START UP AND SCALE UP SALES MANAGEMENT

Seedcamp Sales Tales

Are you Happy with your Sales?

by Stephen Allott

Chairman of Tarigo Product Management Training

Hon. Member of the University of Cambridge Dept. of Computer Science

Venture Partner Emeritus, Seedcamp.

Updated 24 May 2025

Seedcamp “Sales Tales” was inspired by Carlos Espinal from Seedcamp. One morning, Carlos turned up at my London Dynamo slow group in Richmond Park. We rode and rode. The Southern Sportive. The Dragon Ride. Training camp in Spain. We cycled together all over Europe. As we rode, he told me about his unicorns. I wanted in and joined Seedcamp in 2018. Carlos suggested I write a book on Sales.

“Sales Tales” are the success stories and wisdom from the Seedcamp portfolio of 500 companies. Collected from the Seedcamp Sales Engine workshop series, this is an open source living book.

“Sales Tales” also includes what I learnt growing Micromuse from 10 to 800 people, from $7 million to $7 billion in value (1,000 fold) and our NASDAQ IPO, what I learnt chairing 12 boards, what I learnt doing consulting for Redgate Software and for hundreds of other tech companies, what I learnt building the G-Cloud Digital Marketplace in Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office into one of the largest online platforms in Europe and what I learnt working with the incredible Seedcamp portfolio and founders.

And what I learnt Founding, Funding and deFending the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring and its Hall of Fame. Our 354 companies in the Ring Hall of Fame have Revenues of $ 10.1 billion and recently valued at $ 193 billion putting the Ring at the top of the list for economic impact in the UK. I started the Ring project in 2001. And I waited 24 years till now to measure and publish the results. It was worth the wait.

You can see me on stage giving my Building a World Class Tech Company speech at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

You can see my 7 minutes of unconventional wisdom at Sales Confidence

Do come and see me in person in London.

VOLUME 1: WINNING YOUR FIRST CUSTOMERS

1. Seedcamp Sales Tales — the Blog Series
2. The first sale is the hardest — it’s a trial
3. Enterprise sales closing checklist and tactics. The 12 step programme
4. Your Customer Success team target is reference-ability
5. Lead me on — all sales start with a qualified lead. Go forth and educate — make it personal
6. The greatest sales deck ever by Andy Raskin
7. How to write a business case: ROI business case development using ROCE trees
8. Pricing issues (high or low, bundle or menu)
9. Handling legal contracts and T s & Cs,

VOLUME 2: BUILDING YOUR SALES ENGINE

1. Sales is a 3 Act Drama. How your Founder sales role evolves thru Search/Focus/Scale
2. You are selling not buying when sales hiring
3. The first sales hire is the hardest
4. Sales organisation expansion guide / Role and Territory design
5. Recruiting Sales Reps: Top Ten Tips to catch the best
6. USA market entry / when and how to open an office
7. Sales / Pre-sales / Implementation / Customer success: how they fit
8. How to sell to Government: its a different ball game

VOLUME 3: MAKING SALES A MEAN MACHINE

1. With Sales Management Metrics you can Make Magic happen
2. Using your weekly sales meeting to drive innovation / find the money
3. Make your sales forecast about action
4. Sales rep Onboarding and Training … talking to Tim Frankcom
5. Commission plan design / Monthly or quarterly targets?
6. Using channels and “partners”: when does it make sense?
7. How to Diagnose and Fix sales problems from Wayne Barker
8. How to win from within using a Champion inside by Alex Mackenzie
9. Competitor playbooks; how to win every time from Wayne Barker
10. Sales Stack from Sales Stack 2020
11. AI Sales Secrets that will skyrocket your close rates A guest Tale from Vineet Nag (https://marketinggasoline.com/)

SEEDCAMP SALES TALES

The Series consists of 26 Sales Tales and has attracted 28,000 views on Medium. The digital format means we can learn from reader behaviour.

The “problems you are most likely to have” are revealed because they attract the most Views. So, do you have a problem with?

1. Finding out how to design your Sales force target and commission plans? Like with pricing, everyone thinks they are an expert but you can’t find out who are the real experts.
2. Trials that won’t close
3. Getting the business case distilled into convincing numbers

There are 4 standout Tales. Their unexpected diamond wisdom is revealed by the Tales you read to the very end. They have the highest completion rate (“read ratio”). In order of value, you are saying:

1. Use reference-ability as the target for your customer success function.
2. Here is how to do sales forecasting
3. Use Decision Engineering to design your sales management metrics
4. Get the business case distilled into convincing numbers.

The editor’s pick for the best Tale is The editor’s choice for the best thinking is the 3 Act Drama explaining how the game changes through Search, Focus and Scale. This debunks the “Product Market Fit.” so loved by the King Babies.

The editor’s pick for the best piece of Business Strategy is the 8 factors for picking a focus market in “Lead me on”. If you don’t read, use and understand this Tale, you are revealing that you do not understand positive feedback loops, the adoption curve in Crossing the Chasm and should not be a CEO or head of sales. Nor for that matter a VC or board member. For those concepts are the foundation stones of success in software strategy and product management.

They are the perfect interview or exam questions to ask candidates for CEO and leadership roles in sales, product management and marketing. You can also use them when interviewing investors who you are considering adding to your share register. Contact me if you want my help in marking their homework.

The highest completion rates for articles are an indication of the best quality work. Sales forecasting comes top with 50% of readers getting to the end of the article.

ARTICLE COMPLETION RATE

Customer Success and Business Case are also highly rated.

Please suggest any other topics you would like us to cover.

As a software CEO and Chairman, I have had to build, target, direct, motivate and repair sales teams of all sizes and types. They range from:

1. Redgate Software selling developer tools using digital and desk based sales to sell to the US and Europe from a building in Cambridge and growing from 10 to 300 people to
2. Micromuse (NASDAQ:MUSE) selling enterprise software in 20 countries and growing from 10 to 800 people down to
3. Start-ups and scale-ups I have chaired and advised.

The Micromuse logo

My management consulting firm, Trinamo, was flooded with work. When I asked if someone was happy with their sales and explained what we did, they wanted help. Wayne Barker worked for me at Micromuse and Trinamo.

The Seedcamp portfolio asks me more questions on Sales than any other function. It’s high impact to get sales right. In fact, sales is the business. Research shows that once you have product market fit, Sales is the biggest single performance lever. Recent workshops show that the top 3 topics are:

• Digital lead generation and customer case study webinars
• The transition from Founder led sales to the first sales hire
• Sales commission plan design

Survey by the author at Business of Software 2018

Sales covers not only 3 channels: digital, inside and field but sales management also covers 9 separate areas. I asked the audience at Business of Software which of these 27 topics they were most interested in and here are their choices which are strikingly consistent.

• Lead generation
• Designing an inside (desk based) sales team
• Sales process design
• Target and commission plan design

The Seedcamp team