Great stuff by Leslie. He is also the author of Sales Learning Curve, a framework to figure out when to ramp up your sales force. Likewise, technology companie

Great stuff by Leslie. He is also the author of Sales Learning Curve, a framework to figure out when to ramp up your sales force. Likewise, technology companies shouldn't expect to sell their 1.0 product without undergoing a learning curve around the needed feature set, the competitive response, the right type of channel and sales rep, optimal pricing, etc. And yet, nearly every business plan I have seen shifts gears directly from Development to Sales, staffed by a growing number of experienced sales reps charged to sell their regular quota of product. The consequence of skipping the Sales Learning Curve in a business plan is all too common: the company fails to meet the plan, sales reps are fired, eventually the VP Sales is fired, and the company has to raise a highly dilutive down round of capital to stay in business. Leslie's prescription for success and capital efficiency is a plan that includes the Sales Learning Curve. Accept that until we're out there selling, we can't know what we don't know about the selling process. The goal at this point is to maximize runway, since you can't rush science. As my erudite partner and Harvard Business School Professor Felda Hardymon likes to instruct, "run the business like a one story whorehouse" (with no fucking overhead). Hire only two or three creative, guerilla-style reps and a VP who knows how to experiment with multiple channels. It may take 4, 7, or 10 quarters to climb the curve. Only then, when your sales force is a profit center (with two quarters where contribution exceeds twice the sales costs) is it time to flick the switch. At this point, raise lots of capital and hire as many talented reps as you can possibly find! This kind of prescriptive framework for clearly distinguishing the phases of a company is so much more actionable than the wishy-washy approach of hesitantly adding more and more sales reps over time. http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.in/2005/09/best-startup-advice-i-have.html http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.in/2005/09/best-startup-ad... https://hbr.org/2006/07/the-sales-learning-curve https://hbr.org/2006/07/the-sales-learning-curve