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Why Devs Can't Sell

growthlab.so

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Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#11

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Related: https://growthlab.so/

What I don't like about it: The price! A bit steep (IMHO) if someone doesn't have the money... although I do understand that everything in business has to be appropriately charged for...

What I do like about it: Everything else!

Because I've had the exact same problem that the author writes about -- so I know a market exists for solutions, such as his, to this problem!

Plus the bonus fact that unlike Accelerators, Angel Investors or VC's -- no percentage of ownership is apparently taken in the participant's company!

Which is nice!

Anyway, great idea, and wishing the author a lot of luck with this business endeavor!

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#12

Post by woojoo666 »

A lot of this article sounds less about selling, and more about selling out. It doesn't teach you how to sell an existing idea/product that you already have, it tells you to "abandon the hope of finding the next billion dollar idea inside your head, and instead look for it out there, in the heads of other people".

I don't want to scour the markets trying to find an opening, and then put in years of effort only to realize that I don't care about any of it. I'd rather build a product that I care about from the beginning.

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#13

Post by smackeyacky »

The article isn't very good but it does raise an interesting question.

What happens when your prospective customers say they would buy your solution if it was available, so you build it, but it turns out there is a big gap between saying they want it and actually buying it.

I see this happen a lot. This is why its probably better to ask for a deposit when somebody says they want your unbuilt product. You will get a much more honest answer.

I also took some sales coaching, it helped me a lot.

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#14

Post by CaptArmchair »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #8
rektide wrote: post #4

Open source exisystem is an interesting counter answer, where we dont tey to build sandcastles, big complete things, but often just try to build libraries, protocols, standards that others can expand upon & grow. This post talks about failing to find the right target. But ratger than sales first, building things & getting to assess their value, getting direct peer feedback, allows an unconjoined exploration of utilit…

Actually I think open source supports the author's point. Lots of open source projects are cool. Not very many make money. In fact sitting here I can't even think of one. Okay, Red Hat made money for a while.

That's conflating a licensing choice with a business goal. Slapping an open source license on code isn't a business model. Licensing choices do inform what kind of business model the author of the code is going to follow.

The main difference between open / closed source is that the IP is or isn't sold for a licensing fee itself. If the latter is true, you need an alternate business model. One alternative is selling something tangential to your project: typically expertise in installing, operating, maintaining the code. Consultancy. Another alternative is leveraging open source software to sell a service: hosting, CRM, managed services, social media, etc. etc.

All of a sudden, open source becomes very profitable.

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#15

Post by ricklamers »

The way I like to evaluate advice like this is by taking a selection of successful businesses/founders I know and applying the advice to those cases.

For example, I know of one company that very successfully gamed Google search to drive massive traffic to low value pages but pages that give a tiny bit of value to consumers looking to buy a house. Enough to drive ad income to live off very very comfortably.

You see, that business success has little to do with the novelty of the solution (does this exist already?) or deep insights into the customer needs (what do customers really want?). It’s mostly clever exploitation of specific market conditions (cheap to build websites, Google ranks your site for free, lots of people in need of housing, easy to sell ads to many different companies through an intermediary).

I almost feel like the article pushes this idealized view of how to build a successful company that is actually rarely the right recipe to success in practice.

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#16

Post by slgeorge »

woojoo666 wrote: post #12

A lot of this article sounds less about selling, and more about selling out. It doesn't teach you how to sell an existing idea/product that you already have, it tells you to "abandon the hope of finding the next billion dollar idea inside your head, and instead look for it out there, in the heads of other people". I don't want to scour the markets trying to find an opening, and then put in years of effort only to rea…

Totally get it. But, the issue is that to sell something it has to solve a problem for someone else. Generally the choices are:

a. Build something that solves your personal problem - later find out if that applies to others, and whether they are willing to exchange money in return for a solution. b. Find out what problem others have (ask them if they'd pay for a solution) - then build something that solves it responding to their feedback (if it does, ask for the money they said they'd give for a solution).

Maybe another way of looking at it is that (a) is about saying what "your vision is", and (b) is about finding out what "someone else's vision is".

Following (b) is a better commercial/sales strategy, but you're right that it might involve building something that you don't care about - because it's not for you, it's for the customers - which is probably why it's work and we do it for monetary compensation rather than just joy.

Perhaps the most difficult outcome is that many Founders now read product books or go to accelerators where they're told to follow strategy (b). They then basically do (a), while pretending they're doing (b) - but really all they do is listen to people who are positive about their vision and ignore any counter evidence.

Re: Why Devs Can't Sell

#17

Post by zoozla »

woojoo666 wrote: post #12

A lot of this article sounds less about selling, and more about selling out. It doesn't teach you how to sell an existing idea/product that you already have, it tells you to "abandon the hope of finding the next billion dollar idea inside your head, and instead look for it out there, in the heads of other people". I don't want to scour the markets trying to find an opening, and then put in years of effort only to rea…

You're right, that's what the article is about, because that's easier. Finding paying customers and product market fit for an existing product is harder, and that's what I teach at growthlab.so.
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