I just launched a bootstrapped B2B product today (also in the recruiting space). I've never sold a thing in my life before, but have suddenly been trying to learn how to be as effective at sales as possible.
Today I got some significant interest from a couple of fortune 500 companies and got some serious imposter syndrome. Any advice for dealing with imposter syndrome as a defacto sales leader with zero sales experience?
Imposter syndrome or just not sure where to go? If it's the latter, there's a structure to enterprise deals that you can usually follow.
1st uncover the buyer journey with some form of this question: "Just so I can help plan accordingly, let's imagine your company decides to move forward, what does the purchase process at your company look like?" Try to unearth all the steps they need to go through (is it out of their personal budget, department budget, VPs budget? Are there other groups we'll need approval from and what does their process look like? (IT, Legal, etc). How long does it usually take to close a purchase and get a vendor paid in your firm?
The goal is to uncover the end to end process that results in $$s early so you can plan accordingly. If the process takes 18months and requires deep IT and Legal approval - make sure you're priced high enough to absorb the pre-sales time & labor.
And when pricing comes up - if you have a well established market, then price within the norms (your champion isn't using their own money, they're using the company's - they just need to justify the cost). If the product is a new category, price the product to organizational value. If your product reduces the number of sourcing staff or multiplies their effectiveness - a typical strategy is to show the business impact. Perhaps Salary of HR hires saved + number of good hires * impact factor on business (whatever works best to show $$s of impact to the business). Then charge a fraction of that value yearly.
There are a bunch of great books on enterprise sales, but 99% of it after showing value is uncovering the purchase plan and helping nurture your champion (and possibly others) to accomplish the sale to their internal stakeholders for you.
And as a previous commenter said before - don't worry about pricing it perfectly. Fit the budget they have today and readjust next budget cycle or during next year's renewals.
Yes, as a founder keep to the mindset that you don't have to really do sales. You can do a much more powerful thing: Do business by talking about the business with them.
Especially in the early days it's not super key to extract 100% of the potential budget from a client. It's much more useful to get to 80% of their budget and have a very strong relationship for feedback and to get referrals for new customers. You do that by doing business with them as a founder instead of applying hardnose sales tactics.
Just continuously think about 1) how much value you product brings and why this is good for them 2) most sales reps are pretty mediocre at best 3) many other founders have gone through this before.
No quick tips, but can highly recommend the book The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane. It has some great exercises that help you build habits to overcome many things, including imposter syndrome.
Today I got some significant interest from a couple of fortune 500 companies and got some serious imposter syndrome. Any advice for dealing with imposter syndrome as a defacto sales leader with zero sales experience?