It is amazing how much traction a business can get on purely founder-led and word-of-mouth sales. Many companies go years, and reach significant milestones, before building a sales team, and those with product-led growth can go even longer. However, the “no sales team” approach often has a ceiling. At some point, growth may start to slow and flatten. Typically, the desire to build a sales team increases as a business wants to move up-market towards larger customers that bring more significant and secure revenue.

When that time comes, the company is ready to build a true go-to-market (GTM) motion powered by sales and marketing. This is where many entrepreneurs and operators make a common but critical mistake: we try to start doing sales before we have marketing.

At first glance, it often appears that we can “brute force” the sales process by hiring an individual, high-performing sales rep and just hitting the phones or cold emails. While this can yield some results, it is often a fool’s errand because that sales rep lacks the marketing and sales management support needed to be successful. So, why is it so tough to make sales work prior to having any marketing in place?

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This is article #4 out of 50 in The Startup Marketing Playbook.

Imagine the CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) as the brain of your sales and marketing team. The CRM is used to track every person who interacts with in your funnel.

Every time a lead downloads an ebook or speaks with you on the phone, that action is tracked in the CRM. Each time you engage with that lead, you have a record of what you have told them so far and what you need to do to move them along in the buyer journey.

The CRM is a primary component of your organization’s sales and marketing stack (the set of tools you use), alongside your marketing automation system. For a new B2B startup just building your team and launching your first CRM, here is how to approach it:

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