Ready to play?🕹️

What is up, internet friends?

I have hot take this weekend: if you want to be a better marketer, you gotta do sales.

If you never sell anything, how can you understand what kind of marketing works?

Main Quest❗️

Always Be Selling

Before I was shitposting on the internet, I used to be a sales guy selling stainless steel raw materials.

This was a real sales job: cold calling, business trips, wining and dining clients, and sometimes getting too drunk afterward. Even my first tech startup job was in business development.

It wasn't until later that I transitioned into marketing. Starting in sales actually gave me a huge advantage when it came to shaping my marketing mindset:

• The “ideal user” stopped being an abstract concept. I automatically saw users as people, not just metrics.

• I had direct exposure to how they described their problems and why they chose our product.

• I gained insights into how they discovered our products, what marketing tactics worked, and where to double down.

If you’re a sales pro turned marketer, you also have a sharper sense of what drives people to buy, especially in B2B. You’re closer to the money and can generate more ideas for better conversion.

Now, if you’re already in marketing without direct sales experience, don’t worry. There are still ways to learn from sales.

If you’re a marketer at a B2B startup, here’s how you can learn from sales data without actually doing it yourself:

1. Sit in on Sales Calls:

   • This is an underrated tactic for marketers. By sitting in on sales calls, you get a firsthand look at what a potential lead looks like, how they think, and what they care about.

   • You’ll gain direct insights into the considerations and objections they have during the decision-making process.

2. Identify Your Best Customers:

   • When figuring out who your best-paying customers are, don’t just focus on revenue. Consider how much hand-holding is required post-sale.

   • The “best” customers are often those who not only pay well but also require minimal support after the sale.

   • Understanding this can help you refine your target personas and marketing strategies to attract more of these high-value, low-maintenance customers.

3. Analyze Win/Loss Reports:

   • Dig into the details of why deals are won or lost. A

   • ssuming the sales team keep their CRM notes update, these reports will show you what resonates with customers and what doesn’t.

Remember marketers: at the end of the day, your goal is to make money, and becoming comfortable with anything related to sales will help you in many different ways.

XP Boost⬆️

Cheat Codes🤑

• Want to learn video editing? Start making videos of an activity you enjoy. Don’t think too much about editing it, just play around with AI video apps until you figure out what looks good.

• Launching on Product Hunt? Do it at 12:01AM PST so you have all day for your product to be featured.

• The ultimate cheat code: remember that you can just do stuff online.

Item Shop🛖

• Matter: The best reader app to put all your subscribed newsletters and blog posts in one place.

• Softr: Amazing tool to build a web app without coding, with better UI than their competitors

• Captions: Tried this app to create a captioned video for the first time. Pretty solid.

Good Graphics📷

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Until next week.