The founder's guide to selling. Yes, you have to do sales.
If you don't learn how to sell your own product, you will not run your business. Someone else will.
Got it? Good.
How founders sell
There are many formal frameworks that you can use. None of them matter. You're going to have to find your own way to convince someone that, not only have you built something useful, but it's worth paying for instead of spending that money on something else.
Take the users point of view
The process of deciding whether to buy something, especially software, looks roughly like this.
- They have a problem, or desire for something better than, X
- At some point, X becomes so bad or compelling that they have to do something
- They look for a way to fix X
- They compare options, maybe trying one or two
- How they feel about a specific option is a combination of... how much of X is solved + how much it will cost in both money and effort + how much pain they're really feeling + how much better off they believe they will be post-X + the influence of their peers and trusted folks + the cost of doing nothing + the politics and psychology of their organization
Learn what works
What do you need to say, do, or show someone at each step that keeps them moving forward to making a decision?
Debug the failures
- What step did you get stuck at?
- Do they actually have the problem you solve?
- Are they driven to solve the problem? Is it bad enough for them to spend time on fixing it?
- Do you actually fix it?
- How do you compare to alternatives? How do you compare to doing nothing at all?
- Did you convince them?
- Did they have to convince other people? Did you help them convince other people?
- How much pain, time, and effort does adopting your solution require? Do you create more pain today than you take away tomorrow?
Iterate
That's it. Do it over and over.
From selling yourself to enabling sales
Help people convince themselves
What do people need to see, read, do, and feel in order to be convinced? How can you provide ways for them convince themselves?
- On your website: copy, illustrations, screenshots, videos, blog posts, case studies, customer quotes, FAQs, etc
- In newsletters, emails, chats, notifications, banners, promotions, ads, podcasts, etc
- At conferences, on webcasts, etc
- In docs
- In the product
Help people convince other people
Once someone is convinced, what do they need to show, tell, and do to convince others? How can you help them do that?
- Do they need a feature comparison table between your product and another?
- Do they need a recorded demo?
- Do they need you to do a talk for their team?
- Do they need a 15 second description?
- Etc
Help the sales people you hire become YOUR salespeople
In the beginning, this is going to be mostly ad hoc by mentorship and pairing with you.
As soon as you have more than a few sellers, you'll have the same onboarding challenges you do with engineers. The things you'll need to be able educate new salespeople about are the same things you learned from doing sales yourself.
- Why did you build your product, who is it for, and what does it do for them?
- How do they know if they're speaking to the right person and if that person has the right problem and if your product is the right product to solve it?
- What are the specific steps your users go through when deciding to buy your product?
- What does the sales person need to say, do, or show at each step?
- How do they debug failures?
Once you get bigger, the answers to these questions will take the form of formal materials and education that cover:
- Founding myth of the company
- The ecosystem in which your company and product exist
- What the product does, who it does it for, and the value props in both technical and business terms
- Target segments and company types
- Qualification and disqualification rules for determining if there's a good fit between the product and the target, whether they have the right problem, and whether they have the ability or desire to adopt a new solution in the foreseeable future
- Buyer, decision maker, and influencer personas
- Playbook covering the steps in the decision making process and what to do at each step
- The specific language to use at each step in emails, meetings, presentations, etc
- Assets such as slides for a first call, case studies from other customers, etc
- Education on product details, how to give a demo, etc
- How to position against competitors
- What common objections people might have and how to respond
Make sure the training actually works
Have new salespeople pitch more experienced folks. Sit it on meetings with them. Debrief afterwards. Ask them to keep track of what is and isn't working. Try to interview potential customers who say no and get their take on what isn't working. Also interview customers that say yes and get their take on why.
Evolving sales as the company evolves
As your product matures, things like who it's for or the exact problem it solves will get refined or completely change.
The bigger the change, the more likely you'll have to go through this entire process again.
If you hire well, your sales management and staff should be able to do more of this work themselves each time. And they should be providing material feedback on what does and does not work.
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Good luck!