EXTRA EXTRA

A newsletter about early sales from The Extra Group

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I work with founders who are new to sales, and those who’ve been at it for years. They all ask the same question: “what should my sales goal be?”

And I do have some answers. I’ve got recommendations on how many sales calls you should have a week, how many hours you should spend on selling, and what a good email deliverability rate is, so you know your emails aren’t going straight to spam.

But I’m also very hesitant about setting goals, for two big reasons, depending on your stage.

For founders who are just getting started with selling, setting ambitious goals and not hitting them can cause more harm than good. Specifically, it can make you feel super demoralized for no good reason. Think of it this way: if you want to run a 5k but you've never been a runner, you don't start with a 3-miler. You build up to it. You start with lacing up your shoes.

This is why every workout instructor usually starts their class with some variation of: “You showed up. The hardest part is over.”

I will admit that it's a little frustrating when my Peloton instructors say this (shout out Jess Sims), but it's true. Once you've started the class, it's kind of downhill from there.

So if you're struggling to kickstart sales, don't set too ambitious a goal. It can set you back from building a consistent habit. Instead, just focus on lacing up your shoes (aka sitting down and doing real sales outreach to buyers) three times a week, first and foremost.

For founders and startup teams with an existing sales practice, tracking performance against quantitative goals can become quite the undertaking.

All of a sudden, the project at hand isn’t “do whatever it takes to get repeatable sales.” It's now become something like “optimize and analyze every step of the sales process.”

This isn’t always a good use of time. It feels productive, but more often than not, it wastes a huge number of hours that might’ve been better spent writing genuine, non-scalable emails to individual prospects, or reflecting on and synthesizing key insights that you’ve learned from live sales conversations.

We live in a goal-oriented society, where people track everything from sleep to steps to calories – despite the fact that research shows this kind of tracking can be counterproductive and create an unhealthy compulsion.

I’ve seen goal-setting work best for startups when they track progress or momentum. Are you holding steady or improving the amount of time you spend with buyers each week? Are you seeing a general lift in calls booked, even if it’s modest?

And as you set goals, be sure to check in on what they are actually doing for you. Do your metrics and goals help you spend more time with buyers? Or are they taking you down a data rabbit hole and away from the customer?

Get rid of goals that keep you trapped in analysis or paralysis. Keep goals that inspire sales action and momentum. A goal that’s oriented around progress – around showing up for yourself, your startup, and your customers – will ultimately be more effective and less stress-inducing.

This is Extra Extra, a newsletter about the tactics and mindsets that drive early sales. I’m Caroline Fay, an exited social impact founder who’s spent my career launching and selling new products. I help non-traditional tech founders build sustainable, recurring revenue.

Caroline Fay

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