Future-selling is not over-selling
Future-selling is not over-selling, and any B2B startup is almost obligated to do so.
Forget whether the schema I crafted is fully aligned to your particular view of where on the sales map we can exist. I simply wanted to illustrate how different company cultures can result in different behaviors to selling, such as e.g. a timid, deceitful, or fully tuned approach.
We’ve all been burned in the past, and some to the degree where selling anything but the most pristine parts of the product currently in production is hard. Fully discounting the value of anything in alpha, beta, early release cycle, etc. The primary advantage of any startup is its agility and being unwilling or scared to sell things actively in production, independently of their quality or stability is an unnecessary handicap applied.
We’ve all had junior salespeople or even younger versions of our founder selves who in a moment of panic/eagerness oversold the customer on features not actually being in production. The error is not so much in talking about things you do not have yet but in presenting them as already engineered. In a similar vein when you’ve been hurt enough by the prior oversell, you “graduate” within the same deceitful approach to overpromising that a particular feature is around the corner when the feature is not even on the roadmap.
Where a tuned and trustful organization confidently sells all the features in production without any delay or hesitation. This is the minimum required and surely where I see most startups reside. However, if your B2B sales cycle is e.g. 7 months from hi-and-hello to the customer being onboarded, you are essentially under-selling if you only present what you have today, as that will not be the solution the customer will actually adopt. This is where we enter the uncomfortable territory of Future-selling. Being so much in control with your roadmap (however you construct it) that you can confidently sell a future product that you deliver 7 months from now. This does not need to include the finite details of every feature, but it does need to speak to the overarching pains you are solving and what outcomes you expect from your upcoming endeavors. And then most importantly deliver on your promises.
Aspirational selling allows us when needed, to bring the customer along on a journey of what we could become without promising them anything but our damndest best in trying to reach the shore. Getting them excited, not about features, but about what we are trying to achieve. It is super important to strongly differ between your Future-selling efforts and your aspirations for the product, as any mistake here takes you back into overpromising territory. If you or your organization are not yet great storytellers you might even skip this step as it can easily be confused by both customer and team.
Future-selling is not easy to execute and we’ve all had real friction from the makers (engineers, designers, PMs) on the team as they might not see the difference between overselling, overpromising, and a positive setting of Future-selling. I do think you owe it to yourself and your company to try though.
