

Portrait of the CEO as Salesman - tyrelb
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19880301/5901.html

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tyrelb
This is my first submission to HN.

In startups, I think we by-pass a lot of the traditional schools of thought
and jump directly into hacks/objects/apps/fixes which we consider "startups."

As a startup myself, I've lost sight of the most important part of building a
business: sales. Tech, product, marketing, "sales" (free users) are great, but
at the end of the day, to move a company from a startup to a business is hard
work and can only be done with sales.

And if there's one article that sums up exactly what I should be doing, it's
this.

Thought I would pass this along and hopefully change the attitude of others in
our community.

~~~
tyrelb
TL;DR:

"So what the hell are you doing buying a computer?" he demanded. "You know,
Jim, I've seen a lot more businesses go broke because they didn't have enough
sales than I've seen go under from lack of computers. Why don't you work on
first things first?"

Selling is a devalued skill. It's considered beneath anyone with an M.B.A.'s
training. Marketing, on the other hand, is somehow "clean," something
professional businesspeople aspire to. If you go to a cocktail party and
you're asked what you do for a living, and you reply, "I'm a salesman," people
look at you like you've got crumbs on your shirt. Tell them you're a marketing
director, however, and they say "How interesting." In my view, this is one of
the worst hoaxes ever pulled on American business. Manufacturers perceive
marketing as a magic solution that takes away their responsibility for making
good products. Their idea is, we'll make a product that's just as good as
anything else out there--not better, mind you, but just as good--and marketing
it well will make us rich. And that's a lot of crap.

Marketing is all about creating, in the customer's mind, a value that does not
exist: a way of differentiating a basically undifferentiated product and
charging the consumer more money for it. Selling is fundamental.

Consumers are not idiots. They want detergents that get their clothes cleaner,
not detergents with slicker advertising campaigns.

Because, sad to say, it's a lot easier to differentiate your product through
the quality of the marketing than through the quality of the product. To go
back to the automobile industry, it's easier to change your advertising
campaign than it is to build a better car--as General Motors well knows.

