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I don't think it's neccessary for every guy who wants to start a business to be a salesman. If your main skill is technology, you should know enough about sales

I don't think it's neccessary for every guy who wants to start a business to be a salesman. If your main skill is technology, you should know enough about sales to get you so large that you can hire people who specialize in sales. Then focus on your core competency, which is technology. Sales is not what creates the real value of a company - it's the product. If your main skill lies in creating an excellent product, then don't distract yourself by focusing too much on sales. If you do so, you'll always see your product through the prism of 'sales' and this will change your product. Every company has to be pulled by two forces - the force that wants a kickass product, and the other that wants to sell it. So the product guy should say: * Let's make this tool where one can download and play any song in the world for absolutely free The sales guy should say: * We can't make any money that way. Let's put Ads every 10 seconds in each song The middle ground would be: * Let's put DRM in the songs. Something like that. If everyone in the company is just thinking about sales, there is no counter-balance in the company.

adityakothadiya 18y ago
By salseman, I mean you need to learn the art of selling. You need not think of money only. Even convincing your technology to internal/upper management, or explaining your idea (let's say a Free service) to a single user and enticing him to signup to your service can be also considered as Sales act. I've worked in a situation, where we were 2 co-founders, coming from technology background. It wasn't a Consumer Internet startup. So we couldn't wait to code in the room and then let "virality" spread out. We had to make new introductions, go to customers' site, present them what we are doing, understand what exactly they want, and then re-define spec based on majority of customer feedback. We were small tech team, in the process of building something. So we didn't have sales team. So we had to roll our sleeves, and pitch the customers. We couldn't wait until we hire sales guys. Once the startup grows, we'll hire sales team. But my point was, we need to have that selling attitude - always.

adityakothadiya 18y ago

By salseman, I mean you need to learn the art of selling. You need not think of money only. Even convincing your technology to internal/upper management, or explaining your idea (let's say a Free service) to a single user and enticing him to signup to your service can be also considered as Sales act. I've worked in a situation, where we were 2 co-founders, coming from technology background. It wasn't a Consumer Internet startup. So we couldn't wait to code in the room and then let "virality" spread out. We had to make new introductions, go to customers' site, present them what we are doing, understand what exactly they want, and then re-define spec based on majority of customer feedback. We were small tech team, in the process of building something. So we didn't have sales team. So we had to roll our sleeves, and pitch the customers. We couldn't wait until we hire sales guys. Once the startup grows, we'll hire sales team. But my point was, we need to have that selling attitude - always.