“I’ve got enough leads.” Really?!?!

Enough leads for what? Enough leads for when? I’ve heard this phrase and others like it from many early-stage founders and their team. It’s a red flag! There’s no sales qualification process that is being rigorously adhered to give the company a revenue plan to present to the board.

The founder’s enthusiasm is contagious. They are selling their vision – something they are really good at! And, having a founder talk to prospects in a great door opener (they should be part of the sales for at least the first few million in ARR), a great way for people (in sales terminology they are “suspects”, haven’t been qualified yet) to learn about a new product. Who doesn’t like to share something new they learned?

The vision sales carries on through the small GTM teams which keeps busy with lots of activity…yet when you ask the team what is the commit for the quarter, for the year and how are they going to get there. 

Initial response is “we’re so busy, it’ll happen”. 

Ok, how? Crickets.

What’s the plan? Crickets get louder.

Getting rid of the crickets by:

  1. Building a 2 year sales model, by quarter and include average deal size(s), growth, churn to get the idea of how many deals you need by quarter to get there.
  2. Using  a sales methodology, such as MEDDIC, with the GTM team to qualify in/ qualify out leads

Being rigorously honest in lead qualification shows you where your pipeline gaps are – usually the next 2-3 quarters are way off. Now, you can developed a plan to address those gaps.