What To Do If You’re a Startup CEO & You Don’t Know How To Sell

You’ve heard the expression “All sizzle, no steak?” Or the Texan equivalent of “All hat, no cattle?” [sidenote: it’s weird that cows feature prominently in both of these]. Basically these sayings are referring to people who talk a big game but then can’t back it up with action. Sparkly but no quality behind it.

While it’s readily agreed among investors that these types of leaders eventually get seen for what they are over the long haul (although distressingly they usually get funded initially), what I wanted to discuss today is whether a founding team that’s the complete opposite (a TON of steak, very little sizzle) can also be problematic when it comes to building a successful company. This topic matters to me not just intellectually but because it’s a combination I find full of potential and often want to support. Especially since VC pattern matching may inappropriately label people this way (can’t sell) who are merely nervous or new to their environment.

What I’ve concluded is that if you’re an “all steak, no sizzle” CEO you’re gonna harm your company if you don’t address this weakness (but good news, you can address it). You may end up decreasing the quality of outcomes by a standard deviation or more. How does this harm occur? If things are going great, you still may get a lower valuation or smaller round. A hire or two that you should have been able to close won’t join. You’ll wonder why “inferior competitor X” got to headline the conference or was chosen for the big partnership with a major distributor. It’s a bunch of incremental frictions that slow you down and cause more entropy than is otherwise optimal.

The first thing to confront is that as a CEO you’re the company’s primary salesperson. It doesn’t matter what industry, what product, what revenue model, what stage of development. You’re spending much of your time selling: the vision to employees, the opportunity to investors, the story to the press, the offering to the customers, the relationship to partners. Sales is just storytelling with a desired outcome at the end of the story. Figure that you will *always* be spending at least 50% of your time selling in this manner. Some weeks you’ll be selling more…