To sell more without a sales team, work on the levers that improve the conversations you already have before adding more of them: who you target, which deals you chase, your price, the numbers of your funnel and what happens after each call. Each lever below comes from a Y Combinator Startup School talk, and I name the speaker so you can check the source.
Lever 1: Target before you write
Aaron Epstein says better targeting is the highest-leverage way to improve replies: sending 100 targeted emails beats sending 1,000 untargeted ones (How To Convert Customers With Cold Emails). Start with the customers you were glad to close and write who they are in one sentence.
Lever 2: Chase the easiest deals first
Gustaf Alströmer's most important sales advice for early customers is that the first ones should be your easiest. Qualify during the first call, prioritise those most likely to close, and do not be afraid to let slow ones go: if someone drags you through two or three calls, he says it is fine to answer that you should talk again in six months. He adds that selling to people you know is easier than selling to strangers (How to get your first customers).
Lever 3: Test your price
Kevin Hale says startups consistently undercharge, and suggests raising prices by 5% at a time until you lose about 20% of deals (Startup Pricing 101). Use the B2B ROI calculator to back the number with the customer's own figures, and read how to respond to "it's too expensive".
Lever 4: Measure the funnel and work backwards
Alströmer says to track the conversion rate of each funnel step and to work backwards from your goal, because without data you cannot tell a weak process from too little outreach. A post-call report and a 0 to 10 score on the same rubric give you comparable data for the calls themselves.
Lever 5: Never leave a call without the next step
Tom Blomfield's advice is not to leave a meeting without the next touch point set up, and Epstein recommends following up two to four times. See the follow-up guide, and for selling more to people who already said yes, your best customer already said yes once. During the call, a copilot that suggests the next question and the next step helps you not to forget it.
When does it make sense to hire a salesperson?
Not before you know how to sell yourself, according to Alströmer: only then will you know what good looks like. Blomfield gives a rule of thumb for the economics: about 5 dollars of new annual recurring revenue for each dollar of the salesperson's total compensation, so a $100,000 hire is expected to close about $500,000 a year. That also means your price has to leave room for it.
Sources: Aaron Epstein, How To Convert Customers With Cold Emails (video); Gustaf Alströmer, How to get your first customers (video); Kevin Hale, Startup Pricing 101 (video); Tom Blomfield, The Sales Playbook For Founders and How To Price For B2B.
Which lever should I start with?
The talks do not rank them. A sensible order is to start with targeting and the funnel numbers, because they tell you where the effort is wasted, and then work on price and next steps.
Do I need a CRM?
Alströmer suggests starting with a simple spreadsheet and moving to a simple CRM that tracks conversion rates automatically. What matters is that the numbers get recorded.