How To Sell To Customers
Now that you've built an MVP, you need to get users.
Distribution is everything. You cannot launch a product, send a few cold emails, and expect users to show up. You need a brand, a website, a sales process, and a way to create demand over time.
Sales and marketing are the two sides of distribution. Marketing helps people discover you. Sales turns the right people into customers.
This chapter is about building that system.
Cofounder can help set up your sales and marketing department. It can define your ICP, build your website, configure your CRM, create outreach workflows, plan content, generate marketing assets, and turn customer conversations back into product feedback.
Build a Brand
You need a brand.
A brand is not just a logo. It is the story people attach to your company. It tells customers why you exist, what you believe, and whether they should trust you.
A brand has three parts:
The story of the company.Why does the company exist?
A set of values.What do you believe that should show up in the product?
A visual identity.What does the company look and feel like?
The story
Start with story — start with why. Uber's early story was simple: someone waited 20 minutes for a cab and realized the system was broken. The problem was obvious, emotional, and easy to repeat.
Your story doesn't need to be dramatic, but it does need to be a story.
Example — General Intelligence brand story
“Our branding — with the sunflowers, lush greenery, and people spending time with their friends — reflects our vision for the world. That's the world we want to build. A world where peopleactually work lessand can spend time doing the things they love.
We're going to make it easy for anyone to start a company and build that life for themselves. The life they want to build, and spend every day dreaming about.”
Maybe you watched finance teams spend every Monday reconciling spreadsheets. Maybe you saw clinics lose money because insurance claims were impossible to track. Maybe you kept building the same internal tool at every job because the market options were terrible. That is the seed of the brand.
Your brand values should be just as clear. They should not sound like corporate posters. They should shape product and marketing decisions.
Examples of brand values:
- Nike:Sport should move the world forward and be accessible to everyone.
- Airbnb:Travel should help people feel like they belong anywhere, not just book a place to sleep.
- Patagonia:A company can build great products while putting the planet first.
- Stripe:The internet should make it easier for more businesses to participate in the global economy.
- Shopify:Anyone, anywhere should be able to start and grow a business.
- Apple:Privacy should be built into products because it is a fundamental human right.
Visual identity
The visual identity is how the brand shows up — your vibe. It does not need to be perfect. It needs to feel intentional and consistent.
Elements of a visual identity:
- A logo
- A color palette
- Fonts
- Button and layout styles
- Image, illustration, or screenshot style
- Basic rules for how everything should look together
Cofounder can work with you to create a brand guideline — story, values, and visual identity — so the brand feels consistent from day one.
Build a Website
Once you understand your brand, you need a website.
Your website is the home base for distribution. Sales emails link to it. Customers use it to understand what you do. Marketing campaigns send people there. Investors look at it before they take you seriously.
The first thing your website should do is tell any reader what your company does.After that, it can represent your brand and is often the “front door” of your company.
A good early website should answer:
- Who is this for?
- What painful problem does it solve?
- What does the product do?
- Why is this better than the current way?
- What should the visitor do next?
For a live product, the next step might beSign up,Book a demo, orLog in. For an earlier product, it might beJoin the waitlistorTalk to us.
Do not overcomplicate the first version. You need a clear homepage, a simple product explanation, a few screenshots or visuals, and a call to action. If you run a software company, it should also convert readers into signups (self serve) or demos (enterprise).
Cofounder can build your website — turning your product, brand, and positioning into a live marketing site with product pages, calls to action, and links into your app.
Get Your First User
If you followed along with chapter 2, you should now have a product. Since you have a product, you need someone to use it.
Start with people close enough to give real feedback — friends, former coworkers, industry contacts, advisors, or people you know through your network. The important thing is that they understand the problem and will not immediately shut you down.
Do not just send a link and ask, “What do you think?” Watch them use the product if you can. Ask them to share their screen. Sit next to them. Pay attention to where they hesitate, what they misunderstand, and what they try to do that your product does not support yet.
