Become the "Sales Founder"
Not the "founder who (reluctantly) sells"
PSA: I’m hosting a free, virtual, founder roundtable event on Tuesday (Feb 11) with Sam Li, Founder of Thoropass. We’ll talk through 0-1, pivoting, differentiation, and early traction… w/ plenty of time for Q&A. Going to be fun! Register here.
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Realized a simple but powerful thing this week:
We can’t just be the founder who sells.
We have to become the sales founder.
Even if we’re technical. Or we’ve got a product background, and see ourselves more as a “product person.” Or if we’ve got a shiny MBA. Or worked at McKinsey.
Here’s the contrast in my mind:
Founder who sells:
Sells because nobody else will… “it’s the job”
Sells reluctantly, doesn’t enjoy it
Primary motivation for selling is to delegate sales ASAP
Views sales as a tedious, pushy task that’s “beneath” them
When sales doesn’t work, tends to retreat to product / fundraising / theorizing
Sales founder:
Obsesses over why + when customers need to change - why do they pull?
This obsession drives them to become good at sales + GTM and push through the discomfort of selling
Views any setbacks as a reason to have more sales conversations to figure it out
Embraces the role of sales founder… leans into it
The difference between “sales founder” and “founder who sells” is the difference between a company that figures it out and the one that goes through the motions.
To figure a business out - sales, product-market fit, whatever - we need to get to ground truth, which is in our customers’ minds as they consider a purchasing decision. Figuring this out is an act of full-contact obsession… not something that can be done at arms’ length while holding our noses.
How do I become a sales founder?
Becoming a sales founder isn’t really about “learning sales.” I read plenty of good sales books as a “founder who sold”. They didn’t help because I didn’t want to sell.
You, dear reader, are very smart and capable. You can become great at early-stage sales if you pour your soul into it. How do you do that?
How do you become the person who WANTS to sell? How do you wake up EXCITED to do this, to figure this out? How do you get obsessed?
Here’s my trick:
Recognize that DEMAND - what customers are trying to accomplish in their lives - is a totally separate thing from SUPPLY - what you build. You do not control demand, it’s out there in buyers’ minds. Demand is fascinating - when you figure it out, buyers PULL the product out of you. They say things like, “Oh my gosh, where have you been all my life?”
The key, then, is to become FASCINATED with demand — understanding why and when buyers need to change, how they think about change, and what success looks like to them.
This fascination will push you to talk with a ton of buyers all the time to build an intuition for their demand, and how they see the world. You’ll ask difficult but necessary questions - are you really trying to accomplish that? what options are you considering? are we actually a fit for that? are you going to buy? - because you care more about getting to ground truth on demand than you care about anything else.
Become obsessively curious about buyers’ demand. The sales skills, and results, follow.
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