Beyond Code & Funding: Why Sales Skills Are Your Startup's Secret Weapon

Hello and welcome to the show. For those of you who follow me on LinkedIn, you probably have seen that I've been putting up posts for the last four or five days. Well written posts because I started off blogging a long time ago. Over a decade ago. But I quit writing. I quit blogging so that I could pay more attention to the podcast, because writing requires a lot of time. I can come up here, get the microphone and spit for 20

minutes, and then have a podcast episode done. But then if you want to write a good post, it's going to take you. It's going to take you a while. Definitely not 20 minutes every day, especially if you want it to be well constructed. All I put in, you get the point. Writing takes time, basically. Anyway, so since I've been, I've gone back to writing on LinkedIn. I figured that there's some juicy goodness that I've been putting up on LinkedIn that I

might as well share with you guys over here on the podcast. And so that's what today's episode is about. So today I'm going to be looking at how the article that I put up today on LinkedIn was about how sales skills can be your secret weapon if you are planning on starting a startup. And that's because I've been seeing people on LinkedIn talking about how they're going to do a start up this year in 2024. The news is abuzz with people who are raising funds, you know,

things like that. And I get the impression that people are not thinking about this the the right way. They're thinking about things backwards because people are paying attention to having an innovative product or an innovative service. So that makes sense. You want to start up, make sure that your product, your service, your app, your whatever it is, is top notch. That makes a lot of sense. The next thing is everybody's paying attention to funding.

And of course it doesn't help that every other month, OK, maybe every other month, let's say every six months or so. The, the news media is, you know, awash with another Nigerian tech founder who has gotten, you know, X $1,000,000 in funding and this and this and that and that. So of course everybody wants to start up so that they can get some of that funding money because after all, there's a difference between 10 million naira.

Now there's a difference between $10 million. So you know, you know how we think in this part of the world, if you secured funding for $10 million, then supposedly you're set for life. Of course, all the young boys and girls running around looking for funding forget that that $10 million is supposed to be set aside for the business. Currently, that's a topic for another day. So people are paying attention to the tech, they're paying attention to funding, but everybody's overlooking 1

crucial ingredient that you need for success if you're going to have a successful startup. And of course you can't blame them because everybody talks about Zuckerberg or everybody talks about Bezos. You know, talk about the charismatic founder without talking about a crucial ingredient that was necessary for the business success and that is sales skills. Founders who have technical backgrounds, they underestimate the power of sales in the early stages.

So they focus like I said on perfecting the product, refining the product and then they assume that sales is going to appear later. Now there are some of you who have start up ideas and who are not going to make profit from the get go. So you guys are usually focused with adoption or product market fit or whatever. But it's all the same whether people are going to be paying you in revenue or they're going to be paying you in attention using a product.

So you get all the data that you need to refine things later. So you have a start up. You're going to be worried about sales or you're going to be worried about adoption. You're going to be worried about traction. You're going to be worried about product market fit. You're going to be are worried about whatever it is you want to call it. But bottom line, those results that you're looking for are things that can be guaranteed.

Yeah, I think I should say guaranteed will be made easier by having a salesperson on your team sales skills either from you or the technical founder, you need to get some sales know how. So it's a big mistake to focus only on the tech and focus only on the funding. And these are the reasons why most people think about sales people as deal closers. But The thing is, folks like me are not just deal closers. We're also reality checkers because we help you to test all the assumptions that you have around your product or service.

And don't tell me that you don't have assumptions, because believe me, everybody has assumptions. Before we roll out our product, our service, before we start our business, we all have assumptions. I mean, for me as a wedding photographer, my key assumption was that people were tired of being photoshopped. And so people are going to pay good money if they're going to guarantee that they won't be Photoshopped. But anyway, that's a story for another day about testing out your key assumptions, finding your ideal customer profile, you know, those sorts of things.

But I'm just trying to say that everybody's coming at it with some assumptions. So because salespeople, people like me, who are the ones who directly interact with potential customers, we help to uncover needs. We help to identify the pain points. We help to validate your product. We are extremely valuable because there's a feedback loop that is going on here. You know, you, you stay at the head office or corporate office or in your house or whatever because you're the tech founder.

I'm the person who is going out talking to people. I'm getting lots of feedback that you guys can use to iterate to make the product better the app, better the service better the whatever it is, and to make sure that you're solving real problems, not imagined problems that nobody has. So apart from tech and funding, you definitely need sales as part of your dream startup team. So you don't necessarily have to have someone like me or have someone like me on the team.

But you guys or you girls definitely have to be paying attention to sales. When it comes to setting your startup, one of you has to be, you know, listening to the podcast, going for the training, you know, whatever. Start paying attention to these sorts of things now. Another reason why sales skills are important is because traction is what is going to fuel the amount of funding you get. Now remember, traction, adoption, whatever it is you call it, monthly users, whatever you want to call it, those are the things that investors love to see.

You have your app, you have your business idea, people using the app, people signing up. What kind of traction are you getting? Those are the things that investors love to see. Those are the things that generate buzz. Those are the things that make made Zuckerberg really popular earlier on. Even when there was no money, people could see that oh, you open this thing for Stanford. This is the rate of traction you open for Harvard.

