Sales Playbook - Dhruv Pradeep

0. Mental model

Your real competitor is "do nothing." 40–60% of qualified deals die in no-decision.
People don't buy products. They buy a better situation at acceptable risk. Two fears: this won't work and I'll look stupid for picking it.
Fast "no" beats slow "maybe."
Get the message right at 20 conversations, then scale to 2,000. Volume amplifies whatever you have.

1. Foundations

The revenue equation

Revenue = (# opportunities × win rate × deal size) / cycle length

Four levers. When revenue is stuck, one of them is broken. Find which before fixing anything.

ACV decides your motion

ACV	Motion	Cycle
<$1K	Pure self-serve	Days
$1–5K	Self-serve + light touch	1–2 weeks
$5–25K	Inside sales, AE-led	2–8 weeks
$25–100K	Mid-market, multithreaded	1–4 months
$100K+	Enterprise, AE + SE + exec	3–12 months

You can't afford a human demo below ~$2K ACV. Classic founder error: $99/mo pricing with 45-min demos.

ICP

Not "who could use this" — who bleeds without this, has budget, and can decide fast.

Four axes: firmographic · technographic · trigger · pain.

Write the negative ICP too. It saves more time than the positive one.

How to find it: score your customers on speed to close, price paid, support burden, expansion, referrals. What do the top 20% share that the bottom 20% don't? Redo quarterly.

Tiering

Tier 1 — ~25 accounts. Deep research, multithreaded.