Code To Close: The Irreplaceable Role of Technical Founders in Early-Stage Sales

“In early startup sales, technical founders can’t outsource their roles”

The secret fear of many technical founders is hearing something like this from a customer. Video Credit: Billy Madison Movie, Happy Madison Productions

The early stage of a startup is not for the faint of heart; or the moderately sane; it’s a juggling act of roles and responsibilities that can make even the most organized person feel like they’re navigating an obstacle course blindfolded. While on fire. The founder is simultaneously a programmer, a pitchman, a janitor, and even the in-house barista. The term “office chores’ has never been more expansive.

Given the breadth of all of your tasks, you might be asking, “ Why should I, the technical/product genius behind this operation, mess around with the complex art of sales?”. It’s tempting to stick to your comfort zone and leave the business side to a co-founder who can “speak the language”.

Let’s dive right in and talk about why, despite your reservations, you have to do it. Alternatively, I could make more barista puns like, “Let’s not skim the froth, but instead let’s dig deep through the espresso beans and see if we can ground out a perfect cup of answers”. Nobody wants that.

I told you, no one wants that.

You Will Fail And It Will Suck

You’re in a sales meeting, and you stumble. Maybe you mispronounce a word, or can’t connect to their corporate WIFI. Some slides get mixed up or you just noticed an extra comma on slide 4. The demo server has to be rebooted. The customer’s phone rings just as you are about to hit them with a carefully planned, hilarious joke.

Fear. Anxiety. You swear you hear your voice stutter. Can people see you sweating? You’re sweating. Why are you sweating? Probably because there’s no way that it’s only been 45 seconds — why the hell isn’t that server up yet???

There will be a time when you’ll think, ‘I have a business cofounder — that’s what they’re here for so I’ll just keep building’. This sounds great as it lets you each play to your strengths — in fact, it’s what makes you a great team, isn’t it?

Wrong. It is only by being part of those early business development and sales conversations that you’ll learn most of what you need as fast as possible, and this can’t be done through a proxy. You have to be part of the process:

• Watching a prospective client fiddle with a prototype and linger too long trying to figure out what they need to do

• Listening as their words say yes, but their demeanor says ‘no’

• Seeing them try in earnest to tap and engage with your UI, while the glaring sun reflects off of their screen

Witnessing the nuanced behavior of a real customer in their own environment is how you learn. By doing so, you’ll be one step closer to understanding who your customer really is, what they actually need, and what your product needs to do.

Absolutely, one can’t ignore the “Founder Effect” in early-stage sales — the unique blend of vision, insight, and sheer willpower that a founder brings to the table. It’s a secret sauce that even the most seasoned salespeople can’t replicate, at least not initially.

The Crucible of Sales: Where Ideas Meet Reality

As a technical founder, you understand the very essence of the product you’re selling, giving you unique leverage. This knowledge isn’t just technical; it’s deeply contextual. You can translate complex tech features into business value that the customer can understand in real time during a sales pitch. Even the most well-connected industry veteran can’t do that unless you’ve first defined how it’s done. You may love your prototype dearly, but until you expose it to the real world, it’s essentially just lines of code and dreams.

Accelerated Learning Curve

Let’s be honest; mistakes will be made. And that’s fine. Failure is life’s most brutally efficient teacher. But if you’re not present when these failures occur, you’re robbing yourself of crucial learning opportunities. The speed at which you need to iterate and adapt in a startup is intense. Receiving second-hand information is like trying to run a marathon with weights on — it slows you down and you miss out on the full experience. Also, it might kill you.

The X Factor: Founder Intuition

Your intuition about why your product matters is not a line item that can be handed off in a sales playbook. You sense the invisible threads between market needs and your solution. Until you’ve made those threads visible — clear enough to be followed by others — no one else can genuinely sell your vision.

Deep Contacts vs. Deep Context

Your co-founder may have a Rolodex to die for (or whatever the digital equivalent is these days), and they might be good at telling you that a customer wants “Feature X”, but what does that mean? Are they asking for the feature because of some pain point your co-founder didn’t understand? Or worse, couldn’t even see?

Your contacts may be shallow but you have context — a deep and nuanced understanding of the product. Observing a user struggle with your user interface isn’t just a minor concern; it’s a valuable signal indicating where your product needs refinement. Your business co-founder might relay customer feedback to you, but it’s like a game of Telephone; something is always lost in translation. The value of direct observation can’t be conveyed through another person’s interpretation. That feature request might be critical, or it might be a polite ‘no’.

In the early stages, context trumps contacts; every time.

The Sincerity Dividend

Customers can often sense the difference between a pitch from someone who lives and breathes the product and someone reciting well-crafted lines. This sincerity can be a game-changer, tipping the scales in favor of a deal. Your true belief in the product translates into a level of sincerity that no salesperson can emulate until they themselves become true believers. And for them to become believers, you first need to show them how it’s done.

Unpacking The ‘Why’ Behind The ‘Buy’

Until you understand why customers are buying your product — until you’ve been in the room (or on the Zoom call) where it happens — you can’t teach someone else how to recreate that magic. It’s akin to trying to teach someone to paint like Picasso when you’ve never held a brush.

By engaging in the early sales process, you’re doing more than closing deals; you’re mining for the gold of a holistic understanding of the business landscape, your customers, and your product. It’s where your carefully constructed algorithms meet real-world problems. Until you’ve struck that gold, it’s premature to hand off the pickaxe to even the most experienced miner.

As a founder, your involvement in initial sales isn’t just a nicety or a cost-saving strategy. It’s a rite of passage that your startup must go through to emerge from adolescence into adulthood. It’s only after this phase that you can responsibly hand over the reins to a dedicated sales team, confident that they won’t be flying blind, or worse, flying into each other.

You’ll soon realize that the “founder effect” isn’t just the impact that being present in the room leading the meeting has on your sales close rate. It’s also the impact that leading sales has on your insights into your customers and the very product you’re crafting.

When you fall and it hurts, remember to get up and take one more step before you inevitably fall again. Then get up and take one more step. Just one. Then do that again tomorrow. Now go and be better than me.

John P. Joseph

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Originally published on Medium (https://medium.com/@johnpjoseph/code-to-close-the-irreplaceable-role-of-technical-founders-in-early-stage-sales-b5adfeb981f9)