Don’t Go to Market as a Salesperson: Go as a Student, Even if You’re Not Actually a Student

A Reflection on R. Paul Singh’s Sales Talk

Salespeople have kind of an annoying impression. Most of the time, you’re doing some important time-sensitive work when you get the call from a 1–800 number or receive a knock on the door from a brand ambassador. And this is after not replying to a couple emails every day…

As you can see, this is an insanely inefficient way of trying to market something or gain market traction. So, R. Paul, a serial entrepreneur, advised in his talk today to approach potential customers by asking for advice. Get into contact with them saying that you really want to improve “x” in their field “y” but would like some advice. Show up with your current value proposition and present it to them. They’ll usually be more than willing to give you free advice and spend lots of time helping you on this. This is a two-fold advancement: one, you have solid advice and validation for your product and two, you have a potential customer that might buy your product if you build their advice into your product. Now, you go back to your product, implement this advice and boom — you have a product that you know your customer wants. That’s a guaranteed sale.

I experienced this myself with a product I was marketing. We needed initial users in the legal space so we approached a director of an Intellectual Property Agency, asking for advise for our product playing the “student” card. It was pretty obvious that there was no other way to lock in a meeting with a director of an IP Agency. He definitely didn’t have time for a sales pitch. Now, we got his advice and even though he isn’t our customer yet, there’s a clear interest that we can build on.

In the end, yes — sales pitches can be important and can be a crucial part of market traction. However, a more efficient way in early situations to get customers is by going for advice, implementing that advice, and using that already formed connection to sell your product to them.