Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:06:56 · Jen Abel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:06:56] S1: 100%. [00:06:58] S0: Amazing. And I'll just add, the reason I love to have you on this podcast is I've left both of our previous conversations so just fired up about selling. I have nothing to sell, but I'm always feeling like, "I want to sell something now. I feel like I've learned all these things. It feels so fun doing sales after talking to you." [00:07:19] S1: You're a master. You're actually a master at this. Sales is marketing. Marketing is sales to some extent, right? [00:07:22] S0: All right. [00:07:22] S1: And you do that better than a lot of people. [00:07:25] S0: I feel like you're using some sales technique on me to make me feel good about myself. Okay, anything else before we get into step one of the sales enterprise- [00:07:32] S1: No. I think this is good. [00:07:33] S0: ... sales cycle?
00:07:35 · Jen Abel
[00:07:35] S1: SpaceX and targeting the legal function. It's a great question. So I think let's start with how do I even get the first meeting, how do I even engage with these people. There's so much nuance as you target, as we're using the case study of SpaceX today. You have the top of the rung, which is the general counsel, the head of legal, the chief legal officer. They all have slightly different titles, but they all carry the same weight, which is like, "Who's the lead of the team?" And then underneath that, you have a bunch of people that carry a VP title, carry a director title, maybe just say lawyer on their LinkedIn. So you have to do the work to figure out, "What is my entry point?" and there's only two entry points, starting at the very, very tippy top, meaning going direct to the decisionmaker, the chief legal officer, or finding the individual that would be maybe one step removed, okay? Other people would argue with this. I personally would not be targeting anybody else. It is the executive themselves or an N minus one, okay? So let's talk about why. In order for an enterprise deal to move forward, you need to have this extremely compressed storyline that lands immediately to the objective that they want to solve for at the organization. It has to go beyond just an AI mandate. I think every company today has an AI mandate and I know everyone is an AI tool, but what exactly are you solving for them as a problem? That's one, that's level one, but most importantly, the alpha, "What does this executive uncover and unlock by bringing in a net-new tool?" Because bringing in a net-new tool is risky. No one wants it. So if we're targeting the chief legal officer and the N minus one, you get two to three sentences max, okay? That might be through an email LinkedIn, that might be through a phone call, that might be through an event or that might be through some marketing capability. Most C-level executives don't respond to marketing. They might see your brand, they're not going to respond to a marketing campaign, okay? They will respond one on one. And the best individual to one on one to a corporate executive is the founder. Even if you're a series B, series C, right? The founder should be ecstatic to want to get in front of the chief legal officer at SpaceX.
00:11:25 · Jen Abel
I think any founder that is building something really meaningful knows the important role of that. Second is you can get your AE or enterprise sales lead to target the N minus one and you do what you call this ... I call it the pincher model because you're going after two different people and trying to get them together. It's actually called the pincer model, which is start at the very, very top, find that floor and work in between that, okay? So these are the two layers you want to be targeting in landing that meeting, because if you go any further than that, you risk, they're not going to be able to communicate your storyline. It's a game of telephone, right? And now, you're learning from someone that is not near the budget or the executive discussions, which is super risky because now you're learning about user value, not executive value. And a $100,000 deal needs a executive sponsor to sign off on it, to allocate the budget and this is why you need to start at these two layers only.
00:13:06 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:13:06] S0: Wow. There's going to be fractals of questions and things to dig into with each of these steps. This is amazing. I love just how specific and tactical you're with all of these things. I'm going to try to summarize a couple of these tips and then I have a follow-up question. Okay, so tip one is go after either the execs. So in this case, it'd be general counsel, head of legal person or N minus one. Love the way of describing it, maybe a VP. You want to pitch them two or three sentences in a text or an email or at a conference. And the key is to focus on the alpha, what your product will unlock for them. Love that. And it sounds like they're still like a, "Here's the problem we solve for you, but here's really the alpha we unlock." [00:13:48] S1: Correct. Because for an executive to bring something in and be the sponsor and share this and disseminate this down their command, they need to stand behind something beyond, "Hey, we're going to alleviate the time it takes to do X activity." That's not big enough. They're like a founder too of their own business unit. You got to sell the vision. And what are these people going to ... How are they going to get to the next stage with their influence? Get more budget, get more people, however they want to define that. [00:14:23] S0: Yeah. So it sounds like they want to win, and to win, you need something unfair advantage with what you're pitching. [00:14:32] S1: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yup.
00:14:32 · Jen Abel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:14:32] S1: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yup. [00:14:33] S0: Okay. And then this pincer ... I love it. So they do here is, for the exec, say, chief legal officer, general counsel, founder needs to reach out. And then this AE reaches out to the N minus one contact and you do this. You go from both directions. And I imagine the goal is one of them at least responds. [00:14:50] S1: That's correct. And then because you're only one step removed, they'll usually loop in that next person or the founder could say, "Hey, I'm going to loop in my so-and-so colleague. Who on your team should we also include?" or an enterprise executive could say, "Hey, I'm going to bring in my founder. Could we see if your boss might want to be a part of this too?" It's that parity of role. [00:15:17] S0: Yeah. And they might be like, "Wait, I've heard of that. I think I heard that name before because I got this other email." [00:15:22] S1: Exactly. [00:15:22] S0: "I may not remember." [00:15:22] S1: Exactly. [00:15:24] S0: Okay, two questions. How do you find this N minus one person? Any just tricks? Is it just sitting on LinkedIn, figuring it out? And then two, is any channel recommendations these days? [00:15:24] S1: Yeah. [00:15:33] S0: What's the best way to try to contact these people?
00:15:33 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:15:33] S0: What's the best way to try to contact these people? [00:15:37] S1: You can spar with OpenAI and Anthropic to let them do the quick scan of like, "Hey, I'm looking to target the chief legal officer of SpaceX and their deputy. Who are possible people I should be targeting?" and then go off that and do your own gut check and search from there. But usually, they'll give you the proper names. Now here's the interesting thing about this. Everyone is probably also targeting those people, okay? And this is why you need to be ... And we talked about this in other episodes, it needs to feel so different and it needs to be about alpha. And if you don't have executive value, meaning you cannot get an executive excited by your value proposition, then you probably shouldn't be moving up into the enterprise doing a top-down strategy. [00:16:20] S0: Got it. Okay. And then in terms of trying to reach out to them, any tips? Any tools there to figure out their number, whatever? [00:16:28] S1: They're also unique. Cold calling works. Again, it depends on the role. You're not going to cold call a highly technical person, but a nontechnical person, it works. Email, LinkedIn, Twitter. [00:16:40] S0: Are there tools to find these emails and things? Is there something you recommend?