You're in sales whether you want it or not

I watched a founder spend 45 minutes explaining why they weren't in sales. They were a "product person." Sales was for the person they'd hire later.

Meanwhile, they'd just spent the previous hour convincing me their idea would work. Convincing an engineer to join as co-founder. Convincing their spouse this wasn't a terrible time to quit their job.

That's all sales.

The people who resist this label the hardest are usually doing the most selling. They just call it something else. "Sharing the vision." "Building alignment." "Getting buy-in."

Same thing. You're persuading someone to believe something they didn't believe before you started talking.

There's this weird stigma around the word "sales." Like it's manipulative. Like you're trying to trick someone into wanting something they don't need.

But that's not what selling is. Selling is: here's what I see, here's why it matters, here's what we should do about it.

You do this constantly. You sell your ideas in meetings. You sell your priorities to your team. You sell your career narrative in interviews. You sell your company's mission to candidates.

The founder who says "I'm not a salesperson" is the same person who's about to:

If you can't sell, you can't build anything that requires other humans.

Most people think selling means:

Watched too many founders fail because they believed this.

The best sellers I know are often quiet. They listen more than they talk. They ask questions that surface what the other person actually needs, not what they think they should need.

Good selling is pattern recognition. You're trying to figure out: what does this person care about? What would change their mind? What's blocking them from saying yes?

Then you're testing. Does this framing land? Does that example resonate? Should I go deeper here or move on?

It's a skill. Like writing or coding. You get better by doing it badly first.

Worked with a founding engineer who refused to talk to customers. That was "the sales guy's job."

He'd build features based on what he thought made sense. Sales would try to explain what customers actually wanted. He'd argue customers didn't understand what they needed.

Six months in, he still hadn't talked to a single user.

The company didn't make it.

He was brilliant. Could architect systems in his head. But he couldn't sell the value of his work to anyone who wasn't already technical. Couldn't convince the team his approach was right. Couldn't recruit other engineers.

Turned out he needed to sell constantly. He just never learned how because he kept insisting it wasn't his job.

Different company. Designer who understood she was selling every day.

Selling the team on which problem to solve. Selling engineering on why the interaction model mattered. Selling the founder on killing features that diluted the experience.

She'd walk into a room with prototypes. Not to show off her work. To test if she could convince people this direction was right.

When people pushed back, she didn't get defensive. She'd ask: "What would make this better?" Sometimes she'd change her approach. Sometimes she'd dig in and show why the objection missed the point.

She was selling. She knew it. She got better at it.

That company's still around.

Not charisma. Not extroversion. Not even confidence.

Three things:

The first one's where most people fail. They think they're selling their idea when they're actually just... talking. No clear ask. No specific next step.

"We should build this feature" isn't selling. It's stating an opinion.

"Here's the data on why this feature matters, here's what it would take, here's what we'd need to cut to make room for it. I think we should start next week" - that's selling.

The second one takes practice. You have to actually listen. Not wait for your turn to talk. Figure out what success looks like to them, not what you think it should look like.

The third one separates people who learn from people who don't. You're going to hear "no" constantly. Most of the time it means "not yet" or "not like that." If you stop after the first no, you never figure out what would've been a yes.

Check your calendar from last week. Count how many of these you did:

That's eight different sales contexts. Most people do at least four of these every week.

You're already in sales. You're just not treating it like a skill to develop.

Started treating every interaction as a sales moment. Not in a gross way. Just: what am I trying to convince this person of? What would make that easier?

Meetings got shorter. Stopped rambling through context. Started with the ask, then backed into the why only if they needed it.

Emails got clearer. Subject line = the decision I need. First line = the specific ask. Everything else = supporting evidence if they want to dig in.

Presentations changed. Used to build up to the conclusion. Now I start with the conclusion and defend it. If they're convinced in slide 2, we're done. If not, we have 20 slides to work through their objections.

Recruiting got easier. Stopped "sharing the vision" and started listening for what the candidate actually wanted. Then connected our opportunity to that. If I couldn't connect it honestly, they weren't the right person anyway.

None of this felt manipulative. It felt efficient.