git:20261002.46ac0a1 to git:20261002.d5668a9

- description: "Build and diagnose a founder-led B2B sales motion using Peter Kazanjy's Founding Sales method. Use for early customer acquisition, sales narratives, outreach, demos, and deciding when to hire and train the first sellers."

- Use this skill when a founder or first seller needs to acquire early B2B customers, repair a weak sales motion, produce sales materials, or transfer a working motion to professional sellers. Treat sales development as an experimental process that the founder first learns, documents, and then teaches. [S1]

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- For a narrow request, execute the relevant steps below while checking the preceding stage's evidence. For a request to hire a salesperson before anyone has reliably sold the product, first diagnose what has actually been proven and produce the missing founder experiments. Hiring is a scaling mechanism only after a motion exists to transfer. [S2]

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- ## Operational procedure

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- ### 1. Locate the next unproven stage

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- Collect the product, target organization and buyer, existing customers, price, sales history, implementation results, and available sales records. Classify the venture by demonstrated evidence rather than fundraising stage or enthusiasm. Use this sequence as the diagnostic ladder. [S2]

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- - Problem discovery: prospects describe a real pain and current workarounds; the team has translated that learning into an initial product. [S2]

- - Value creation: implemented customers show improvement in the intended business measures. Product usage alone does not establish this. [S2]

- - Value exchange: customers pay and subsequently receive the promised value. Free pilots cannot prove willingness to pay. [S2]

- - Repeatable exchange: the founder repeatedly sells to suitable customers outside the initial beta group, with documented execution and successful onboarding. [S2]

- - Transfer: other sellers can run the motion efficiently, close suitable customers, and get them to success. [S2]

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- State the earliest missing proof and design the current task to produce it. Do not substitute a larger pipeline, a polished deck, or an executive hire for an unproven stage. The founder remains responsible for discovering the motion and initially managing its transfer. [S1] [S2]

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- ### 2. Define the pain-bearing customer

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- Write the ideal customer profile as observable business conditions that create the problem, plus the role responsible for solving it and the role controlling relevant budget. A broad industry label is insufficient. Target the person close to the pain rather than automatically approaching the CEO. [S3]

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- For each proposed account, record the evidence of pain, current solution, responsible contact, and reason the account qualifies. Existing expenditure on competing tools or manual work can be positive evidence of demand. Where no solution exists, the narrative must establish why the neglected problem deserves attention and money. [S3]

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- Separate fit from timing. Identify a real event that makes the pain urgent, such as a newly expanded team exposing management gaps. If creating a new category, identify the hidden budget or opportunity loss and build a business case the champion can carry to the economic buyer. [S9]

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- ### 3. Create the master commercial narrative

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- Write one central narrative before producing individual messages. Follow the progression from problem to solution to supporting specifics. Cover who suffers, what the pain costs, how existing alternatives fail, what changed to permit a better approach, how the solution works, and evidence of superiority. [S3]

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- Translate claims into customer operating measures. Distinguish measurable savings, incremental revenue, and softer qualitative benefits; label estimates as estimates. Explain the mechanics behind headline results and retain the calculations. If a prospect rejects the problem definition, address that disagreement or end the pitch instead of continuing through irrelevant product claims. [S3]

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- ### 4. Ship minimum viable sales materials

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- Turn the narrative into a compact deck with coverage of the problem, affected buyer, cost, alternatives, enabling change, solution, proof, and price. Keep slides modular so the argument can become more detailed as customer conversations reveal gaps. Prioritize rapid iteration while preserving credibility. [S4]

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- Move uncommon integration details and competitor comparisons into an appendix. When the same question appears a second time, create a reusable answer slide. Maintain a concise live presentation and a separate sendable version that reflects what was actually discussed. A generic fundraising story or unexplained product tour does not supply this commercial argument. [S4] [S5]

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- ### 5. Build appointment-setting assets

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- Derive a plainspoken outreach email and a short phone outline from the same narrative. In the email, connect an observed qualification fact to the recipient's specific pain, describe the relevant improvement, supply credible proof, and request a synchronous conversation. The immediate goal is an appointment. [S5]

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- Use a relevant subject line and customer-specific facts rather than ornamental marketing design. Where useful, include a screenshot or linked demonstration that supports the claim. Store reusable templates centrally and fork variants when distinct customer subgroups require different arguments. Do not treat highly targeted prospecting as a general product announcement. [S5]

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- ### 6. Run discovery and demonstrate a workflow

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- Before the call, inspect the organization and attendee, identify the likely fit, and decide what progress the meeting should achieve. Use specific, researched rapport. During discovery, investigate the current process and its consequences rather than wasting the conversation collecting facts already available publicly. [S9]

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- Use discovery to reveal the prospect's pain to the prospect as well as to learn about it. Follow answers into concrete examples of failures and consequences. Then frame how the solution addresses the acknowledged problem before moving into product screens. If time is short, earn a specific next meeting rather than rushing a disconnected demo. [S9]

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- Write a demo outline around the customer's natural workflow. Start with a compelling, readily understood use case and proceed through the work in its usual order. Customize examples to the prospect's actual needs, pause for discussion, and tie demonstrated capabilities back to the commercial argument. Do not rely on improvisation or exhaustive feature coverage. [S5]

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- ### 7. Ask directly and preserve the evidence

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- Explicitly ask whether the prospect has the problem, wants to solve it, and is prepared to spend money. Ask for the sale when appropriate rather than hoping interest turns into a purchase. Treat a poor fit or stalled opportunity as a reason to move on to other qualified prospects rather than hoarding every possible deal. [S6]

