The mind of an Indian startup founder is typically (and sometimes even exclusively) attuned to creating a great product. But very few understand the power of sales and marketing in making that product available before a wide range of users. Engineers may not necessarily be the coding nerds from every sci-fi movie you have ever watched, but they are certainly not the face of a business organization. It may seem ironic, but even at the height of automation and software innovation, we still need the sales team to do the market research, make those phone calls, and be the smiling face of customer representation. In this chapter, we turn to entrepreneurs who adopted a sales framework early on in their startup career—and even those who didn’t—to understand the importance of sales and marketing in a SaaS organization.
