It's all sales

Most early founders think that building the product is the hard part.

It’s not. The hard part is getting anyone to care.

It’s distribution. Sales and marketing.

Because you can build a beautiful, elegant, perfectly-timed product that solves important problems that people are willing to pay hand over fist for.

But if no one notices it, it DIES.

This isn’t the Field of Dreams where ‘if you build it they will come’. In the real-world there are hundreds of Fields of Dreams for a target customer to watch a ballgame at.

So to be successful, distribution must be fundamental.

Distribution means people finding out about your product (marketing) and then converting from prospects to paying customers (sales)

When it comes to sales, a founder cannot simply hide behind the product. You must stand out in front of it and defend it’s very existence to your customer.

I’ve found there are really 2 aspects to sales 1) Empathy, and 2) Belief

In reality sales is actually pretty simple in this way. It’s not about shaking hands or tailored suits or a winning smile. It’s about:

1) understanding and sharing the feelings of a prospective customer (empathy). putting yourself in their shoes, doing all you can to feel their problems, pains, desires, contexts

2) motivating and inspiring a customer to trust that your product can solve their problems and is worthy of their precious dollars (belief). Show them that an inevitable, beautiful future awaits that your product will help them access

When it comes to the product itself, you must think in terms of benefits, not features.

The customer is the hero at the center of the story (not your product).

They are employing your product to provide a benefit that will help them on their journey. Sometimes the benefit is just a mere idea, not a feature at all.

When you realize these things, sales becomes much more straightforward.

You begin to realize that inspiration is contagious.

That empathy matters more than anything.

That sales is everywhere.

Every time you make a decision you are being sold a future version of yourself in exchange for some cost or effort.

From picking an apartment, to buying a coffee.

When you decide to go for a jog in the morning you are selling health and well-being to yourself.

I think that is beautiful.

Peace,
Ramsey