I have been getting advice from people who are successful in selling or marketing. The problem with me is that I am not a believer in either. I apply the JTBD approach to sales. It is popular in product development.
I have written about “Jobs to be done” earlier in detail.
Pillers of Jobs to be done:
Pain: Why will someone think about buying something if an existing product has eliminated all their pain?
Desire to Progress: If a user has no desire to progress, why will he even take pain in switching. None of us like to change. People are happily using spreadsheets since inception, while many peers are making 10X return moving to workflow tools and simplifying life.
Willingness to pay: If someone has no money, what use your product is for them.
Now I understand there is another school of Andrew Chen evangelizing growth marketing and discount or freemium model in sales. It might be very successful but does not fit with my philosophy and principle I am doing my business. I have nothing against it.
I believe in delighting my customers, solving their pain points, and making them evangelist. It has served us well so far. I am also very naked, honest, unlike others in sales where you have to add lipstick, paint pictures for closing customers. I believe we are part of this journey where customers are our extended family. We are all building better ourselves together.
The same comes to marketing. We have made all our sales while being in stealth. Our customers connected us to a new set of users, we onboarded them on a few weeks trial and got them as paid users. I don’t see the point of going out, advertising or adding lipstick on my product and creating a wave of marketing.
I am not saying others who are into it or the business of marketing are flawed. It is that I do not believe in it.
There have been some instances where we let go of some customers or left money on the table for them.
I understand we are living in a startup world where everyone is hyper funded, growth business. I have all good wishes for them, most of my friends are doing it. It is just I don’t want to get into that treadmill.