Startup Sales — 5 Common Sales Mistakes by Founders
August 12, 2025
Founders are responsible for the first sales a startup will make. For many founders, this is one of their very first experiences of sales and mistakes are often made.
Hello, Everyone. Today, we’re talking about customer discovery. When you’re testing ideas with potential customers, you’re looking out for enthusiasm, for excitement. Not “hmm…. That sounds interesting” or “it might be helpful”
Testing out a very early stage startup is often a risk and at a minimum it’s a potentially frustrating time commitment. People won’t go through all that for a slightly better outcome. It needs to be a big change
When you do find something valuable. It will likely be obvious, the customers behavior will change instantly. They’ll be excited and they’ll probably ask for it yesterday.
Of course what people say and do are often different. So you should go one step further and test this demand by creating scarcity. That could mean offering a deployment within a week but if they don’t do that, perhaps they have to wait a month because someone else is going to take their slot. Or you could ask for payment up front to go at the front of the line for a deployment.
