$1M to $10M: The enterprise sales playbook with Jen Abel

Jen Abel is GM of Enterprise at State Affairs and co-founded Jellyfish, a consultancy that helps founders learn zero-to-one enterprise sales. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met on learning enterprise sales, and in this follow-up to our first chat two years ago (covering the zero to $1 million ARR founder-led sales phase), we focus on the skills founders need to learn to go from $1M to $10M ARR. *We discuss:* 1. Why the “mid-market” doesn’t exist 2. Why tier-one logos like Stripe and Tesla counterintuitively make the best early customers 3. The dangers of pricing your product at $10K-$20K 4. Why you need to vision-cast instead of problem-solve to win enterprise deals 5. Why services are the fastest way to get your foot in the door with enterprises 6. How to find and work with design partners 7. When to hire your first salesperson and what profile to look for *Brought to you by:* WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://workos.com/lenny Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI: https://lovable.dev/ Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace: https://coda.io/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-enterprise-sales-playbook-1m-to-10m-arr *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/177909982/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Jen Abel:* • X: https://x.com/jjen_abel • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/earlystagesales • Website: https://www.jjellyfish.com *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Welcome back, Jen! (04:38) The myth of the mid-market (08:08) Targeting tier-one logos (10:50) Vision-casting vs. problem-selling (15:35) The importance of high ACVs (20:45)  Don’t play the small business game with an enterprise company (25:09) Design partners: the double-edged sword (28:11) Finding the right company (36:55) Enterprise sales: the art of the deal (43:21) The problem with channel partnerships (44:41) Quick summary (50:24) Hiring the right enterprise salespeople (56:49) Structuring sales compensation (01:01:01) Building relationships in enterprise sales (01:02:07) The art of cold outreach (01:07:31) Outbound tooling and AI (01:14:08) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:* • The ultimate guide to founder-led sales |…