Show Notes
"A lobster knows when it's time to shed its shell when it starts getting uncomfortable. If it never felt uncomfortable, it would never grow." - Ari Barmapov, Co-founder of Foundations Ari didn't start in a boardroom. He started at Blockbuster, selling membership add-ons from behind a cash register, just asking everyone who walked in. The more he asked, the better he got, and he ended up the top salesperson in the entire district. That was the whole formula, and it hasn't changed since. No auto-dialer, no real CRM. Just a phone, a phone book, and 150 to 200 manual dials a day. Brutal reps, but invaluable ones. Four President's Clubs later, he built Foundations to give founders what nobody gave him. His take on why founders stay stuck in founder sales: they try to delegate before they've done the work themselves. BDRs aren't there to figure out your business, and a VP of Sales isn't going to cold call for you. The only way out of founder sales is through it. Do it yourself, do it a hundred times, know what works, then pass it on. On cold calling being dead: it isn't. People say it's dead because you can't sell a $99 course on it. You actually have to pick up the phone, and most reps today won't sit down and make focused calls for 90 minutes. Not because they don't have the time, but because they don't want to be uncomfortable. That discomfort is the whole point. The one question he leaves every founder with: when was the last time you booked a meeting with someone you didn't know? If you can't remember, you already know what to do next.
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