Leveling up your sales game

One of my take-aways from last year's State of Open Con in London was that founder-led sales never really go away — it's just that as companies scale, founders only get involved in the largest of deals. And regardless, founder-led sales is absolutely critical at the early stages of a company.

That insight is part of what led me to write about how founders can improve their selling skills in this month's Entrepreneurship for Engineers column for The New Stack. Some really great insights from Matt Barker, Robert Limbrey and Carole Mahoney, including:

💰If you are a founder, you are in sales. Period, full stop. You need to get your head around this fact. If you can't, perhaps founding a company isn't for you, or at the very least you need a co-founder.

👊 Sales isn't something you do to other people, it's about collaboratively solving people's problems — who may or may not become your customers. In fact, not everyone is a good fit for your product/services and you should be comfortable when those people don't buy. Relatedly, sales is about really listening to what prospects/customers are saying, not going on and on about how awesome your product is.

👩‍💼 Understanding your ideal customer profile is extremely important — though you won't know this without having conversations and validating your assumptions.

If you’re a founder and want to level up your sales game, definitely check out the article.

And if you’re a founder and you have no freaking idea who your ideal customer profile is, you might want to reach out and see if I can help. Especially if your company is an open source company, and you also have no idea who your ideal user profile is, or how the two relate to each other.