As a startup founder or marketing leader, you’ve probably heard the mantra “sales is everything.” But what does that mean? Really mean, and how do you put it into practice?
Building a great product is hard, but it’s only half the battle. The real challenge is getting the product in front of the right customers – repeatedly and at scale.
For most startups, everything fails here. In my experience, many founders either get stuck trying to sell to fewer customers at a higher price or chase thousands of customers with lower prices. As a result, they overuse their resources and fail to create sustainable growth.
The solution is Build a scalable distribution engine. But how do you set up a system that consistently delivers results while balancing your current channels and marketing strategy?
In a current one Marketing against the grain ConsequenceKieran and I explain why startups need to prioritize sales from day one – and how to design a sales system that works.
Check Your Numbers: Why a Sales Strategy Is Critical for Startups
Let’s look at the math in more detail. Most Series A or B startups sell to mid-sized companies with an annual contract value of $5,000 to $12,000. To achieve the growth investors expect, you have two options:
- Go more upscale and increase your ACV to over $250,000. This is incredibly difficult and in my experience most people fail.
- Attract thousands of customers at your current price. This requires a powerful distribution engine.
The reality is that most startups never invest enough time in building this engine – and without it, they stand still.
The key is to design a distribution system that is predictable And high leverage. Why? Because predictability gives you predictive power, while leverage allows you to acquire customers efficiently.
Here’s how to do it.
How to Build a Startup Distribution Engine
Kieran and I have worked with countless startups (and helped build HubSpot’s own sales engine from the ground up) and have learned a thing or two about mastering sales. Here are our four best tips.
1. Identify your product channel fit.
Startups often talk about product-market fit – but that’s just as important Product channel fit. In other words, which distribution channels best fit your product, attract customers, and enable repeatable growth at scale?
At HubSpot, for example, we developed our sales strategy in parallel with our product development. Since our product is based on inbound marketing, we focused on channels like content marketing and SEO that attracted our audience while simultaneously (and conveniently) demonstrating the real value of our own product.
By aligning our sales strategy with what HubSpot was designed for – Inbound marketing — We ensured that both our product and our channels grew together organically in a way that was scalable and repeatable.
2. Balance predictability and creativity.
One of the biggest challenges in building a startup sales machine is balancing predictability and creativity. You need reliable, predictable channels to drive consistent growth, but you also need to take creative risks to find the high-leverage opportunities that will propel your business forward.
A good example of this is Abercrombie & Fitch. Once a brand in decline, they rethought their distribution strategy, using influencers and social videos to reach new, younger audiences.
While they still relied on predictable channels like social media, they added a creative twist by rebranding their image and using influencers to increase authenticity. This balance helped them succeed – and at times even outperformed fast-growing companies like Nvidia.
At HubSpot we took a similar path. In the early days, paid advertising accounted for about 50% of our demand, providing predictability. But as we scaled, we invested more in creative, high-impact channels like search and flipped the ratio so that search ended up generating 60% of our demand – an absolute game changer for our scaling strategy.
Pro tip: Look into affiliate programs or collaborations with creators to add creative twists to predictable channels. These types of partnerships can offer unique sales aspects that set you apart from the competition.
3. Find unique starting points.
As Kieran points out in the podcast, these are the most successful sales strategies Find a unique perspective within existing channels. Especially when a channel is already crowded, it’s no longer enough to just participate – you have to stand out.
A good example of this is Genius.com, which became the top song lyrics website by adding user-generated content like lyrics annotations. This feature increased the value of each page and helped them rank higher in search engines – not because they had the best product, but because they found a new way to use user interaction to increase visibility and engagement.
Pro tip: Segment your sales channels into “known” (predictable) and “unknown” (risky, impactful) categories. This helps you balance stable growth while testing new channels with high profit potential.
4. Find asymmetrical opportunities.
Sales success often relies on identifying asymmetric opportunities – channels or strategies that provide disproportionately high returns for relatively low inputs. These opportunities typically come from the ability to see what others are missing.
Kieran explains: “To have a real impact in sales, you need someone who can creatively explore untested areas while still applying process and rigor.” This means your team can’t just focus on optimizing what they’re already doing works – it has to be competitive, inventive and not afraid to experiment.
A powerful example of this was a company I worked with in Brazil that targeted logistics managers in a B2B niche market. Instead of relying on traditional channels, we found an asymmetric opportunity by licensing popular business content (like James Clear’s). Atomic Habits) and adapted it into Portuguese. This created a unique, localized offering that resonated with audiences in a way no one else could.
Don’t neglect distribution
Sales aren’t a side concern for startups – they are everything. To scale your business, you need a startup sales engine that is both predictable and capable of delivering strong growth.
By focusing on the right channels, balancing predictability with creativity, and always looking for asymmetrical opportunities, you will be in a much stronger position to grow your business.
For more information on marketing strategies for startup sales engines, see the complete episode from Marketing against the grain below:
This blog series is a partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It delves deeper into the ideas of marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (CMO of HubSpot) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they craft growth strategies and learn from outstanding founders and peers.