Samantha Mckenna is the founder of SamSales and a leader in building go-to-market strategies. She has spent her nearly 15+ year career in enterprise sales doing two things: breaking over 13 sales records and doing so by leading with a buyer-first approach to sales.

In this episode of the Startup Field Guide podcast, she shares why early stage founders should focus on solving challenges for buyers rather than selling, the need for thorough research and personalization in outbound prospecting, and the effectiveness of LinkedIn as a marketing platform.

Some topics we covered with Sam include:

00:00 Preview: Importance of solving customer challenges first
00:18 Sam’s early journey into sales and GTM
02:20 Common mistakes in enterprise sales process for startups
02:37 Challenges and misconceptions about enterprise sales
04:10 How technical founders can get started in sales
9:26 : How founders can start doing outbound sales while building their product
14:26 Tips for effective outbound messaging
18:18 Selling to engineers
19:57 Why founders should be using LinkedIn
22:25 : Strategies for marketing on LinkedIn
38:15 AI tools for outbound sales and marketing
43:01 Hiring the right sales leaders for early stage startups

Samantha Mckenna is the founder and CEO of SamSales.

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.