Kalzumeus Podcast Episode 8: High Touch Software Sales with Steli Efti

I recently met Steli Efti, founder of Close.io, in Palo Alto, and did a podcast episode with him.  Transcript and links below as per the usual.

Sidenote: I listen to a lot of podcasts and have been using Marco Arment’s Overcast app recently to do so.  It was the best $5 I ever spent.  Give it a whirl.

[Patrick notes: The transcript below has my commentary inserted like this, as usual.]

What you’ll learn in this podcast:

• Why engineers speak a different language than sales people.
• How we can get over our reluctance to do sales to sell more software (without selling our souls).
• Tactics for getting over the pain of rejection when doing sales calls (and sales generally).
• How to qualify prospects so you don’t waste time pursuing deals which you’d never, ever close and can instead concentrate on the deals which your personal attention will cause to close quickly.
• Why Steli shuttered a multi-million dollar consultancy to focus on Close.io’s SaaS product.

If You Want To Listen To It

MP3 Download (~80 minutes, ~54MB) : Right-click here and click Save As.

Podcast format: either subscribe to https://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store.

[powerpress]

Transcript: High Touch Software Sales

Patrick McKenzie: Hi, everybody. I’m Patrick McKenzie and this is the — I don’t even know what this is – episode of the Kalzumeus podcast. Thanks for staying with us.

Keith, unfortunately, can’t make today. He and his wife and daughters are having fun back in Japan, but I am here in sunny Palo Alto, California with a buddy of mine who founded a company. We’ll talk you a little bit about the story later, but he founded a company, which these days, it’s Close.io, a YC funded company. Meet Steli.

Steli: Hey, guys. I’m super excited and honored to be on the podcast, a big fan of it.

Patrick: Steli, can you tell us a little bit about your background? I’m more from the engineering side of the house and you are… not.

Steli: I’m originally from Greece, born and raised in Germany. I’m basically a high school dropout that has no credentials whatsoever, completely unemployable, and never had a real job in my life. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life.

A lot of times I joke that the entrepreneurial super power that I use to move things forward is the hustle in sales. I love communicating. I love people. I love moving things forward, on the business end of things. I’ve been an entrepreneurial salesperson my whole life.

For the first few years, small businesses, boot-strap businesses back in Europe, and then seven and a half years ago sold everything I had, bought a one-way ticket to come to Silicon Valley, follow the legend of becoming a tech entrepreneur with...

For the full transcript see here.