Run your first call
What you’ll learn
How to structure and run sales calls that move prospects forward.
Why it’s important
Unstructured calls lead to repeated mistakes you can't diagnose. A consistent approach lets you learn from each conversation and improve, rather than guessing why deals stall.
Keep reading if...
- The thought of selling on a call makes you sweat.
- You’re unsure of how to bridge from discovery to sale.
- Your instinct is to show the product and pitch features as fast as possible.
Remember how we told you that your discovery calls were about listening? Yeah, you’re still doing that. But now you have to move the prospect to the next step in the process. You need to turn them into a lead.
Nervous? That’s normal.
Founders have told us they were “visibly shaking” on early calls. Or that they “did the same stupid thing over and over” without realizing what was holding them back.
The sales call is showtime. It’s one of your first and most important external functions as a founder. And if you have co-founders, it is your responsibility to take this seriously.
While approaches vary depending on your chosen methodology, generally, “a sales call” can refer to several calls:
- Discovery/Qualifying
Learning about the prospect and whether or not they are even a good fit for your product (and vice versa). - Demos
Showing the prospect the actual product. - Onboarding/Trial/Pilots
Setting the prospect up on your solution before a deeper commitment. - Stakeholder alignment
Getting supporting teams, buyers, or technical owners on the call to ensure that the deal can go through and there are no technical or administrative blockers.
The most common mistake new founders make is trying to jam all of this into a single call.
“I would jump straight into a product demo and say, ‘Look at these features, look at all these cool things you could do!’” says Bobby Pinero, co-founder of Equals. “Every instinct I had was to try to tell them the answer….I didn’t know how to sell.”
In that first call, we'll do some discovery and we also do a demo. Once we've learned a bit about, why did they even have interest in Tofu in the first place, we set up a much more holistic demo for the wider team that's actually walking through what they told us.
Elaine Zelby
Co-founder, Tofu
Before the call
Take a breath, and take your time. Here’s where to start before your first sales call, building on our founder-led sales mindsets:
You’re in charge
If someone agrees to spend an hour with you, you’re already in the driver's seat. Don’t waste the call by winging it. Show up ready to run through a process. (It's also a subtle but important signal that you’re trustworthy.)
You’re there to listen
Especially if it's the first call. Don’t jump to demoing, selling, or convincing. Hear them out and use your discovery questions. Aim for 80% listening, 20% talking.
Show them respect: Do your research
“Extend the individual respect by putting a lot of effort into what you're saying to them so that it's clearly not copy-paste or AI slop,” says Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom. “Making it clear, ‘Hey, I do know who you are. I know your job title, and I know your company. I've thought about how my product could benefit you. You specifically.’"
During the call
Come with a question toolbox
Here’s one we’ve used:
You can always veer off course to chase a particularly interesting insight, but your question toolbox gives you a place to return to.
Disqualify them ASAP
Especially early, you will be more focused on ruling them out than trying to do additional discovery. Be ruthless with their time and yours.
“If you ask if they have this problem and they say ‘no’ and they actually mean it, then that's great,” says Marty Kausas, co-founder of Pylon. “The worst thing that could happen is you schedule more time with them, and they're just being nice.”
Do not pitch them
No one buys something they’ve never heard of from a new company on the first call. But they do have their curiosity spiked enough to try it out. “The first 20 to 50 calls are not going to be about closing. You don't even know what that is... they are about finding who has the problem, how do they describe it, what have they tried, what triggers action, what would be the impact to them if they had something that would solve this problem for them," says Esha Joshi, co-founder of Yoodli.
Related: If your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is other CEO and founders, beware of the double pitch.
“I've had many sales calls where I was selling them, but the person was trying to sell me something, and you have this very weird moment. It's just a really weird situation, and you don't want to be in the room,” says Enzo Avigo, co-founder of June. “This happened to me many, many times in the first year.”
Record your calls
You want to focus on the conversation, not note-taking. Also, watching old calls is the best way to improve. Learn more about the right tools and tech in Step 3.
Ask open-ended questions
Then follow up with several “whys.” This is how you reach the second and third levels of insight. The good stuff. Do not lead them with "Wouldn't it be better if…” or “Have you considered…”
Practice reflection
Invite additional thoughts with a simple follow-up question, “So, what I heard was [restate answer], is that right?” That makes it feel less like an interrogation and more like a conversation.
Don't confuse compliments for evidence
To quote Alec Baldwin, money talks and bullshit walks. Everyone can be nice until it’s time to pay.
Remember, you’re performing
“I realized how dead my expression looked on calls, and [my sales coach] was like, ‘You need to smile,’” says Amanda Zhu, co-founder of Recall.ai. “Also, I would verbally indicate that I was listening. But the sales coach helped me realize I don't want to be accidentally interrupting them. These are like two really small things, but they made a really big difference in how comfortable people felt and how much they shared.”
I was always spending the time, even when it was more manual, setting up these demos for them, making the effort to make it as personal an experience as I could.
Elaine Zelby
Co-founder, Tofu
After/at the end of the call
1. Assign next steps
“Usually, we’ll assign people homework after a qualifying call, which is to share with us some documentation of a really difficult process they’re not sure that AI can solve. We build a custom demo based on that,” says Steve Hind, co-founder of Lorikeet. Pylon will add its prospects to shared Slack channels. Recall.ai time-boxes a trial.
2. Follow up. Be charmingly annoying.
“I'm relentless. I will follow up with you until you tell me to F off or you give me an answer and close the loop. I will send 12 emails if people ghost me until they actually close the loop,” says Elaine Zelby, co-founder of Tofu.
3. Capture the call
File the recording, enter it into your CRM, and/or use an AI agent to structure the information and place it in the right spots. You’ll want future sellers and yourself to have access to what you’ve learned on each call.
4. Ask for the next call
"There's a necessary bit of bravery involved at the end in sales to say, ‘Let's set up a second call’ or ‘Can you introduce me to your CTO?’ In my experience, that's where founders chicken out or are too high empathy,” says Des. “That's where they fail to sell. They don't close."
After you’ve successfully had a few first calls, you’ll be ready to move to closing.
Reflect
Are you trying to close on the first call? If a prospect won't take the next step, focus on learning why—not forcing it.
When a prospect goes quiet after a good conversation, do you follow up once and give up? We’ve talked to founders who would send 12 emails before they got a response. What’s your threshold?
Sales is a performance. When was the last time you were “on”—a presentation, a pitch, even a toast at a wedding? Tap into that energy.