“Can You Sell This?” Why It’s the Wrong Question for Your Startup

“Can you sell this?”

I’ve heard this more than once from aspiring founders and innovators.

Sales. It’s what startups and small companies need to turn what they’ve built into the money they need to keep building.

But dropping someone into an office chair and telling them to sell something is the last step, not the first.

Why is sales such a struggle?

Because salespeople are the fingertips of your organization. They are where your company reaches out into the market. And what they hear, say, promise and commit to has to be supported by the rest of the organization.

That’s where commercial operations comes in.

We often talk about the sales funnel: taking leads and prospects and turning them into opportunities, deals and income.

But there’s a funnel that goes the other way, too.

Information. Tools. Processes. Support. Training.

All of the things your sales and marketing teams need to do their jobs effectively — connected to your commercial strategy and to the functions inside your company that have to deliver on what you sell.

That’s commercial operations: the underlying structure that connects your commercial team to the rest of the organization.

And commercial operations needs to start early.

Sales may be the final step in turning what you built into revenue, but you shouldn’t wait until you’re ready to sell before you start thinking commercially.

Your sales and marketing teams are one of your most important sources of market feedback. They can tell you what customers actually need, what they value, what they don’t understand, what they will pay for — and sometimes, whether they want what you’re building at all.

That feedback needs to reach the people making decisions about the product, proposition and strategy before it’s too late to act on it.

Otherwise, you risk building the perfect sales process for a product that has poor market fit.

More importantly, commercial operations is about building systems that can keep this feedback moving through the organization.

Don’t get me wrong. Sales is hard work. You need to work closely with your commercial team, understand what is happening in the market, and keep improving their performance. If there’s common factors that make their job more difficult, you need to know about them. Information needs to flow both ways.

But just like a beating heart, a well-designed system can handle much of the routine work without requiring your constant attention — leaving you to deal with the exceptions and, more importantly, the other day-to-day issues that come with running a company.

The goal isn’t to make sales hands-off.

The goal is to make the whole commercial system work together — from understanding the market, to shaping what you offer, to communicating its value, to ultimately making the sale.

If your commercial activity still depends on you personally connecting all those pieces, it may be time to look at the system around it.

I help science-based companies, founders and innovators build commercial systems that connect strategy, market feedback, sales, marketing and communication.

You may not know what “commercial operations” means yet — and that’s fine. If you’re wondering how to turn your scientific idea into a business that can actually operate and sell, get in touch.

We can look at what you have in place, where things are getting stuck, and what needs to be built next.

Welcome to The Systematic Vet.

There’s a lot more to building a science-based business than having a good idea — and that’s where I can help.