How do You Make Money (sell) without Hating Yourself?
Today at our “sales for tech founders” mastermind group we talked about all the things we hate when others market or sell things to us in the wrong way; aka “being sold to”.
As technical founders we are trained to do things in logical ways and double and triple check everything before we say something with confidence. This is to the point that we find sales and marketing people who say things without deeply understanding them very offensive, if not manipulative. Some of them might go as far as using psychological tricks to get us to buy things we don’t really want or need. So, the big question for me during my startup journey has been how to avoid becoming that person.
Initially I thought that was what I needed to be and I thought it was a matter of learning the lingo and the techniques and voila! But the reality is that I hated myself and everything about how I worked every time I tried it. I didn’t feel comfortable with sales and marketing until I understood that I didn’t need to be that cringe, fakely excited person who acts like they care about me and disappears as soon as I show no interest in buying.
The core idea of “value based marketing” is indeed being authentic to one’s true identity, passion, and values. It says that instead of faking that you care, you should care for real. Instead of engaging in transactional interactions, you should create and maintain meaningful relationships. Broadly, it emphasizes the importance of building a brand that is associated with upfront value first, and then monetization. In an ideal scenario, the value or experience offered through a service or product is so compelling that the first few adopters, refer everyone else to you and you don’t need to work much more for your acquisition. This part of the conversation reminded me that the first time that I heard GitHub was a for-profit company my mind was blown!
It is not necessarily a trivial thing to figure out what you should give for free and what you can charge for, but the fact that both are necessary is undeniable. It is just too hard to trust an offering that doesn’t provide any value without being paid, you know? I think it ultimately comes down to your mindset: do you think doing business can be done in a way that everyone wins? Or is it a zero sum game for you? If the former, how can you create a systematic approach to providing as much value as possible with a low barrier of entry, with the option to get paid more as the customer receives more value.
We did wonder if being a more manipulative sales person could provide competitive advantage because it is imaginable that you would get more market share by being greedy. I personally thought that it might work for a while but it would be hard to maintain a long-term, sustainable business without customers’ good will behind you. I thought that the manipulative actions of a founder during sales is very likely to also penetrate into other aspects of the company and end up creating a very toxic culture which is not the best recipe for success.
