Aw, thanks. glad it was useful. I do wish I didn’t write it from my phone. So many typos. :)
About creating millions in value, it really does compound, and it’s about capturing the value too.
I have self-funded customer discovery regularly, if they won’t buy a discovery, they probably probably won’t buy a solution. It’s ok to educate them, let them try to solve it on their own and then the good ones come back.
Getting investment can be super helpful though. I like knowing how’s to get 2-10x value out of each dollar. It helps with growing fast. Current recession likely makes it easier for me to raise investment in some ways.
I sometimes go out of my way to recommend everything but my own solution. It’s better when they connect the dots, and if they can’t.
Most B2B saas in time need a professional services division of some kind - so why not get the customer to pay for the sales cycle, as long as it might be. It’s an easier form of seeming the breakthrough. I hang out in Academia and other slow industries though sometimes and have to pass the time. It’s changing though thankfully.
Many customers want to pay to learn and get comfortable and build buy in to become a 10-20y customer.
Business skills get you in the room for conversations at the level of strategy and direction, way better than selling in. It’s great leaving management consultants making way more than you adding no value to the convo because they don’t get the fundamental shift in the business is doing the change not studying it.
Lots of people will say that’s not advisable to go this deep, and they might be right. I’ve found going deep on things leads to warm introductions to other people’s problems. Demonstrating care about someone else’s business done right does open doors. Doing things that doesn’t scale gets you access that doesn’t scale to the many.
I’ve recently come across an author by the name of April Dunford that made my add value first and awesome approach fell a little less alone, and special which is awesome. She is amazingly well written and spoken. Going to read more of her stuff in the next few months.
I accidentally closed a paid pilot over a lunch by making fun of all the software in my space including my own as the reason to refused to put it in place for him even though it would get him forward in the short term. He is a pioneer and because the future needs to be built in his world his tools have to be as well instead of doubling down on tech anchored the past.
I find most sales are the byproduct of trust in showing people how to navigate the information overload out there. It’s good to get the bad fits out of your hair, the rest more than make up for it. I’m going to try to make 2023 more vocal about being very different and see how it goes.