Category: Blog

You have a product, you want more sales (or start sales).
What do you do?

1. Pay for advertising
2. Ask friends to share the link on facebook
3. Ask coworkers to share the link on facebook
4. Do a website for your product

What if none of these really matters? (well, maybe number 1 in case of well established products).

Want sales? The question is not “How can I get more”, the question is “Why am I not getting enough of them?”

And the answer, 9 out of 10, is: Something’s wrong with the  claims, with how you sell it, with what you say and we don’t know why.

Hard to fix right? But there’s an old job that’s the perfect example of how to get the right sale pitch for your product.
It’s a job that doesn’t require you to ask friends to share a link to a website, because that doesn’t drive sales.

What drives sales is: Selling.

So what do you do? You start selling it to real people in real life.
_And you record the audio of each sale_.

The first 10 sales will be pure garbage, but once you adjust your pitch you’ll see some reactions and hopefully more sales.
Once you are confident of the pitch, once you can sell it confidently, _then_ and only then it’s time to do a website, advertising, whatever (no asking to share link, please. A product worth sharing gets shared. Your friend john won’t earn you any sale).

After all the hardest part in selling, is selling.
There’s no workaround, but you can MVP it by selling _first_ in real life, then in the medium of your choice.

What’s the first reaction when you’re not able to manage a sea or a pool and you’re drowning in it?

You move frantically your hands and try to shout “Help me”. 
It one of the few moments  in life when ego and our social status doesn’t get in the way.

In near-death situations we tend to get back to our roots, to ignore whatever status we have. To do what’s needed to survive.

In the usual life, though, we don’t.
We avoid asking for help because it might mine our status, it’ll make us look weak, fragile.

We think that, by doing it by ourselves, we’ll be greater, have more impact, have more money, be more important.
Except that it’s not.

We’re that guy drowning in a pool. In some cases the guy can get out by himself, but in most of the cases he dies.

We’re slowly dying to protect our status, missing out the opportunity to improve, build something greater than us, something we might not be able to do by ourselves.

Ask for help, you’ll see that it’ll benefits you and your work.

If you’ve never run in your life, would it be possible to run a marathon tomorrow?
Of course not. 

Would it be possible in one week? Nope.
What if you’d have 1 year? Maybe.
3 Years? Yes.

But how can you get to run a marathon in 3 years?
You have to prepare, maybe not each day, but frequently and consistently.
You have to plan, to define the many small steps in between.

The first months you’ll be able to run 10 minutes. A marathon in those days will feel like you’re trying to do the impossible.
But if you keep working, if you keep training, after a few months those 10 minutes will become 20 minutes, a kilometer, 2 kilometers.
The distance till the end will slowly become smaller.

What if you slack? That time won’t become smaller.
And the thing is: it’s not about a marathon. It’s about doing things.

Learning to sing, learn a new language, learn to discuss, learn to be kind.
All of these activities are like learning a marathon. They require time and _most of all_ they require consistency.

They require you to show up and do your thing each and every day for a long time.
They require you to not give up, to continue even if it seems too far, out of your reach.

And if you do trust that the end is gonna come, that you’ll get to that goal one step at a time, then you’ll get to the finish line.

Because consistency trumps everything. It trumps talent, it trumps fortune.
Consistency is the key to do, learn, and improve.
The only way to keep doing things is to be rigid about it. To do it nonetheless. Rain or shine, good or bad day.

Because each misstep will take you away from the goal, from the result and will make the goal impossible to achieve even though it was possible in the first place.

How do you feel like you’re super busy? 

It feels like you’re a key piece of the puzzle, like if the company _depends_ on your skills.

It might happen from time to time to be extra busy, but if your go-to answer for any question or request for help is “I’m too busy” then you should rethink your role.

You’re not important, you’re a bottleneck.
I know, it’s nice to be extra-busy, to feel that buzz of importance. But if it happens too often or if it doesn’t allow you to help people _on your same team_, then it’s not working as it should.

You should think about _why_ this happens and find a plan to get out of it. 
Plan some buffer time to allow busyness to compensate and extend like water, ask for help. Whatever the solution, think about it.

There might be times when you don’t agree, maybe it’s a decision that will backfire, or maybe you feel like you’re risking the face of the company.

Whatever the reason is fine if you disagree. But is it fine to _always_ do it?

It all boils down to choosing the battles you really care about.
In a growing company everything is a work in progress, which means that everything can be improved.

Should everything improved right away? Probably not.
Some topics are more important and urgent than others, while other topics can be left out for a while.

If you always disagree or you’re always the one giving advice there are consequences. Your words will be valued less because they’re so frequent, while if you choose wisely the topics to discuss you’ll have higher chances to explain your views.

Pick your battles, because you wouldn’t have the energy to fight them all anyway.