🚀 How to close early sales?

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Join 200+ founders getting actionable and personalized advice on building startups in the early days at the DECODE Conference on November 15.

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• Kevin Weil | Chief Product Officer, OpenAI

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💻 Demo your product to investors including:

• Barry Eggers | Founding Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners

• David Jen | MD of Finance at X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory 

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3 tactics to close early sales

🔀 Get to the bottom of your customer’s problem

• Slice and dice your customers to identify your ideal customer profile

• Take a genuine care and curiosity on what your customers do and how they get currently their job done:

  • What products do they sell? At what price and to whom?

  • How often do they update their products? Where are they sourced from?

  • What do they need done on a day to day basis?

  • Is the current order process easy or complex?

  • Is there a seasonality in their sales cycle?

• Probe for the real problems instead of asking them directly “what are the biggest challenges you are facing” (see previous newsletter on how to run user interviews)

💰 Understand your customer’s buying behavior

• Your product solves a problem, but customers might be buying for completely different reasons (e.g. personal, political, or career reasons)

• Uncover real motivations of your customer beyond benefits of the product:

  • What KPI does this help them hit?

  • Who gains (or loses) political capital if this deal happens?

  • Whose career accelerates if this works?

• Research your customer’s buying process: 

  • How they learn about vendors

  • Who needs to sign off (and when)

  • What political dynamics exist in their organization

• Design and align sales process to mirror how customers make decisions (e.g. if additional approvals are needed, offer collaterals or have follow-up calls to prepare your champion)

🔎 Explain how your product solves the customer’s problem

• Map the problem to your product

  • Focus on figuring out how your product naturally fits the problem 

  • Identify where your product can easily handle the big parts of the problem

  • Don’t be afraid to propose a feasible solution that is different than what your customers had envisioned 

• Share your plan for solving the problem, what it requires and why it’s a good fit for the customer; 

  • Ensure the customer understand the upsides and limitations of your product

  • Explain what the hardest parts of the solution are and how risks are mitigated

  • If the sales processes involve multiple parties, explain it to all additional stakeholders

• Craft your pitch around what success looks like for your customers instead of only focusing on the technical features

2 traps to avoid

🚨 Using the wrong (or no) sales deck

• Don’t repurpose investors decks into sales deck; problem statements like “The world of X is broken” can be condescending to those in the space

• No deck = assuming buyers already share your view of the problem and are just validating if your solution fits it

• Lay out a clear agenda for every sales call: who you are, what you’ll cover, the impact your product delivers, then prove it with a live demo; avoid speaking too much about product specifics

🚨 Pitching like a big player

• Don’t lean on messaging that makes you sound or look like established incumbents; they have far more assets and logos than you do, and you’ll be exposed

• Tell a narrative where newness is proof of innovation (e.g. at my previous company, we tried Competitor X, Y, and Z. None solved the real problem. So we built the product we wish we had)

1 tool to leverage

📖 Best practice on closing sales in the early days

• Founder-led sales first —> Hire a BDR/SDR to scale founder —> Bring on the first AE to report to founder —> Hire a second AE when first AE hire is successful —> Then, hire a sales leader

• Use tools like Mixmax to help with outreach email tracking and prospect meeting bookings in the early days

Bonus: 1 trend to spark startup ideas

📈 AI is set to reshape freight market and take it out of recession

• Freight industry is now in its third year of contraction, the longest and deepest in more than two decades

• Volumes are weak, rates are flat, and operating costs are rising; insurance is up 6% YoY, wages continue to climb, and compliance (e.g. fraud prevention and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations) add new friction

• Overcapacity, tariff uncertainty, and erratic demand make forecasting and asset utilization harder than ever

• AI can transform both operations and strategy:

  • Operational efficiency: AI agents that automate track-and-trace, document reconciliation, and rate confirmations, reducing thousands of human hours

  • Strategic intelligence: Predict regional demand shifts using signals like port throughput, tariffs, and industrial activity, allowing dynamic asset redeployment and pricing