It took 10 years of unlearning my engineering righteousness to understand this
I stared at one of my former clients with a squint in my eyes.
It was like Zoom had frozen.
I was trying to get past what he had just told me. “Yeah, I’ve exchanged a couple of emails with them but nothing has really come through.”
What I had asked just before that was “So did you book the meeting?”
Just a few minutes before our call, I had gone through the outreach campaign to enterprise developers in his Hubspot (CRM). We had developed the campaign to drive more leads for his pilot program. I saw a good amount of email responses in his inbox. I saw a handful of people show interest in having a sales call with the Founder – exactly what we wanted. I was excited to get on the call.
A few minutes later, I was on that call asking “So what about this person, they said they’re interested.” I shared my screen.
My silicon valley founder had done something else. Instead of following the next step, and booking a call, he got into email conversations aka email purgatory – answering one objection after the other.
He had skipped a crucial step.
And I’ve caught myself doing the same thing – skipping steps, selling the wrong thing at the wrong moment, wondering why things didn’t convert when I expected.
He skipped the step because he didn’t know what he was selling.
Stop Spamming People With Your Products. They Don’t Want it (Yet)
No one cares about your product. They only care about their problems and what can solve them.
And the solution is always “the next step.”
That’s what needs to be sold.
But if you don’t know what you’re selling, you’ll waste time and energy selling the wrong thing.
Even when you have the most amazing product to sell, you’ll fail if you sell it at the wrong stage of the process. The sooner you know what you sell per stage, the better you’ll sleep at night.
When we started that engagement, he mentioned getting calls on the calendar as a primary goal. He was a fast-talking, witty, silicon valley “second-time” founder type. Every time I pointed something out to him, he’d stop me before I finished my sentence.
He said things like “Yeah, I know this stuff already.”
I said, “ah, ok o.”
I thought he knew what I knew and just needed someone to help him run it. When we launched the outreach campaign, there was clear interest. The exact developers he wanted to talk to had opened his email, read it, and responded. But instead of selling the thing he said he wanted – the “discovery (sales) calls,” he stayed in the email discussing, answering questions, handling objections, defending his position, justifying his product. Things that could have been handled a lot better on the call.
He was selling his product in the email, instead of selling what the prospect wanted – the next step, in this case, a phone call.
Because that’s the solution they’re looking for – to talk to someone that can help them think through their current problem.
Unfortunately for this founder, skipping one step cost him.
When you don’t know the full process, you know what you want at the end but don’t know each step that needs to happen to get there. When you don’t know the steps, you can’t see where the leverage actually is – so you push on the wrong things and wonder why nothing moves.
Without knowing how to break down the steps and improve along the way, everything feels trivial. You’ll become impatient, wanting outcomes that your actions will never give you. And when expectations don’t match reality, you become unhappy.
That’s what happened here. He was unhappy, I was unhappy. Even though the results were right there in front of him.
Instead of back and forth emails.
A simple response at that step like: “sure, that is a legit concern and we’ve handled this before. I would be better suited to address each question over a brief call. Does Tuesday at 1pm work for a chat?”
That response gives outsized results, when selling the right thing – “the call.”
But it seemed so trivial and boring to my big-time silicon valley valuation chaser.
If you don’t know what you’re selling, you’ll never know the best practice.
That’s why it’s important to break down the steps so you can find what actually works at that step and where things break.
And things can break at each step.
Don’t jump two steps ahead, just sell the next step.
I’m learning that selling is really about persuading someone to take the next best step with you.
With my engineering background, I used to hate sales. I thought sales guys were sleazy with their blue shirts and tight ties, doing nothing but going to happy hours.
I didn’t realize how important a life skill it was until I started my business.
Now, I help businesses grow their pipeline. Part of that is sales outreach, where every step is crucial. It took me 10 years to learn this. With each step, there is an outcome. In my first outreach, I sent out 700+ emails to close one deal. Now I send way fewer to get the same results.
That’s because each year, I’m chipping away at improving each step for myself and clients.
For instance, all your first emails on a sales sequence need to end with a question mark. Before I realized that I used to send emails that didn’t garner any curiosity in the reader. I had done all the work and wasted it because I didn’t add four more words and a silly question mark (?). Once I changed that, responses improved drastically.
Every step is crucial, carrying its own weight.
Skip one, and you’re just guessing, not knowing what works, what broke.
For every new thing I want to start, I find someone who’s done it, and ask them to break down all the boring steps. Not just the interesting outcomes and visions of how they got where I want to be.
I’d invite you to do the same.
The golden reps are in the steps.
Closing reflection:
When my founder-client was trying to convince prospects that he had an important product for them in their inbox, I should have stepped in sooner.
I wish I had known that he didn’t know what to sell at the right time. There are a lot of times when the things we want are right in front of us, but skimping on simplicity moves us further away from it. The more you understand each step, the better you can take a patient approach that compounds into an outsized outcome.
That founder had the results right there in his inbox. He just didn’t know which step he was supposed to be winning.
So here’s the question I have for you today: “Do you know the one step you can improve in your process that would give you the biggest result?”
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. What’s one step you wish you understood better in your life or business.
