Mark Suster has a great blog post up about sales. Sales is an often overlooked piece of building a company. Suster writes a lot about it so I make it a habit to read his blog.
One of the things I always tell people that are interested in building an entrepreneurial culture in their town is to become customers of the startups. Startups that can grow top line revenue don’t need as much capital to grow. One example of this is Braintree. They didn’t take VC money for the first four years of their life.
Selling is daunting though. It’s not easy. It’s scary. Many people think it’s smarmy or manipulative. But, selling is really just solving a problem for a customer and making them aware of one way to do it.
There are lots of different sales styles. Different selling styles fit different businesses. In some cases, selling is more consultative. In others, it’s down and dirty feature–>advantage—>benefit—>ask for the order type selling.
How can you sell better?
1. Practice your pitch before you call a customer. If you can, video it. Have others critique your pitch.
2. Practice answering objections you think you will get during the sales call. That way, when they come up, you will handle them easier and won’t stumble over an answer.
3. During the call, don’t “puke” on the customer. You know your product better than them. Hopefully you are excited about your product. But, the customer doesn’t have to know every single minute detail about it. After initially engaging with them, ask a question. Get them talking about the problems they have. Then fit your pitch to solve their problems.
4. In many cases, don’t go for the whole ball of wax in the first call. Ask for a trial. People are risk averse. They like the idea of trials so they don’t feel trapped. If your product is as good as you think it is, once you get a trial they will be hooked.
5. When you hire your first VP of Sales, it might not have to be the person that will be your VP of sales after your company matures. Early selling is different than selling later in the game and when you are managing a bigger organization. Hire a sales person that can open some doors and close accounts to get business flowing.
There are many other ways to sell better. It’s a skill not a lot of startups practice. Too often, they focus on engineering or product market fit. But, the engineers can’t design better products without input from the customer. That comes with an active sales force learning about their wants and needs.
