I talk to many entrepreneurs and cofounders on a monthly basis. For many of these leaders B2B sales is not something they have done or really want to do. They feel more comfortable with operations, fund raising, finance, or product development than sales. There was a recent Entrepreneur article entitled, 5 Reasons Entrepreneurs Must Be Salespeople More Than Visionaries. This article does a good job of positioning why a startup leaders should also be a sales leader. You will find that you may need to do a few unnatural things when you start selling.

This blog post will help the non-sales founder feel more comfortable and be more successful in sales.

Leverage Your Network

This is the easiest place to start, not just for a co-founder, but for a sales professional. Find your direct connections and see which ones are the decision maker for your solution or work in organizations that could use your solution. LinkedIn is a great tool to help expand the use of your network. Mine your 1^st connections that can make introductions to your 2^nd connections. Half the battle is booking the meeting and the other half is what happens in the meeting.

Create Scripts and Practice

If you are new to sales, what you say or email to prospects may not come easy. Prepare a script for an email that you can tweak. Plan what you would say in a meeting describing your business, solution, and benefits. The great thing about sales is that you can practice it as well. Get another team member to be the customer and role play meetings and telephone calls.

Make Time for Sales

At the end of a busy week you may wonder where the time went. Many people gravitate towards the things they like or feel comfortable with. This means that sales can often get overlooked. Set up goals for yourself on time and activities. That could mean time for outbound efforts for 6 hours a week from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., 3 days a week or committing to going to networking events twice a month.

Try Networking

Find the right networking group where you can connect in person may be more comfortable for you. If you find the right events it can be an effective use of time.

Utilize Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a tactic that helps get qualified leads into your business. For most organizations inbound marketing is a great option. When you do have sales interactions the accounts will be qualified and should be interested in your solution. Inbound marketing typically takes some time for the engine to produce leads, this may be time your business does not have. I would recommend at the start to not rely solely on inbound marketing.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Publish your activity and revenue targets. This will motivate you to hit them and show the rest of team your commitment to sales. You can make a game of it with another team member on what happens if you hit or overachieve the targets.

If you are looking for some more information on growing your sales team check out our white paper, Growing your Sales Team.