I like building, but I love selling.
Selling is a pure act of love for the product.
“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” — Thomas Edison
I like building. It’s an act of creation — something didn’t exist before I got around to creating it. Building things solves problems. Building things is fascinating. Building things requires deep thought and intuition. Building things is complicated, messy, and beautiful. And, therefore, exciting.
I love selling. I love talking about a product I’ve built. I love understanding the product to a depth that I can explain the why and the how of it.
I am enamored of both the problem and the product that solved it. I want to tell you about the idea, the breakthroughs, the mis-steps, and what we left on the cutting-room floor. I love the details — every last, little, beautiful one. When I sell, I am not selling the organization, selling the product, selling the research, selling the engineering, or trying to close a deal.
I want to tell you the story of the product. I want to tell you everything I know about the problem, the process, and the final product. With pure, love-at-first-sight, enthusiasm. I am in the zone, in a zone where I can speak for hours.
Your product often has a number of hidden advantages to it that you can discover if you dig deeply enough. If you are armed with lots of evidence of product value, you no longer have to have selling and calling feel so much like self-promotion. You can make it be about pure and enthusiastic communication of benefits. If I have to talk about me and my worth, I might get tongue tied and lower my price. If I can tell stories about how and why the product performs so well, and what the reasons and rationale are behind the product’s success, I can talk all night. That’s the zone salespeople get into and love. You know that zoned feeling, when it seems that life is a dance and death is a joke. Get there. — Peter Kang.
Selling is the purest act of love for a product that I know of. Selling is shouting, from the rooftops, the beauty of a product. Selling is telling the world, “Look, look at this thing, can you believe how it works? Can you believe we built it?”
There is never any point during the selling process that I am thinking of revenue, the pricing, or the deal. In fact, those are never in my mind. All I am interested in is sharing my unrestrained delight at having built something that blew my mind. And, I hope that it blows yours, too.
I feel most like a kid when I am selling. I feel like a kid explaining how his or her favorite toy works to someone who is willing to listen. I am always grateful for the people who are willing to listen, who grin at my joy, who can feel the giddiness I have, who can sense that I am still pinching myself (14 years later) that I got to build a thing.
When I walk away from a sales call, even if I don’t have a customer at the end of it, I am still as exhilarated. I mean, I got to talk to someone about something I love, and they listened. To me. To me! Of all the people they could have spent their time with, they spent it with me, letting me talk about something I love. And, for that, I am grateful.
The joy of communicating my joy about what we’ve built.
That’s why I love selling.
