#50: Hiten Shah on SaaS Sales, Getting Your First 100 Customers and Building Great Products

About the Episode:

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Hiten Shah. Hiten has started three SaaS companies since 2005, Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quick Sprout, all with his co-founder, Neil Patel.

When it comes to startups, Hiten is somewhat of a legend in the San Francisco Bay Area where he’s known for his incredible generosity with his time & help for new founders. To that end, Hiten has become an active advisor and investor in startups like Buffer, Drift, LinkedIn, Lyft and more.

Hiten also co-hosts The Startup Chat podcast with Steli Efti where they’ve published over 280 episodes talking about all things business and startups. Now, Hiten is focused on building out his community over at Product Habits, his blog, and newsletter about product management where he recently launched a training program called Build Winning Products.

Today’s interview is another one that I originally did for The Inside Sales Summit a few months ago—the online event I co-hosted with Close (the inside sales CRM of choice for startups)… we had speakers like Noah Kagan, Jill Konrath, Sujan Patel, Dan Martell and more. So, if you enjoy today’s interview and want to keep the fun going—then check out the other 54 interviews just like this one over at insidesalessummit.com. But for today, we’re here with Hiten Shah.

 

In Today’s Episode, We Talk About:

[02:44] How to diagnose a leaky sales funnel.
[04:19] Questions to ask when diagnosing a leaky sales funnel.
[06:44] How SaaS leaders are approaching sales today.
[09:45] His recommendations on outsourcing some processes when you’re just starting up.
[11:32] If he’s met a salesperson in his career that was particularly impressive to him.
[14:05] Qualities to look out for when you’re hiring your first sales team members.
[18:03] Best practices for when you’re trying to sell to big organizations.
[20:27] The best investment he’s ever made in terms of building his selling skills.

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Connect with My Guest:

Hiten’s new project: Product Habits

Hiten’s product FYI for easier document search & organization

Hiten on his blog, LinkedIn and Twitter

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In this episode, we’re talking to Hiten Shah, the co-founder of three multi-million dollar SaaS companies over the past decade. We cover everything from how to get your first 100 customers, to scaling your SaaS sales process into the thousands of customers, building great products that get used by millions of people, and so much more...


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2 responses to “#50: Hiten Shah on SaaS Sales, Getting Your First 100 Customers and Building Great Products”

  1. DNN Avatar
    DNN

    Good morning Ryan,

    I had no clue Neil Patel was a part of the action on the saas companies. He’s everywhere. He has a Blog where he has an image of him talkin about blogging in his pajamas, has an email marketing service, and who knows what else. He’s quite a successful guy that I respect for building a side hustle business from the ground floor up. Moreover, I’m grateful to you and others that you have this side hustle discussion going. Keep up the good work. 🙂

    1. Ryan Robinson Avatar

      Haha you’ve got that right. Neil has seemingly been everywhere for years—very impressive!

      Hiten’s always been there too.. a little less of a “huge personal brand builder” but an incredible resource and influence for so many startup founders I know.

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