The SaaS Podcast: Founder Interviews - Page 7

Richard Fenton, Go For No

Why the Best Startup Sales Strategy Is to Hear No More Often

Richard Fenton is a speaker, coach, and co-author of the bestselling book "Go for No!" alongside his wife and business partner Andrea Waltz. His latest book, "When They Say No: The Definitive Guide for Handling Rejection in Sales," builds on that foundation with 41 practical strategies for handling rejection. Richard's path to becoming a startup sales expert started with complete failure. Working for his father - a legendary car salesman who was the number one seller of General Motors product in company history - Richard sat frozen at his desk for 30 days, unable to make a single cold call. Fear of rejection paralyzed him completely. After quitting and moving from Chicago to Los Angeles to escape his father's shadow, Richard took a retail job selling suits. He failed again. That is, until a district manager named Harold asked him a career-changing question after a $1,100 sale: "What did that customer say no to?" The answer was nothing. Richard had been cutting customers off at his own mental spending limit instead of pushing for the next yes. That conversation rewired Richard's approach to startup sales entirely. He stopped treating "no" as the enemy and started treating it as a metric to increase. Within a year, he became an award-winning salesperson. He went on to build a business coaching Fortune 500 companies - including a seven-year pursuit of Discovery Network that finally resulted in a deal. Richard's philosophy applies directly to SaaS founders. Whether you are making outbound calls, running demos, or pitching investors, the fear of hearing "no" causes most founders to undercharge, under-pitch, and leave deals on the table. One of Richard's earliest clients told him to raise his prices because they were so low it raised doubts about his credibility. In this conversation, Richard breaks down why quantity of presentations beats quality when it comes to startup sales, how to use rejection as a diagnostic tool, the concept of becoming an "assistant buyer" to your prospect, and why building long-term relationships through value-driven follow-ups is the fastest path to closing deals.

Nik Mijic, Matik

From Zero Sales Skills to Founder-Led Sales Machine

Nik Mijic is the co-founder and CEO of Matik, a SaaS product that automates data-driven presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides. Before starting Matik, Nik worked as a program manager at LinkedIn, where he built internal tools that helped sales and customer success teams create data-heavy decks. In 2018, Nik realized that many B2B companies were wasting hours manually pulling data from Salesforce, Tableau, and other sources just to build quarterly business reviews and ROI decks. He saw an opportunity to automate the entire process. But he wasn't ready to quit his job just yet. Nik met his co-founder Zach through a mutual friend. Zach was an early engineer at Box who had stayed through the IPO. The two spent five to six months researching the idea, validating the problem with potential customers, and making sure they were a good fit for each other before committing. When Nik finally decided to leave LinkedIn, the hardest part was telling his parents. As refugees from the Bosnian civil war, they had sacrificed everything to give their children opportunities in the US. But instead of pushing back, they told him to go for it - even offering to sell their house if he needed support. The co-founders started working out of Nik's apartment in early 2019. Building the product came together quickly, but selling it was a different story. Neither Nik nor Zach had any sales background. Nik's founder-led sales approach started at a dinner party, where a woman introduced him to her company's enablement team. They loved the prototype, asked where to sign, and Nik realized he didn't even have a purchase order or legal terms. He made up a price of $2,500 on the spot, and that became Matik's first paying customer. From there, Nik leaned heavily on his LinkedIn network and a clever tactic: reaching out to former LinkedIn employees who had moved to new companies and missed the internal tools Nik had built. That approach got Matik to its first 15 to 20 customers. When it came time to build a sales team, Nik learned a key lesson: hire in twos. Bringing on two account executives or two SDRs at the same time lets you benchmark performance and figure out whether issues are with the person or the process. He also discovered that founders never fully step away from selling - even after hiring a head of sales, Nik stayed involved in deals to keep a pulse on the market. Today, Matik's customers include B2B tech companies like Asana, Glassdoor, Greenhouse, and SalesLoft. The founders have raised $23 million, including a $20 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz.