Build it and they WON'T come.

Read time: approx. 5 mins and 29 seconds, ish.

Ah – the infamous Devonshire ‘hand-of-no’. The hand gesture that makes clear ‘that’s not going to happen’ and that the time for talking is over.

Business is usually a negotiation.

A common mistake made during negotiation is a misguided belief that rational logic will prevail.

If only business was that easy – entrepreneurialism would be so much more simple, so much less brutal.

It takes extraordinary willpower to go out and sell, rather than invest effort in activity you believe will help win the negotiation. This is perhaps singularly the biggest issue that catches-out more founders than any other.

The repeat behaviour common to successful entrepreneurs is how quickly they concentrate on ‘sales’ as the highest order priority.

More important, successful entrepreneurs dismiss all the legitimate reasons why selling would be so much easier, more abundant, less risky, more convenient, sometime further along in the journey.

Successful entrepreneurs dismiss the “I need a logo” – “I need a website” – “I need a better website” as conditions on which selling depends.

As an active angel investor, the moment that I hear ‘sales’ being referred to as a future event, all my alarm bells start ringing.

If you want to accelerate the growth of your business and avoid expensive mistakes, the best source of foresight is asking entrepreneurs who are ahead of you in their quest – irrespective of how different your businesses might be.

When entrepreneurs are asked, ‘Do you have any regrets?’ and ‘If you were to do it all again, what would you do differently?’ the most common answers that I hear is a wish that they had started selling sooner – a regret that they could have pursued sales more aggressively earlier in the journey.

And that is exactly why when talking to new founders, the misconception which concerns me most is a belief that “build it and they will come” (ie. the notion that selling is dependent on having a finished product).

This idea represents three potential mistakes:

1. A belief that sales cannot commence until a tangible product has finished being built
2. That prospects need to see and feel tangible product in order to buy it
3. That simply by virtue of a product (and/or service) existing, that people will be compelled to buy it

I cannot say this strongly enough: The repeat behaviour common to successful entrepreneurs is that they do not rely on tangible product (or polished product) in order to sell.

What do they rely on instead?

The repeat behaviour common to successful entrepreneurs is that they: 

• Convert every conversation into a sale.
• End every conversation with – “and how many units can I send you?”.
• Worry less about pricing and economics in the early days and accept that profit/margin will be tight initially. The economics can be optimised at scale.
• Are especially clear, definitive, and articulate about what problem their product / service / company solves.
• Build product that is remarkable – that people are compelled to remark about it to their friends, family, and network (even if it doesn’t totally deliver against its promise completely in the ‘beta’ versions).
• Get product out the door – and that the product is data-centric and quickly yields and harvests ‘data’ – data that is converted into meaningful insights that are intriguing, engaging, and compelling. They generate new data and new narratives not seen or heard before.

Entrepreneurs are often obsessed. Sometimes their success depends on it. Which is why it is easy to forgive entrepreneurs for trying to ‘convert’ everyone with their passion.

But that passion is invariably misplaced when it translates into requests for funding in order to build product before sales have been won.

Sadly, increasingly, the evidence is the exact opposite. Increasingly my concern is:

“Build it and they WON’T come.”

I have participated in the investment of more than 300 ventures (and served as cofounder to a fair few). Without exception, I’ve yet to work with a venture that managed to achieve mass-adoption without considerable effort, intervention, and cost.

My appeal to founders is simple:

• Just because you find a proposition compelling, that does not mean that everyone else will share your passion and/or your taste
• However logical and rational you believe your solution to be, does not mean that that logic and rational thinking will be persuasive
• If purchasing your product/service requires people to change their behaviour be aware that often people will do almost anything to avoid making that change
• Saving money; saving time; saving the planet, are not necessarily enough to compel people to buy – however overwhelmingly logical and rational you believe that to be

Which may sound incredibly negative, pessimistic, and gloomy. In-fact the challenge of selling; the challenge of driving adoption of your product is singularly the most important obstacle that needs to be overcome in order to achieve business success. Not only is that challenge exciting, I believe it is surmountable.

Designing and building product is never simple or trivial. However, in my experience, building product is not as challenging as building demand. Which is why I advocate prioritising the building a sales pipeline ahead of building the product.

And that’s why MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is such a vitally important stage of the validating customer demand.

Build the cheapest, quickest version of your product in order to be able to establish and test routes to market.

I often hear entrepreneurs worry about failing to meet customer expectations. Concern about over-promising and under-delivering. About causing disappointment and the potential to burn bridges. I hear founders say: “we only have one shot at this”. There’s a common belief amongst first-time innovators that products have to be perfect before shipped. I think all of those concerns are entirely legitimate.

In response to these challenges, the solution is not to build the perfect product. Success is not dependent on perfection, success is managing expectations appropriately and winning your customers forgiveness and winning their advocacy.

My advice to founders is:

• Don’t think of business development as a sequential process
• Anticipate success

What that means in practical terms is, if you are running a trial, anticipate that it will end well and be ready for the next steps based on that assumption, rather than waiting for the result of the trial before deciding what to do next. Pursue business development concurrently, not sequentially.

Don’t rely on building product to unlock sales.

Products rarely make sales. Humans do.

I’ll share my thoughts on how best to unlock paths to mass-adoption via a separate post.