Season 1 - Episode 10 : Sell To Them THeir Way
As a founder, you'll have an idea about where you'll want to highlight your product to prospective customers. Whether that's social media, trade shows, or inbound tactics, you'll have a hunch as to the how and where you'd like to meet your customers in the market. Here's the thing though: What's best for you isn't always what's best for your prospective customers.
Background Story
Dave here. Chris and I had an unfortunate run-in with a business accelerator. The feedback we got from the “experts” there was pretty harsh: we were a lifestyle business and maybe we’d “make a million bucks” one day. Thanks bud. But after some of the experts had left, we got some of the best advice in the history of our business. It was an innocent enough comment, “you need to sell your customers their way”.
Up to this point, we wanted it our way. Now we knew that we had to step out of our comfort zone to get the business to the next level.
Outline
Background: Haters getting us fired up.
What does “Sell them their way” really mean?
How do you sell them their way?
Busted Myth
Myth: It’s yet another startup myth that your product is so awesome that it will somehow sell itself. You need to go out there and figure out how your customers want to be sold to. Meeting them halfway will get you all of the way.
Learnings
Background
We got shot down hard. For an organization that was supposed to help businesses get going (we were even profitable by this time!) this expert took pleasure in taking us down. “This isn’t a real business.” was a distinct moment. He left the call a few minutes later. Cool. Thanks for the feedback.
Startup Low Moment. Cue the doubts.
In the end, it turned out they were funding a competitor. We pushed that competitor out of the market a few years later.
It wasn't a total waste though. Some of the hater’s entourage remained on the call after his proclamation. They were more sympathetic or at least pitying us. They were content enough to keep talking to these two brothers from a small town that had a not-real real business. Oddly enough, the last 5 minutes of this call made the pain of the first 5.
They gave us key feedback on our go-to market strategy. Namely, one of the advisors made a seemingly innocent but important comment, “You need to sell to your customers how they want to be sold to.”
What does it mean?
It’s a simple idea - people and organizations have certain ways of evaluating and buying your product. It’s on you and your business to meet them in those places and be ready with a compelling offer.
The rub is that you won’t necessarily know where or how to sell to customers. You’re new to the market meaning that a more comprehensive evaluation of how to sell to those customers is required.
And you might think - well, yeah. D'uh. That's obvious right? Not so fast. Data: The data behind this says that 34% of small businesses that fail lack the proper product-market fit and 22% of startups that fail don’t have a sound marketing strategy. It’s not as easy as you think.
How do you do it?
Ask your customers: The first and easiest way to get on top of this is to ask your current customers. It’s tempting to want to run into a room with your team, get a big meeting going, spitball some ideas, write up a big o’l plan, and then move into execution. Yeah, don’t do that. You are not your customer.
Small Channel Bets
Take an MVP approach to evulating various channels. For example, we took on:
Direct Mail (Snail Mail) - Worked, surprisingly.
Inbound Marketing (Blog) - Didn't work
SEO and Website Activities - Worked, Important.
Social Media (Twitter, Facebook) - Didn't work at all
Tradeshows and Conferences - Worked really well, crap.
Sponsorship with Trade Associations - Worked OK.
Cold Emailing and Not Calling - Worked.
Referral Program - Worked.
Request for Proposal Responses - Ugh, Worked.
3 - Do the things you Hate but your Customers Need
Customers will come to you with things that you should do, not things that you necessarily want to do. For Chris and I this was two things: I was exhausted already and going to tradeshows seemed like a non-starter. I also hated making RFP responses (I still do!). Instead of resisting, I recognized that this needed to happen, so we got good at it.
Summary
Ask your customers
Make small bets, do what they need.
You'll find out where your product needs to be positioned in the market.
Data And References
Startup Failure Rate Statistics
by Josh Howarth, November 3, 2023