Sales for Founders

Founders have several advantages over salespeople when it comes to closing business. This includes heightened levels of authority, influence, and purpose.

The missing ingredient is trust.

Salespeople usually work for established brands. IBM, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic… The trust established by their employer opens the door.

Early stage founders are an unknown.

New company, new product, no track record…

To make things worse, most founders would rather build than sell.

The demo becomes a showcase of technology. The close is assumed. And the prospect is left confused.

As a founder, I paid for sales training. Learning how to cold call, present, and close. “Is this Bob? Todd Moses here with Estimand. You probably saw my posts on LinkedIn?”

It did not work. They would say, “Who do you work for?” “Estimand. We use AI to predict volatility in exchange traded markets.” “Um… I don’t think we need that.”

Facing failure, I dug deeper. Thinking back to how we closed business in my first AI company.

Turns out, sales for founders is not a series of scripts. Instead, it is a focus on solving a problem. A big enough problem where people will buy today.

When you solve a big enough problem, trust ceases to be an issue. In my first AI company, we sold $16,000 on day one. No one knew who we were. There was no product. Nothing but a logo and coming soon landing page.

People bought because we solved their big problem. No sales pressure, no closing attempts, just a focus on finding pain, amplifying it with questions, and then comparing our solution to doing nothing.

It all comes down to conversation.

Not scripted nonsense.

My 2nd discovery was that the demo is not a test drive. We are not comparing features, explaining our tech stack, or showing anything.

Instead, the demo is the place to find the pain, amplifying it with questions, then comparing our solution with doing nothing. Often, not a single screen or slide is shown.

Why? Because people do not want another login screen. They want a solution to their most pressing problem.

So how does it scale?

When having real conversations with potential customers, founders quickly learn what is most important. Once someone becomes a customer, their perspective is used to attract more like them.

This is the message. A single sentence reply to what do you do. Omitting technical jargon, clearly describe the outcome of your product. Use your customer’s words.

An effective message is the first step to scale.

When a prospective customers hears or reads your message, they should want to meet. It is a way to attract those that have the problem you solve.

Once accomplished, growth becomes a function of money. Meaning, the more people that see the message, the more sales you will have. Now you can scale with ads, social influence, etc.

Want to apply these lessons in your own company?

Get the Sales for Founders guide for just $149.

Everything you need to accelerate growth in any B2B startup.