The Growth Navigator is a practice-oriented growth program by the Vienna Business Agency for startups that are already on the market and planning their next development step. Founders can choose from four sprints – Product-Market Alignment, Sales & Go-to-Market, Investment & Financing, and Operational Excellence & Organisation – applying for all four or only the ones most relevant to their stage. Konsultori contributes expert knowledge and program concept across all sprints, with one shared goal: help founders build the clarity, confidence, and strategic foundations that make growth sustainable.
Sprint 2: Sales & Go-to-Market
Getting your first customers is one challenge. Building a sales engine that keeps bringing them in is another. Sprint 2 addresses exactly the gap many founders hit after early momentum: growth plateaus, the pipeline feels inconsistent, and no one can quite explain why. The sprint focuses on sales strategies, go-to-market approaches, and the professional development of sales structures. After completing it, founders have a clearer picture of how to reach customers in a targeted way, how to organize sales activities efficiently, and how to scale their revenue models with more confidence.
Meet the Trainers
Tim Birdsall is a Vienna-based facilitator, trainer, and consultant with over 25 years of experience in sales training, leadership development, and negotiation. He has worked across multinational environments in Central Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and was formerly Sales Director at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences. In the Growth Navigator, Tim leads the Sales & CRM session on managing the sales cycle and pipeline discipline, and co-facilitates the Pitch & Pipeline Review alongside Petra Wolkenstein.
Petra Wolkenstein: In the Growth Navigator, Petra leads the Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing session that also tackles Core Segment Selection and the analysis where we are losing leads. She co-facilitates with Tim the Pitch & Pipeline Review.
In Conversation with Tim Birdsall: Sales & Go-to-Market
We sat down with Tim Birdsall to get his perspective on where founders get stuck in sales, what a healthy pipeline actually looks like, and when it’s time to stop relying on founder-led selling.
Founders often come into the Sales & Go-to-Market sprint with some wins under their belt but frustrated that growth has plateaued. What’s usually the real root cause — and why is it so hard for founders to see it themselves?
On an emotional level, founders often begin with very high levels of “passion for the business”. They speak to many people in a short time about their vision and aspirations, which creates a burst of initial momentum and generates (lots of) opportunities.
However, these opportunities can become overwhelming. Faced with multiple ideas for product changes, founders often shift their focus away from sales and toward product development. Additionally, they sometimes exhaust their existing relationships and have an unrealistic expectation that others can replicate their level of passion, motivation, and topic related presentation/influence skills quickly.
From a rational perspective, founder-owners often struggle to break down the sales skills they use into clear, teachable components. These components should be structured into a defined methodology – such as an acquisition campaign or outreach plan.
A structured approach ensures that more people can dedicate time and effort to systematic, measurable outreach activities.
In the Sales & CRM session, you focus on managing the sales cycle and pipeline discipline. What are the most damaging habits you see in early-stage startup sales pipelines, and what does a healthy, repeatable sales process actually look like?
The challenge is less about damaging habits being formed and more about the absence of strong, repeatable habits.
Good habits provide structure and consistency to sales activity. Examples include:
1. Outreach Plan / Campaign: A systematic method for running cold outreach. This creates a repeatable process rather than ad-hoc efforts.
2. Account Planning: Bringing the team together to discuss key target customers, develop a relationship map, an action plan, and repeat this process across multiple accounts, periodically (defined cadence eg: 1 account every 2 weeks)
3. Opportunity Assessment: Evaluating opportunities against key criteria—for example,
- Have we built a buying vision?
- Do we have the right level of relationship?
- How high is the “cost of sales” (and can we afford it)
These questions can ensure focus on strategic, qualified opportunities.
4. Sales Management Routine: Establishing short, regular check-ins, such as a five-minute daily call with each team member to review:
- What is your plan for the day?
- Where do you need support?
The common thread across these examples is dedicating focused time to sales activities and repeating that process in a structured manner over weeks and months. This discipline ensures the sales function receives the attention it requires and creates the conditions for sustainable results.
It’s worth noting that shifting to this approach is less about technical sales skill and more about leadership. It requires a direct, “outside-in” leadership style to set the direction, model the behavior, and hold the team accountable.
During the Pitch & Pipeline Review, founders get feedback on their sales scripts and funnel health. What’s the most common thing founders discover about their pitch or funnel that surprises them – and how do they typically react? What are the two or three concrete things they can do differently in their very next sales conversation or pipeline review?
Based on our work with 30 startups over the past 18 months, a clear pattern has emerged.
In over 80% of cases, the companies significantly evolve their minimum viable product into something quite different. This shift often has a substantial impact on their target audience and overall positioning. As a result, the sales pipeline also changes, requiring teams to reassess their messaging, target segments, and go-to-market approach.
Here are some of my key recommendations for startups:
- 1. Expect evolution: Recognize that both your product and your target customers will change as you learn. Build flexibility into your sales and positioning strategy.
- 2. Capture value from early outreach: Document insights and stories from early customer conversations. These can be repurposed for sales materials, case studies, and positioning, even if the product pivots.
- 3. Balance your pitch: Shift focus from product-centric slides to customer-centric ones. Dedicate time to outlining customer problems, desired outcomes, and the specific value you deliver.
- 4. Strengthen pipeline reviews: In your next pipeline review, apply the eight early qualifier questions to specific opportunities. This will clarify qualification status and next steps.
- 5. Clarify targets: Distinguish between quantitative targets—such as revenue goals aligned with closed deals—and qualitative targets, such as developing strong implementation plans. Qualitative targets should align with your “Engage Them Plan.”
- 6. Focus on discovery in sales meetings: The most effective approach is simple: ask thoughtful questions and base them on what you hear from the customer. Prioritize listening and use customer input to guide the conversation.
There’s a big difference between a founder-led sales approach and building a scalable sales structure. When is the right time to make that transition – and what are the warning signs that you’ve waited too long?
One of the most critical challenges startups face is the lack of willingness to “own” the sales topic.
In many technical startups, founders and early hires are engineers, product managers, or technical specialists. Most prefer to work on product development rather than sales, because they see it as more valuable or more aligned with their skills. As a result, the founder-owner is often surrounded by a team of 3–5 people, none of whom actively want to be in a sales role. (The Europeans have a cultural aversion to sales)
The solution is to make sales a deliberate, resourced function from the outset. This means:
- 1. Assign clear responsibility: Decide who is accountable for sales, even if it’s part-time. Avoid leaving it as an ad-hoc activity that everyone does when they have time.
- 2. Dedicate time daily: Block a specific amount of time each day for sales activities—outreach, follow-ups, pipeline reviews. Treating sales as a scheduled priority prevents it from being crowded out by product work.
- 3. Align incentives with the business goal: Make it explicit that commercial activity is as critical to the company’s success as product development.
Without this structure, startups risk building a great product with no effective path to market. Making sales a resourced and protected function ensures consistent focus and avoids the common trap of deprioritizing commercial activity.
The Takeaway: Sales Is a System, Not a Talent
Stalled growth is rarely a product problem. It’s a structure problem. The founders who enter the Growth Navigator Sprint 2 with inconsistent pipelines leave with something more durable: a process they can manage, hand off, and build on.
Sprint 3 moves to the next scaling challenge: Investment & Financing – what it really takes to get investor-ready before you need to be.