The ultimate guide to founder-led sales | Jen Abel (co-founder of JJELLYFISH)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I've always wanted to create a very tactical episode on how to do sales, especially with a focus on founder lit sales.
A lot of early stage founders get tripped up as they're taking late stage sales advice. The founder is the product. You have studied, you have experienced something that most of the market hasn't even had a chance to maybe see or visualize yet.
A billion SaaS tools emailing me constantly about their product. How do you get someone to even want to talk to you and be open to learning about what you're doing?
So if you can focus the messaging in a way that speaks to something that is a bit of shock value or is counterintuitive, you'll get them to continue reading. When a problem is truly being felt by the market, people will get on a call.
People will respond. The next step I imagine is you're on the phone with them trying to convince them to actually care. What do you do there? How do you get them to engage further?
You need to be vulnerable. I would be very open and honest with where you are. Hey, I'm an early stage startup. We have a lot to learn. Can we kind of gain your insight into like how this problem is manifesting on your side? Founder-led sales is not about revenue on day one. It is about learning as fast as humanly possible to get to that pulse so that you can earn the right to sell.
Today, my guest is Jen Abel. Jen is the co-founder of Jellyfish, where her and her team help early stage founders learn how to sell, do early customer discovery, and set up a repeatable sales motion. Prior to Jellyfish, Jen was an enterprise sales director at the Muse and at General Assembly, and she's obsessed with helping founders in the zero-to-one stage of their journey. In our conversation, we get extremely tactical and in the weeds on how to actually Do sales as a founder. We talk through each step of the sales process, and Jen shares what you should be doing and saying at every step. We go through how to find your first set of leads, how to reach out to them, what to say in your message, how to structure your first sales call, how to get through procurement, and how to get that final signature.
She shares actual words you should be using and phrases and structures and pitfalls that most people run into at each of these steps. I've never heard a podcast episode with this much advice that you can put into practice tomorrow, and I am very excited to hear how it goes for you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Jen Abel. Jen, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks, Lenny.
What I've always wanted to do is to create a very tactical episode on how to do sales, like how to actually have sales conversations, how to find leads, how to close deals, especially with a focus on founder-led sales, where founders are doing the early sales versus hiring a salesperson, which one, I know you're a huge advocate of, and we'll talk about this. And two, you basically spend all your time working with founders and founding teams, helping them learn how to do sales, how to set up their go-to-market motions, how to scale teams, sales teams, how to hire salespeople. So I'm very excited to have you here to kind of create a very like in the weeds, hands-on episode on how to do sales.
What is founder‑led sales and why is it crucial for early‑stage startups?
Yeah. Uh how does that sound broadly?
That that sounds awesome. And thank you so much for having me, Lenny. I mean, it's a true pleasure to be here with you.
It's my pleasure. Many people have recommended you come on this podcast. I'm excited we're doing this. Let me start with just this kind of question our founder led sales. Maybe just briefly explain what that term means and then talk about why this is so important, why this is the way you recommend companies start doing sales.
Founder led sales is really that first milestone that a startup goes through on the commercial side, right? Which is how do I go out and get my first few customers?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:03
2
What is founder‑led sales and why is it crucial for early‑stage startups?
3:03–10:06
3
How should founders structure the sales cycle to land their first customers?
10:06–13:46
4
What cold‑outreach tactics and message formulas work best for early founders?
13:46–18:34
5
How do conversion rate and win rate differ and which should I focus on?
18:34–33:51
6
What should I say on the first sales call to keep the prospect engaged?
33:51–52:27
7
How can I navigate procurement and make the process easy for buyers?
52:27–58:51
8
What are the key steps to secure a signature and close the deal?
58:51–1:16:01
Speakers
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