When > What - by Rob Snyder
I’ve noticed a pattern where it’s very hard for B2B founders to describe our products in sales conversations. Customers don’t “get it.” At best, they understand IN THEORY what the product does, and how the features work, but they don’t connect it to their world. Ultimately, they don’t buy. They ghost us after saying something confusing like: “This is awesome, I can see how it can be helpful, let me circle back with the team and let you know when this fits into our priorities!” And we don’t know whether: They’re not a good-fit customer They lied to us We’re bad at sales We have a shitty product nobody wants We just can’t describe the product well Etc. Welcome to hell. I have found that the simplest “way out” is: Stop describing our product based on WHAT it is Start describing our product based on WHEN it’s relevant A firsthand example: My new startup is a dev tool - it’s a platform-as-a-service to build secure web applications in your AWS account. And when I describe it like this, based
Get free access to my full 6-hour Harvard Innovation Labs PMF workshop deck HERE. Get my help implementing this stuff - video walkthrough HERE. I’ve noticed a pattern where it’s very hard for B2B founders to describe our products in sales conversations. Customers don’t “get it.” At best, they understand IN THEORY what the product does, and how the features work, but they don’t connect it to their world. Ultimately, they don’t buy. They ghost us after saying something confusing like: “This is awesome, I can see how it can be helpful, let me circle back with the team and let you know when…
related reading
- How To Sell — Nabeel S. Qureshinabeelqu.co
- A guide for finding product-market fit in B2Blennysnewsletter.com
- We Don’t Sell Saddles Here. The memo below was sent to the team at… | by Stewart Butterfield | Mediummedium.com
- This Is the Person Selling Your Product | Stay SaaSystaysaasy.com
- How To Validate Product Ideas Before (And After) Building Themtraining.kalzumeus.com
- Sales Advice for Founders - Tracy writestracy.posthaven.com
- The Greatest Sales Mistakes Founders Makepaulgassee.substack.com
- Excuse me, is there a problem?longform.asmartbear.com
- How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original idealennysnewsletter.com
- A guide for finding product-market fit in B2Blennysnewsletter.com
- A Smart Bearlongform.asmartbear.com
- How to build great products | defmacrodefmacro.org