Sell or die.
Selling in the very early days is hard. Why?
Nobody knows you. You don’t really know how to create a sense of urgency yet, and without urgency, there are no sales. People are busy and it’s usually easier for them to delay replying to your email by a day, and then another, and another, until they forget.
And also because the problem you were set on tackling with your co-founder, the one you discussed with a few target customers, it just doesn’t resonate in the same way when you’re selling for real.
Most products are sold before they’re bought.
Some people say the best products are bought, not sold. They’ll cite great products that immediately made people want to ditch their old tools and processes entirely, wondering how they ever worked without it.
But those products are rare. And even they are faced with significant inertia: changing people’s habits is difficult. Even the greatest products take a bit of convincing early on.
So as you are figuring out who to sell to and what the killer messaging for your product is, you should be obsessed with two things: minimising friction and shortening feedback loops.
Minimise frictions.
Minimising frictions means:
not asking for introductions to people who are not buyers.
not scheduling demos with people who are not end users or decision makers.
highlighting how easy it will be for you to onboard them.
emphasising how your product fits in their existing workflows.
always asking for the simplest action on their part that will move you ahead in the sales process.
Be concise. Make the value you provide crystal clear. Be super explicit about what you’re asking for from the person receiving your message.
And remember that people are just people, 24/7. They don’t walk into the office (or log on to Slack) and suddenly morph into another species. Don’t write in a pompous & illegible way because you are selling to “a business”.
Every time you reach out to a would-be customer, make sure your message respects these rules.
Shorten feedback loops.
If you’re making your first sales, odds are that you’re not profitable yet, which means you have a finite runway. And when you have a finite runway, few things are as valuable as your time.
So don’t wait around for customers to get back to you. No startup has ever died because they were too intense as salespeople. You need to put a lot of intensity into your sales process. It’s not a “no” until you’ve messaged them 10 times or they’ve said so explicitly.
Don’t be scared about being too pushy. If you’re not pushy, you’re dead.
Make every interaction count...
The inertia in front of you is usually strong, so your momentum has to be stronger. If somebody introduces you to a potential buyer, don't wait a few days to bounce back on their email - do it right away. If the customer doesn’t get back to you, don't wait a week to ping them again, wait two days. If they say no, ask why.
Every interaction should be a learning opportunity, but for that to be the case YOU NEED TO INTERACT.
…because selling is where you learn.
Selling is where you gain some of the most valuable customer insights. I’ll finish on a story my friend Hampus Jakobsson once told me about how he started baking bread when he went on paternity leave.
He started by baking for him & his wife, but soon baked more than either of them could eat. So he went to his neighbour and gave her the bread; she was delighted. The next day, he tried to sell her the bread. She said she wouldn’t buy it because there wasn’t enough salt.
That was new information that could only be learned by selling! Selling creates a positive feedback loop by driving the product roadmap forward, hence leading to more sales, more information, and on and on.
So go sell, NOW!
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