5 sales skills that are not so helpful when you want to build a great product

Some habits are hard to change, especially if they were helpful for your job - like specific sales skills. I mentioned the valuable skills in my last article, but I observed certain sales habits are obstructive for building a user-centric product. Here is my observation:

1. Talking too much:

I know that you should listen more in sales, but I think the listening ratio should increase while talking to users.

Excuse my enthusiasm; I just get dragged away when someone tells me about a problem they encounter. It's the twitch to be helpful, and I might miss out on crucial information by talking and not asking why people perceive something as a problem. So I try to shut up, take notes, and try to really understand. (Easier said than done.)

2. ABC - Always be closing:

Ah, finally references to sales clichés from Hollywood.

But being in constant pitch mode is useful for certain times but fatal for building good user-centric software.

My sales brain is somehow wired to convince with arguments, but products are like jokes: It's not good if you have to explain it.

The user is trying to tell me why something is not right, and I should acknowledge it and pond about it. How else should I ever find out if I keep on telling them how awesome everything is?

3. Not taking things personally:

Sales is a lot of psychology and how you manage yourself. That also means that you should not take everything personally. It is a way to cope with rejection and helps to keep up the energy and spirit. Be Teflon.

This doesn't translate well into founder life. It is my one job to figure out as a founder from day 1 until someone churns to find out what went wrong and improve on it.

Taking it personally doesn't mean that I should feel attacked - it means that I take it in, reflect on it, and care about the solution.

4. Selling the vision:

Remember my last post when I told everyone that it is fantastic to tell big stories?

Yeah, sometimes that sucks too, because if you are developing a product and you overpromise, then disappointment is programmed. Bugs, missing features that we don't have yet...

As a pure Salesperson, these problems were possible to delegate to someone because you just cared about closing the deal. 

Doesn't make sense when you are that someone: customer success, finance, product, tech. ?????♂?

5. Being a hunter:

If you are familiar with sales, you know what there are the classifications of hunters and farmers. Hunters are there for new business and outreach. That also leads to less nurturing activities, which are often taken over by farmers.

I love the thrill of talking to new users and customers, but it doesn't make sense to always pour in new users into the product when you haven't achieved product-market-fit yet.

One way to counter a leaky bucket is to put us in private beta and slowly onboard new users. This helps find all the flaws and bugs of an early product - that just works with early adopters; these are the ones that make or break a product. 

Nurturing this relationship is more important because it helps us building something people want. 

Conclusion:

It's all a bit schizophrenic because all these skills need to be turned again once it comes to convincing new customers or investors.

So I'm thinking about doing a cheesy secret trick to shift my mind:

I take an invisible hat off, saying "sales hat off" ?????♂? and then put another invisible hat on, saying "product manager hat on".?????♂?

Will tell you if it works.