Jason M. Lemkin says founders should close their first 10 customers themselves. Customers want to talk to the CEO, and doing the sales work teaches you what the market actually needs. You'll know when to hire a salesperson because you'll have learned the job.
So I think the question that Liz leads to is what is a sign that you should start to hire your first salesperson?
Even if you hate sales, even if you think it's icky, even if you don't like it, As a founder, you've 95 times out of 100, you've got to find a way at least to close the first 10 customers yourself. You've got to find a way and we could dig into how to do that if you don't like sales. That the hack though, is that even if you don't like sales, customers love to talk to the CEO. They, the customers love it. And here's the other thing. As a founder, you're really good at the product in the market, hopefully even in the early days. So what I mean, so what's important is even if you don't know how to do outbound, even if you don't know how to send a cold email, even if you don't do any of this stuff, and even if you don't know how to ask for a check, even if you don't know how to open or close, almost all founders are a plus middlers. A plus middlers. A plus middlers, right?
