Go-to-market from first deal to $500K
You've proven someone will pay. Now prove you know why they paid — and that someone else could close that deal too.
Take the assessmentFocus here first
You've closed deals, but can you explain why? Repeatability means documenting the pattern: who buys, what triggers the purchase, what the sales process looks like, and how to handle objections.
Your sales process needs to become explicit. Map the stages, know your conversion rates, and identify where deals stall. This is the foundation for everything that comes next.
Early revenue is when you learn whether your positioning actually works at scale. If every deal requires a custom pitch, your positioning is broken.
With real customers, you can now validate pricing. Are you leaving money on the table? Are you losing deals on price? The data is there — look at it.
What to ignore (for now)
Hire Readiness
The urge to hire a salesperson is strong, but premature. Document first, hire second. Most first sales hires fail because the process wasn't documented first.
Distribution
Channel strategy can wait. You need to nail the direct sales process before you can evaluate which channels make sense.
Common traps
Hiring a salesperson to "figure it out"
Salespeople execute processes — they don't create them. If you can't describe why deals close, a new hire can't either. They'll churn within months.
Celebrating revenue without understanding the pattern
Closing five deals is validation. But if three of those came from warm intros and two from conference conversations, you don't have a repeatable process — you have luck.
Scaling demand before the funnel works
Pouring leads into a broken sales process wastes money and burns your market. Fix the conversion process first, then turn up the volume.
Frequently asked questions about go-to-market from first deal to $500k
- How do I know if my sales process is repeatable?
- It is repeatable when you can describe the exact steps from first contact to closed deal, someone else can follow those steps and close, and you see similar patterns across your last 5 deals. If every deal requires improvisation, the process is not repeatable yet.
- When am I ready to hire my first salesperson?
- When you have a documented sales process, know your average deal size and cycle length, can describe why your last 5 deals closed, and have enough pipeline to keep someone busy. Missing any of these means the hire will likely fail.
- Should I focus on closing more deals or understanding why current deals close?
- Understanding why comes first. Closing without understanding is luck. Once you know the pattern — who buys, what triggers the purchase, what objections come up — you can close more deliberately and eventually hand that process to someone else.