ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS SELLING. SO START SELLING: SELL, SELL, SELL!

Accelerate your business with these expert tips on "Entrepreneurship is selling". Analyse and discover this TIP!

The importance of sales for an entrepreneur

Without sales, a company cannot be considered truly established, and sales are the fuel that drives the company to success. Validating hypotheses and getting feedback from other entrepreneurs and friends is valuable, but the most important feedback is that of the customer willing to pay for the company's products or services. Validation of the business model through sales implies that the company's product meets a need that the customer considers important, that the quality of the product is sufficient to justify its price, and that the functionalities that were thought to matter to the market actually do matter. The chosen pricing strategy is well-founded. Entrepreneurs to go out and sell from the start and to overcome their fear of selling, as it is a crucial task in the success of a business. Remember YOUR MOST IMPORTANT PRIORITY as an entrepreneur IT'S SELLING. If you don't get sales, you haven't created the company yet. Sales are the fuel of your new company. An entrepreneur who achieves sales does not need all the tools and tips we have given in sprint 1 and 2, as he/she will overcome the valley of death without any problems.

From the beginning of the acceleration programme we have invited you to go out and sell. Validating hypotheses is to sell ideas, to see if they are bought. The key to success is about getting sales as quickly as possible and growing them. When you have a lot of sales, your company's problems disappear. The sale is a role that all entrepreneurs have at the beginning of their livesThe very technical ones also have to sell, even if they feel rejection!!!

Why such a rush to sell?

The funniest thing of all...is that it's not for the reasons you think. It is not a question of starting to monetise (see TIP) immediately. It's also not about covering up the forms and making your investors see that you are on the "right track".... This is much more important for the future of your project: you must sell to validate your business model... don't be fooled, the opinions of other entrepreneurs, the opinions of customers who act for free as "beta-testsor friends are valuable and you should certainly internalise them, and consider them... but they are worth nothing compared to that of a customer who is willing to pay.

That a customer is willing to pay for what your company produces (or for the services it offers) at the level of quality that you are going to provide them at the outset implies that you have validated a number of assumptions or hypotheses that are absolutely key to your future:

• Your product fills a need (or rather answers a job) that the customer considers key and that he/she has not yet been able to fill.
• At the current quality stage (which I'm sure is a far cry from what you have in your head) it's good enough to be worth paying for.
• The features you thought the market would care about really matter. Your guesses have a basis.
• The price strategy you have chosen is well-founded.

All this is, of course, if you have done it right, and you have launched your project early on the market... rather than waiting to have a perfect product with a set of features that you imagine the market will value. Remember:

"If you are not completely ashamed of your product... you have brought it out too late".

Read these tips from an entrepreneur who has already succeeded in setting up his business:

"...I remember a long, long time ago, one day I had lunch with a nice businessman who had set up a very cool distribution company. interesting and without investment. R&D partners in Korea, manufacturing partners in India and business partners in the USA. Remember: no investment.

Halfway through the meal, after telling him about my "fantastic" plans for world domination, which involved devoting all possible resources to development, asked me a question that I will remember for the rest of my life:

• How many potential clients have you visited today?
• Errr... Uhmmm.... None.
• Well, you just lost a day.

I will be honest: I didn't pay any attention to him at the time. "Yes, selling is important. That yes, we will get on with it one day (and as we are blessed we will sell a lot without effort, and we will all be happy in the world of jelly beans, and with the profits we will buy a real unicorn, and we will set up a stable for it in the offices we will open in Silicon Valley, which will also be much cooler than the Googleplex)". 

These are things you think about when you are young, or stupid (or both at the same time in my case). I think by the third time we ran out of money (and obviously forced to make an emergency landing). I began to believe that the good man was right. And to remember his words, something I have done every day since then.

I say this because in my hours advising entrepreneurs I am noticing a strange (if not perverse) trend: nobody asks me about the business strategy. And not because I am an expert on that part, but because it seems secondary.

Lots of questions about raising mega-million dollar rounds, about the ofi of SiliconValley, about setting up an international management team, about organising sponsored attendance at events, about hiring a PR agency... But (almost) nobody talks about sales, go-to-market, partner contracts for integrations? Nothing. Rien. Nothing.

In all this there is an internal part that I understand perfectly well (I lived through it): the stage fright of going out to sell, the procrastination because it is not a pleasant task, the "it is still early because we are missing these essential features"... But guys, you have to overcome it. It is an essential part of the process of retiring in Bariloche.

Let me repeat it: sell is I-M-P-P-R-E-S-C-C-I-N-D-I-B-L-E. (see TIP)

I know it is complicated: the office is a place safe and controllable, there is a wave of techcrunchism that tries to make people believe that a cover is worth more than a thousand euros in revenue, there are consultants coming out from under the rocks without much idea (naive the good ones and perfect bastards the bad ones), too many subsidies (to prolong the agony) at hand... but in spite of all of this, One has to be clear that success is primarily a question of turnover.

I know... I also find it strange that the idea of selling means going against the current in the sector. But I repeat: es I-M-P-R-E-S-C-I-N-D-I-B-L-E.

So start selling at once. And anyone who says otherwise is miserable.

Advice from another entrepreneur: 

"...We should all say to ourselves at some point the phrase on this T-shirt "GET SELLING FOR FUCKING AROUND". In my head I only hear lamentations like...things are really bad, nobody wants to buy, the market is saturated...and excuses like .... I'd better spend all day planning tomorrow's appointments or sending these emails because going into the customer cold doesn't work...Come on, man!

Let's get our act together, go out on the street, go into 10 companies and see how at least one wants to serve me. Tomorrow I'll do the test, I'll go to the street, I have a list of companies there (taken from the internet) and tomorrow I'll tell you if I have achieved at least that one favourable result. Wish me luck!!!!

If you still feel to start selling, I recommend you to read the TIP how to remove emotional blocks.

In your development team; who is already selling? If the answer is none, start selling now!!!