So many founders make it their goal to get out of the sales role as they scale. “I can hardly wait until we can afford a VP sales to take over” is a common founder refrain.
While his role has evolved, getting out of sales entirely is the last thing that Usman Sheikh plans to do. In this episode we will learn what defines a founder-led sales organization and how you might change your mind about getting out of sales.
It all starts with redefining the sales mindset. B2B sales are not transactional. They come with building a relationship and the core currency of a relationship is the right information.
That’s how he got xiQ - Personality-Driven Sales & Marketing™️, started in the first place. He reached out to his SAP network to share his vision of providing more helpful data to sales organizations than they could possibly collect on their own.
This turned into more and deeper conversations with people in his network who eventually became his first 5 customers. Rather than change this approach, he expanded it by reaching out to more and more people in his network which created opportunities for his sales team.
Highlights:
4:54 Fortunately for me, when I was at SAP, I was able to form a great network of
highly valuable and engaged and influential people
7:15 I started explaining my vision, which was to be able to tap into this enormous amount of data that's out there that's relevant to sales but humanly it's not possible to analyze and bring in, it started ringing bells.
9:04 So it was very clear to me that listening to what the customers had to say, addressing their key pain points, and being able to bring novelty innovation to how traditional problems were solved was super, super important.
12:47 … being able to hire the right mindset. Sales is not about selling anymore, it's about educating. It's about having a conversation.
15:42 We have to make it easier to buy from us, and knowing our buyers better helps us do that.
18:18 We take salespeople and we make them into tool jockeys, and that just takes time away from selling.
20:03 Salespeople are only spending about 20% of their time with actual customers. 80% of their job is doing so many other things.
21:45 We, by the way, drink our own champagne. Everybody uses xiQ. And one of the core purposes of xiQ is to help you spend less time on doing research, more time on selling.
25:30 We're still doing a lot of networking and finding individuals that can help us meet a heart lead leader.
31:16 We are increasingly leaning towards partnerships and channels.
Quote:
“You’ve got to know the problem you are going in to solve. The client doesn’t have time to explain it to you.”
Connect with Usman Sheikh in the links below:
Website: https://xiqinc.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usmanmsheikh/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/usmanmsheikh
You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.
Website: https://AliceHeiman.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/
The CEO's Role in Sales: 2nd Anniversary Edition with Alice Heiman
The Danger of CEOs Undermining Sales with Larry Mandelberg
Companies are bought, they are not sold with Tracy Young
Case Studies Close Deals with Julian Lumpkin
Navigating the Future of Partner Selling with Cassandra Gholston
Scaling Your Sales Through Customer Retention
Usings AI To Gain A Competitive Edge In B2B Sales
What Titans of Tech Teach Us About Growing Sales Teams
How to maximize revenue growth with SalesOps
How Mission-Driven Companies Benefit From Founder-Led Sales
A Customer-Success Driven Sales Strategy
Better Prospecting Leads To More Sales Conversations
The Art Of Scaling A Sales Team
Building and Implementing Scalable Processes
How To Hire The Right Sellers In An Early Stage Company
The Secret to Predictable Growth through Building a Personal Brand
Move Deals Through Your Pipeline With The Centricity Model
Strategies To Gain An Unfair Advantage
How This CEO Bootstrapped A Sales Team
What every CEO can learn from 2022
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Organic Marketing Simplified: Master podcast marketing, fuel podcast growth, and make money podcasting!
THE GO BIZ GUY
The Sigma Femme Podcast
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Tim Ferriss Show