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- Record qualification details, opportunity size, objections, and next actions in the CRM. Make temporary conversational knowledge persistent so future follow-up and diagnosis have evidence. Keep customer interactions moving instead of endlessly perfecting collateral or communications; templatize recurring work to support high activity without sacrificing relevance. [S6]

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- For the first paid engagements, carry the agreement through procurement and implementation. Instrument the promised business result, review it with the customer, and count successful value delivery alongside payment. Selling many customers who never achieve the intended outcome is a failed proof of repeatability. [S2]

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- ### 8. Diagnose the motion before scaling it

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- Review activity volume and conversion between actual steps, including meetings and subsequent commitments. With sparse data, retain qualitative responses as well as progression counts. Repeated engaged discussions that produce a next meeting are stronger evidence than pleasant calls that go nowhere; inspect discovery and narrative when progression is weak. [S9]

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- Use the founder presentation's examples of 30 to 50 or more non-beta prospects and roughly one to two dozen successful customers as reference ranges, not universal numerical gates. The operative check is healthy sales performance plus a repeatable, documented motion that another seller can test. Avoid hiring a sales leader to manufacture this proof. [S2]

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- ### 9. Transfer the motion through hiring and training

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- Once the transfer stage is justified, define the execution the role must reproduce. Assess resourcefulness, coachability, persistence, precision, and demonstrated learning. Prestigious employers or schools are insufficient substitutes for evidence, and selling established products does not automatically prepare someone to sell an unfamiliar solution. [S7]

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- Use a realistic hiring exercise covering account research, discovery, presentation, demonstration, closing request, and follow-up. For a presentation role, evaluate the whole simulated customer interaction, including the invitation and proposal. Avoid theatrical exercises involving arbitrary objects; observe whether the candidate can execute the relevant work. [S7]

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- Build onboarding around the buyer's world, narrative, product, tools, and sales process. Rehearse presentation sections with feedback, pair trainees for realistic practice, and let them participate in the work surrounding experienced sellers' calls. Prepare accounts and tools rather than assuming new hires will configure everything correctly. [S8]

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- Start live selling with well-qualified opportunities and available support. Do not use unsuitable prospects as disposable practice. Review calls and leading performance measures, and reduce supervision as execution improves. Prove that a small number of sellers succeeds before adding many; the founder must make time for coaching rather than personally closing every opportunity. [S8] [S2]

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- ## Finished output

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- Deliver a sales working packet scaled to the requested task, with these elements or explicit reasons they are premature. Keep its claims traceable to observed customer and sales evidence. [S2] [S6]

- - Stage assessment, missing proof, and next experiment with an observable exit condition. [S2]

- - Customer profile, prospect qualification evidence, and master narrative with business measures and supporting calculations. [S3]

- - Relevant deck outline, outreach drafts, discovery branches, workflow demo, objection answers, and closing request. [S4] [S5] [S6]

- - Opportunity records and review measures covering progress, payment, and delivered value. [S2] [S6] [S9]

- - If transfer is justified, a hiring exercise, onboarding sequence, and criteria for independent execution. [S7] [S8]

- ## Worked example: invented illustration

- An invented startup, DispatchLoop, automates exception handling for regional delivery operators. Three free pilot customers report fewer missed deliveries, but nobody has paid. The agent identifies value exchange as the next missing proof and recommends founder selling rather than an immediate sales executive hire. [S2]

- The target profile becomes operators with dispatch staff manually coordinating repeated delivery exceptions. The narrative compares the current calls-and-spreadsheets process with automatic exception routing. An illustrative calculation of 40 dispatcher hours saved monthly at $30 per hour implies $1,200 in potential labor capacity; it remains a hypothesis until measured with customers. [S3]

- The agent drafts an outreach message tied to observed delivery expansion, then prepares discovery about recent exception failures and a demo following one exception from detection through resolution. The founder asks for a paid engagement and follows through on implementation. The review compares meetings, commitments, payments, and measured customer results before considering a first seller trained on the documented motion. [S5] [S6] [S2]

- ## Sources

- All sources below were fetched directly with curl. The articles and transcript are publicly available; no gated book chapters were used.

- [S1] Founding Sales: The Founder Led Sales and Startup Sales Handbook. https://www.foundingsales.com/

- [S2] Peter Kazanjy, Founder-Led Sales: A design pattern for iterative startup GTM development and execution, public presentation. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1t-2gOEhYSXEUow67j7_n3CbgoNPwpFVp4eaolEn3H24/export/txt

- [S3] To Build An Amazing Sales Team, Start Here First. https://review.firstround.com/to-build-an-amazing-sales-team-start-here-first/

- [S4] Building Your Best Sales Deck Starts Here. https://review.firstround.com/building-your-best-sales-deck-starts-here/

- [S5] Here are the Scripts for Sales Success: Emails, Calls and Demos That Close Deals. https://review.firstround.com/here-are-the-scripts-for-sales-success-emails-calls-and-demos-that-close-deals/

- [S6] 10 Ways You Need to Change How You Think and Talk to Succeed at Sales. https://review.firstround.com/10-ways-you-need-to-change-how-you-think-and-talk-to-succeed-at-sales/

- [S7] The Anatomy of the Perfect Sales Hiring Process. https://review.firstround.com/the-anatomy-of-the-perfect-sales-hiring-process/

- [S8] You're Losing Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Because of Poor Sales Onboarding. https://review.firstround.com/youre-losing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-because-of-poor-sales-onboarding/

- [S9] Founders: Here's how to get your sales pitch in ship-shape, Peter Kazanjy, In Depth podcast and public transcript. https://review.firstround.com/podcast/founders-heres-how-to-get-your-sales-pitch-in-ship-shape-peter-kazanjy/