The Importance of Selling Before You Build
Too often, I see or read about startups that spend months and thousands of dollars developing a product without first speaking to customers— only to find out that no one wants to buy it. It is tempting to avoid speaking to actual customers because having your idea crushed by a stranger feels terrible. However, it’s better to hear criticism about an unbuilt product than a product that you’ve spent hundreds of hours building. Flashstarts has made me realize the importance of selling before you build, and it’s my job to help the teams make that happen.
As a generalist intern, my role at Flashstarts is constantly evolving. At the beginning, many of the teams didn’t know what their product was going to look like. Rather than guessing what the customer wanted, it was my job to “get out of the building” and ask customers what their needs were and how the product would meet their needs. These kinds of discussions helped define the products of many teams at Flashstarts. For some, it was the first time they were able to test their assumptions about their product-market fit. Now that the teams have defined their products, my role has transitioned to direct marketing, sales, and pricing strategy. My goal when I call customers is to try to convince them to meet with us and see a demo of the product. Reaching out to customers to ask them which features they want saves us weeks of development time because we only build what they need. Since we only have three months at Flashstarts, using time wisely is critical to a team’s success.
Selling products that are still being developed also makes my job much more involved. For example, I get to travel with some teams to participate in the demos. Even though I had never conducted a product demo before coming to Flashstarts, it has been my favorite part of the internship so far, and I can’t think of another job that would give me this opportunity. I am not the only intern that feels this way, either. All of us are trying things that we’ve never tried before and growing faster than ever.
Some advice to future generalists who will work in sales:
- Pick up the phone. Emails have a response rate of 0.12%, and a phone call is much more personal.
- Pick. Up. The. Phone.
- Start selling from day one. Sales cycles often take months, and you only have three months before the program is over.
- Don’t be discouraged if someone doesn’t return your call. The Rule of Seven tells us that the average customer must be contacted at least seven times before making a purchase.
- Pricing should reflect the value that your product provides to your customer. This is usually higher than what you initially expect.
- Dialing one hundred phone numbers and only speaking to ten prospects is a successful day.
- At the beginning, make it your goal to hear thirty customers say no per week, and ask them why they said no. Quality feedback about your product is priceless, and if you hear thirty people say no, you’ll usually hear one or two people say yes.
- Call the decision maker. If you don’t know who the decision maker is, ask someone at the company, then call him/her directly.
Flashstarts will force you to get out of your comfort zone. I originally was uncomfortable with cold calling prospects, but now I know how to engage customers over the phone and I see it as a valuable skill. I originally had no idea how to assign a price to a service, but now I know how to negotiate prices with a potential buyer. I originally thought that startups should build a beautiful product and then sell it, but now I know that selling a product that doesn’t yet exist is not only possible, but also saves precious development time. As someone who plans to build a startup myself, these are invaluable lessons that I would not have learned anywhere else.
Position: Generalist
School: Yale University, Class of 2016
