The First 3 Months With Me

Hey friends,

A founder reached out last month.

On our first call, she said:

"Closed 50K myself. The product is ok to be sold now. I want to build a team. I want a real sales process. We need to figure out SDRs, too."

This is the most common situation I see.

The founder has proven they can sell. The product is (almost) there.

However, everything depends on the founder, making it difficult to scale.

Here is what the first 3 months engagement with Inscaler looks likee.

Before Signing -->OKRs

I don’t start any engagement until we have agreed upon a set of OKRs.

These are sales OKRs, tied directly to the goal the founder reached out with.

• Build the first sales cycle.
• Run the first outbound campaign.
• Hire the first AE.

Whatever the real goal is, we put it on paper before we start.

Month 1: First Things First

Month 1 is foundation work. We go through:

• The pipelines (what stages exist, what each stage really means)
• The CRM (set it up properly, or fix the mess that is already there)
• The script for discovery calls
• The script for the proposal calls.
• We kick off the outbound strategy, or a real evaluation of inbound, if that is the channelù
• We start choosing your sales stack, including AI for sales productivity.

By the end of month 1, we have foundamentals.

I also kick off live / offline coaching, listening to the calls the founder (and the team) runs - reinforcing the script.

Month 2: Strategy and (continuous) Coaching

Month 2 is where the system starts to live.

We build the sales playbook, based on the actions we are taking every day.

I coach the founder (and the team) on how to maintain a CRM pipeline.

We review live deals every week and move the needle on the ones that matter.

We make sure what we wrote in month 1 is actually being used.

This is also when bad habits get caught early.

There is a lot of pipeline hygiene at this point, with properties like amount, closed date, and starting to be used daily.

We also start to “forecast” some deals based on the data we have.

Month 3: Hire and Scale

Month 3 is about people and scaling the system.

We work on:

• Hiring (job description, screening, interview process)
• Onboarding & training for the new reps
• Compensation plan
• Sales planning, goals

Everything the founder needs so the team can run without them.

By the end of month 3, the founder has a documented sales cycle, a functional CRM, a playbook, a coached team, and an onboarded hire.

The process operates independently of my involvement or the founder's.

Bring Us Home

This is what 3 months with me look like.

If the 3 months are normal…of course running a startup is so f****** crazy that more things get in the middle.

And you know what? It’s fine.

I’m there in the trenches with my founders.

I will be there with you if you need.

Because building your product was difficult, marketing and selling aren’t easier but with the right processes and frameworks anybody can build a successful first sales team.

Thanks for reading this far. See you all next week!

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