Raise your hand if “sales” is your least favorite part of having a startup.

Do sales meetings stress you out? Do you hate putting together proposals? Are you avoiding making a sales call right now? You’re not alone. But unless you start engaging in the selling process every day, you’re also not a startup.

First, a cautionary tale

I am a runner.  But I wasn’t always. See, I fell in love first with the gear of running. The high performance shoes, the shorts with weird pockets, the crazy nutrition gels. I love it all. My GPS watch is something I’d save in a house fire.  So I started running, but for awhile it was mostly just so I could enjoy the “stuff” of running.

And then one day, my cover was blown. I joined the front of the pack in a spring trail race. Sure, I hadn’t put in many miles lately, but I was wearing awesome compression socks and, come on, have you seen my watch?!

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You know what comes next: I sucked wind, ate dirt, almost barfed, came in pretty much last, and vowed right there on the trail to forget the gear and learn to be a runner, not a running gear enthusiast.

I would love to tell you this was the first time I’ve learned this lesson. Sadly, it is not.

The first time was with a startup. In 2008, some good friends and I had an awesome idea for a company. Based on my friend’s experience creating mobile content for museums, we were building a product that fit right in with the amazing marketplace growing up around the newly launched iPhone and App Store.

Except, we got a little distracted with being a startup. We did a lot of cool startup stuff. We joined an accelerator. We got an awesome brand. We entered (and won!) a lot of business plan competitions. We networked, we had meetings, we drank coffee, we got a cool office space, we made t-shirts, and then we had some more meetings.

And then we failed.

And we failed for exactly one reason: We weren’t selling. We got lost in the “gear” of the startup life, and forgot to get some damn customers. And we lost the race because of it.

Looking back, we weren’t really a startup company. We were startup gear enthusiasts.

Why do we avoid selling?

Selling is one of the simplest things you’ll ever try so hard to avoid doing. We all know you can’t have a company without selling something, so why can’t we pick up the phone, get the meeting, or write the proposal?

I think it’s because sales has gotten a bad reputation. Quick: picture a salesperson. Are you picturing a too-slick, suited up, fast talker trying to trick you into paying too much for a car? Thought so.

Sales has gotten associated with trickery, sneakiness, and disingenuousness. Startup hopefuls don’t want to be associated with that! We got in this to be entrepreneurs, not salespeople! So we avoid sales like the plague, and often, we lose the race because of it.

But do you know which salesperson you probably didn’t picture? The last bartender who poured you a beer. Because you didn’t see her as a salesperson then. See, your needs and that bartender’s offering fit together PERFECTLY. You had thirst, she had an IPA, and the sale was made. You didn’t feel like she really tricked you out of that $5. You probably even thanked her for being there in your time of need.

Needs and Need Fillers

When done right, sales has almost nothing to do with the caricatures that have given it a bad reputation. Sales is about fitting need fillers to needs, simple as that. It’s done with a lot of listening, a clear connection, and some creative problem solving to deliver the thing that fills the needs of your customer in a way that makes them say, “Wow, THANK YOU,” and not, “Please stop calling me.”

And that’s not slick stuff. It’s connection, it’s design, it’s strategic, and when it works, it’s fun as hell. And that’s why you’re starting a company, right?

The jargon-free, no B.S. explanation of sales

You can read a million books on how to sell, and some are better than others, but all of them include a fair number of buzz words. Sales jargon is ridiculous. You will get lost in prospects, leads, SQLs, MQLs, cold calls, warm intros, pain points, point plans, planning calls, solutionizing, ideating, and deal engineering before you can say “coffee is for closers.”

Turns out, you don’t have to. They all boil down to a very similar message: When you meet real needs with real solutions and the sale feels mutually beneficial to buyer and seller, you are selling successfully.

If you want to start selling, and you’re not sure how, throw out the jargon and try this:

1. Find a person who you think might need the thing you have.

Ex: “I do believe this busy executive might be interested in the workout subscription service I’ve started.”

2. Ask them to explain how they currently fill that need. Then listen intently. No seriously, don’t be thinking of your pitch here. Just listen actively to the things they do to fill the need.

Ex: “How was your day? Stressful. Hmm… tell me about how you usually relieve stress?”

3. Get your best idea of what they actually need, based on what they’ve told you.

Ex: “Let me see. They said that they usually just go home after work, even though they work right by a great gym. When I asked if they go to the gym, they said, ‘No, I feel stupid because I never know what to do there.”

4. Fill in the blanks of this sentence and say this to your customer: “To help you solve ____, I believe I can provide _____. Would that help?”

Ex: “To help you solve some of your stress, I think I could provide a set of workouts to your inbox every Monday that takes all the guesswork of the gym. It would cost you $10/week. Would that help?”

