A founder who sold at ADP and startups explains why hands-on selling works early but breaks at scale. The tension: founders know their product cold and have networks, but formal sales methods like MEDDIC feel rigid. The move from scrappy to systematic requires keeping what made you good while adopting structure.
Let's take a little bit of a lens here because, you know, you've worked with ADP and, you know, very large, you know, structured organizations with a lot of bureaucracy, but also a lot of sales expertise, as you said, sort of like the Harvard of sales, Harvard School of Sales. But I know you've also worked with a lot of, you know, early-stage companies that, you know, sort of 1 to 20 or 2 to 20 kind of range where oftentimes it's the founder has been, you know, in the trenches because they know everything that's right about their products. They just built it. They know everything that's wrong about the competition because they probably used to work there. They had some industry expertise and they've got a Rolodex of contacts. So they've been out there in the trenches slugging away, making deals happen. Maybe they don't have the benefit of sales training and things like MEDDIC, and it might seem intimidating to them to think about bringing in a more formalized sales process. Whatever that is, what do you see as, you know, give us a little bit of your insight.
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