Sales Education
If you're a B2B founder at $1M–$10M ARR, your team needs more than product knowledge. They need to understand how each customer makes money, what has changed, and what would make a conversation worth the customer's time.
By Louie Bernstein·Last updated October 6, 2026
Short answer: Help your salespeople understand the customer's business by requiring research before each call, a clear business question, and something useful to bring. Review their account knowledge in your weekly deal meetings. Make preparation part of your Sales Playbook and Accountabilities Document, so useful conversations happen without you joining every call.
The Value Call Checklist is a five-part preparation standard: understand the business, find a change, identify the people, prepare a useful contribution, and confirm what you learn. A value call is a sales conversation that gives the customer something useful or something they perceive as useful. Your product doesn't have to be the answer to every question. Your salesperson does have to earn the time they're asking for.
Start with the company's website. Read its product pages, customer stories, pricing if available, and About page. Ask your rep to explain the business in plain English: who buys, what they buy, and why they buy it. A list of features won't answer that question. Neither will a headcount copied from LinkedIn. If your rep sells software to a service business, they should understand whether that business earns money from projects, recurring contracts, or both. That difference changes the questions about staffing, delivery, and cash flow.
Read recent press releases, company announcements, and public financial results when they exist. Look for new customers, a new market, a product release, a strategic initiative, or a key hire. Those are clues, not proof of a problem. A company opening another location may need a better way to train people. It may already have that handled. Teach the rep to say what they found, explain why it might matter, and ask whether the customer sees it that way. Never let research turn into pretending you know more about the customer's business than they do.
Use LinkedIn and the company's leadership page to understand each person's role. Has your contact been promoted? Has someone joined who could affect the decision? Is there a connection who can help you understand the account? Separate the person who likes your product from the person who owns the business result. A department manager may care about daily workload. A founder may care about whether the business can grow without another layer of overhead. Don't invent a buying committee from job titles. Ask your contact who needs to contribute and what each person will want to understand.
A useful contribution can be a relevant checklist, a question that exposes a missed risk, an example from a similar situation, or an idea for making implementation easier. It should fit the account. Sending the same brochure to everybody doesn't make every conversation a value call. In my archived LinkedIn lesson on follow-up, I give an example of calling with another way to help the prospect implement more quickly. That gives the buyer a reason to talk. Your rep still wants a decision on the proposal, but the call needs to help the customer too.
Open with what you found and invite correction. Listen for the customer's language, business priorities, and constraints. Afterward, separate confirmed facts from open questions in the CRM. Record the useful contribution, the customer's response, and the next step you both agreed to. A completed call is an activity. A clearer business problem or an agreed action is progress. When you're trying to get out of founder-led sales, these notes let the next person help the customer without asking you to reconstruct every conversation.
Your reps don't need to know everything about an account. They need enough context to ask questions that respect the customer's time. Salesforce's sales-call guidance starts with preparation and checking whether circumstances have changed. HubSpot's pre-call planning guide also emphasizes research and a clear purpose. The management job is to make that preparation visible. If you're the founder answering every difficult business question, telling your reps to ‘do more research’ won't transfer your judgment. Show them the questions you ask, then require them to explain their own thinking.
For example, imagine a prospect has announced a new customer in a market it hasn't served before. Your rep could offer congratulations and launch into a demo. Or the rep could ask how that new customer's requirements change delivery, onboarding, or support. That question might uncover a useful problem. It might also show there's no fit. Both outcomes help you use your team's time better. Put the preparation standard beside your discovery questions in the Sales Playbook. Keep the rep responsible for doing the work, even when you coach them through it.