You are trying to learn:
Do they understand what the product is for?
Watch for confusion in the first 60 seconds. If a user cannot explain what the product does after a brief look, the positioning is unclear.
Can they reach the first valuable moment?
Identify the moment the product first delivers real value. Then count how many steps it takes to get there. Every extra step is a drop-off risk.
Where do they get confused?
Note every hesitation, misclick, and misread label. Confusion is data — each instance points at copy, UX, or model mismatches you can fix.
What would make them use it again?
Retention starts on day one. Ask what would pull them back tomorrow, next week, next month — and whether the product currently delivers that.
Would they pay for it?
Willingness to pay is the strongest signal. Ask directly. A polite “maybe” is a no — push for a real answer.
Who else has this problem?
If they say yes to paying, ask who else they know with the same problem. That is your first lead list — and the start of an ICP.
Take the feedback seriously, but do not obey every request. Users are good at revealing problems. They are not always good at designing the solution.
Building a good company is a function of how well you solve your users' problems. Your first users also help refine your ICP.
Define Your Ideal Customer
Most people start too broad. They say they sell to founders, marketers, realtors, doctors, developers, small businesses, or enterprises. These categories are too vague for sales. You cannot write good outreach, build a strong pitch, or prioritize leads if your customer is “everyone who might maybe use this.”
You need anIdeal Customer Profile, or ICP — the highly specific kind of customer you are trying to sell to first. It is not every possible customer. It is the customer most likely to feel the problem, understand the value, and buy early.
We sell to ecommerce companies.
We sell to DTC brands doing $5M–$50M in revenue that rely on repeat purchases and have a small retention team.
The second version tells you where to look, who to message, what pain to lead with, and what language to use.
To define your ICP, start with the broad category, then narrow it by company size, industry, growth stage, geography, workflow, budget, and trigger event. Atrigger eventis something that makes the problem urgent: a company just raised money, a new leader joined, a team is hiring, a regulation changed, a bad process finally broke.
Good sales starts with good targeting. If your ICP is wrong, everything downstream gets harder.
Cofounder can help define your ICP — turning a broad customer idea into a sharper profile, identifying buying triggers, and helping you decide who to sell to first.
Understand Your Competitors
Competitors are not proof that you should quit. They are proof that customers already care about the problem. The mistake is copying them.
If you copy their website, features, pitch, and customer list, you become a weaker version of something that already exists. The goal of competitor research is not to blend in. The goal is to find the opening.
Search the main keyword in your category and study the first few serious companies you find.
Look at:
- Who their homepage speaks to
- What pain they lead with
- Which features they highlight
- What industries they mention
- How they price
- What their reviews complain about
Then ask:what are they missing?Maybe they serve enterprises and ignore smaller teams. Maybe they are powerful but hard to use. Maybe customers like the outcome but hate the workflow. That gap is where you should position yourself.
Choose Your Sales Motion
A sales motion is how you sell. The right motion depends on your customer, price, product complexity, and how much trust the buyer needs before they pay.
There are three questions to answer:
Transactional or consultative?
A transactional sale is simple — the buyer understands the product, the price is low enough to decide quickly, and they can usually buy without talking to you. A consultative sale requires a conversation.
Product-led or relationship-led?
A product-led sale depends mostly on the product experience. A relationship-led sale depends more on trust.
Inbound or outbound?
Inbound means customers come to you. Outbound means you go to them. Most startups are outbound first because nobody knows they exist yet.
A simple rule:
- Cheap, obvious, low-risk products can be self-serve and product-led.
- Expensive, complex, high-trust products need consultative sales.
- If nobody knows you exist yet, you need outbound.
Choose the simplest motion that can close your first customers.
Choose based on how hard the purchase is and whether buyers are already looking.
