In Blitzscaling Reid Hoffman describes start-ups as dead by default. What he means is as the endpoint for most start-ups is failure, their default position is death. It is this insight that I apply to one of my hardest-learned lessons. The first, and probably most painful lesson, from selling in a start-up - its not about you. Salespeople cant be effective if they dont care passionately about winning.

It is one of the reasons I look at competitive sports achievements when hiring, especially when hiring graduates into sales functions. If they care about winning at sports, they will care about winning at work. It is also rare for salespeople to be light on ego. Combine these traits and it usually translates to salespeople believing that their wins were predominantly to do with their efforts.

I certainly believed this when I joined my first start-up. When it was successful, I was convinced this was attributable to great selling - my great selling. This was exacerbated as this start-up was led by one of the world's first and greatest blitzscalers, sales was the execution engine of the company. Then I joined my second start-up. This did not go so well. My ego kicked in and I rationalised it was not me, it was them and so I moved on.

The next start-up I joined I worked harder, figuring that we could sell our way out of death. At some point in this journey I realised that there was more to avoiding “death” than just selling. I began to learn about product fit, market fit, and over time experienced lack of funds, hiring people from large companies totally wrong for the company, product misfires, no market, incomplete products, and any number of other issues, sometimes more than one at a time, any or all of which could be the driver to take you to the default position – the Uber journey to start-up death. So, what have I learned that could be of use to you?

Using Hoffman's concept of marines to land on the beach, the army to expand, and the police to manage a steady state, I have adopted the following process which I find works for landing and expansion. Once an organisation reaches the state where it needs policing, I have learned that what follows is not required, and much as I loved cop shows when I was a kid, that personally I don't enjoy it as much.

First, you need to understand that most of the time, when you are brought in from the outside as a sales leader, it is because there is a need to do something differently. Second, the company usually doesn't know what it is that needs doing differently, just that what is being done isn't giving the outcome they expected. The first thing to do is to establish a baseline. What hypothesis drove the delta between what was expected and what was delivered. What does the company think that it is taking to market? Now isn’t the time to worry about the TAM, or the serviceable available market SAM) - the part of the market your product could fit.

The part to focus on right now is the serviceable obtainable market (SOM) - that part of the market that you can actually win. Gain agreement from all on the Executive what they think are the proof points and genetic markers of companies in the SOM, identify which markers you can quantify and measure. Next, segment your targets as tightly as you can within the SOM. Financial Services as a target won't teach you enough.

Financial Services companies range in geography, size, products, target customers, etc. Try to focus in on a specific sub-segment. This helps refine learning that you can use to find other segments that have similar measurable genetic markers you can analyse. While this effort must be data-driven, make the time to listen to the salespeople and others who interacted with the customers, about what works and what doesn't. This is not a win/loss field in your SFA tool, because even if you have a drop-down that says outsold, no salesperson is going to choose it. Most of the time the sales team will choose pricing, and they will do this because that's what the customer told them. No customer ever told a salesperson, were going with the competition because they did a better job selling than you did. Usually they say, you were too expensive, it is more comfortable for the customer to tell them this.

Listen consistently to the people interacting directly with the customers, both won and lost, as to why you are winning, and more importantly, why you are losing. If you were outsold, you could have won this opportunity, and if you could have won the opportunity, you lost because of positioning, focus, effort, training or some combination. To avoid “death”, you need to work out the root cause. When you get it right, work out why and do more of it. When you get it wrong, go back and agree a new hypothesis to test, new measurable markers that will validate or invalidate the hypothesis. Pivot and try to adapt the market focus, the product positioning, the pricing combinations, the promotion, to see if you can get traction before death's icy hand reaches out.

Hypothesis - test - measure - learn - scale. This is what I have learned from my multiple lessons trying to avoid “death by default”. I have found this approach works both in a pure start-up, but also when you are trying to land or expand new verticals, new countries, and new products.

This advice may seem obvious, but how often do we really all agree on the starting hypothesis of what we have before we start selling? How often do win/loss reviews come back with pricing as the reason for loss? Did you measure your last success or failure in a market based upon a sales number rather than the markers you were seeking to understand?

Unless the answer to these were “every time”, “hardly ever” and “Yes”, then I suggest that taking the time to understand what you are testing before you start selling will yield material results. It is this understanding that will guide you to why you are succeeding or failing, where to scale-up efforts, how fast to ramp-up sales, and what to do to optimise for successful and predictable growth.