How to run a discovery call·Build a Sales Playbook
Research references: Salesforce: preparing for a sales call·HubSpot: pre-call planning
| Routine sales call | Prepared value call |
|---|---|
| ✕Starts with a product pitch | ✓Starts with a relevant business issue |
| ✕Collects facts without using them | ✓Turns a verified fact into a useful question |
| ✕Assumes the contact owns the decision | ✓Checks who owns the result and the decision |
| ✕Follows up to ask for an update | ✓Follows up with a useful contribution |
| ✕Treats a friendly conversation as progress | ✓Checks what the customer learned or agreed to do |
| ✕Needs the founder to explain every account | ✓Keeps confirmed account knowledge in the CRM |
Give the standard to the person who actually coaches the reps. Titles vary, especially at $1M–$10M ARR. ARR alone doesn't decide who you need. Use scope, reporting lines, and the work that must get done. This matrix describes common responsibilities, not a rule that a company must hire all four roles. Your founder can start the routine, and a Fractional Sales Leader can help build and run it before you're ready for a full-time VP of Sales.
| Role | Scope and reports | Owns and checks | Typical stage or need |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Manager | Rep team; usually reports to a sales leader or founder | Call preparation and weekly coaching; checks all five items | Small team needing consistent day-to-day execution |
| Sales Director | Multiple teams or a segment; reports to Head of Sales or VP | Manager consistency; checks account quality and review habits | More teams or segments than one manager can coach |
| Head of Sales | Sales function; usually reports to CEO | Playbook and team standards; checks adoption and deal progress | Founder handing over ownership of the sales function |
| VP of Sales | Sales organization and its leaders; reports to CEO | Revenue plan and management system; checks whether standards support results | Established system needing broader executive leadership |
Don't wait until a deal goes quiet to discover that your rep knows little about the customer. Pick a live opportunity in the weekly review and ask what has changed, which people matter, and what the next call will give the customer. Listen to the answer before you supply yours. If the rep has a gap, have them find the missing information and come back with a better question. You're teaching judgment, not turning every review into another founder rescue.
Add this responsibility to the Accountabilities Document: prepare a value call, verify business priorities, and keep account knowledge current. Start by reviewing a few notes together. Use role playing to practice the opening and the follow-up. After the call, ask whether the customer found the contribution useful. Don't score success only by whether the rep booked another meeting. The customer may need a different answer than the one your rep hoped to hear. A good standard rewards preparation, listening, and honest qualification.
Louie Bernstein, Fractional Sales Leader who helps B2B founders at $1M–$10M ARR escape founder-led sales.
I founded MindIQ in 1986. In 2002, MindIQ was included in the Inc. 500 list. My course, How to be a Professional Salesperson, includes understanding the customer's business and making a value call as discipline 3 of 21. The homework asks sales managers to quiz reps on their accounts and the key people involved. Preparation has to be something the manager requires, not something the manager hopes happens.
Today I help founders turn what they know about selling into Sales Playbooks, coaching routines, clear accountabilities, and a team that can handle customer conversations. You don't need to sit through every call to set the standard. You need to teach it, inspect it, and give your reps a chance to use it.
More about Louie →·Connect on LinkedInResearch the company and the people, review your CRM notes, choose a useful contribution, and write the business question you need to confirm. For a founder's team, the preparation should be recorded briefly so a manager can coach it. Start with public facts, then let the customer correct your assumptions.
Pre-call planning means deciding who you're speaking with, what matters to them, what you want to learn, and what you can contribute before you call. The Value Call Checklist makes that work repeatable. Keep it short enough that reps will use it and specific enough that you can review it.
Bring something relevant to the customer's situation: a useful question, a practical idea, or an example that helps them make a decision. Check whether they found it useful. A founder should coach the rep to connect the contribution to a confirmed business priority, instead of assuming a product pitch counts as value.
A discovery call is a conversation to understand the customer's situation, problems, decision process, and fit for your solution. Research helps your rep ask better questions during that conversation. It doesn't replace listening. The value-call standard applies to discovery and to later conversations, including follow-up after a proposal.
Briefly explain why the conversation may be useful, confirm the time available, and check your understanding of the business issue. Ask whether anything has changed. For your team, practice that opening in role playing so reps can sound natural and invite correction before moving into prepared questions.
If your reps know the product but keep relying on you to understand the customer, let's look at the preparation and coaching they need. Fractional Sales Leadership can help you put a repeatable standard into the team you already have.