[PODCAST] Setting The Playbook On Knowing Customers To Grow Innovative Businesses

About This Discussion:

When it comes to building startups, especially on the emerging technology side, founders often think the technology will sell itself. If that doesn’t work, their next step is throwing on a few key words, like Artificial Intelligence or Blockchain to try to seal the deal.

However, when it comes to growing and scaling a company of any type, it truly goes back to the basics, and Amos Schwartzfarb breaks down a process in Sell More Faster that any company can use to understand their client better, focus their sales team on the right things, and scale their company for growth.

About Amos Schwartzfarb:

Amos was born in the bronx, NY and grew up in Fort Lee NJ.  At a young age, Amos started seeking adventure and pushing limits. While attending college at the University of Massachusetts in 1992 Amos fell in love with rock climbing which brought him to Northern California in 1993 and eventually a job packing boxes for Shoreline Mountain Project. While there Amos helped turn an old school mail-order company into one of the first e-commerce companies which launched his career into the startup world.  

After Shoreline, Amos went on to 6 other startups including HotJobs.com, Work.com, Business.com, mySpoonful, Blacklocus and Joust. At each of these startups, his responsibility was always directly related to figuring out product market fit, early sales and building sales organizations. 

Then, in 2015, he moved over to the investor side as Managing Director of Techstars in Austin.  Now after over 70 seed stage investments Amos has become one of the more active early stage investors, via Techstars Austin in all of Texas.

Here is the official breakdown of our talk:

3:00 - Introducing Amos’ book and discussing who it really is for (and the answer may surprise you)

5:47 - The motivation and reason behind Amos’ book, and what was important for him in order to write the book

7:23 - Introducing the W3 model, and why it’s crucial that every business understands it before starting to sell their product. It’s all about understanding the Who, What, and Why of your customer and your sales process.

8:32 - Why 90% is your most important number in making the match of who your customer is

9:00 - Why the ‘what’ isn’t the question about what you’re selling to the customer, and how you need to approach this question instead

13:05 - Why understanding what happens with your customer beyond the sale is crucial to your sales process

13:45 - How you begin to measure the success of your customer if you’re just in the beginning part of your business

15:45 - Understanding the difference between the customer sales process and the customer development process

18:30 - Why the sales person’s job isn’t about customer development

20:59 - When a startup isn’t getting the right feedback, it may be time for a pivot, but what is the moment when that a business should understand when it truly is time for a pivot. Or are you just not talking to the right customer?

24:20 - How you actually use the data you’re gathering from your customer and sales

26:29 - When you’re trying to get to the scaling part of your business, what are the most important questions you should be asking

28:32 - What disservice that we’re doing for companies when it comes to understanding the type of business we’re building, and why we should be building it

30:32 - Understanding why the focus of your sales should be about long term vs just one sale at a time

34:53 - Changing the mindset of the sales cycle, and how to change the view of a sales cycle

38:02 - How to understand the different ‘customers’ within your sales process if you’re selling to a larger company

40:40 - Why doing your due diligence in the beginning vs. rushing for the sales can end up benefiting you in the long run

42:11 - What are the biggest mistakes companies make when developing a sales process

Interested in buying the book, you can find it here —> https://amzn.to/2pUIfZK

Want to get in touch with Amos?

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amosschwartzfarb/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/avatureamos