Simple product, low risk, buyers already search
Clear website, pricing, signup, content
Complex product, high trust, buyers already search
Demo requests, discovery, proof, proposal
Simple product, clear ICP, buyers are not looking yet
Targeted emails, short calls, trial links
Complex product, expensive or risky, demand must be created
Named accounts, warm intros, deep discovery
Startups usually begin in the outbound row because nobody knows they exist yet. Move toward inbound and product-led only when the product, market, and trust signals support it.
Cofounder can map your ICP to a sales motion and set up a practical first sales process.
Set Up the Sales Workflow
Sales needs a system. The first version does not need to be complicated — it needs to help you track who you are selling to, what happened, and what happens next.
A sales workflow turns one lead into a sequence of clear next actions.
Day 1
Touch 1
Context, problem, solve
Day 2
Touch 2
Become familiar
Day 3
Touch 3
Answer the likely objection
Day 4
Touch 4
Show real engagement
Day 5
Touch 5
Share the differentiator
Day 6
Touch 6
Make it relevant
Day 7
Touch 7
Soft walkaway
Run the sequence up to 3x with different decision makers.
After a month, use their news. After two, restart the cadence.
Set up a simple CRM
A CRM is where you track customers. A structured spreadsheet can work. A lightweight CRM can work. What does not work is trying to remember every conversation in your head.
Your CRM should answer:
- Who are we selling to?
- Who is the decision maker?
- What stage is the deal in?
- What did we last discuss?
- When do we need to follow up?
- Why did we win or lose?
Cofounder can set up a CRM, define pipeline stages, and keep your sales workflows organized from the start.
Warm up your inbox
Cold email only works if your email lands in the inbox. New domains have no reputation. If you create a domain and immediately send hundreds of emails, email providers may treat you like spam.
Gradual sending builds trust before you scale outbound.
Blast Everyone
Flagged as Spam
New domain, high volume, weak reputation
Gradual Ramp
2 Emails
3 Emails
4 Emails
5 Emails
Inbox Stays Healthy
Low volume, clean setup, targeted recipients
Before outbound, set up the basics:
- Use a real business domain.
- Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Send a small number of targeted emails first.
- Ramp volume slowly.
- Keep bounce rates low.
- Make it easy for people to opt out.
Build a lead list
A lead list is a list of companies or people who might buy. Start with the ICP, then look for evidence that a company has the problem now. Hiring posts, funding announcements, product launches, new executives, regulatory changes, industry news, and public complaints can all be useful signals.
A good list is:
- Relevant.The leads match your ICP.
- Repeatable.You can build the same kind of list again.
- Reachable.You can find a real person and a real channel to contact them.
- Rare.It is not the exact same list every other seller is blasting.
Then score the leads:
Tier 1:Strong ICP fit, clear trigger, likely to buy soon.
Tier 2:Good ICP fit, some signal, worth contacting.
Tier 3:Possible fit, but unclear need or long sales cycle.
Spend most of your time on Tier 1 and strong Tier 2 leads.
Cofounder can help build and score lead lists from your ICP, buying triggers, and market signals.
Choose the right decision maker
The ICP tells you which companies to target. The decision maker tells you who to contact. The right person is not always the most senior person — it is the person who feels the pain, understands the workflow, and can influence the purchase.
Look for:
- Problem fit.Who actually experiences the problem?
- Budget or influence.Who can approve, recommend, or block the purchase?
- Timing.Has something changed that makes them more likely to act?
- Familiarity.Have they used a similar product before?
Do not spend forever finding the perfect contact. Pick the best person, test the message, and move.
Do outreach that does not suck
Nobody wants to engage with spam. Good outreach is casual, clear, concise, and contextual.
Hi Michael,
I hope this email finds you well. I am reaching out because our revolutionary platform helps modern organizations unlock operational efficiencies across the enterprise.
Michael — saw your team is hiring three lifecycle marketers.
Usually that means retention is becoming a bigger priority, but the reporting stack gets messy fast.
We help DTC teams see which campaigns actually drive repeat purchase without stitching together five dashboards.
