Setup guide: founders selling B2B

Who you are reaching

Your buyers, in their own words. Founders often set up an audience of other founders, because that is who they read. Other founders are not your customers unless you sell to startups.

Prospects settings

• Their Job Titles: your buyer's exact title, one level up, one level down. Selling to ops: VP of Operations, Director of Operations, Operations Manager, COO. Selling to marketing: VP of Marketing, Head of Marketing, Marketing Manager, CMO. Selling to startups: Founder, CEO, Co-Founder.
• Words to Watch For: the problem your product fixes, in the buyer's words. Nobody posts "I need workflow automation software". They post "my team spends Fridays on spreadsheets". Three to six phrases like that.
• People to Skip: your competitors' titles, plus Sales and Marketing at other vendors in your space, plus Investor and Venture Partner unless that is a separate audience.
• Words to Skip: fundraising, we're hiring, product launch (unless those are your topics).
• A second audience for investors or partners if you want them: Partner, Principal, Investor, with keywords like portfolio, thesis, and your category.

Train Allen

Bio: what you build, for whom, and how you talk. Founders have the strongest voices on LinkedIn and the most to lose from sounding generic, so paste five real comments, not three. Rules: "never mention our product unless asked", "no building in public clichés", "never say excited". Goal: add insight. Length: medium.

Sample comments

On a VP of Operations posting that their team's month-end close takes two weeks:

• Add insight: "Two weeks usually means three people are waiting on one spreadsheet. The fix that worked for the teams I have watched was not faster tools, it was moving the reconciliation from the end of the month to every Friday, so close day starts at ninety percent done."
• Respectful pushback: "I would push back on 'the team is slow'. Every two-week close I have seen was a handoff problem, not a people problem. Where does the file sit on day six?"
• Ask a question: "Which day of the two weeks is the worst? In my experience it is always the same one, and that day is the whole bottleneck."

Autopilot

Five a day, weekdays, buyers audience only to start. Add the investor audience later if you want it, and untick it when you are not raising.

Watchlist

Your top fifty target accounts, the buyer and their boss at each. Current customers, so you keep showing up for them. Three or four people in your space whose posts your buyers read.

The first DM

"Thanks for the reply on the close post. The Friday reconciliation thing is a real change for a lot of teams. No pitch: if you want, I can send the two-paragraph version of how one team did it." Only mention your product when they ask what you do.

Posting too

Founders benefit most from the loop between comments and posts. Write one post a week on the problem your keywords describe, from your side of the table, and watch Engaged with you on Pipeline to see which buyers it brings in.