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Why sales is so important

Hey all!

I came across this brilliant quote from @csallen a few days ago while I was looking through my notes from the very first version of the Sales for Founders course.

It still rings so true to me. And I wanted to share it again because so many of the challenges IHers are facing could easily be avoided by starting off with sales, not marketing.

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    I've been trying to get into more of a sales mindset recently and anecdotally it appears to be working. Instead of just constantly tuning our funnel and our marketing and hoping to improve our conversion, I've shifted my tactic to basically one of sales: reach out to people personally, interact with them, help them understand the product, make sure I understand what's not working out the product for them, etc. It doesn't seem scalable but the point is, it doesn't need to be scalable at this stage, as we only have around 100 paying customers.

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      Hi CB --

      I have a very strong sales background, have also done a lot of professional copy writing and cold calls (1 million in sales). if you think your conversions could be better, or even getting more leads -- would you be interested in connecting?

      My discord is: do#3695

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    I believe one of the reason also being that most of the indie hackers are from technical background and thus, they find it a bit difficult to get started with marketing/sales. That includes me as well.

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      Definitely - we tend to skew towards enjoying the building when it's only a part of the equation.

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    What are some good resources for getting started with sales?

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      Great question!

      So for the very early stages - 0-100 customers - I spent ages trying to find one but couldn't.

      That's why I created the Sales for Founders course.

      Right now it's paid only, but - if you add your name to the email list - there's a completely free version launching in ~2 weeks!

      If you already have 100+ customers, then I recommend checking out the Close.io blog.

      If you're starting to hire sales people, then give the book "Predictable Revenue" by Aaron Ross a go.

      And finally - if you're most interested in customer discovery - I really recommend The Mom Test by @robfitz.

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        Nice! Just signed up. Excited to see what's in store!

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    Sales is certainly a more direct way to success. It is scarier and more painful at least short term. But you get to true validation quicker, you get to cash quicker, and you get to a customer-funded venture rather than an investor-funded one.

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    The funny thing is, when I tried to do sales for Zlappo (i.e. cold DM-ing on Twitter), a popular influencer in my niche told me, "You're going to need a new strategy if your strategy is spamming people and hoping for a positive response."

    It hurt my feelings honestly, even though I knew a thick skin was very necessary for sales. However, it did sign up my first 10 or so paying customers just DM-ing people and introducing to them my (then-)new app (mostly Jan-Feb earlier this year).

    It was very unscalable and tedious though.

    Indie hackers like marketing because it's very scalable and thus frees up more time to improve the product and also plan for the long term, instead of being bogged down by the daily minutiae.

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      The message sometimes tells you more about the person than about the core idea of the message.

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    Agree. But would like to add a bit. Sometimes it hard to start with just direct sales. You still need to do your minimum: Market research, value proposition, define your audience and sales channels - this is a real marketing

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    To be honest, I agree but not 100%. I really believe that both things are important: Sales and Marketing. Don't you agree that one things (Sales) needs the other (Marketing)? Problem is that founders think that results come in a "flash mode" (very quickly) and don't do marketing the way needs to be done. Same thing with sales. Mostly focus on product and forget that, go to market is also a priority.

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      Don't you agree that one things (Sales) needs the other (Marketing)?

      To be clear, we're talking about the very early stages (first 10-50 customers) of building a business here.

      Later, marketing becomes very important. Hopefully (in most cases) much more important than sales.

      But the easiest, least risky way to get to that point where you a) understand how to do marketing that your customers respond to, and b) already have some momentum from your first 30-100 customers, is to do sales first.

      You learn much more, much faster.

      So no - for the first 10-30 customers, you don't need marketing at all (and it often isn't helpful).

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    Founders are usually not very good at sales. They have to learn it while building their startup. Not an easy thing to do. I guess having a sales savvy cofounder would help.

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