Worth a quick look next week?
This works because it references a trigger, names a problem, says what the product does, and asks for a small next step. Cold email is useful, but it works best when the prospect can also find a real website, a real point of view, and real signs that your company understands the market.
Cofounder can turn your ICP into outreach angles, draft concise messages, create follow-up sequences, and adapt your pitch for different customer segments.
Run the Sales Process
A pipeline is the path a deal moves through from lead to customer. The stages should reflect real progress — a deal should only move when something objective has happened.
A simple early pipeline:
Open— lead added.
Trying to Contact— outreach started.
Contacted— prospect replied.
Consult— discovery call scheduled or completed.
Pitch— you presented a specific solution or proposal.
Verbal Commit— buyer agreed in principle.
Closed Won— contract signed or payment received.
Closed Lost— deal is not moving forward.
Review the pipeline weekly. Ask what needs follow-up, what is stuck, what should be closed lost, and which deals deserve more attention.
Run a consult call
A consult call is where you learn enough to decide whether you can help. Do not treat it like an interrogation. The best consult calls feel like real conversations — you are listening for pain, urgency, authority, budget, and fit. You are also qualifying them. Not every prospect should become a customer.
You want to learn:
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- Why does it matter now?
- How do they handle it today?
- What is broken about the current approach?
- What happens if they do nothing?
- Who else is involved in the decision?
- What would a successful outcome look like?
Develop a strong pitch
A pitch is not a deck. A deck can help, especially in a consultative sale. But the pitch is the story you tell about the customer, their problem, and the better outcome you can help create.
A strong pitch usually follows this structure:
Here is what we heard.Repeat the customer's problem in their language.
Here is why it matters.Connect the pain to time, money, risk, growth, or opportunity.
Here is what changes.Show the better workflow or outcome.
Here is how the product helps.Explain the product only as much as needed.
Here is proof.Use examples, testimonials, data, or a clear demo.
Here is the next step.Make the path forward obvious.
Talk about outcomes more than features. Customers do not buy a dashboard because it has filters. They buy it because it helps them see which campaigns are wasting money.
Close the deal
Closing is not a trick. If you have targeted the right customer, understood the pain, built trust, and pitched a useful solution, closing should feel like the next logical step. A good closing process makes buying feel safe.
Make sure you have:
- A clear price
- A clear scope
- A clear buyer
- A clear approval process
- A clear timeline
- A clear onboarding plan
- A clear next meeting or signature date
Re-establish the business case before talking terms. Then make the next step concrete.
“Let me know what you think.”
“Can we send the order form today and schedule onboarding for next Tuesday?”
Improve the Sales Process
Once you have a few dozen real conversations, start looking at the process. Your CRM is how you diagnose where sales is breaking.
Look at the conversion between stages:
- Leads to contacted— tells you whether your list, copy, and sending setup are working.
- Contacted to consult— tells you whether the message is relevant enough to earn a meeting.
- Consult to pitch— tells you whether you are reaching the right ICP and finding real pain.
- Pitch to verbal commit— tells you whether the story and offer are strong.
- Verbal commit to closed won— tells you whether pricing, procurement, trust, and onboarding are clear.
Do not obsess over tiny numbers. Early data is noisy. But review the process monthly and look for patterns. Sales improves the same way product improves: observe, learn, change one thing, and measure again.
Stage conversion shows which part of the sales process needs work.
A weak stage points to one specific sales habit to improve.
Change one variable, then measure the next month again.
Cofounder can turn sales notes, CRM activity, and customer objections into product and positioning feedback. The patterns you hear in sales should flow back into what you build.
How to do Marketing
Marketing creates awareness and generates warm leads. Sales converts those leads into customers.
A successful business usually does both. In the beginning, consumer companies tend to be more marketing-heavy. Business-facing companies tend to be more sales-heavy. But even B2B companies need marketing. Cold outreach works better when people can see that your company has a point of view.
