I’ve meant to write about early-stage sales a bit more, specifically sales at Photon, for a while now (read: my marketing team and CEO have sent me 20 reminders in Slack). This morning, an early call triggered the right lack of sleep + caffeine buzz necessary to rip off some hopefully coherent thoughts. Here we go.
To many, sales means running a clear playbook, competing to beat out a team of 20 other account executives, and flashy SKOs with performances by B-list rappers from the 2000’s.
Early-stage sales is another beast entirely. Trade in the cushy expense account and spendy travel for obscure regional conferences at a remote casino resort a few hours from the nearest airport, sent on your own to find out whether we can sell into this market—or if anyone will even talk to you.
When you check into your room, you notice the scent of mildew, cigarette burns on the carpet, and unsavory stains on the wall, which you choose to ignore, hoping you can trick yourself into a semblance of quality sleep on the equally suspect hotel bed.
Such is the life of a salesperson at an early-stage company.
I get a lot of questions about why I chose early-stage sales versus an enterprise role with a clear path to crushing quota. Despite the disastrous hotel stays and the constantly changing market for a startup, this is the life I’ve chosen. I’m here to be a part of something grand and improbable—but not impossible—at Photon.
Making rice
My three and a half years in early health tech sales and 9 months in the trenches at Photon burned three core truths into my mind:
- sales is the most fun you can have at an early-stage startup without being a founder
- sales is the most painful thing you can do at an early-stage startup without being a founder
- there is no better job to prepare for whatever comes next in your career than early-stage sales
When I joined Photon, I brought a lot of experience (baggage) from my time on a mature sales team and at other startups, where I was the first salesperson. I’ve lived the highs of hitting quota in May and the lows of anxiously waiting for a DocuSign at 10 PM on December 31st.
Every salesperson wants to accelerate to closing as soon as possible when they join at a new company. At Photon, I spent the first few months “making rice”--one of our values focused on executing the small things at a high level before moving on to the big stuff (I guess Otto, Photon's CEO and Co-Founder, watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” the night before my first day, and it stuck). Now, I am fully contributing to the growth here at Photon, helping our growth metrics move up and to the right rapidly, an unfortunately uncommon thing in health tech.
Fresh fish only
The reality is that most companies serve up a shitty buying experience for their customers. And most salespeople are treated like replaceable line chefs in an all-you-can-eat BYOB sushi restaurant where diners commonly risk food poisoning. That’s why salespeople are hated. Don’t give your buyers food poisoning.
Being crystal clear with your value today and your reason to exist in the future makes it easy for your buyers to understand whether or not they should invest time and energy in talking to you.
At Photon, we keep it simple. Today, we remove barriers that prevent patients from accessing their medications, which reduces clinical operations work and creates a world-class patient experience. Tomorrow, we’ll continue to take down access barriers and press hard on affordability. Ultimately, we will tear down rotten legacy infrastructure and the middlemen making prescription drugs in the United States one of the most expensive and painful experiences in the world.
Making world-class sushi
Photon has built the foundation of a sales organization that promises not to waste the time of our buyers and delivers massive value for our customers. Now, we move from founder-managed sales to a fully sales-led organization (shoutout Jen Abel on this topic - her tweets on early-stage sales are pure gold). This formative period is unique due to the absence of holy relics of the past. Everything that exists may be discarded, replaced, or improved. Our next hires get to define the rules and build what works best for Photon and our customers.
To that point, we’re hiring. If you’re a sicko who loves the polarizing world of early-stage sales and you’re up for building something wildly ambitious in healthcare (what’s more important than that?), reach out to me. There’s no better opportunity than the one right now at Photon.