#23 - Ethan Schechter (VP Sales & 1st Sales Leader, Snyk) - "Trade Dollars for Speed", "The Minute You Stop They Win", and More Tactical Advice for Sales from Early Stage to Scale

This episode is packed with tactical advice for all things sales and go-to-market. It’s relevant across stages whether your company is at $0M ARR or at $100M+ ARR.

Ethan Schechter is VP Sales at Snyk. He started at Snyk 6 years ago as the first sales leader. In this episode, we cover tactical insights from Ethan’s experience leading early sales to scale at Snyk and ZeroTurnaround. He describes how to position a product when “shift left” was a new and scary term, how to make first sales, tradeoffs to consider with early vs late stage deals. He shares stories, anecdotes and advice for other startups about the earliest days of selling, hiring, and balancing various gtm strategies. I’ve been personally wanting to do this for awhile and Ethan absolutely delivered with a packed episode of learnings.

Where to Find Ethan:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanschechter/

Where to Find Shomik:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/shomikghosh21

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shomik-ghosh-a5a71319/

* Newsletter: https://www.shomik.substack.com

* Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google.

In this episode, we cover:

(01:21) - Selling to Developers Before the Market Fully Formed

(03:58) - Effective Champion Enablement

(05:06) - Joining Snyk as 1st Sales Leader After Being CRO of ZeroTurnaround

(07:40) - Hiring an Effective Early Sales Leader

(12:02) - Closing Snyk’s Early Customers

(17:34) - Balancing Inbound and Outbound Sales in Early Days

(20:48) - Orienting the Whole Org Around the Customer

(23:59) - Positioning and Messaging the Product for the Right Personas

(26:27) - “Trading Dollars for Speed”

(29:23) - Creative Packaging and Pricing to Win Early Customers

(32:00) - Contract and Risk Acceptance

(33:57) - Common Mistakes with Early Sales Hires

(36:05) - Building the Early Sales Playbook

(37:52) - Advice for Early Sales Hires

(40:09) - Going from $0-$1M ARR

(41:19) - Scaling from $1-$10M ARR

(45:03) - Selling Multi-Product from Single-Product

(46:49) - Reinventing and Tweaking GTM Through Scaling

(49:02) - How to Scale Yourself

(52:47) - “The Minute You Stop They Win”

How to Subscribe:

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google.