Enterprise Sales

Kuman argues that early sales require founder-level knowledge of the product, experimentation, and close feedback from customers. His technical co-founder experience at Optimizely taught him that sales is a learnable skill grounded in solving customer problems, not tricks.

Start with a hypothesis about who has the problem and how the product helps. Optimizely used BuiltWith to identify companies with relevant analytics tools and JavaScript frameworks. Kuman recommends inbound content, warm introductions, and short, personalized emails, while warning founders not to spend time with easy-to-reach prospects who lack a real need, budget, or buying authority.

Use the first call to learn whether the prospect has a costly problem, budget, and authority, and to arrange a demo. Ask about the problem, its impact, the buying process, and who else must decide. Make the demo a story about solving that prospect’s problem; Optimizely built a way to demonstrate A/B tests directly on customers’ websites.

Ask what the problem costs and what the customer spends on alternatives, then treat early pricing as an experiment. Kuman recalls quoting $10,000 per month and closing at $2,000, and advises founders not to underprice out of fear. Learn the customer’s approval steps early, start reviews in parallel, keep legal documents simple, and work with the customer champion to clear delays.

Kuman says implementation is the seller’s responsibility: at Optimizely, some customers paid six figures but had not run a single A/B test a year later because teams could not coordinate installation. Build an implementation plan before signing, assign owners, and track progress together. The sales process ends when customers use the product regularly.