Starting a Business Without Sales Experience?
With the pandemic and working from home, I've had some time to reevaluate my professional goals. I think I'm ready to start my own boutique firm!
I've got the skillset, network, and some capital, but what I don't have is much sales experience. While sales is something I would like to learn and get better at, I would rather defer to experienced and up-and-coming MDs to win mandates.
When it comes to selling, I can perform when the stakes are high and thrilling (for me personally anyway). For example, the goal would be to raise $50 million to get my shop off the ground. I feel I can achieve this, especially with the amount of capital in the market right now. Could be a single investor or several, structured as debt, equity, or both.
My question is: can one be a successful entrepreneur without being excellent at sales? Or do you only need to be good at sales if you can't afford to hire a sales/marketing team?
Thanks for the opinions.
My Opinion is that every entrepreneur needs strong sales skills for the following reasons:
1) If this is your first venture, you're selling yourself, your credibility, and your vision to someone irrespective of whether it's to raise capital, sell your first product, or hire your first employee - and nobody else can do this for you.
2) Sales skills are fundamental to winning mandates in finance - clients will select their partners largely based on which people they would like to work with and have the strongest relationships with, because the "product" is highly commoditized.
You can always partner with someone who is a stronger salesperson and have them be the face of your organization while you "execute" - you'll still have your ownership share.
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