Carol Malakasis is the Founder of a new venture called Market Pull which she reveals for the first time in our interview.

She has been in sales since 2010, co-founded a company in the Consumer Packaged Goods space, and has been part of the 3 founding sales teams where 2 of the startups became acquired. Carol has personally made over 500k cold calls, and closed over $2M in revenue. Oh and she speaks 5 languages.

In this episode, we spend the first half of the interview learning from Carol’s career and her transition into sales consulting. Then we talk founder-led sales issues and strategies. Finally we wrap with Carol’s advice on how to move efficiently from a founder-led model to a sales-led sales model.

#salesconsultantpodcast #founderledsales #salescareer #salesconsulting

Time Stamps:

[1:18] We jump right into Carol’s origin story.Being that she was so accomplished at such a young age I asked her to talk about where her drive comes from. She describes her career as “a big happy accident” and shares how she fell into sales and ended up falling in love with everything about it. 

[8:08] There’s a different mentality today than there was when she was starting her career toward working hard. She also gives advice to anyone thinking about joining a startup and explains the level of effort you should expect to put in.

[12:30] Shares why she wanted to be a sales consultant and the story behind pushing her way into an opportunity to intern for 8-months (while also working her full-time sales job). 

[17:00] Her advice to people who want to work in another field like she did switching from sales to sales consulting. She lays out the steps a person should take.

[19:21] Talks about how she finds sales consulting clients. In the beginning she didn’t have a network so she used to send out cold videos over LinkedIn and Email using Loom.

[22:18] We get into how clients can get in their own way and block themselves from getting the full value of engaging with a sales consultant.

[26:40] She addresses why founders hesitate or even flat out resist leaning into sales activities. The founder-led sales model dilemma. 

[30:00] We talk about what’s required to move from a founder-led sales model to a Sales-led model where you’re hiring your first VP of Sales and building a Sales org. Carol explains why she would hire a salesperson or an SDR first before hiring a VP of Sales.

[34:50] Carol reveals the name of her new venture for the first time publicly. She’s calling it “Market Pull” which is a free sales content guide for early stage startups.

Mentions:

• Market Pull - https://www.marketpull.com
• Rampd - https://rampd.co
• Loom - https://www.loom.com

Connect with us:

Carol’s LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolmalakasis/

Market Pull - https://www.marketpull.com

The Sales Consultant LinkedIn Page - https://the-sales-consultant-podcast.captivate.fm/

Derrick’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/derricklwilliamsjr/

Derrick’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/derrickis3linksales/

Derrick’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/derrickis3link