Marketing starts by turning your brand into content. Content is not just posting for attention — it is how you teach the market what you believe, explain the problem, show your product, and make the company easier to remember.
Choose the content
Before you make content, decide what kind of content fits your market. The right content depends on your customer. Developers may want technical guides. Operators may want templates. Executives may want benchmarks. Consumers may want short videos or social proof.
Examples of content types:
- Essays or blog posts
- Images and social posts
- Short videos
- Educational guides
- Templates and checklists
- Product demos
- Customer stories
- Benchmark reports
- Micro-apps — small free tools that solve a narrow problem and bring the right audience into your orbit
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Cofounder can help plan your content strategy — turning your brand, ICP, and product into content ideas, briefs, calendars, and drafts.
Make the content
Most startup content is bad because it is rushed, generic, or written for no one in particular. One useful guide that says something specific is better than ten vague posts about “the future of work.”
Good content usually has one clear idea. It can teach something, show a workflow, explain a customer pain, compare approaches, launch a feature, tell a founder story, or give away a useful tool.
You can use AI tools to produce the assets. Image models like gpt-image-2 can help generate campaign visuals. Midjourney can help explore art direction. HyperFrames can help create motion videos from web-based compositions. HTML can be used to make social assets, product visuals, and decks.
The important thing is not the tool. The important thing is taste. Refine the output until it looks like something your company should actually publish.
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Cofounder can generate marketing content through integrations with image, video, and design tools — creating images, motion videos, social posts, HTML-based visuals, and decks from your brand and content briefs.
Pick a strategy
Do not try every marketing channel at once. Pick a strategy that matches your market and your strengths.
- SEOworks when customers are already searching for the problem. Slow, but compounds.
- Paidworks when you know who the buyer is and can afford to test messages quickly. Fast feedback, but can burn money if the funnel is weak.
- Organicworks when your market spends time on social platforms, communities, newsletters, or forums. Builds trust, but requires consistency.
- Influencer or partnership marketingworks when trusted people or companies already have access to your audience. You borrow trust, but need to choose partners carefully.
Pick one primary channel and one supporting channel. Run them seriously for long enough to learn.
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Cofounder can help run and optimize marketing strategies across SEO, paid, organic, and partnership channels — suggesting tests, generating campaign assets, and tracking what is working.
Distribute the content
Making content is not enough. You have to put it where people will see it — publishing on your blog, posting on X or LinkedIn, uploading to YouTube or TikTok, sending a newsletter, launching on a community, running ads, or giving partners assets to share.
The platform should match the customer. Do not post everywhere because you feel like you should. Post where your ICP already spends attention.
You will need to create the accounts yourself. Use the same brand identity across them so the company feels consistent.
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Cofounder can distribute content through integrations once your accounts are set up — adapting content for each platform, scheduling posts, and keeping campaigns organized.
Measure and refine
Marketing should create a learning loop. Do not confuse attention with progress. A post can get a lot of likes and produce no customers. A niche guide can get fewer views and produce three excellent leads.
Track the basics:
- Which content gets attention?
- Which content brings qualified visitors?
- Which visitors become leads?
- Which leads become meetings?
- Which meetings become customers?
The goal is not to be famous. The goal is to create demand from the right people.
Tell a Consistent Story
Sales and marketing both depend on story. Not fake storytelling. Not manipulation. A good story is a clear explanation of why the customer should care now.
The customer is the main character, not you.
A simple story has five parts:
The customer has a goal.
Something is getting in the way.
The old way is no longer good enough.
Your product creates a better path.
The customer gets a better outcome.
This story should show up everywhere: your website, outreach, consult calls, pitch, demo, proposal, content, ads, and onboarding.
If the story changes every time you tell it, the market will feel confused. If the story is clear, customers start repeating it back to you. That is a strong signal.
What comes next:
Once you've got this down, you'll have to start scaling functions like customer support, product analytics, and others. That's what Chapter IV covers.