.fm/series/the-official-saastr-podcast-saas-founders-investors/saastr-176-
what-saas-startups-need-to-raise-a-series-a-today-why-we-need-a-new-framework-
to-think-about-saas-multiples-and-how-the-rule-of-40-changes-with-scale-with-kristi-
na-shen-partner-bessemer-venture-partners
Source: McKinsey
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/cutting-sa-
les-costs-not-revenues
Appendix
Learn more
about Microsoft
for startups:
https://aka.ms/salesplaybook