Selling Ain't Easy

Have you ever heard someone say a product will "practically sell itself?"  Well I've yet to see a case where that holds true, and I doubt you will either.

Sometimes we think our product is so great that it will fly off the shelves. That's what we thought back in 2004.  We had just finished our first version of MobileBabble, an SMS text message to big screen platform.  Adrenaline was running high and we figured if we just showed people what we had, they would instantly be hooked. We never came up with an aggressive sales and marketing campaign because we were so confident.  Unfortunately, the results showed how unprepared we were.

We went into phone calls and meetings 'thinking' we had everything in order.  However, I remember the exact instance I realized we were being severely outclassed in the sales department. We were on the phone with representatives for Barry Bonds. Our company and another company were vying for a contract to create his mobile fan club. We definitely had the better product, and in fact the other company's product was just a prototype! We gave a live demo and they just had PowerPoint slides. But their sales rep was a thing of magic. He gave Barry Bond's team a vision for where his company could take them. He put forth an incredible sales pitch and boy it worked. The next thing I knew, I was seeing press releases about a joint venture between Bonds and the other company for a ground-breaking fan club application.

Frankly, we were caught with our pants down. We didn't even know how to follow up with a prospect properly. My advice to you is to take the extra time, effort and money to get your product the sales pitch and marketing strategy it deserves. Business isn't just going to fall into your lap.  And even if it does, at least you have a solid strategy to continue pressing forward.  Being overly confident in a product may be the biggest mistake you can make and you'll be in for a surprise when your best prospects are going with inferior solutions.