This afternoon a podcast host asked me to share the most important sales fundamentals founders often get wrong when they start doing sales for the first time.

In no order, here& #39;s my top five... https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">

1/ Not understanding your target customers (audience) well enough.

19 out of 20 "sales" problems I help founders with are actually "I don& #39;t understand my audience well enough to sell to them" problems in disguise.

2/ Not checking that reward > risk for all CTAs.

It& #39;s so common for founders to not even consider whether - from the prospect& #39;s perspective - the expected reward of taking an action outweighs the perceived risk.

If risk > reward for *any* step, you won& #39;t make the sale.

3/ Not understanding *why* you didn& #39;t close a sale (and using it to improve your sales process).

Founders often feel like they& #39;ve failed when a sale falls through... but they shouldn& #39;t.

You only & #39;fail& #39; when you don& #39;t learn *why* the sale didn& #39;t happen, so you can improve.

4/ Not creating a situation in which the *default* outcome is that the prospect buys your product.

As a founder doing sales, you want to work with the prospect to create a shared success plan (story) of how they will get from where they are today, to being a happy customer.

5/ Going into sales conversations with the mindset of "how can I get this person to buy my product" (bad) vs "how can I help this person achieve their goals" (good).

Helping founders with sales can be awkward... you often have to & #39;nudge& #39; them to care more about their customers.