OH NO! I Fired My Entire Sales Team. Now what?
By Michael Tessler, Managing Partner
Ask any entrepreneur what fuels their drive, and most will reply they’re passionate about the solution they’ve built because they believe it can solve real-world problems. To turn their product into a business, however, they need customers.
Many startups find their first clients by identifying individuals inside a target organization that champion their offering. These “Product Champions” see potential in the technology, hope it solves specific problems, and want to test it in their environments.
I believe this is one of the most exciting times for any new organization. I am amazed at some of the customer projects that are developed in the early phases of introducing a product.
The challenge is to take these early customer experiences and turn them into a repeatable process that helps grow a business. This step is where many technology companies fail because they are building multiple offers without realizing it.
To keep early customers happy, many teams add additional features or create variations of an offering. Each “Product Champion” pulls in different directions with varying needs. Suddenly, engineering resources are stretched thin. Even worse? Since your product is tailored to a few specific organizations, your young sales team struggles to find similar opportunities.
So, what do you do? Usually, the first answer is to fire your sales staff. It seems logical. If they can’t sell your product, you need a team that can. However, in the long run, this might not be the right approach.
A Better Approach: Use Case Selling
Early on in a business’s tenure, a carefully managed go-to-market process is critical. To avoid the above scenario, a startup needs to focus on Use Case Selling (UCS). This technique is not new, but it can be instrumental in scaling a business if appropriately managed.
The concept of UCS is to focus on one buyer with one need and one value proposition. To get to this point, you need to understand when the buyer requires your product, why they need to buy it, and how they will use it for their business.
Use Case Selling is a simple, repeatable, and successful way to scale your business and sales pipeline. It adheres to the following steps:
- Developing Company Messaging
- Brainstorming Potential Use Cases
- Discovering Your First Use Case
- Scaling Your First Use Case
- Becoming Aware of New Use Cases and Adjusting
The best part of UCS is that once you have mastered the first use case, you’re prepared to tackle the second one, then the third, and so on. UCS is the cornerstone of building a repeatable and successful sales model. Learn how to apply this process for your business by downloading True North’s guide to Use Case Selling today: click to download the whitepaper.
