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Title: Founder Led Sales is a Superpower (Adapt or Die)


Read time: 3 min

In today’s issue I’m going to discuss why mastering the science of founder led sales will become a superpower that accelerates scale.

The best founding teams I’ve worked with always focused an incredible amount of bandwidth on getting sales dialed in. It’s the lifeline of your business, why wouldn’t you. It’s the easiest ROI on money invested.

The problem I see is many founders don’t grasp the residual effect selling will have not only on their business, but in their life. It truly is a superpower that will pay massive dividends.

Learn to build. Learn to sell. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

~Naval Ravikant

We typically see 2 different types of use cases at Rampd with the former commonly in a state of panic because their runway is dwindling.

Let’s take a look at both.

1. The first group of founders goes all-in on product. They spend 80 percent of their time obsessing over the MVP. They polish the UI, build in every feature they can imagine, and over-engineer the stack. Once they finally ship, nothing happens. The product doesn’t land. Not because it’s bad, but because they never built a motion to bring it to market. No discovery process. No qualification. No sales narrative. No structure.
   

   Now they’re holding a product the market doesn’t want yet, and worse, they have no path to revenue. With runway shrinking and no sales engine in place, they're stuck. This is the “build it and they will come” death trap. We see it constantly.
   
   

2. The second group of founders flip the ratio. They spend 60 percent of their time selling, 40 percent building. They launch early, with just enough to test the hypothesis. Every call becomes signal. Every objection is logged. They learn what buyers actually care about and where the friction is. They keep the product lean so they can move fast and adapt.
   

   They close early deals. They figure out why others don’t close. Over time, they build a sales process that scales before the product even does. When it’s time to grow, they already have a playbook. These are the founders who win.

   One group builds in a vacuum. The other builds in the market.

The latter will always prove to be more fruitful and yield a higher ROI.

Here’s 6 reasons why:

1. It teaches you how and why people make decisions.
   My definition of selling is: “Identifying pain and empowering people to take action.” This is what selling is. The only way you can understand how and why people say yes, is to first identify where the source of pain is coming from. Once you do this, which is extracted on the discovery call, then you have an idea of what you need to do to get them across the finish line.
   
   

2. It teaches you how to be an incredibly effective communicator.
   Ninety percent of effective communication is a result of you listening. Listening to understand, rather than listening to reply. When you listen, you have the ability to ask really good questions, which are conveyed to the prospect as you caring. From there you can provide a path forward through your solution. This is effective communication.
   
   

3. It teaches you how to build relationships
   - Business is about relationships. And relationships are rooted in you being competent. If you cannot deliver, there is no relationship. We run a multi seven figure consulting firm at Rampd and I’ve never spent a dollar in marketing or advertising. Not one dollar. One hundred percent of my business is referrals, either from existing/past clients, or VC partners. Why is this? Because I’ve built great relationships, but most importantly I’m highly competent in what I teach.
   
   

4. It teaches you how to solve problems.
   You are not in the business of selling. You are in the business of solving. Solving problems. Again this dials back to being an effective listener and asking great questions. This allows you to be a problem solver. There is a big difference between someone trying to sell you something, or someone trying to solve a problem for you. Prospects will intrinsically feel and know the difference.
   
   

5. It teaches you how to not be afraid.
   Most of us are hardwired to be agreeable. We all want to be likable. Asking people to buy things inherently goes against our human DNA. This is where limited beliefs and you confronting them will play a big role in your success. The worst outcome when asking people to buy your product is they say no. It’s the habit of doing things you’re uncomfortable doing that will be the most rewarding. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
   
   

6. It will teach what you need to know about being a good operator.
   Successful entrepreneurs are efficient operators. They’re highly skilled in capital allocation. There’s 2 part to capital allocation. Human and financial. You need to find the right asses to put in the right seats, and allocate money to those individuals to grow the company. How do you find and hire the right people? How do you raise money? How do you get good at the allocation of capital? It all comes down to selling. Period.

Actively work on these points, and you’ll quickly see how founder led sales will become a superpower.

That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re a venture-backed company interested in coaching, book a call here.