Harris’ business is perfectly situated for a young startup company that is heavy on product / technical talent and light on sales / marketing talent. Many young companies can ill afford a full-time sales person at the beginning, before the product has launched or in the near-aftermath of product launch because the sales motion isn’t well understood. What’s needed, instead, is part-time assistance to begin experiments on the sales motion, to listen deeply to prospective target customers in order to hone the sales motion and to begin to put into place effective processes and practices that enable a repeatable sales engine to emerge. Harris provides all of these things — he’s a seasoned sales leader who has been through the startup cycle(s) several times so understands the difference between the early-listening/experimentation phase and the later process-implementation phase. He’s got excellent sales management skills to bring to bear all of the necessary CRM tools into the mix and advise about which ones might be best for the environment. Because he’s led marketing in the past, he also understands keenly the interplay between the two functions. Harris served both as our part-time sales manager – to drive our emerging engine – and as part-time sales experimenter – to drive many different conversations with our prospective customers to learn more about them (who they are, what they’re wanting to buy and why they’re buying).