This is the rate of traction people in Nigeria, they're waiting. When will it be our turn? You open up the servers to the Nigerians. These are the number of people that sign up. You open it in India, you know this is the fraction. So that is it. That is what investors love to see because it de risks the venture for potential investors. Because if you have an idea and then there's traction or there's sales or there's adoption or there's whatever it is that you are trying to look for, then it gives the investors a sign that this is a good idea to fund.

Nobody wants to put money behind a dead pig. So if you come up with good stuff and looks like there's demand, people are signing up, people are using, people are whatever it is, then is going to help you attract investments in the future because people will see that. OK, I dropped 50K earlier. This is the progress that they've done. It looks like this thing is going to hit, going to be a hit. So instead of dropping 50K the next time, maybe I should drop one M So that's how it works.

So without sales, your amazing product, your amazing app, your amazing whatever it is might just remain a prototype and not get any product whatsoever. Then building buzz requires hustle. You're not going to be at home or be in corporate office. And then buzz is going to come and meet you. Because the coolest product, coolest service, he needs somebody to shout about it. And sales people are natural evangelists. You know, we know how to generate excitement.

We know how to build relationships. We know how to spread the word about your brand or create a loyal community. Even before you scale, everybody wants to scale. You know, thousands of users, millions of users. But you need to to start on that evangelist level in the beginning. One person talking to another person talking to another person. That's how it starts. So it's not just about closing deals, because sales skills also involve communication,

negotiation, relationship building, and these are things that you guys need for your partnerships as you guys work together. You know, you have a technical founder, you have a, what else technical founder. OK that's person will be designing the app then maybe you have the non-technical founder somebody OK he would be responsible most likely for getting sales and then things like that you know as the the classic Steve Jobs and what's his name Wozniak setup.

So Wozniak is the computer guru and then Steve, Steve Jobs is the fellow who knows how to sell. So you know that whole get up that you have, we need someone who is grown up and has the skills when it comes to communicating, negotiating, building relationships. That is what is going to keep the partnership together and avoid all the situations where although it didn't hamper the growth of Apple, but it's well known that later on Steven Wozniak weren't really on talking terms.

And you always hear about all the all the basic that happens when you know the company grows a bit and then people start quarreling and then stuff like that. So it's when you have good sales skills, communication skills, relationship building skills, things like that, that we can limit all that, all the negativity that happens later on. And then plus, all these skills are also important for stakeholder management because if you're building a startup,

you're going to have to be dealing with some government regulatory agencies. They're going to be dealing with investors. What else? If what you're doing has some community implications, you know, like people who run like a fellow that I spoke to interviewed on the podcast who runs an Ed tech, an aquaculture Ed tech. So of course you can't run aquaculture without having fish tanks, you know, in the community and things like that.

So stakeholder management absolutely important because some people don't want your fish there, some people think it's an environmental hazard, some people don't like the smell, you know, blah blah blah. So if you have a sales savvy team then you can navigate all these complex conversations and you can build trust with different stakeholders. So expose yourself early to sales skills and excuse me, selling skills because this is going to equip your your team with valuable skills that will translate across different roles in the start up.

So if you learn how to understand customers and adapt to their changing needs and how to communicate effectively, if you do that, if you learn how to do that in a sales or marketing role, then when you move to another arm of the business, let me see, I think of the scenario. Let's say you start off in the sales and marketing role, you acquire those skills. By the time you move back to the tech role or something, you know those skills are going to increase the value that you have to the team because of how well you're going to be able to work with your colleagues in there.

And if there's any customer facing opportunities later on, you're going to be able to bring those those skill sets to the table. So whatever it is in your team that is equipped with all these skills is going to be a valuable asset for the future. So how do you integrate sales into your team? You don't have to hire sales people on day one, so you don't have to look for people like me from day one. So you do have to look for people that seem to have strong communication skills, strong problem solving skills or relationship building skills.

And then of course start early. Every technical team member will be able to be benefit from these sorts of training, especially technical people, because you know how you technical guys are. You want to design the perfect app, you want to design the perfect this, you want to design the perfect that, and you're just there in your head coming up with all kinds of perfect ideas. But if you have some sales skills and you guys have a culture of understanding customer needs, then you guys will actually ask yourselves from time to time what actually does the customer want before I

start writing lines of code, or before I start designing this or before I start designing that. And since you have sales skills, you will also have the courage and skill to have one-on-one conversations with dozens of customers. And it's going to help you. I was going to inform how you design that perfect product. So in summary, sales skills are not just for sales people, They're essential for everyone who wants to start the startup,

who wants to work in the startup, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or whatever. So you have to embrace this mindset. That is what will help you to validate your product, to show your investors that there is something viable here, that there's room for growth here, there's market demand here, that this thing can't work. It'll help you to secure funding and ultimately that is what is going to make you build a path for business success.

So thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode. I think I will share our riff on other other articles that are put out on LinkedIn recently. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next recording.