Imagine you’re lost in Tokyo, looking for a ramen shop with a green storefront. You have the photo pulled up on Google Maps. You just can’t find it.
You circle the block, hungry, too stubborn to ask anyone. Not even sure if anyone here speaks English. Finally a local stops you: “It looks like you’re lost. Can I help?”
It turns out, the shop was painted pink last week. You’re standing right next to it.
Ruben Halfhide told that story at a workshop he ran for our 10x Solo community last week, on starting DM conversations with prospects. His point was that your prospects are doing the same thing right now. They have the problem you solve and a long list of reasons not to ask for help with it.
Someone has to start the conversation. Whether you’re willing to depends on how you think about sales.
Mid-workshop, Ruben asked one of our members for his definition of sales. His answer was honest, just the first thing that came to mind.
“Convincing a prospect to give me money for the product that I offer.”
How close is that to your own definition?
Ruben’s response: “That definition makes it inherently difficult to reach out to people.”
If that’s your definition, every DM is an interruption. Every pitch is an imposition. With that belief, you start every sales interaction five points behind. It leaks into your word choice, your buttering-up, your apology energy. Your prospects can feel it.
If you don’t come from a sales background, you might carry some version of that definition. We all built it from the bad examples we’ve seen our whole lives: the pushy closer, the rep who qualifies everyone and disqualifies no one, and the pitch that withholds the full truth. We saw bad sales and subconsciously decided that’s what sales is.
Then we started our own businesses and became part-time salespeople, maybe even quietly a little ashamed of that part of the job.
My definition of sales came first in college.
I was studying marketing and figured I needed experience, so I answered a flyer for a part-time “marketing associate” job. I interviewed, got it, and showed up to find out that it was actually just me, alone in an office, cold calling a list in Salesforce. Just an outbound sales job disguised as “marketing.”
I did fine at it. In fact, a few years later I ran into my manager (the head sales guy) who said I set the call that turned into their biggest client. But I hated it. I only lasted about two months.
I quit because I didn’t believe in the service I was selling, or that I was really helping anyone. I felt like I was interrupting people to push something I didn’t believe in. That job tainted my view of sales for years.
What repaired it was watching better examples. Later in my career I worked with salespeople who did it differently:
They actively disqualified the people they knew they couldn’t help.
They were honest about what their product could and couldn’t do.
They believed their product would genuinely improve someone’s work life, even in a small way.
Most software and services are not going to cure cancer. But they can still make someone’s Tuesday better. Sometimes much better.
These days I describe myself to prospects as a very non-pushy salesperson, and I mean it. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. But I do believe I can help the right people with the problem I solve, and that belief is where the confidence in my sales conversations comes from.
People don’t want to be sold. They do want help fixing problems they have. Good sales is serving the people you know you can help, in exchange for money.
Isn’t that one of the things you like most about running your own business anyway? Getting to help people with problems you know how to solve. Sales is just the part where you find them and offer to help.
Here’s your invitation for the week:
Think back to the best sales experience you’ve ever had. What did that salesperson do? They probably understood your problem, believed they could help, and made it easy to say yes.
That’s your model.
Now follow that example this week in your DMs, your conversations with prospects, and your pitch. Belief in service-first sales gets rebuilt by doing it, one conversation at a time.
Somewhere right now, your best client is circling the block, hoping someone asks them if they need help. Go find them.
Keep building,
Garrett
Just for 10x Solo members:
Last Thursday’s workshop: Ruben Halfhide on Pitchless, his method for starting DM conversations with potential clients and turning them into calls without the pitch. It’s the workshop behind today’s issue. The recording is posted in the Notion library.
This Thursday: Reuben Swartz on the Simple 2-Step Sales Process, including how to use your origin story and positioning to generate better referrals with less business development effort. Already on your calendar.
In #asks-and-answers: “Did I just lose an easy $2k retainer opportunity?” A member talked a prospect out of the retainer she was ready to buy and into a fixed-scope project instead. 8 replies
P.S. When you’re ready, here are two ways I can help you:
Join the 10x Solo community. A private community of full-time B2B solos, fractionals, and small agency owners. Weekly workshops, honest peer feedback, and referrals. Apply here.
Work with me 1:1. For maxed-out consultants, fractionals, and agency owners who want to make more money in less time by refining their business model, offers, and systems. One spot opening up in a few weeks. DM me to set up a time to chat.
Have questions or comments about today’s topic? Share them below. 👇
That's a great reframe. I like to help founders see sales as problem solving with another human. Similar to helping them. Your goal is to solve a problem for that customer and you find those customers by being an evangelist for that problem and what life looks like after that problem is solved.
When you approach your customer engagement with a problem solving mindset it feels likes like persuading them to buy and more like working with them to improve their day to day.
Every DM starting five points behind because of one bad definition of sales is a specific enough mechanism that I recognize it operating in my own hesitation. I've never traced my reluctance to reach out back to a single flawed belief I picked up from watching pushy examples years ago.