Models & Methodologies
Selling is four questions, not one.
What you sell, how you sell it, who sells it, and who you sell to. Most people answer one of those well and wing the other three. I work all four, and I close the gap almost everyone leaves open: the methodology, the who-and-how that makes any model actually run.
The four questions
A selling motion is these four answered together, not one of them answered loudly.
What you sell
The offer itself: positioning, packaging, the shape of the thing. Get this wrong and nothing downstream saves it.
How you sell it
The method and the motion. The play you actually run, and the reason it fits.
Who sells it
The model. The product, you, a team, a partner, a community, or a blend. This is where most of the leverage lives.
Who you sell to
The market. The ICP, the buyer who actually says yes, and, just as important, the ones to walk past.
The models (who sells it)
Who does the selling, and how much of it the product carries versus the people.
Not a menu you pick once. Most companies run a blend, and the blend shifts as you grow. What matters is choosing on purpose, and giving each model the things it actually needs.
Product-led
The product does the selling. People stay out of the loop until the buyer wants them.
Requires: A self-serve path to real value, activation you can measure, in-product conversion, and expansion that compounds.
Product-led sales (assisted)
The product qualifies, a person closes.
Requires: Product-qualified signals worth acting on, a clean handoff from self-serve to human, and a real reason for the human to step in.
Founder-led
You are the seller, and for now that's right.
Requires: A pitch that repeats, ruthless clarity on who it's for, and a plan to hand it off before it caps your growth.
Sales-led
A team carries the number.
Requires: A motion that works without hero reps, honest pipeline math, enablement, and a comp plan that matches the sale.
Marketing-led (inbound)
Demand comes to you, and marketing carries it to the buy.
Requires: A point of view worth finding, content that does real work, and a path from attention to conversion that doesn't stall.
Outbound-led
You go find the buyer before they're looking.
Requires: A sharp target list, a message that earns a reply, and a cadence that's persistent without becoming a pest.
Channel / partner-led
Someone else sells for you, or beside you.
Requires: Partners who are credible in the space (not just big), a real reason for them to care, and economics that hold on both sides.
Community-led
Your users carry the word.
Requires: A product worth talking about, a place for people to gather, and advocacy you earn instead of buy.
Ecosystem / marketplace-led
You sell through someone else's platform and its ecosystem.
Requires: Fit with the host's incentives, a listing that converts, and a plan for the day the platform changes the rules.
The methodology (the gap)
Naming a model is the easy part. Building the thing that runs it is the work.
"Go product-led." "Hire a VP of Sales." That names the shape, it doesn't build it. The methodology is who runs the model and how they run it, day to day, and it's the part usually left undone. So I work the whole picture: what you sell, how you sell it, who sells it, and who you sell to. I figure out which blend actually fits, spec what each piece needs, then build the methodology to run it, with you or your team, until you can run it on your own.
Not sure which motion you're running, or why it's leaking?
Bring it to a Results Call. We'll map the four, name the model, find the gap, and you'll leave knowing what to build. You decide what it was worth after.