Sales or Die

Make sales or die. A little background on me for anyone who hasn’t been reading my articles since 2009: I started selling on the Internet when I was eleven years old, in 1995. Since then I’ve co-founded three successful companies: TypeFrag, Carbonmade and Uncover. What do they all have in common and why are they all still around? It’s revenue. Revenue comes from sales. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have revenue, and without revenue, you will die.

For far too long, Sales has gotten a bad rap. Product has been all founders care about. What shiny new feature can we build? What code can we improve? How can we scale our resources? What designers and developers can we hire? I ask you: how did we get to this stage of history on the Web if Sales has taken such a backseat to Product? I’m someone who does Product, Design, Development, and Sales, so I’m not paranoid. I just never read about or hear people talk about sales.

If you’re a new startup and you want your business to be around for the long-haul, then you better start thinking about Sales, paying customers, revenue, and cash flow. If you’re not, then you will die on the vine or you’ll raise another round of financing and disappear soon after. Stop whatever Product thing you’re doing and ask yourself: “Does this increase Sales?” If not, move on.