5. If the answer is yes, ask them for the opportunity to work together.

Ex: “Great! Can I get you on our Beta program? It won’t have all the bells and whistles at first, but you’d get great workouts.”

6. If the answer is no, ask them to help you understand what didn’t match up between their needs and your offering. Then either change your offering (if you want to and you can) or thank them and move on.

Ex: “No? Okay, what about that isn’t appealing to you? It will really help me better shape my product offering. A weekly consult with a trainer? Hmm, now that’s interesting.”

7. Say thank you. Not on email.

Ex: “Thank you! You’ve given me amazing feedback, and I really appreciate your time.”

That’s it. It’s truly that simple, and it definitely works. But not unless you do the work.

No buts, no cuts

Startups occasionally have some objections to this concept. Let’s review a couple of them:

“My product is SaaS. We don’t need sales meetings, just some great marketing.”

Sure, okay, I buy that objection, so long as you have an absolutely pitch perfect understanding of exactly who your customer is, how they buy, how they’re changing this week, what they’ll do next week, and who else they’re considering. How do you get that deep understanding? Oh yeah, sales meetings.

“My product isn’t ready yet. We’ll work on sales as soon as we have an MVP.”

Lucky you! You haven’t built that feature that nobody wants yet! Selling is a key part of the product development process. Many prospective customers will happily take a look at your plans, wireframes, prototypes, or idea and let you know whether it fits their needs. Take them up on this — it’s the cheapest user testing you’ll ever do. It has the double benefit of making them more bought in to your product…and more willing to buy.

“Oh, I’m not the salesperson for our company. I’m the developer/designer/chief fun officer.”

Sales is absolutely everyone’s job in an early stage company. Brilliant developers are awesome in sales meetings when they describe what they’re developing and where it can go in the future. Designers can often creatively find ways to meet customer needs that others won’t see. And every team member will benefit from hearing a customer say “Yes!” or “No, and here’s why.” No one gets to hide behind their laptop or their job title.

“Nah. We’re focused on getting a funding round right now.”

You know what investors really like? Proof of revenue. Get out there.

Your workout plan

Oh, but the starting. If you’ve ever started or re-started running, you know that the first two weeks are the absolute worst. It’s painful, ugly, awkward, and comes with a lot of cursing. And then you just keep doing it and somewhere, it stops sucking so much. Same with sales.

You can think of it like a set of workouts though, and I swear, it’s not so bad. Try this, or some variation of it that works for your company.

1. First, know your number. Set yourself an audacious goal that makes you throw up in your mouth a little tiny bit when you think of it. Don’t make this goal ambiguous. Don’t make it a number of customers. Make it financial. Just say “What I need to do is sell $600K in the next 12 months.” Without this number, it’s hard to set your workouts.

2. Know what it takes to get there. You need to know how many customers you’ll have to go after, and how many of those you’ll need to win. Try this fun math:

What is your financial goal?  (Lets say: $600K)

How much does your thing cost?  (Lets say: $50K)

How many do you need to sell? ($600K/$50K = 12)

What % do you think you can win? (Set this low at first. Then adjust when you know more: Say 15%)

Okay, so you need to be talking with 80 customers in order to win 12 of them. If you lower your price, you gotta sell more. If you get awesome at selling and you win 50% instead of 15%, you don’t need as big of a pipeline to make your goal. Isn’t math fun?

3. Set up tracking. Tons of awesome, cheap (or free!) customer relationship management (CRM) software programs exist. Use them religiously to keep track of how many conversations, meetings, wins, and losses you have. Get one that has a mobile app so that you can easily jot down a few notes right after each meeting. This will feel annoying at first. But in a very short time, you will have amazing information about how often you win, what’s working, and how close you are to that goal. And then you will become addicted to that data.

4. Vary your workout. You don’t have to just hit the phones all day every day and hope it works. To keep things on track, try these:

Repeats: 5x/week, make contact with at least 10% of the potential customers you’ve identified. Phone call, coffee, email, meeting, whatever.

Hill work: 2x/week meet in person or on a truly interactive call with a potential customer

The long-distance run: 1x/week deliver a proposal or ask for someone’s business

Watch Game Tapes: 1x/week, look at the data. Provide your team a report of how you did against your goals and what you think you need to do to improve.

Rest day: 1x/week, don’t tackle sales. It’s OK to have a rest day. But use them wisely and know it’s a rest day. Then get back to it tomorrow.

The difference between the companies that make it and the ones that don’t is the simple ability to match needs with true solutions that generate real revenue, jobs, growth and profit.

Learning to sell and being disciplined about doing it shows results, fast. You’ll learn with a great deal of certainty whether you have something people want to buy, whether it’s priced right, and whether your team is the right one. And that’s where the real startup fun begins.

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Karen Borchert is the Director of Digital Products for Election Systems & Software.