Why is sales so hard for tech founders and how to overcome
If you are a founder selling to B2B, then this is for you.
In the early stages of your startup, the founders are responsible finding and closing customers. But sales is hard especially if you are a techie founder.
I meet many startup founders as part of my advising and coaching, and almost all have the same sentiment – I am not comfortable in sales or marketing. I am more comfortable in technology.
I get it. I was one of you.
In 2009, I was trying to find customers for a startup that I had just started working with the founder. The first job was to find customers to talk to. Now, I had never done sales in this way. I had made sales presentations as part of my Big 5 consulting role. But selling in a startup is a completely different beast.
At that time, I had no podcasts or blogs to follow. I just randomly started emailing strangers.
It was terrifying. I was so bad.
What helped me transform?
I did two things that helped.
First, I read the book “Solution Selling” by Michael Bosworth. It’s a book for sales people but it transformed my thinking. At its core, the book recommends a solution based selling approach. Your client has a specific problem and your job is to explain how your product can solve that problem.
And of course, if anything, we are good problem solvers.
The second thing I did was change my pitch. Rather than my making it an awkward sales pitch that I was not trained for, I converted to a problem solving mode. I started talking about their specific problems and how they are solving today. And left out all the fluff. I then discussed their ideal state and then proceeded with a demo, which obviously had their ideal solution.
I ended up talking to 80 odd prospects in the first couple of months. It was hard but I muddled through it. I started getting more comfortable after some practice.
The transformation was to reframe the fear of selling to problem solving.
Now, by no means I am a seller. I will fail miserably in a traditional sales role. But I am much more comfortable in early stages of discovery and selling.
Why is selling so hard?
Selling is not natural to most of us, especially for techie founders.
There are of course many reasons.
We don’t how to start a conversation with a stranger.
If a customer asks a question on the spot, we will be tongue tied
They will reject us
They will ghost us
Of these, the fear of rejection is the most important reason why we think sales is hard. For sales people, this is a natural way of their work. They have learnt to develop a thick skin.
Here is another thing I learnt.
Your success at just getting a demo meeting is at best 10%. Which means you will need to learn to handle all that rejection. Don’t take it personally. It’s not a rejection per se. Just that these customers are either not your target or they are not yet ready.
Your goal is to find motivated customers who resonated with the pain point and are ready to solve. And you are not actually selling. You are solving a problem for them that you deeply understand.
(How I found customers to talk to is another topic I will cover shortly. )
Founders need to be sellers
Many founders hire sales rep or SDR or to outsource agencies to book appointments. The problem is they do it too early. I always ask If they have nailed down the ICP and the value prop. If not, then who are these sales people targeting and what are they positioning.
Remember, the goal of the sales people and their compensation depends on closing deals. If your ICP is not defined then they will be chasing wrong deals and waste time. Frustration will set in and you will have to fire these sales people.
A better approach in B2B is for the founder to do the initial sales. That way they get to deeply understand the customer, their pain point and the value proposition that is resonating with them. It’s also a ground for learning about your customers and fine tune your product and positioning. You simply cannot outsource that.
Once you have figured out a repeatable sales pattern, you can hire your sales rep.
Conclusion
In B2B, customer can take 3-7 meetings to close. The goal of the first meeting is to get a followup meeting. In order to get there, you have to convince that you have the ability to solve the customers problem and that customer is ready solve.
You are in problem identification and solving mode. If a customer is convinced that you have the right solution, they will go the next step to close a deal.
