Modern Logic collaborated with Lighter Capital on their latest webinar series, “Scaling and Accelerating SaaS startups”. This article is part of the series on the topic, “Accelerating Sales and Leveraging Technology to Build Engaged Communities.”
Staring ahead towards an iceberg – what mistakes are preventable? Check out these tips to learn hard-won knowledge from Anna Talerico at Arthur Ventures, Derek Baird at Sensyne Health, Brian Loar at GoCheck Kids, and Dustin Bruzenak, our CEO.
Anna Talerico shares:
“My problem was holding on to people too long who couldn’t produce. It was time I wasted by not having the right people in the door and the right seats, and not holding others accountable.”
Derek Baird tells us:
“My two biggest mistakes have been hiring a great person for the wrong sales role and not counseling founders enough to let go of the reins. It comes down to regular assessment of where you are for product market fit. If you’re still trying to get that fit, you should call up Modern Logic and get some help! If you’ve figured it out, it takes a certain approach and skill set among your team. Those transition points are often really hard to see and detect when you’re in the middle of them. I’ve made mistakes when I didn’t realize I’d moved along on that spectrum. You need to adjust- even if easier said than done. There’s not 1 playbook- there’s 15 different playbooks for each part of the spectrum.”
Brian Loar says:
“When I retire, I’d always thought that I’d write a book on mistakes, but it turns out it’ll have to be an encyclopedia that gets updated…
The hardest part for me has been answering the question: when do you walk away from a deal? There’s emotional attachment. When you walk away, you tell yourself you lost, you walked away, or you weren’t good enough. How can we detach that emotion?
And from a sales leadership standpoint- not specializing fast enough. You can easily hire a great person for the wrong role. Your best closers are not great prospectors, so you shouldn’t be expecting them to do all those skills. You’re diluting their power that way, taking something where they’re truly expert and spreading them out to become average.
Dustin caps off this airing of mistakes, sharing his final piece of advice:
“Ruthlessly evaluate your own performance regularly. If you’re three times into doing something and it’s not working – try to do something different.”
Find more insight like this in the full webinar recording on our YouTube channel!