Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
00:16:40 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:16:40] S0: Are there tools to find these emails and things? Is there something you recommend? [00:16:44] S1: Yeah, there's a ton of tools that do enrichment. I'll try LinkedIn first and say, "Hey, I shot you a note on LinkedIn. I just want to make sure you got it." Most people don't check that on a daily basis. But yeah, you have Lemlist and all sorts of these enrichment tools that can give you the email, but I think the number one thing is, assume they're getting hit with hundreds of emails, how are you going to message your storyline to stand out? And that's not easy to do and that's really why I think having, going back to our first episode, why founder-led sales is so important to figure that piece out. [00:17:23] S0: So that was my next question is, what are some examples of two to three sentences, if you have some in your head, maybe even from your current job that you think are good examples of this two-to-three sentence pitch?
00:17:23 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:17:23] S0: So that was my next question is, what are some examples of two to three sentences, if you have some in your head, maybe even from your current job that you think are good examples of this two-to-three sentence pitch? [00:17:34] S1: Yeah, I think it comes down to what is the differentiator to what you're offering, not even what do you do 10x better, because to them, it still sounds like a commodity. How are you rethinking the business model? How can you help them rethink the way that they're structuring their team? We are in this flood-the-zone moment of everyone trying to break into the enterprise and the number one thing that breaks into the enterprise is like, "Oh, the way I'm modeling my business unit, here's how I should be thinking about it in the age of AI." And it needs to be different. It can't just be like, "Oh, we'll help you reduce the number of resources here." No, no, no. How are they going to show needle-moving impact to their COO, CEO? If they were to bring it to the board meeting, what would they say about the product, "This product will allow me to do what?" That's the litmus test. [00:18:26] S0: Is this a pitch that you iterate on over time? [00:18:28] S1: Yes. [00:18:28] S0: Because you're probably getting some percentage of people responding. [00:18:32] S1: Yup. [00:18:32] S0: Okay. So the advice is like, "Keep trying to reframe this." [00:18:34] S1: That's exactly right. [00:18:35] S0: Awesome. Okay. Anything else on the first reach out before we get to the next step? [00:18:40] S1: No, I think that's good.
00:18:40 · Jen Abel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:40] S1: No, I think that's good. [00:18:40] S0: Okay. Okay, let's do it. I saw you shaking your head before you said it in case people are confused. Okay. Step two. Step two is basically running the intro call.