SaaS Sales: The Playbook Every Founder Needs to Scale

Most companies don't have a sales problem. They have a playbook problem. And it's costing them every deal that should've closed. In this episode of SaaS That App: Building Tech-Enabled Businesses, Tom Stearns and Peter Cleary, co-authors of Graphic Sales, join Aaron Marchbanks and Justin Edwards to break down what actually separates scalable sales orgs from founders who are still doing everything from memory. This podcast is brought to you by Delta Systems, your one-stop shop for front-end, back-end, and full-stack software development. At Delta, Justin and Aaron share the same philosophy when it comes to clients: they treat people like colleagues, not just customers. Maybe that’s why Delta typically spends years working with the same companies: how many software engineering firms can you say that about? So, if you’ve got a big SaaS project in mind but have no idea where to start, come and get a free scope and estimate from Delta Systems at: https://deltasystems.com/ Got a burning idea for an episode, or a SaaS question you absolutely must know the answer to? Leave us a voice memo at: https://www.speakpipe.com/SaasThatApp

Most companies don't have a sales problem. They have a playbook problem. And it's costing them every deal that should've closed.

In this episode of SaaS That App: Building Tech-Enabled Businesses, Tom Stearns and Peter Cleary, co-authors of Graphic Sales, join Aaron Marchbanks and Justin Edwards to break down what actually separates scalable sales orgs from founders who are still doing everything from memory.

What You'll Learn:

How to turn a founder's gut-level customer knowledge into an ideal customer profile the whole team can run with
Why falling in love with your own product features is quietly sabotaging your demos
The difference between an ICP that looks good on a slide and one that actually scales
Where AI sharpens a strong sales foundation, and where it just helps you scale bad habits faster

Tom Stearns is the founder of Stearns Consulting, specializing in helping SaaS companies deconstruct and rebuild their go-to-market strategies from the ground up. With a background in fine arts and three decades of experience spanning graphic design, marketing, and sales, Stearns brings a unique perspective to sales process optimization.

Peter Cleary is the Senior Manager at Akamai Technologies, bringing decades of enterprise sales and sales engineering expertise to complex B2B environments. With a background in history and extensive experience managing large-scale sales teams, Peter advocates for treating sales as a teachable science rather than an art form.

This podcast is brought to you by Delta Systems, your one-stop shop for front-end, back-end, and full-stack software development. At Delta, Justin and Aaron share the same philosophy when it comes to clients: they treat people like colleagues, not just customers. Maybe that’s why Delta typically spends years working with the same companies: how many software engineering firms can you say that about? So, if you’ve got a big SaaS project in mind but have no idea where to start, come and get a free scope and estimate from Delta Systems at: https://deltasystems.com/

Got a burning idea for an episode, or a SaaS question you absolutely must know the answer to? Leave us a voice memo at: https://www.speakpipe.com/SaasThatApp

Highlights:

[02:36] Your Go-to-Market Worked Until You Scaled It
[06:47] Five Doors After Five and the End of Spray-and-Pray
[10:08] Three Problems, Three Solutions, That's All a Demo Needs
[12:23] Let the Customer Talk for 25 of Your 30 Minutes
[16:55] AI Won't Fix a Broken Foundation. It'll Break It Faster.
[18:23] What the Founder Knows That the Sales Team Doesn't
[24:59] The Bespoke Trap: When Customizing Kills Your Product
[35:25] Point AI at Your CRM, but Verify Everything
[39:00] Start With the Outcome, Not the Tool

Episode Resources:

Tom Stearns on LinkedIn
Peter Cleary on LinkedIn
Graphic Sales Stories Website
Aaron Marchbanks on LinkedIn
Justin Edwards on LinkedIn
Delta Systems Website