A few weeks ago we at Hustle Fund hosted an event with Armand Farrokh on “how to land your first 50 customers when your product barely exists.”

Armand is, you might say, something of a sales genius. At Carta, an equity management platform, he went from an Account Executive to Director Of Sales in only 2 years. He helped the company scale to $100M+ in ARR. Next, at compensation-benchmarking software company Pave, he grew ARR by 100X from $100K to $10M+ in 2 years.

Currently, he’s the founder of 30 Minutes to President’s Club. It’s a revenue media platform teaching hyper-actionable sales tactics.

At the discussion with Hustle Fund’s Haley Bryant, Armand spent an hour deep-diving into his strategies for closing B2B deals. He shared:

• How to make a list of prospects for your sales outbound strategy
• How to build a customer advisory board
• How to find the right trigger to connect with a cold lead
• How to write follow-up emails in your cold email sequence

In this article (the first in a four-part series), we’ll explain how you can make a list of prospects to reach out to, and cover the rest in the upcoming articles. Let’s dive in!

Build your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Note the characteristics of a company that will make the best fit for the solutions you provide. You can sell your product to these companies the fastest because they need it. For example, Armand narrowed Carta’s ICP to mid-size private companies that raised an institutional round in the last 6 months.

You should also figure out the right person to contact at these companies. For Carta's sales strategy, that was founders or first finance hires at Series A companies.

Understanding different buyers at companies

You can’t just contact one person at a company and call it a day. It doesn’t work that way. You’ll have to connect with 3-5 people per company. That's because there are three types of buyers:

1. The champion or “at the line” person

A champion is someone who will buy and promote your tool. These are department heads or directors. They own the department that will use your tool daily. For Armand's sales strategy at Pave, these were the Directors of People Operations or Heads of Compensation. You should figure out your champion first. Get on a call with them to demo your product and explain how it will solve their problems.

Note: Sometimes, a company can have 2-3 champions. You need to persuade all. For example, once Armand converted the Head of People Ops at the target company into a champion, he also converted other department heads (like the Head of Compensation).

2. The “above the line” person

These are economic buyers. You won’t have them on every sales call, but you need their agreement because they’ll write the check for your product. At Pave, a compensation management platform, Armand was often looking for the CHRO or the Chief People Officer. Armand recommends that once you persuade and onboard champions, ask them to broker a call with the “above the line” person. You can then get their buy-in to accelerate the deal.

3. The “below the line person”

These are the people who’ll actually use the tool. For example, the “system admins.” You’ll have to teach them the technicalities of your product. Ensure you talk to them only after you've got the buy-in from the “above the line” and “at the line” people. In summary, these are the 3-5 people you’ll have to contact at each ICP company: 1 “above the line” person, 1-2 “champions” or more (depending on your industry), and a few of the “below the line” people.  

Reaching out to contacts at the companies

Once you've made a list of companies and contacts based on your ICP, Armand recommends the following approach:

If you sell to SMB companies (4-figure contracts), target 50-60+ companies and 3-5 contacts per week. If you sell to mid-size companies (5-figure contracts; usually $20-$50K), target 25-50 companies and 3-5 contacts per week. If you sell to enterprise companies (high 5-6 figure contracts), target 10 companies and 5-10 contacts weekly. This is how you create a BIG list of prospects for your outbound sales strategy.  

Let's stop there for today. Coming soon in future installments: building a customer advisory board, connecting with a cold lead, and sending impactful follow-up emails in your cold email sequence.

Happy researching!

Sameer

This article was written by Sameer Ansari. When he's not writing for technology startups, VC funds, and investors, he's obsessed with human psychology and soccer.