For founders & CEOs selling into the enterprise.
You shouldn’t be the head of Sales. You should be the Founder.
I’m Ed Smith. I help founders run the enterprise sales motion as fractional VP of Sales or advisor — so you run the company again.
Companies I’ve sold for
30+ years. $1M+ deals at every company. IBM’s then-largest ecommerce/OMS deal. Toshiba’s $100M+ Kroger book. Built the GTM at Standard AI through a product pivot. Retail, brands, and CPG are where a lot of that work happened. The gate is a committee, not a vertical.
Thirty minutes. We map where sales is stuck, and whether we should work as partners.
Your product got you the meeting. Your sales motion is costing you the deal.
Enterprises buy through committees. Founders win the first meeting on the product, then stall: no power map, no next step, no one selling the people who can spend or kill the deal. I run that motion with you and put you in the rooms that actually move the close.
The first meeting goes well and leads nowhere
Discovery wasn’t mapped. Nobody owned the next step. The deal had no sales resource behind it, so it drifted.
Ghosted after a good demo
You sold the people who liked the product, not the people who can spend — or kill — the deal.
Stuck below the power base
An enthusiastic contact is not late stage if the economic buyer has never heard your name. That’s hope, not a forecast.
You’re on every call
Discovery, demos, status, price. The buyer has learned to wait for the founder. You need to be used on the calls that matter.
I help you run the motion. You run the company.
Default is fractional VP of Sales. Some founders want a counterpart on the deals and the forecast, and still close themselves — that’s advisory. Some have one pursuit, one partner, or a hire to land — that’s a special project. We pick the shape on the first call.
What I help you run
- Qualification, pipeline, and a forecast a board will believe.
- Cadence: reviews, next steps, discovery, demo prep, close.
- Position, price, and whether the offer is complete.
- Where you show up — and where you don’t.
Where the founder belongs
You and I work as partners. I put you in the moments that move the deal. I keep you out of status theater.
Need you
- The first real conversation with the economic buyer.
- Late-stage alignment, when residual risk is still sitting with the committee.
- The last commercial conversation on non-standard terms.
Only feel like they need you
- Early discovery with mid-level managers.
- Every demo and status meeting.
- Price as a rescue because they asked for the founder.
What changes in 90 days.
I don’t take the company away from you. We run the motion together. You get time back to be CEO.
Standard AI — why this practice exists
Limited concurrent clients
Complex enterprise deals are not built for founder-led teams.
The stall is rarely the demo. It is the motion: no follow-up owner, a pilot that never becomes a rollout, a champion with no budget, InfoSec late, procurement after “yes,” a partner who owns the door.
What that sale actually requires
- Map the buying process before the demo — business, technical and economic buyers, IT, security, finance, procurement.
- Orchestrating and managing a complex sales process, internally and externally.
- Selling the rollout, not the pilot.
- Keep the founder out of status theater and in the three moments that move power.
- Price and offer completeness before the RFP writes you into a corner.
- Competitive product positioning, business value, and alignment with the power base and executive sponsors.