I love to ideate, plan, and build. There’s nothing better to me than diving headfirst into a new project that has all the bells and whistles. The challenge of taking something from my head and translating it into a real product is what makes it exciting to wake up in the morning.
Can you relate?
This thrill, this focus on building and creating can make it difficult to do anything else. Many times, we get so attached to what we’re making that we skip the hard part of marketing and selling.
Instead of talking to prospects, we decide to build one more feature, write one more article, or tweak one more part of the design.
It can feel like progress. It’s not. At least, it’s not meaningful progress. It’s not the kind of progress that will pay the bills. You know what does pay the bills?
- Understanding who your customers are/will be
- Selling/marketing to those people 70% of the time
In this ultra-short post, I’ll share a few ways you can do both the first and the second one. Keep in mind that how you sell is contingent on the kind of product you’re building.
Understanding your market
I know. You know who you’re selling to because you have the problem yourself or you’ve been working in the industry for a billion years. While that may be beneficial, that doesn’t mean you understand the perspective of most people who will be using the solution.
Every market has different segments. For example, Slack caters to small teams, large teams, medium teams, communities, developers, content creators, marketers, designers, etc. Each one of these people, though using Slack in a similar way, use it for a different reason.
If you don’t understand the reason people use a product, then it’ll be difficult to market to and sell to them.
I know of two overarching ways to get a better understanding of your market. Both of them are qualitative research methods where you focus on the way people feel, the reasons for their actions, and perspectives.
The easier method is to use surveys with open ended questions (mixed with a few close ended demographic questions) to find out how people feel about the problem. Though easier, it shouldn’t be the first method you use.
Why?
Because if you ask the wrong questions then the data won’t be useful. How do you know what the right questions are? You don't know until you do the more difficult method which are interactive customer interviews.
Customer interviews done in person or over the phone let you explore the problem in depth. You can react to their tone of voice, their facial expressions, ask clarifying questions, etc. This will give you a much deeper understanding of your market and help you create better survey questions.
After you’ve done your research and have a better understanding of who your customers/prospects are then you can start selling. Not before.
Two ways to sell (one scalable one unscalable)
We love scale. It’s all the startup world talks about. Is it scalable? What’s the TAM and our SAM? How much market share can we capture in 3 years? Sure, all of those are important considerations but before you get there, you’ll need to prove your hypothesis – by selling like a human being.
The unscalable way to sell is one you’re likely familiar with (because you’ve been on the receiving end). A sales rep (in this case you) emails or calls the prospect, asks for a few minutes of their time, and shoots their shot. Most of these shots miss because the message/pitch isn’t refined and that’s why you’re doing it in the first place.
It’s one thing to know what people want and it’s another thing to convince them that you’re the right person to give them the solution. That’s sales. Bang your head against the wall for a few weeks. Your pitch will get better and you’ll close customers more regularly.
That’s when you can think about scaling it.
The scalable way is through webinars. This works whether you’re selling shoes, courses, software, and everything in between. The pitch you refined with the unscalable way will come in handy here. Of course, the nuances of building out a webinar are beyond the scope of this post.
Here is a list of 17 webinar software tools, check out Joel Erway (the webinar guy), and start practicing with cold traffic before you work with partners.
Conclusion
Selling, at first, can be daunting so we do busy work for a long time. That’s not the answer. If you want your idea to swim then you – not the marketing hire, not the agency, not your freelancer – will have to figure it out.
In this short post, I’ve given you the idea. I’m not here to spoon-feed you – I have my own children to attend to. Instead, follow the bread crumbs and figure this out.
I know you have the ability to. All it takes is a bit of effort.
Daniel “rooting for you” Ndukwu out
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