Getting comfortable with selling

If you didn’t get a chance to attend State of Open Con in London, I’d recommend checking out the videos (they’re not posted yet, but should be soon), particularly of the entrepreneurship panels, which really were one-of-a-kind.

There were so many nuggets to pull out of the conversations, but the one I wanted to focus on was about selling. The gist of the conversation was that founders always have to sell, and getting comfortable selling is a critical part of succeeding as a startup founder. This applies even at the stage when you’re just promoting a free open source project. Even when money doesn’t change hands, you’re convincing people to spend time and human resources to get it set up — that’s a process of selling.

Selling should not feel sleazy for either party… though it definitely can. The more aware you are of the exact market you’re serving, the precise pain points you solve and the outcome your users/customers can get from the project/product, the less sleazy it will feel and the more successful your sales efforts will be.

Sales should feel like solving your customers’ problems — because it is. It is most successful when it’s targeted to a very specific pain, experienced by a very specific group of people.